How to Copy and Paste With No Formatting in Gmail and Google Docs

One thing that always annoyed me was how copying/pasting text into Gmail or a Google document would also paste the formatting of whatever website you clipped it from. This is sometimes useful when it comes to hyperlinks or bold and italic text, but mostly quite annoying when it also copies font styles and HTML table information, requiring the unnecessary step of reselecting the text and choosing “remove formatting.”

Recently I came across a glorious shortcut: Ctrl-Shift-V, or Command-Shift-V on Mac.

The result is clean, beautiful, unformatted text. (At least if you’re using Chrome).

Try it out, and never again let your emails be plagued by a font change in the middle of a paragraph.

What I’ve Been Working On — KoreaJobFinder.com

Over the past few months, I’ve been working on a website for people looking for jobs in Korea, KoreaJobFinder.com. This is, hopefully, my retirement plan.

As a background, Korea’s somewhat of an oddball when it comes to online communities. Websites that have a huge following in the west, for whatever reason have a hard time tapping into the Korean market. The job market is similar — companies like craigslist, monster, and careerbuilder have little or no presence in Korea.

There are a few existing job websites in Korea that cater to foreigners (non-Korean residents). The biggest of these is a site called Dave’s ESL Cafe, which is specifically for English teaching jobs (which make up probably 99% of the foreign job market in Korea). There are probably a half dozen other job boards as well, but this is definitely the most popular.

So my idea isn’t anything novel. But the reason I made KoreaJobFinder is because I feel the other job boards are just plain cumbersome to use. Click on the Dave’s link to see what I mean. It assaults your eyes with caps lock and an overflow of information. If you’re looking for a job, your only choice is to read every single headline, and click on the ones that interest you. Then you have to skim read the entire post to find crucial details, like how much the job pays (which usually determines whether or not you’re even interested in reading more about the position), resulting in a lot of wasted time and effort.

With my site, I’m working from the ground up to make the job search as efficient as possible for the user. Users can search by a set of criteria, so that every job post they read is for a job they would potentially take. I’m also making an effort to organize key information at the top of each post, so users can take in the crucial information quickly, then decide whether or not they want to read more about the position.

I’m banking on the assumption that if I put the time and effort into making a genuinely useful website, people will share the link and it will start to gain popularity (and start showing up in relevant Google searches). From there, I can start charging for recruiters to post job listings, which is how the site will eventually make money.

So, check out the website and let me know what you think: http://koreajobfinder.com. It’s a long way off, but as long as I continue to put in a bit of work every day, I’ll eventually get there. Any feedback on the website is welcome, and if anyone wants to spread the word on their blog, facebook, or twitter, it would be much appreciated!

Where This Website is Going

Hey, what’s up. If you followed my website in the past, you might be surprised with the direction I’ll be taking this blog/website thing.

I don’t make videos anymore. At least, I don’t make videos right now. And I don’t really see the videos I made back in high school and college as a reflection of who I am anymore, so it seemed pointless to continue to display them on my personal website.

Likewise, I haven’t been getting drunk every weekend and taking stupid pictures of my face lately. Yeah, I guess you could say I grew up. Hey, not that there’s anything wrong with getting drunk and taking stupid pictures of your face, but I don’t really consider that the high point in my life either.

So if I’m not making stupid videos, and I’m not getting drunk every weekend, then what, you ask, could I possibly be up to these days? What will become of dear old duffx.com?

I’m starting my own online business. Basically I’m tired of working for someone else. I’m tired of my income being decided by someone else’s budget, not how hard I worked that month. I want freedom. I want to be able to play soccer at 2pm on a Wednesday. I want to be able to pack my bags on a whim and visit a friend in a random part of the world without needing to ask anyone for permission. It might sound juvenile, but then again if you’ve followed my website at any point in the past, me acting juvenile isn’t exactly a new thing.

This blog is going to follow my progress along the way to making my business profitable, and be an outlet for anything that interests me along the way. Current interests include waking up at 4:30am, finding the right balance between work and play, doing pullups, and the life philosophy of the ancient Stoics. A little thing called Kaizen. Ridiculous amounts of coffee. Confused yet? Good.

Who knows. Maybe it will be boring as hell. But then again, maybe it will be awesome. But at least if I’m writing about what interests me at the moment, it will be updated. And after years of sporadic and at times a complete lack of updates, that’s what’s important.

So there you have it. Duffx.com is reborn. There, I said it.

Now just wait a month or so until I’m inspired to write another post. Eh, who knows. Maybe it will happen sooner.

Coming Soon…

Got a lot on my plate right now, but I’ll get this up and running eventually 😉