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Inception hunk Tom Hardy admits: 'I've had sexual relations with men'

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 5:25 PM on 28th July 2010

Engaged: Tom Hardy and fiancee Charlotte Riley at the Inception premiere in London earlier this month

Hollywood heart-throb Tom Hardy has revealed he had a string of gay flings as a teenager.

The 32-year-old Inception star, who is engaged to British actress Charlotte Riley, 28, and also has a two-year-old son with a former girlfriend 

But asked if he'd ever had any sexual relations with other men, the broody actor said: 'As a boy? Of course I have. I'm an actor for ****'s sake.

'I've played with everything and everyone. I love the form and the physicality, but now that I'm in my thirties, it doesn't do it for me.

 

'I'm done experimenting but there's plenty of stuff in a relationship with another man, especially gay men, that I need in my life.

'A lot of gay men get my thing for shoes. I have definite feminine qualities and a lot of gay men are incredibly masculine.' 

London-born Tom found big-screen fame with Star Trek Nemesis, and in the 2009 hit Bronson, where he played the notoriously violent criminal Charles Bronson to critical acclaim.

In Guy Ritchie's hit Rock'n'Rolla he starred as gay gangster Handsome Bob, and had a crush on Scottish hearthrob Gerard Butler.

He then starred as Heathcliffe in a BBC remake of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, where he met stunning fiancée Charlotte.

In an interview with Now magazine, the former party-boy who has battled drink, drugs and crime to turn his life around, added: 'A lot of people say I seem masculine, but I don't feel it.

'I feel intrinsically feminine. I'd love to be one of the boys but I always felt a bit on the outside.

'Maybe my masculine qualities come from overcompensating because I'm not one of the boys.'

Hollywood heart-throbs: Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy in a scene from Inception

 

via Do Buddhists Watch Telly?

 

 

image courtesy of the author, WILFREDO PASCUAL

 

1.

Beneath the early evening cloudy sky we saw Nora Aunor dwarfed by a multitude in the middle of Times Square.

There, I told myself, barely five feet tall, is the only living Filipina actress and singer honored in my country as one of our cultural heroes within the last one hundred years, surrounded by the lights of Broadway, mammoth digital ads and huge talking heads on gigantic TV screens. I remembered home and suddenly the Philippines seemed so tiny in this corner of the world.  

The eddying tide of teens and tourists swallowed Nora as she looked up at the multinational Viacom and Clear Channel displays. Her legendary wistful eyes marveled at light-emitting-diode technologies, the new visual language spoken by media producers, communication conglomerates and similar gods in the heart of this great city.

A sudden swift breeze chilled Nora, still dazzled by the glowing lights, the streaming showbiz news, the big retail record chains, the cineplexes. She reveled amidst the vortex of the entertainment and marketing industry that marked her destiny. This, in a planetary scale, is the industry that feeds, nourishes and occasionally tries to destroy her; that brings out her lusterless and her most resplendent moments. She honors it with her artistic defiance and locks horns with its demands. This is what she endures, where she thrives, her reward and punishment, her gift and her curse.

It claimed her as a child. Take it all away and you couldn’t help but wonder – who ultimately is this woman? What if Tawag ng Tanghalan, the national singing competition that propelled her to fame as a young child, never happened? What if for some reason, she had missed the strange confluence of those times? At fifty, she could just have been our nameless laundrywoman who, from time to time, would sing the saddest of songs and make us stop – but only for a moment – and then we would have to go back to whatever we were doing, nonchalantly dismissing her insignificance in our busy, dreary lives.

But as fate would have it, Nora stood in Times Square, relishing her rare moment of anonymity. As she bought us tickets to see the musical Little Shop of Horrors, we achingly saw ourselves in her: mortals all, warmed by the hearth of our most phosphorescent passions, our most combustible and devastating dreams.

But I would rather remember her in the emptiest of spaces. On her last days in the city, I saw Nora out in the streets, in places where not a single soul could be seen. Those were rare and fleeting moments when she appeared as if in a dream, in the middle of the street’s ghostly emptiness, alone, finally left to herself, like the playful phantom of a beautiful dark child in a post-apocalyptic vision.

This happened on two occasions, midday and midnight. She wore white on both occasions and broke pedestrian and traffic rules, an apparition in the midst of forbidden crossings.

2.

It was Puerto Rican Day and Nora wanted to see the parade that celebrated this US colony. Norie, Leonel and I followed her through closed traffic from 44th to 86th Streets leading to the parade route. We could hear the celebration on Fifth Avenue. As we reached one corner, Leonel and Nora made a quick, bold move: they slipped through a roadblock.

To suddenly end up midday, in a block in Manhattan where there was not a single human being in sight felt strange. With mute skyscrapers towering above us, it felt eerie to see the entire block littered by thousands of parade flyers, fluttering on our feet, as if every person on earth had gone and died and the melancholy litter of paper flying in the wind was all that was left to remind us of life in the planet. But we saw Nora walking ahead of us in the middle of the street, lone survivor, free from the maddening crowd, her steps bouncy, her feet winged.

The beating of the drums grew louder. A breeze lifted papers around her, swirling. I had to freeze the moment, flyers airborne, her hair blown. She slowly turned to us and smiled. And then heeding the call of the music, she broke free from us. I wanted to believe that she was at that rare moment, genuinely and completely happy.

We ran after her but lost her as we turned around the corner. How do you find a woman of Nora’s height amidst the frenzy of several hundred thousand spectators, waving and wearing the Puerto Rican flag? The air turned humid as I squeezed and inched my way to the front row. Music blared. People of brown color cheered on floats and cars decked out in red, white and blue. A small hand pulled me. You do not find Nora. She finds you.

How she managed to squeeze herself to reach the front row without getting crushed was beyond me. But there she was beside me, waving, beaming at the sight of young Puerto Ricans on the float playing hip-hop music. She waited till the last float passed by. The crowd took over the streets and began dancing. The police tried to clear the avenue but the crowd would not budge. The officers started yelling at people, their arms sweeping and shoving bodies indiscriminately. I looked around and saw Nora trying to cross the street. An officer blocked her and barked at her to go back. I tried to call her but she could not hear me. Lost, she ignored the officer and continued to cross the street. The officer towered over her and screamed, “MOOOVEE!” But the lashing authority of that order did not even startle her. She casually turned around with her chin up in the air, put her hands in her pocket and walked away unfazed.

3.

Round midnight, she joined us in Splash, one of Manhattan’s hottest mainstream gay dance club. She wore tight shorts and a white denim jacket over a layer of white ribbed cotton tube undershirt and tanktop. She also wore a white pair of high cut sneakers and a white cap. Annie Batungbakal hit the packed dance area as Frankie Knuckles, one of the world’s greatest DJ and remixer played early 80s dance music and techno. We were dancing with Nora Aunor. She danced to the rhythm of the kinetic black light amidst the gay crowd, ranging from their mid 20s to late 30s. Maternal at fifty, mercurial at night, our very own Cinderella, our queen, rocked the ball. If she was our midnight Cinderella, then surely most of us felt that we were in so many ways, her fairies, waving our wands to prolong the transformative powers of that magical night.

On our way home, we went to an adult shop where Nora bought a black leather mini skirt she later wore at the Los Angeles concert. Having claimed the night as a fairy tale, we had to succumb to its narrative arc, to the ticking of the clock. Reaching a traffic light crossing along Sixth Avenue, I have decided on one particular moment in bidding farewell to the nocturnal charm of it all.

As Nora walked ahead of us with the last glitters of our fairy dust trailing her, Jojo gaily remarked, “Tingnan niyo si Inay, parang siga kung maglakad.”

Hearing this, Nora hunched her shoulder and cracked us up as she gamely put on a show, walking with the cool lumbering tread of a street thug. And then suddenly, just as she reached the traffic light, which by then had signaled red, she crossed the deserted avenue. We stopped as Nora crossed the road alone, this time with hips swaying like a vivacious belle. The delightful switch showed at that moment what we loved most about her, how she continues to brave forbidden crossings and pay the price on our behalf.

Moreover, it was again the expansive emptiness of the space that made the moment truly memorable. No car passed. No one crossed the street. Not a single soul in the great city of New York reminded her and us of the multitude that stakes their claim on her life. Finally alone, unescorted and unattached in a vast, dark place, Nora, luminous in white, was a dazzling sight to behold. Like she was about to ascend to jubilant heights, airborne by the rainbow-colored wings of a Byzantine angel.

Those were rare moments. For the most part, I realized how humbly she had acquiesced to the irrevocable price she had to pay to reach her unknown destination. Like lines on the palms of her hand that marked her, it hardly required charting. “Basta nangyayari na lang,” she once said in an interview.

4.

One morning, while looking for a USB cable, Norie led us to a dollar store. “Baka pag may pinoy na nakakita sa atin dito,” I whispered to Leonel, “patay na naman. Lalabas sa tabloids – Nora, Sa Dollar Store Na Lang Namimili.” Of course we did not care. Why would we? Nora was so sweet. She bought us a set of flavored lip moisturizers with glitters. She looked so endearing walking down the shopping aisle, hugging three miniature fist-sized electric flat irons she bought for herself.

Leonel saw miniature sewing machines on the shelf. “Inay, parang iyong makinang tinapon niyo sa bintana sa Bituin.”

We did not know that a middle-aged Filipina behind us had overheard us.

“Ay, oo nga,” Nora said. “parang sa Bituin.”

Startled by that unmistakable voice, the Filipina turned to Nora and later in disbelief, approached Leonel. “Si Nora Aunor ba yan?” she whispered.

Leonel smiled and shrugged. We turned to Nora who was busy eyeing the goods on the shelf’s upper rows.

The woman approached her. “Kayo po ba si Nora Aunor?” Nora smiled and said, “Kamukha ko lang po.” As if she could get away with it. But the defining mole on her cheek identified her. The woman gasped and started jumping. She became hysterical. Hugging Nora, she cried, “Kayo nga! Kayo si Nora Aunor! Diyos ko si Nora nga! Si Nora! Si Nora!” Like the whole of Manhattan needed to know.

Nora laughed and politely asked the Filipina, “Kumusta na po kayo?” But the woman’s nerves were too frazzled to reply like she needed a good dosage of Valium just to calm down. We pulled our kababayan and told her about Nora’s concert tour as the Superstar walked on and turned to another aisle. We left the dazed Filipina and followed Nora.

As we walked from aisle to aisle, I would turn around from time to time, haunted by observant eyes. The Filipina kept her distance but she continued to follow us with small, quiet and apprehensive steps, shadowing us all the way as we checked out our goods at the cashier. It felt eerie. I wondered whether the act of stalking had the power to charge the air with a strange sort of energy. I wondered how Nora managed this bizarre existence.

As we stepped out to 48th street, I turned around and saw the woman through the glass windows still staring at Nora. It was frightening. As if that momentary encounter had startled her like a camera flash. As if the rest of the world had faded but only for a brief fantastical moment and then she had to fight against waking up to a world as it should be. She craned her neck. I saw a sharp glint in the woman’s eyes. I shuddered. That was how I last remembered the woman, with her stunned face pressed against the glass window, a frantic look and a final grasp to a lifeline being cut as Nora Aunor turned around the bend.

I wondered what the woman really thought, how Nora felt. Sometimes my obsessive attempts to reflect and understand it all humbles me, like Job’s questioning and eventual embracing of God’s mysterious ways. Who did I think I was? I am just another fan.

And then I remember what writer Philip Gourevitch had to say about the power of imagination and our rare and brief memories of privacy and freedom: “We are, each of us, functions of how we imagine ourselves and of how others imagine us, and looking back, there are these discreet tracks of memory; the times when our lives are most sharply defined in relation to others’ ideas of us, and the more private times when we are freer to imagine ourselves…it occurred to me that if others have so often made your life into a question, really, and made that question their business – then perhaps you will want to guard the memory of those times when you were freer to imagine yourself as the only times that are truly and inviolably your own.”

How do you embrace a mystery? How do you remember Nora’s wonderful forbidden crossings across the empty streets of New York? I could probably freeze Nora’s rare moments of freedom and lock its blessedness inside my memory chest. But really, could I? Do I really have the heart to throw away the key and keep my soul blazing for all eternity?

WILFREDO PASCUAL

Editorial
Malaya
26 July 2010

PRESIDENT Aquino’s State of the Nation Address is expected to focus on the problems inherited from the previous administration, especially the anomalies pulled off in the last months of Gloria Arroyo’s nine years of misrule. That kind of stock-taking is an absolute necessity so Aquino can lay down the baseline from which to build on in the next six years.

Aquino’s team, however, has been on the job less than two months. The time might be enough to uncover the more egregious last-minute fast breaks, but it would take much longer to determine the depth and breadth of corruption that attended the unlamented Arroyo administration. And we are not talking yet of the failed programs and policies which must be discarded if Aquino is to redeem his promise of a brighter future for the nation.

But first things first. The people should not entertain overly high expectations from the new administration. An administration does not assume office with a blank sheet. The challenges are daunting. About 70 percent of the P1.541 billion budget for 2010 has been spent. Revenue collections remain in the doldrums, triggering fears that the deficit could hit a record P325 billion this year.

The overall economic outlook, nonetheless, is improving. After the first quarter’s strong 7 percent growth, the economy is seen hitting a growth of 6 percent for the full year. Growth, however, is seen tapering in 2011 and it’s anybody’s guess what the prospects would be after that.

In the days of Arroyo, we used to regularly warn that promises made in the State of the Nation Address should be taken with a bucket of salt. It was easy to conjure dreams of prosperity. The reality test, we used to say, was the budget proposal which the administration must submit within 30 days of the opening of Congress. In all the nine years under Gloria, the bright picture painted was not supported by the funding programmed for the coming year. This was already on the assumption a good portion of the money would not be skimmed.

The Aquino team does not have the luxury of time to minutely scrutinize the budget proposal drafted by the previous administration. His instructions to adopt zero-based budgeting, for example, cannot be complied with by the line departments within the 30-day period prescribed by the Constitution.

We should not expect a detailed program in Aquino’s first SONA. It is not in his character to spout glowing statistical targets and we would be disappointed if he started talking technocratese. He promised good governance. It is by this covenant that we should bind him.

Posted by Danton Remoto on Monday, July 26, 2010

Artwork: Chip Taylor

Technology is supposed to make life easier, but it doesn't seem that way when you're struggling to wrangle 289 new e-mail messages, dealing with a hard-drive crash, or suddenly realizing that you left an important file on the office computer. Thankfully, plenty of tools can help. We'll tell you which ones are worth trying, and we'll also suggest some practices that you can incorporate into your workday to use tech tools more effectively and efficiently.

1. Telecommute by Remotely Controlling Your Office Computer

You can work from home--but use the computer in your office--through remote control software such as LogMeIn (free version available) or TightVNC (free). You can view the remote computer full screen, launch and close programs, read e-mail, copy and paste text between PCs, and access any files you left behind. Save money on gas, claim home equipment on your taxes, and convince your boss that you'll be more productive without leaving your house. Even the iPhone has some VNC clients, such as Mocha VNC and Teleport.

If you don't need full remote control but you do require access to your office or home files, set up Microsoft's free file-syncing tool, FolderShare. Your files will always be up-to-date, no matter where you're working or where you last updated them.

2. Schedule Automatic Hard-Drive Backups, Locally and Remotely

Backing up your critical files is as exciting as purchasing home insurance, but just as important, too. Don't risk losing your irreplaceable digital photos by making empty promises to yourself to burn a couple of DVDs every few months. Instead, set up software and services to do the job for you while you concentrate on more-exciting projects. First, save yourself from an "OMG my hard drive crashed!" catastrophe with a top backup program. Or get started now with a free copy of SyncBackSE, and schedule regular backup jobs to your external FireWire drive, thumb drive, or network drive. (If you have FTP-server access, SyncBack can back up to that as well.)

Of course, local backup isn't enough. To protect your data against fire, lightning, theft, or other disasters, you want to back up your data to a remote server over the Internet. Both Carbonite and Mozy Home offer affordable unlimited server space and utilities that quietly back up your data in the background while you work.

3. Work Faster and More Efficiently Without a Mouse

Streamline your computer work by teaching yourself keyboard shortcuts for your common actions, such as Ctrl-S to save, Ctrl-T to open a new tab in Firefox, and Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V to copy and paste (see our list of additional shortcuts). Then, become a keyboard master with the help of a keyboard launcher such as the free Launchy (Windows) or Quicksilver (Mac). You can start programs, open documents, and even do advanced actions such as resizing images and moving files without moving your hands from the keyboard.

You can also assign key combinations that automatically type out common phrases--such as user names, passwords, addresses, and e-mail signatures--with utilities like TypeItIn (Windows) or TypeIt4Me (Mac OS X).

4. Lose Weight, Get Fit, Save Money, and Increase Your Mileage Online

A new crop of social self-improvement sites help you monitor how much you've eaten, exercised, and spent, to motivate you and keep you on track.

Web services such as FitDay and Weight Watchers log and guide your diet and fitness regimen.

If Quicken or Microsoft Money has become too complicated to update, you can track your spending, balance your checkbook, and run charts on expenditures versus income at personal-finance sites Mint.com and Wesabe.

As for your car, avoid online gas scams. Additionally, you can squeeze the last bit of mileage out of every expensive tank of gas with a miles-per-gallon tracker like Fuelly or MyMileMarker. Entering your information into such sites gets you personalized suggestions, comparisons, and a community of like-minded people who can offer support and suggestions.

5. Clear Out Your Inbox Every Day

Beat e-mail overload once and for all by emptying your inbox completely--and keeping it that way. The "Inbox Zero" philosophy says that e-mail messages are just calls to action--not clutter that we need to hang on to. Create three folders or labels in your e-mail client: Action, Later, and Archive. Each day when you check your e-mail, make a decision and do something with every new message you've received until you've moved them all out of your inbox and reduced your message count down to zero. Ruthlessly delete the messages you don't need, on the spot. Respond to the ones that will take under 2 minutes. File messages that you want to keep for future reference in the Archive folder, those that will take longer than 2 minutes to reply to in Action (and add those to-do items to your list), and messages you need to follow up on at a subsequent date (such as Amazon shipment notifications) in Later. Then breathe a sigh of relief when you see that glorious declaration: 'You have no new mail.'

6. Get Your Cables Under Control

When you have a tangled mess of dust-coated cords knotted into a bundle under your desk, disconnecting a laptop or setting up a new printer can be impossible. The cords for power, USB, speakers, and FireWire all look the same. Simple labels can help you avoid accidentally killing your entire rig by pulling one wrong plug. Print out your own with a label maker, or buy a prefab pack of Pilot ID labels to stick on your home-office or living-room plugs. When the cat knocks one out or it's time to rearrange, you'll be glad you did. Then, get cords up off the dusty floor with an under-the-desk cable tray such as this $10 Ikea model. To keep gadget and laptop cords from falling off the back of your desk when they're not plugged in, affix a simple cable catcher (or a binder clip) to the edge of your desk to hold them. Finally, plug your workstation and your collection of peripherals into a single power strip or UPS to shut down the energy hogs with a single switch when you're not using them.

7. Stay on Task With the Right To-Do List

The key to staying on track with the stuff you need to get done is writing it down and checking it off--whether you do so online, on your desktop, on your smart phone, or in a plain text file. PC World has tried a number of online task manager sites, and our pick is Remember the Milk. It provides all the bells and whistles you'll ever need in a to-do list online, on your desktop, and on your phone. RTM offers task categories (such as Work and Home), file attachments, notes, priorities, tags, due dates, and even "honey do" items (you can send tasks to other RTM users, such as your spouse or assistant). RTM also offers a Firefox extension that integrates the service with your Gmail inbox, so you can turn e-mail into tasks. Of course, no matter how good your software is, nothing can replace the visceral satisfaction of crossing off a line on your paper to-do list with the stroke of a regular old ballpoint pen.

8. Replace Your Laptop With a Thumb Drive or iPod

Instead of lugging a laptop on your next trip, save your aching back by taking your computer's desktop with you on a thumb drive or iPod. Portable Windows software offerings such as MojoPac and U3 put a full desktop on your USB thumb drive (or disk-use-enabled iPod), letting you run applications like Microsoft Outlook and save documents all on that drive. All you need is a host computer: You can plug the MojoPac drive into your in-laws' PC or a coffee-shop workstation, for instance, to access your documents and applications without leaving a trace behind. Alternatively, you can save and run free portable applications--like the Firefox browser, Pidgin IM client, and Sumatra PDF reader--from your thumb drive. Download those and other programs for free at PortableApps.com.

More: 23 Things to Do With a Thumb Drive

9. Use Your Camera Phone as Your Digital Photographic Memory

Almost every cell phone model now includes a built-in camera, and they're good for more than just snapping pics of your buddies' bar shenanigans to blackmail them with later. Use your phone's camera and memory card to capture the spot where you parked, the label on a bottle of wine your spouse loved, the price on a new gadget to look up online, or an amazing meal you'd like to try to cook at home. A new crop of Web services can turn digital photos of whiteboards and documents into searchable PDF documents, too. E-mail your camera-phone shot of a whiteboard or document to Qipit, and the service will recognize the text and e-mail you the resulting searchable PDF.

More: Six Things You Never Knew Your Cell Phone Could Do

10. Create Your Own Price-Protection System

Deal search engines such as RetailMeNot.com or SearchAllDeals.com and social sites like BeatThat are great at finding the best prices before you buy, but PriceProtectr.com and similar services will save you money afterward by monitoring over 130 stores that have price-protection policies. If the price goes down after your purchase, that store might owe you money, but knowing whether the price went down is the trick. You can take advantage of price guarantees by going to RefundPlease.com, or track items on your wish list by using the free Amazon Price Watch software. Travel sites like Farecast and Orbitz also have price-protection systems and e-mail alerts for when prices reach a certain low point.

11. Consolidate Multiple E-Mail Addresses With Gmail

You have more e-mail addresses than you do pairs of socks--so it makes sense to keep them all in one drawer. If you have mail coming to your ISP's account, your work address, your school address, and your throwaway Yahoo account from 1998, and you're having difficulty juggling everything, it's time to consolidate all those messages into one inbox. Google's free Web-based Gmail service is both an e-mail host and an e-mail client. Use Gmail's built-in Mail Fetcher to retrieve messages from up to five external e-mail accounts using the POP3 standard. In Gmail's Settings area, visit the Accounts tab to set up your external e-mail addresses, and you'll then receive all your mail in one roomy inbox. You can even send mail from your non-Gmail addresses via Gmail's Compose screen, too.

More: Get Organized in Gmail

12. Never Forget a Birthday, Teeth Cleaning, or Oil Change Again

When you're tired of scrambling to send Mom flowers at the last minute every year, set up a scheduled e-mail reminder for her birthday--and for any other long-term recurring tasks. Google Calendar can send upcoming-event alerts via SMS ("Pick up the dry cleaning at 3 p.m. today") or e-mail ("Schedule a hair appointment; it's been six weeks!"). Most Web-based calendars (like Google Calendar) and task managers (like Remember the Milk), as well as Web sites such as HassleMe and Sandy, support e-mail alerts.

More: 26 Tricks to Help You Tame Google Calendar

13. Never Forget a Password Again

Your Web browser can save your user name and password for sites you log in to often, but you still have lots of other passwords to remember--Wi-Fi network names and passwords, computer log-ins, PINs and passphrases, even security questions and answers. Instead of writing everything down on a sticky note tacked onto your computer monitor, lock up your store of sensitive passwords in a secure, encrypted password database. The free KeePass works in Windows, Mac, and Linux, and assigns one master password to your database. Park your passwords, PINs, and software serial numbers in your personal secure database, and save yourself the hassle of having to call the IT department the umpteenth time to reset your password.

More: 15 Great, Free Privacy Downloads

14. Encrypt Your Private Files

Everyone has a folder or two of private files that thieves, children, competitors, coworkers, or casual passersby should never see. Whether you want to secure your stealth startup's business plan or some personal photos, the free, cross-platform TrueCrypt encryption software (review; download) is ideal for storing sensitive files in a password-protected virtual container. Only someone with the master password can open that container and read or write the files within; to everyone else, it's a nondescript single file full of jumbled-up junk. TrueCrypt can secure a single folder on your hard drive, or an entire disk--it's great for a thumb drive carrying precious data that could be exposed if the drive is lost or stolen.

15. Stream Content From Your PC to Your Tivo, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, or Wii

You don't need yet another box under your TV in the living room to enjoy your digital music and videos. If you own a game console or TiVo box, you're ready to start streaming media from your PC today--no Apple TV or set-top media box needed. Find out how to get started.

Microsoft also recently announced that, by this holiday season, Xbox 360 owners who are also Netflix subscribers will be able to stream "thousands of movies" using just their game console. In the meantime, you can stream Netflix movies from your PC to your Xbox 360 with the vmcNetFlix plug-in.

16. Get Your TV and Music Fix Online

Forget basic cable--there's plenty of free TV available to watch online. If you don't want to catch your favorite shows at the networks' own Web sites, hit up sites such as Hulu, Joost, and Comcast's Fancast to get your full-episode TV fix. Also: Stream music for free to your computer from Last.fm, Pandora (both available on the iPhone), Deezer, or Slacker.

If you're on the road and missing your TiVo, use a place-shifting device such as the Sling Media Slingbox or Sony LocationFree to watch your own DVR content online.

More: The Best TV on the Web

17. Reach Favorite Sites and Searches Faster With Firefox Keywords

You probably hit the same Web sites and search engines several times a day. Why not get to those pages as quickly as possible? Instead of typing out long URLs by hand or hunting down the right search box, use Firefox keyword bookmarks to navigate to your favorite Web haunts instantly (here's how to set them up).

To search Wikipedia for George Washington, for example, you could key up to Firefox's address bar (Ctrl-L), type w George Washington, and press Enter to go directly to that topic page. You can use the same technique for Web pages that don't involve searches, too--for example, try setting the compose keyword to open a new Gmail message. To associate a keyword to a bookmark, enter a short, easy-to-remember keyword in the bookmark's Properties dialog box. Once you've set up a few keywords, you can use your Firefox address bar as a powerful, customized command line.

Bonus tip: Sync your Firefox bookmarks from home to the office to the laptop using the Foxmarks extension; it will keep your keyword vocabulary up-to-date wherever you're working.

More: 15 Undocumented Firefox Tips

18. Tweak, Monitor, and Extend Your Wi-Fi Network With a Firmware Upgrade (or Aluminum Foil)

Extend your router's signal, throttle your bandwidth, review usage charts, and more with an open-source router-firmware upgrade. The free DD-WRT and Tomato firmware each offer advanced features for managing your wireless network, including bandwidth monitors, quality-of-service graphs, and even router overclocking to extend your signal.

Want to make your Wi-Fi router's signal reach the attic and the basement the low-tech way? Some sites say they've achieved gains by fashioning a foil "windsurfer" parabola and attaching it to the router antenna.

19. Master Search Techniques to Pinpoint Files or Web Sites

Drill down through millions of search results for popular Google search terms by mastering advanced search operators. Enclose phrases and proper names in quotes (as in "Don't tase me bro" or "Michael Phelps") to get exact-phrase matches. Use the + and - signs to specify meaning, especially for words that have more than one definition (for example, salsa -dance), and use the filetype: operator to find certain kinds of documents (as in budget filetype:xls).

You can even search for all the ingredients in your fridge with the word recipe to figure out what to have for dinner tonight.

Then, take your search chops to your desktop, where organizing files in an elaborate folder scheme is no longer necessary. Use Windows Vista's Saved Search folders to build a dynamic store of all the files that contain the term "NYC," for instance, or all the digital photos taken on your birthday.

Gmail's built-in e-mail search capabilities are also killer. Use the from:, to:, and subject: operators to find specific messages, as in from:"Bill Gates" subject:"dinner date".

More: Advanced Google: Search Faster, Find More

20. Print Smart to Reduce Costs

You've already paid an arm and a leg to refill your home printer, so get into some smart printing habits to save money on ink and paper. Wherever possible, preview your document before you print, and shrink the selection down to fewer pages, or print only the pages you need in the document. Set your printer to the lowest quality (draft mode) when possible, and opt for double-sided printing or print several pages per physical page (when you're printing out PowerPoint slides, for example). When you're printing Web pages, use the Aardvark Firefox add-on to delete big colorful advertisements and other unwanted elements before you print. When you don't really need a hard copy, opt to print to a PDF document instead. Mac users can do this by default; Windows users can download the free CutePDF to print any document to PDF.

More: Six Savvy Ways to Get More Prints for Less Money

Gina Trapani is the lead editor of Lifehacker.com and the author of Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better (Wiley, 2008).