Nissan Altima Hybrid review

Here is a review of the 2007 Nissan Altima Hybrid.

links for 2007-06-29

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  macosxhints.com - 10.4: Export Mail to mbox with Save As...
  
  
  (tags: email howto mac macosx mbox tips apple)
  
  

links for 2007-06-25

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  How To: remote mySQL access, via SSH port forwarding
  
  
  (tags: mysql ssh port forwarding)
  
  

Binary marble adding machine

Now this is cool.  This is a 6-bit binary wooden adding machine counts using marbles.  The video is pretty amazing.  A lot of work was put into this.

[via MAKE: Blog]

More iApp annoyance

I have been starting to have frustrating experiences with Apple's iApps.  In this post, I mentioned my frustrations with iTunes and FrontRow.  Now I am having a frustrating time with iPhoto, where it is not doing exactly what I want.

Last night I wanted to upload some photos to our gallery.  The complication arrises because we have a couple of coputers.  My wife uses her computer to load the photos from the camera.  I was trying to upload the photos from my computer.

I use unison to upload the iPhoto library to an external server.  Then I use unison on my laptop and our Mac mini to copy the photos back down.  This worked fine until we upgraded our camera.  Now the large photo size of our 5 mega-pixel camera swamps our upload bandwidth.

iPhone Walkthrough

Apple has posted an iPhone guided tour video on their web site.  I like it a lot, but I am still unsure of the usability with out any tactile feedback.  Also I am concerned about the screen getting scratched.  In addition to those two concerns, I don't want to switch to AT&T for cell service.

[via The Macalope]

links for 2007-06-22

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  The Little Known C# ?? Operator - SuperJason's Personal Blog
  
  
  (tags: C# programming operator tip null)
  
  


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  Notifications: Wake up to a YouTube video with ALARMD - Lifehacker
  
  
  (tags: alarm clock YouTube)
  
  

links for 2007-06-21

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  Geek to Live: Create your master feed with Yahoo! Pipes - Lifehacker
  
  
  (tags: rss yahoo lifehacker pipes howto)
  
  

Crystal Weather Station

This is a cool looking weather station.  The Crystal Weather Station has laser engraved 3D icons in crystal.  One of the coolest things about this clock is that you can switch between temperature and clock mode by waving you hand over the clock.

[via Engadget]

autoHideStatusbar

autoHideStatusbar is a pretty simple Firefox extension, that... automatically hides the status bar.  This is an easy way to squeeze a little screen area for your browser window. 

You can configure it to automatically show the status bar when you hover the mouse over the the status bar area, or over a link (to see the destination url).

[via Lifehacker]

Mac Media Center

I really like the Mac Mini and FrontRow as a way to play media.  The interface is great.  The one part of this solution that I am getting frustrated with is how to copy tracks to it.  Since FrontRow uses iTunes to play audio tracks, they need to be copied to the iTunes library.

I wrote this AppleScript to copy newly added tracks to the hard drive on the Mac mini and then add them to the iTunes library.  This works fine, if you want to keep the content on the computer itself.  I now want to keep my content on my Network Attached Storage. 

Copying content to the NAS works perfectly for video content, as FrontRow will make videos available that are on a remove file system, when you add an alias to the remote directory on the local hard drive.  This doesn't work for audio, as you not only want to make the content playable, but you want to have it indexed by the meta data.

Eclipse Area Shot GPS

As I have written before (1, 2, 3, 4) , I am would like to get a single-DIN GPS head unit that is able to control an iPod, satellite radio tuner and can be used for hands free phone calls.  Yesterday, I was just browsing around and I found The Eclipse CD5100.

This head unit has some pretty cool features:

1. HD radio ready (with an external tuner)


2. iPod control capable (with iPod adapter cable)


3. Satellite radio ready (with an external tuner)


4. USB port, to allow playback of WMA and MP3 files.

The one feature that I wasn't sure of is called Area Shot GPS.  After looking into it, I know that I wouldn't want this head unit.

links for 2007-06-17

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  20 Tips for More Efficient Google Searches - Dumb Little Man
  
  
  (tags: google search tips howto tricks)
  
  

links for 2007-06-12

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  Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories - Cure that crooked picture frame with rubber feet
  
  
  Handy tip for quickly ensuring that a picture frame hangs straight
  
  
  (tags: pictureframe hang level tips howto)
  
  

links for 2007-06-11

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  Palm Treo 800w Details Leaked: WM6, Wi-Fi, EV-DO Rev. A - Gizmodo
  
  
  (tags: Treo 800w Wi-Fi EV-DO)
  
  


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  jkOnTheRun: HTC touch online demo
  
  
  (tags: HTC Touch TouchFLO demo)
  
  

LifeType 1.2.3

LifeType 1.2.3 has been released.  This version has several new features and many bug fixes.

Car Talk on iTunes

NPR's Car Talk is now available on the iTunes Store as a podcast.  This makes listening to the show on your iPod easier than this hint.


[via Autoblog]

links for 2007-06-03

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  Programming: How to build a Firefox extension - Lifehacker
  
  
  (tags: firefox programming extension javascript web xml howto)
  
  

Updated Related Posts plugin

I have updated the Related Posts plugin for LifeType with some features:

1. Added the option to get keywords out of the body of the message, instead of just the title.  (This does cause generating related posts to take longer.)


2. Added the ability to specify words that should be not used to generate the list of related posts.

This will be available for download as soon as the plugins are pushed to sourceforge.