Category: Tips

  • Use Picasa to add photos to iPhone contacts

    The facial recognition feature in Picasa is addictive, but it’s also useful for adding portrait thumbnails to all of your existing Gmail contacts. Since Picasa already integrates with your Google account, adding faces to your contacts is as simple as right-clicking a picture. Here’s how: What you’ll need: Picasa iPhone/iPod Touch Gmail [step 1] Get…

  • Paste as plain text in Outlook

    I use Outlook at work and a lot of the information I send out in messages is copied from various sources to the clipboard and then to the pasted into the new message dialog. One thing that has always annoyed me about this process is that by default in Outlook the underlying styling/formatting of the…

  • Delete files using crontab

    Got some files on your *NIX system that need a good deletin on a regular basis?. Well then crontab is going to be your friend. There are tons of articles that painstakingly explain the crontab format when you Google “scheduled job Linux”, but how to actually implement a scheduled job using crontab from start to…

  • Buy by rating and get free shipping

    Buy a lot of stuff online? Get a free year of Amazon Prime membership for students with a valid .edu email address. Later, when buying electronics or computer parts using said Amazon Prime membership, use newegg.com to comparison shop online. Its rating system is one of the most honest in the industry and they carry…

  • VIM quick reference

    This custom VIM reference chart is organized for me – but you can borrow it. There are lots of quick VIM reference charts, but this one is mine. It has the stuff I’m always looking for and none of the crap I don’t need. VIM quick reference cheat sheet (from ViEmu.com) David’s frequently used &…

  • Use Microsoft Office in a browser

    Microsoft has finally released their online versions of Excel and PowerPoint Word and OneNote on SkyDrive. While the “cloud” versions of these programs don’t have all the features found the installable Office product, they offer enough power to be considered a reasonable alternative to Google’s suite of cloud applications called Apps. Now, if you don’t…

  • Repurpose shipping foam as a cable manager

    Today like clockwork my notebooks power cord fell into that void between my desk and the dresser the moment I unplugged it. Swearing like a sea-captain and scraping my arm whilst surely looking like a crazy person performing contortions to get that darned cable back I thought to myself: There must be a better way.…

  • Replace Corolla OEM front rotors when replacing brake pads

    When my ’04 Corolla’s odometer hit 70,000 miles it was time to get new front brake pads, so I ventured over to brake masters and had them replaced. $50 dollars later I was back on the road driving to and fro various consulting gigs. A few thousand miles later though, I noticed some vibration when…

  • Five ways to better organize & use your Gmail

    I rely on Gmail for all my email needs because it has great spam filters and an uncluttered functional interface. Last week I had some time to organize my Gmail and now finding, noticing and keeping track of email messages is even easier. I use labels as pseudo email folders, filters to automatically categorize messages,…

  • Compare two files in two clicks

    Windows is a great operating system for games, managing multimedia, and running millions of applications. For development though, I’ve always been used to Linux, UNIX or Solaris command line tools like “vi”, “diff”, “grep” and the like. Since I only have one notebook filled with gigabytes of family pictures, movies and mp3’s, a free copy…