David Vielmetter

Adventures in stupid technology

  • Access the DCIM folder on your iPhone

    I am updating this article for the first time since 2011 because I get a lot of requests for help on this particular topic. The original article (now crossed out below) is 6 years old and likely doesn’t apply to newer model iPhones. Now then, with that bit out of the way, here’s some updated…

  • German style potato pancakes

    I like me some fried greasies from time to time, and when I do potato pancakes often the bill. This is a pretty standard recipe not much different from a glut of them on the internet, but I feel that the magic happens in the cooking more than the prepping, so I took some pictures…

  • Improve Finder with Default Folder X

    For those of us Microsoft Windows guys who really want to like OS X, Finder is the biggest hurdle standing in the way. I’m not saying Windows explorer is perfect, but it IS a superior file management interface – period. So when I am using my MacBook I supplement Finder with a great little tool…

  • 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…

  • HTML tag matching in vim

    My Vim knowledge sure comes in handy when I need to edit code from the command line and when it comes to hand coding large HTML, CSS, or PHP files, I’m thankful for the matchit vim tag matching macro. It doesn’t come activated by default (I found that out after re-installing OS X from scratch).…

  • Cyberduck + Textmate = Awesome

    I’ve been using EditPad Pro for web development on a Windows PC because it has an integrated FTP tool. With EditPad Pro, you can ftp to your production web server, list all of the files and easily edit any of them in place (code highlighting and all). I got used to the tool, but could…

  • 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…

  • A smarter iFrame with PHP

    Depending on site design, it can often be much quicker to embed dynamic content  in an iframe which already has your site’s header and footer. The problem with this approach is that _blank links pointing to said content will not open in the iframe, but instead in a window without your site’s design. Here’s how…

  • DIY Forms Solved by WordPress

    If you use WordPress, you’re probably familiar with the admin interface’s widgets tool. It a super easy user interface (UI) that allows users enable/disable elements by dragging them into a designated area. Gravity Forms has ingeniously utilized this concept to allow users create web based forms by dragging and dropping fields. But wait! There’s more.…

  • OSX Finder – Missing Features

    I’ll admit it. I was kinda curious when Apple announced its latest overhaul of OSX called Lion today. Upon further analysis, however, it seems that most of the “improvements” are going to be cosmetic in nature and functionality will take a back seat. This makes me sad because I feel that the Finder in OSX…

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