Adventures in stupid technology
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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…
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Skype blocks local Apache server
Apparently Skype thinks that occupying ports 80 and/or 443 would be a great idea on Windows. I guess that’s fine for the most part, I mean you don’t really want to be debugging your local web app while chatting with grannie. So what about when you’re not using Skype? What possible reason could there be…
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Long Beach harbor cruise
Last weekend I went on a three hour urban ocean boat cruise covering the Port of Long Beach. Sponsored by the Aquarium of the Pacific it’s one of a few attractions there that isn’t mercilessly overrun by exhausted moms, rows upon rows of strollers and screaming kids on the weekend. It was a perfect day…
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Macbook pro palm rest discoloration
A few months ago I noticed that my brand new Macbook Pro had developed some permanent stains on the palm rest. A trip to the Apple store “genius bar” ended in a 45 minute wait session followed by an interrogation about my palm moisture levels. Finally I felt I needed to make the following concession:…
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Streaming HD content over WIFI
SageTV Media Center can stream shows effortlessly to any SageTV Client in your house, but if you want to stream HD content you’ll need to step up to Wireless N for additional bandwidth. I’ve configured SageTV Client on my VAIO notebook in the bedroom and it now plays streamed HD content on an external 24″…
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Serial commuications on a MacBook Pro
Connecting to a device using via a rs232 using a MacBook is not straight forward, but possible if you have one of the more popular USB-to-Serial adapters. The PL2303 adapter is sold by a number of manufacturers under different model names. Luckily, however, most of them run on the same basic chip for which an…
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Making thin burger patties
My ideal hamburger is like those you find at In-N-Out. It has a relatively thin seasoned patty cooked medium well, onion, lettuce, tomato, thousand island dressing and ketchup all on a soft white bun. I never understood the appeal of those thick rare in the center burger patties advertised in restaurant burgers. To me a…
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Extend your desktop to a notebook
Want to add your notebook to an existing display environment? Then Synergy is for you. It’s a cross platform open source application that lets you control a systems mouse and keyboard through the network. Its server/client architecture let you extend the reach of your mouse and keyboard to other computers. Here’s how I configured Synergy…
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Snow Leopard a few months later
It’s been about five months since I got my MacBook Pro and I’ve gotten much more comfortable with both the new hardware and operating system. Like most reviews this post will boil down to a list of features I like and ones I don’t. It’ll be a cliché in the sense that this is yet…