David Vielmetter

Adventures in stupid technology

  • Add “Edit with VIM” to the OSX Context Menu

    I’ve been using Vim for making quick changes to files in Unix and Windows for years. As a result I am used to right-clicking files with any extension and editing it with Vim from the context menu (or is it contextual menu? I forget). Often times before making changes to a file, I’ll make a…

  • Fixing stubborn DNS errors on SBS 2003

    Windows 2003 Small Business Server (SBS) has wizards for configuring all sorts of settings during the initial server setup. Unfortunately changing those settings without the wizard later can be a hassle. This is the story of an SBS server which was originally setup as a gateway router with two network interfaces (WAN/LAN) only later to…

  • Keep Buzz out of your Gmail inbox

    Google’s Buzz is a great new social feature, but as all of my friends are giving it a whirl my Inbox has become swamped with useless notifications I wish would just buzz the heck off! After fiddling with filters for a minute here’s a temporary way to automatically archive Buzz to its label and keep…

  • 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,…

  • Sorting Folders before files in Finder

    I know that the mac works differently (so everyone keeps telling me!) but I’m sorry, that’s not a valid solution to a host of real annoyances. It’s true that I’m a Windows user and that I’ve got Windows habits (think delete key), but listing folders sorted separately from files in a window just seems something…

  • DIY HD DVR v2.0

    My home theater has been built around a home-made DVR since 2003. It started off on a used Dell Optiplex GX150 and moved to a bigger case with more hard drives and a P4 in 2006. It worked great for nearly 3 years, but in December I earned some extra cash and upgraded my DVR…

  • Grabit on the Mac

    Heard about WineBottler for the Mac? It’s open source software that lets you “bottle up” Windows applications and run them on your Intel Mac OS X. Since there aren’t any good or free usenet downloaders available for the Mac (boo), I tried bottling up Grabit from Shemes and it works! Here’s how:

  • Irfanview on MAC with WineBottler

    There are a lot of Windows Apps I miss on my MacBook Pro. One of them is an awesome free Swiss army knife of image manipulation tools called Irfanview. It lets you batch rename/convert/modify entire directories of images and it’s not bad as an image viewer either. Well, here’s how to get it running on…

Skip to content