I am not a big widget user, but I just found a very practical use for Leopard's web clipping capabilities. I went to the web page that has information about snow-releated school closings in our area, and clipped the relevant part of the page to my desktop.
Now, in the morning, I can simply hit F12 on my computer, and see if the school has a delay or closure. And, at work, I can monitor the weather and see if the school is going to close early, and make any necessary arrangements. Because I work an hour south of where I live, the weather at work is often significantly milder than the weather at home. So, using the web to monitor the weather is the most practical way to stay aware of what the school is up to.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Save gas; don't make left-hand turns.
Save gas; don't make left-hand turns.
WiseBread posted an article today about how UPS saves a ton of money on gas each year by reducing the number of left turns they make during their deliveries.
Somehow, it figures. Just about every turn I have to make on my way to work each day is a left one.
Friday, December 7, 2007
The USDA Food Stamp Nutrition Connection
The federal government has been kind enough to produce a web-site that may help with my quest for truly frugal meal plans and recipes. The USDA Food Stamp Nutrition Connection. I'm going to have to spend some time on the site before I can determine how frugal, healthy and good the recipes are.
(Via Get Rich Slowly.)
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Free Coke as part of a "Class Action Lawsuit"
Free coupon for Coke and Coke Zero. File a 'claim' against Coke for Taste Confusion and receive a free coupon for both for taste comparison.
I love this little gimmick! Check out the name of the law firm.
(Via Money Saving Mom.)
Good Deal on Mac Shareware
Macintosh Applications in Bundle
I know I shouldn't be getting myself anything at Christmas-time, but I just couldn't resist this bundle. I love Yep from what I've seen of it, and am also a big fan of the aquarium screen-saver.
I'm hoping the mind mapping software gets unlocked. I really expect it will. These bundles seem to be popular. I don't need iStabilize; so could care less if that gets unlocked or not.
I'm also looking forward to playing with memory miner.
"MemoryMiner MemoryMiner is the award-winning Digital Storytelling application used to discover the threads connecting peoples’ lives across time and place. It lets you zero in on the stories depicted in your photos by linking them to each other based on people, places and time. Using simple drag and drop actions, you specify who is in the picture, where the picture was taken and when."
For some reason, my mac is turning me into a data hoarder.
(Via Usingmac.com - Home.)
Wonderful Free Location Switcher for Mac
MarcoPolo is an open-source location switcher for the Mac that I'm utterly infatuated with.
When I get to work, I have to do several things every day:
1. Mute my sound so I don't drive my office-mate batty.
2. Turn off my OS X firewall so that Parallels can correctly connect to my network shares. Otherwise, I can't access Visual Source Safe.
3. Flip my network location to work.
4. Connect to my network shares so I can work on my files in Coda.
Before finding MarcoPolo, I would manually flip my network location to work, turn off my sound, turn off my firewall, and connect to my drives.
Now, MarcoPolo can do this all for me. It sees that I've connected to my work wi-fi, and based on that connection, knows I'm at work. It pops up a notification telling me it's doing its thing, which I find reassuring.
When I go home, MarcoPolo recognizes that wi-fi network as well. It flips my location to home so that I now have a static IP address on my home network. It turns on my firewall and turns on my sound too.
MarcoPolo can do things like change my desktop wallpaper, run scripts, start up my screen-saver and more based on my location.
Furthermore, it doesn't just use my wi-fi connection to determine where I am. I can set certain rules for it based on triggers such as ethernet connections, bluetooth, bonjour and more. For now, I'm content with it tweaking my settings based on wi-fi. But, I may investigate bluetooth triggers to see if it will perform certain actions when I come near the computer with my iPhone.
When I get to work, I have to do several things every day:
1. Mute my sound so I don't drive my office-mate batty.
2. Turn off my OS X firewall so that Parallels can correctly connect to my network shares. Otherwise, I can't access Visual Source Safe.
3. Flip my network location to work.
4. Connect to my network shares so I can work on my files in Coda.
Before finding MarcoPolo, I would manually flip my network location to work, turn off my sound, turn off my firewall, and connect to my drives.
Now, MarcoPolo can do this all for me. It sees that I've connected to my work wi-fi, and based on that connection, knows I'm at work. It pops up a notification telling me it's doing its thing, which I find reassuring.
When I go home, MarcoPolo recognizes that wi-fi network as well. It flips my location to home so that I now have a static IP address on my home network. It turns on my firewall and turns on my sound too.
MarcoPolo can do things like change my desktop wallpaper, run scripts, start up my screen-saver and more based on my location.
Furthermore, it doesn't just use my wi-fi connection to determine where I am. I can set certain rules for it based on triggers such as ethernet connections, bluetooth, bonjour and more. For now, I'm content with it tweaking my settings based on wi-fi. But, I may investigate bluetooth triggers to see if it will perform certain actions when I come near the computer with my iPhone.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Frugal, Healthy Cooking
I am so weary of frugal living websites that have suggestions for saving money like - grow your own vegetables or raise your own chickens. Sometimes, I think the authors of these suggestions forget that not everybody lives in the country, and the startup costs for starting a garden or raising chickens are high. Not to mention that if you suddenly find yourself in a financial tight spot, you're not going to be able to instantly plant a vegetable garden and haul in the crops.
A truly good frugal cooking site will be realistic. It will understand that not everybody has a pantry stocked with a variety of spices, fresh herbs and essentials like rice. It will show the true cost of cooking a recipe, and not skip over ingredients that the recipe creator has on hand.
Furthermore, frugal recipes need to pay some attention to be satisfying and nutritious. Living on generic macaroni and cheese and ramen noodles will only get you so far.
So, I'm wondering if I could put together a collection of inexpensive recipes that meet my own rules.
I think I'm going to start playing with the idea and impose a few simple rules on myself.
1. No sales prices. Readers won't necessarily find a super sale on the ingredients. If they do, they can chalk it up as a bonus.
2. Meal plans that meet nutritional requirements.
3. Meal plans for individuals and families.
4. Portion sizes should be realistic.
5. My family has to actually eat it and like it and think it was enough food to be a satisfying meal.
With those rules in mind, I think the game is on. I'll start collecting the recipes and when I'm ready with a week or two of meal plans, I'll post them in the Domestic Policy forum at EA.
A truly good frugal cooking site will be realistic. It will understand that not everybody has a pantry stocked with a variety of spices, fresh herbs and essentials like rice. It will show the true cost of cooking a recipe, and not skip over ingredients that the recipe creator has on hand.
Furthermore, frugal recipes need to pay some attention to be satisfying and nutritious. Living on generic macaroni and cheese and ramen noodles will only get you so far.
So, I'm wondering if I could put together a collection of inexpensive recipes that meet my own rules.
I think I'm going to start playing with the idea and impose a few simple rules on myself.
1. No sales prices. Readers won't necessarily find a super sale on the ingredients. If they do, they can chalk it up as a bonus.
2. Meal plans that meet nutritional requirements.
3. Meal plans for individuals and families.
4. Portion sizes should be realistic.
5. My family has to actually eat it and like it and think it was enough food to be a satisfying meal.
With those rules in mind, I think the game is on. I'll start collecting the recipes and when I'm ready with a week or two of meal plans, I'll post them in the Domestic Policy forum at EA.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Coda 1.1
"
Yay! An update. From my limited trial, the spaces bug I complained about the other day seems resolved. Now, if only they would get multiple file search and replace, Coda would be just about perfect.
Yay! An update. From my limited trial, the spaces bug I complained about the other day seems resolved. Now, if only they would get multiple file search and replace, Coda would be just about perfect.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Coding for Vbulletin Has Lost its Appeal
Over the past year, I have basically quit coding any modifications for Vbulletin.
In part, it's because of the nightmare that the Vbulletin.org forums have become. Once Xenon and Erwin left as administrators, the place went downhill fast.
In part, it's because I'm having more fun coding for Xaraya. The Xaraya frameworks make creating modules and modifying the code incredibly easy and straightforward. The only downside to Xaraya is its horrendous administrative user interface.
I should be recoding the quiz system for Vbulletin.
I should be refining and improving the custom userpage modification to make it use dynamic data.
But, there's just no joy in it anymore. The community of coders is basically gone and has been replaced by a bunch of new faces. And, I think I would almost rather code a new forum system from scratch than continue on with Vbulletin.
I owe a lot to Vbulletin. I learned about PHP and MySQL from tweaking it over the years. It helped me change my career and get into web development professionally. It offered a wonderful coding community where I made many friends. It's just a shame that Jelsoft mismanaged the whole modification community so badly. They lost an army of talented coders who gave their customers a myriad of add-ons for free. For a while, I hoped that Jelsoft would become more professional in their management of their forums, but I've given up.
It's time to move on and find another coding obsession.
In part, it's because of the nightmare that the Vbulletin.org forums have become. Once Xenon and Erwin left as administrators, the place went downhill fast.
In part, it's because I'm having more fun coding for Xaraya. The Xaraya frameworks make creating modules and modifying the code incredibly easy and straightforward. The only downside to Xaraya is its horrendous administrative user interface.
I should be recoding the quiz system for Vbulletin.
I should be refining and improving the custom userpage modification to make it use dynamic data.
But, there's just no joy in it anymore. The community of coders is basically gone and has been replaced by a bunch of new faces. And, I think I would almost rather code a new forum system from scratch than continue on with Vbulletin.
I owe a lot to Vbulletin. I learned about PHP and MySQL from tweaking it over the years. It helped me change my career and get into web development professionally. It offered a wonderful coding community where I made many friends. It's just a shame that Jelsoft mismanaged the whole modification community so badly. They lost an army of talented coders who gave their customers a myriad of add-ons for free. For a while, I hoped that Jelsoft would become more professional in their management of their forums, but I've given up.
It's time to move on and find another coding obsession.
I Use More Software on my Mac
I'm not quite sure why, but I'm finding I use more applications on a daily or weekly basis than I ever did on my Windows computers.
On a Windows machine, I generally used Notepad, Word, Source Safe, Eclipse, Firefox and iTunes. Sometimes I would have to fire up Putty or an FTP client, but generally my software world was limited to my browser and an editor.
But on my Mac, I consistently use a variety of applications. I use Coda as my tool of choice for working with my PHP files. I use Textmate for quick text notes. I use Quicksilver to launch programs. I use NetNewsWire to read my RSS feeds. I use MacGourmet to track my recipes. I use Skype cause my boss makes me. I use Mail.app instead of using Gmail's web interface. I use OmniFocus to manage my many to-dos. I use Parallels to let me run Visual Source Safe. I use Safari for general web browsing. I use Firefox to debug Ajax problems. And, I use iTunes and iPhoto to interface with my iPhone.
I'm not sure what it is about the Mac that makes me more prone to collect data and to ditch web apps in favor of desktop apps. Heck, I'm even tracking what I eat and how much I exercise on my laptop. This sudden obsession with data has one bad side effect. Now that I enjoy maintaining data on my computer, backups have become important. In my Windows days, I never hesitated to dump any data I had and reformat my hard drive. Now, I find myself saving iTunes libraries, MacGourmet recipes, and OmniFocus projects and tasks.
Also, I find I'm buying a lot more software for my Mac than I did for Windows. There are plenty of free, open-source programs for OS X, but I've fallen in love with some beautifully designed and simple to use shareware. This is almost making me want to learn Cocoa so I can take a crack at creating my own applications. Perhaps after the iPhone SDK comes out.
On a Windows machine, I generally used Notepad, Word, Source Safe, Eclipse, Firefox and iTunes. Sometimes I would have to fire up Putty or an FTP client, but generally my software world was limited to my browser and an editor.
But on my Mac, I consistently use a variety of applications. I use Coda as my tool of choice for working with my PHP files. I use Textmate for quick text notes. I use Quicksilver to launch programs. I use NetNewsWire to read my RSS feeds. I use MacGourmet to track my recipes. I use Skype cause my boss makes me. I use Mail.app instead of using Gmail's web interface. I use OmniFocus to manage my many to-dos. I use Parallels to let me run Visual Source Safe. I use Safari for general web browsing. I use Firefox to debug Ajax problems. And, I use iTunes and iPhoto to interface with my iPhone.
I'm not sure what it is about the Mac that makes me more prone to collect data and to ditch web apps in favor of desktop apps. Heck, I'm even tracking what I eat and how much I exercise on my laptop. This sudden obsession with data has one bad side effect. Now that I enjoy maintaining data on my computer, backups have become important. In my Windows days, I never hesitated to dump any data I had and reformat my hard drive. Now, I find myself saving iTunes libraries, MacGourmet recipes, and OmniFocus projects and tasks.
Also, I find I'm buying a lot more software for my Mac than I did for Windows. There are plenty of free, open-source programs for OS X, but I've fallen in love with some beautifully designed and simple to use shareware. This is almost making me want to learn Cocoa so I can take a crack at creating my own applications. Perhaps after the iPhone SDK comes out.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
YouTube Suspends Egyptian Anti-Torture Activist's Account
YouTube Suspends Egyptian Anti-Torture Activist's Account
"YouTube is catching a lot of flack for suspending the account of an Egyptian activist who had captured evidence of police brutality on video and uploaded it to the site."
In this case, I'm not certain YouTube SHOULD catch flack.
YouTube seems to be about sharing light, entertaining videos more than anything else. If it chooses not to feature violent videos, that should be within the company's rights. I am sure there are plenty of other places the Egyptian activist could share his movies online, and these places would be more suitable for his purpose.
The one thing that might give me pause is that YouTube does involve itself in politics in some ways. For example, the political debates in which users created videos of questions for presidential candidates. By opening this door to the more serious side of user-generated content, it could be argued that videos about torture are within the scope of the site and should not be considered as gratuitous violence.
Frustrating Coda Bug
Coda has been acting funky under Leopard today. For some reason, typing a letter in the first column of a line makes Coda kick me into a different spaces desktop. I can safely type a tab, a space, a punctuation mark or a number, but not a letter. I haven't noticed this behavior before today, which does concern me a bit. Bugs that materialize suddenly when nothing has changed on the system can be hard for engineers to reproduce and fix.
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