POD SYS 3: July 2007 Archives

« June 2007 | Main | August 2007 »

July 30, 2007

Xubuntu: Lightweight Ubuntu Linux Distro

Looks cool!

Posted by lsloan at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)

H.323 Videoconferencing For Mac OS X

I haven't tried it yet, but this sounds like a useful tool: XMeeting - Powerful Videoconferencing Solutions for Mac OS X

I wonder how compatible it is with other videoconferencing tools, especially Windoze-based ones.

Posted by lsloan at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)

July 23, 2007

Cellphonebooth

This will be required for all cell phone users soon:

Portable Cellphone Booth

July 18, 2007

Screen Capture, Recording, and Sharing

The recently announced Jing Project is from a nearby Michigan company. It might be worth checking out. I wonder if it can save a screen capture every X seconds and make it into a movie or slideshow.

Posted by lsloan at 12:03 PM | Comments (0)

Several Dozen Reasons To Avoid iPhone v1.0

This long list of iPhone v1.0 bugs should be enough to convince most people to avoid this product until they can be corrected.

Personally, I wouldn't buy an iPhone unless it can be used as a PDA, without AT&T service. I also don't like the battery that's not replacable by (most) end users.

Posted by lsloan at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)

sed AppleScript For iTunes

As I was searching for some AppleScript help today, I noticed
iTunes SED - Smart batch changes on ID3 info using Unix SED and Regex. I haven't tried it yet, but this looks awesome. I have wondered for a while why nobody had added sed capabilities to editing various things in Mac OS X.

I might be able to follow this fellow's example and make AppleScripts to reformat text with the UNIX "fmt" command or even unquote/requote email messages.

Posted by lsloan at 09:47 AM | Comments (0)

July 17, 2007

The Amazing, Long-Running Mac

Recently my wife remarked that the Firefox web browser on her Mac was running very slow. It loaded pages slowly, which was unusual. It was very gradually getting worse as days went by. In my experience, that's the kind of behavior I've seen on Windows machines after they've been used for a while, but our Macs usually don't do that.

When I finally got around to looking at her Mac, I saw that Firefox was slow, but the rest of the applications and OS were not. I decided it was only a problem with Firefox. Since Mac OS X is really just UNIX, I went to a shell and checked on the Firefox process with the "ps" command to see what I could find before I stopped that application.

I found it had been running for a month! Only after running Firefox for a month did my wife notice any degradation of performance.

I wondered how long the computer itself had been running if Firefox had been up for that long. I used the "uptime" command in the shell to find out.

It had been over two months since that computer was rebooted. It even had some updates from Apple applied without needing to reboot.

So, to solve the problem, I quit and restarted Firefox. It ran fast again, but I thought my wife would appreciate some new features of the latest version of Firefox. So I installed that and a couple plug-ins. It worked great.

When I was done, I still didn't reboot her computer. I've never seen a Windows computer that could run reliably with that much time between reboots.

Posted by lsloan at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)

July 16, 2007

Cheetos & Chopsticks? No. Origami Cup!

Sometimes the biggest discoveries are the simplest ones. I'm not sure that really applies here, though...

Anyway, for years I've used chopsticks for eating Cheetos. It keeps my fingers and keyboard clean as well as being a good source of chopstick practice.

Then my son asked for a snack in an origami boat he folded. That reminded me that I didn't have a good use for the origami cup (PDF) I folded. So I loaded it up with Cheetos and I was happy.

Turns out that the origami cup is even more convenient than chopsticks. Chopsticks have to be picked up the right way, whereas the cup is always ready.

I tried making my cup with a non-square, wide sheet of paper. It does make a wider cup that's easy to use, but the base doesn't line up with the rest of the cup. Works just as well, or better!

Posted by lsloan at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)

Cool Garage Storage Products

The storage solutions from Garage Strategies - ProStor look pretty cool.

I like the "Hoist Monster" for bikes and the "HeavyLift" for other things. Both of these items have video demonstrations on the web page. They are expensive items, but I found that Target.com have these at lower prices. The bike hoist is a little cheaper, but the HeavyLift is about $100 cheaper.

Also check out the company's home page. They have a lot of other cool things for the home and garage. Like, little nooks that mount on the wall surface or in a hole between studs. They also have lifts for very heavy items, including cars!

POD SYS 3

The Not Entirely Nonrandom Thoughts of Lance E. Sloan