Archive for the 'ideas' Category

the coolest thing microsoft has done… ever

Published
by
patrick
on June 15, 2007
in Internet, commentary, ideas and interesting
. 0 Comments

Thanks to Josh for sending that…

[tags]Microsoft, Tabletop Computer, Surface Computing, Milan[/tags]

Apple iTunes Store Wishlist…

Published
by
patrick
on April 27, 2007
in advice, apple, ideas, ipod, music and productivity
. 0 Comments

Apple iTunes Music Store WishlistI have been doing this for awhile but after speaking with a friend the other day who didn’t know the trick I thought it would be worth sharing. I am a big believer in wishlists. I figure if I mark something as a want or wish, and I still want it a month or two later, it is probably worth buying. This helps to cut down on my impulsive buying. I used to maintain my wishlists on Amazon, but since the Apple Music Store opened I have been buying my tunes there. So how do you maintain a wish list on the iTunes Music Store. In iTunes create a new playlist, to do this press the plus sign in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. I call this new list “Apple Store Wishlist.” I chose this name so that it appears near the top of the list. Then go browse the iTunes music store, you can listen to 30 sec. previews of any song in the store. When you find a song or album that you like simply click and drag the preview into the newly created playlist. All of the previews are stored there until you delete them. Then when you are ready to buy the album or song simply click the “ADD SONG” button and it will go to your shopping cart. Simple, but very useful!

[tags]iTunes, Apple, Music, Wishlist, Apple Music Store[/tags]

The year of the virtual machine…

Published
by
patrick
on January 1, 2007
in Internet, commentary, ideas, lifehacks and mac
. 0 Comments

I have for some time been fascinated by virtual machines. I have been reading a great deal about the possibilities that are available for sand-boxing, testing, and otherwise by the use of virtual machines. But this past week was my first true adventure into this new world, and I have to say that I am pretty pleased at this point.
Fusion VmWare just announced its full Beta release of Fusion which is their virtual appliance for OSX. Now being a mac guy I could have used Parallels but I was specifically waiting for VmWare to release their version, simply due to the trust that I have in their name and other appliances.
I began by installing VmWare Fusion which could not have been more simple. I have been using Bootcamp for several months now for those rare circumstances when I just had to have Windows. But, it was always such a pain to reboot the machine for that five minutes that I really needed to do something. And was even more painful if I had to be there longer since I no longer had access to all my music. Thus the beauty of Fusion which allows you to run the virtual machine within the same session that you are in currently, in my case OSX.
The first OS that I tried installing was Windows. I must say that it came off without a hitch. Windows installed beautifully and worked right out of the gate. I limited the drive to 8gb and gave the VM 1 gig of my 2 gigs of RAM. It is a little pokey but I must say it is not all that bad to use. I discovered early on that it is important to install VMTools on the new virtual machine as it allows you to change the window size on the fly and allows the mouse to move in and out of the virtual machine seamlessly. Having done all this my experience with installing Windows was almost pleasurable which is the first time I can say that about a product from Redmond.
I have also been wanting to take the opportunity to work in Ubuntu. I am not a Linux guy by any stretch of the imagination but I have the desire to learn more. I have read great things about Ubuntu and wanted to give it a try. I just did not have the spare machine to dedicate to my experiment. Ubuntu was only slightly Ubuntumore challenging than Windows. I began by trying to download a pre-installed version from the VMTN website. This is a great resource of already installed virtual machines that are pre-configured and ready to go. I could not find a good one of the new version of Ubuntu and thus downloaded the 6.06 version. I moved the new virtual machine into the vmware folder on my machine, double clicked, and away we went. It was truly amazing. VMTools was already installed on this machine and so all the cool window resizing and mouse tricks worked out of the box. The only thing that did not work was my sound which I imagine was a driver issue with my iMac and could have been fixed but I did not take the time to do so since I was feeling cocky and ready to get the latest version 6.10.
I downloaded an iso of the latest version of Ubuntu and began the full installation process. The process was very speedy with only a few hitches. It took a few minutes to get VMTools working on the machine. I had to do the update process several times and was aided in that by this article. The only inssue that I had beyond that was getting the mouse to work properly. It turned out that the mouse driver that Ubuntu was using was the default and not the vmmouse that is requried. I found this article quickly on VMTN and was again “good to go.”
I have to say that the entire experience has been very positive. I am looking forward to working in x11 on Ubuntu and not having to reboot for those times that I need Windows. Fedora is next so I will post about my experience with it. All in all a great experience.

[tags]VmWare, VmWare Fusion, Fusion, Mac, OSX, Parallels[/tags]

Lose your cell phone? Ask it to scream for you

Published
by
patrick
on September 7, 2006
in cellular, ideas, interesting, lifehacks, mobile and phone
. 0 Comments

This article details a piece of software that will cause your cell phone to begin screaming if stolen from you. Most people realize that their cell phone is missing within in 30 seconds much faster than the one hour it takes us to realize our wallet is missing. I am not sure what that says but it says something. This software will cause the stolen phone to make a loud high pitched noise begging the thief to relinquish it.

[tags]mobile phone, cellular, security, mobile, phone[/tags]

Got family pictures… create a poster

Published
by
patrick
on August 31, 2006
in advice, family, ideas, interesting, lifehacks and mac
. 1 Comment

Family PosterI love pictures, in fact the entire wall behind the desk in my office is one giant bulletin board with no cork showing from all the pictures placed on it. My wife, however, will not allow me to do that same at home. Recently I came across this idea on Mac Break which uses an OS X Automator script to compile images into a 24″ x 36″ poster. I printed out the poster on film quality paper and now have a beautiful collage of my family that hangs in our media room. It took some searching on the Internet to find a suitable frame but I found one here at a quality price. This was a simple and cost effective way to capture some of my favorite pictures for display.

The ultimate Bible lifehack

Published
by
patrick
on August 19, 2006
in bible, commentary and ideas
. 1 Comment

I have never been much of a note taker in my Bible. I always sort of looked enviously on those Bibles that showed years of sermon notes and wear. The problem is that I can hardly read my writing that is composed at a desk much less my own script that is patterned on onion skin paper while resting in my lap. As of late, I have adopted a wonderful note taking book, the moleskine which of course is championed by 43 Folders. The moleskine has large enough rule that if I concentrate hard I can make out my scribble the next day. In the two months that I have been doing this I have really enjoyed having those notes to go back to.

Today, however, I came across this ingenious idea and thought I would share it with you die hard note takers. This serious student of scripture has built his own blank page Bible. It seems a little cumbersome to carry and a great deal of work to construct, however you are left with the finest note taking Bible around.

H-T The Shepherd’s Scrapbook - Part 1

H-T Part 2 - the failure

H-T Part 3 - the success