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Paul's Time Sink

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LED lightbulb

Paul Westbrook | 15 May, 2005 18:01

Hiwt-105 Led1 EA couple of weeks ago, I saw an episode of "I Want That!" that described these LED light-bulbs.  Appalachian Wind Systems, LLC makes a bunch of different types of LED light bulbs.  In addition to saving electricity over incandescent and florescent bulbs, they are supposed to last a lot longer.

I would be interested in these bulbs if they were dimmable, so I could use them with my X10 system.  I couldn't tell from the specs if they are capable of dimming.

Gadgets :: Comment (2) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (0)

More TiVo and Vonage

Paul Westbrook | 15 May, 2005 06:19

In a post I wrote a while ago, I talked about a way to make a TiVo make phone calls over a VoIP connect.  Vonage used to have instructions on dial prefixes that would work.  (It looks like they removed all of those instructions.)

I just got a new TiVo, and was trying to set it up, and the second phone call was failing.  I did a search on the web, and I found these instructions that would allow the TiVo to make the phone calls over a broadband connection.

Electronics , Phone :: Comment (1) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (1)

Fixing locked iTunes music library file

Paul Westbrook | 15 May, 2005 06:16

When I was copying music to the iPod Shuffle, I accidentally disconnected the iPod from my laptop.  This caused iTunes to crash.  I guess it didn't close the library file correctly, because when I launched iTunes again, I got the following error message:

" The iTunes 4 Music Library rile is locked, on a locked disk, or you do not have write permissions for this file."

This page has a description of how to fix this problem.

Update: The previous page is not available.  Here is the page on Google Cache. 

Update #2: It looks like the page is gone from Google Cache. 

Computer :: Comment (1) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (0)

Free iPod Shuffle

Paul Westbrook | 14 May, 2005 23:33

iPod Shuffle in box On Friday, my free iPod Shuffle arrived. I got this by using the FreeiPodShuffle.com web site. The one site that made it very easy to fufill the requirements is on the I Hate my Cubicle website. They have a banner program that if you use them as a referrer, you can have your referrer link added to their banner rotation. From this I got people, that I don't know, using my referral link.

Now, I am going to try to see if I can get a free Mac Mini or Photo iPod.

If you are interested in trying these out, click on these links (Mac Mini, Photo iPod), or go to FreeStuff-IHMC.

More iPod Shuffle photos.

Electronics , Gadgets :: Comment (3) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (1)

Delicious Library

Paul Westbrook | 14 May, 2005 21:36

I tried and really like Delicious Library.  It is a library manager for all of your DVDs, CDs, books and games, just like DVDAttache.  It has a great polish. 

The one unique feature that it has is that it can use a firewire web cam to act like a barcode scanner.  This will allow items to be automatically imported, without any typing.  In addition to this, you can enter items with title, UPC, or ISBN searches.

Also, you can export the library to your ipod.  And they have added Spotlight indexing of the library.
 (More)

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macam

Paul Westbrook | 13 May, 2005 16:00

It seems like Mac compatible web cams that they sell in the store are pretty expensive.  macam is a QuickTime component that lets you use many different web cams with software that use QuickTime input APIs.

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Podcast book

Paul Westbrook | 13 May, 2005 13:49

Today was the big announcement on the Geek News Central Podcast.  Todd, the podcaster there, announced that he has published a new book on podcasting.  "Podcasting: Do It Yourself Guide" looks like a good book if you are interested in podcasting.

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Showing full names for post

Paul Westbrook | 11 May, 2005 14:20

I looked through all of the templates that are available for pLog, and I noticed that all of them don't show the full name for the authors of the posts.  I made the following change to allow this to work.

Change: 
<span class="date">
{$postOwner->getUsername()} 
| {$locale->formatDate($postDate,"%d %B, %Y %H:%M")}
</span>
To: 
<span class="date">
{if strlen($postOwner->getFullName()) > 0 } 
{$postOwner>getFullName()}
{else}
{$postOwner->getUsername()}
{/if}
| {$locale->formatDate($postDate,"%d %B, %Y %H:%M")}
</span>

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Moved XM Commander

Paul Westbrook | 08 May, 2005 20:42

Repositioned XM Commander The velcro holding the XM Commander display in our Odyssey got loose, so I reattached it with some stronger velcro. I also took the opportunity to position it better. Now the buttons are more accessible and the display is easer to see from the drivers seat.

Unfortunately, the strongest velcro that I could find is white, so it is a little more visible than I would have liked.

Cars , Electronics :: Comment (0) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (0)

Phone powered devices

Paul Westbrook | 08 May, 2005 20:06

These telco powered devices are pretty funny, but also interesting. These are devices that are powered by the electrical current on telephone lines.  I assume that most of these work by having a battery, and using the phone current to trickle charge the battery.

I think that the funniest product is the telco powered vibrator.

[via MAKE: blog]

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Make your own ring tones

Paul Westbrook | 08 May, 2005 19:22

The April 29th episode of the Make podcast, mentions smashTheTONES.  This is a free service that lets you upload your own music to use a ring tone for your cell phone.  It also lets you upload images as well.

I tried to use this with my Motorola T730c, but this phone only supports uploading images though this service.  Also, I am not able to see the images on my phone, but I think that this is caused because I don't pay for Verizon's GetPIX service

General , Gadgets :: Comment (1) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (0)

Automatically install malicious Dashboard widget

Paul Westbrook | 08 May, 2005 18:54

This is an interesting web page that describes how a web page can automatically install a Dashboard widget.  It also looks like Apple does not provide a way for you to remove an installed Dashboard widget. 

This web page installs a moderately malicious widget.  In order to remove it, you will have to manually remove it and restart the Dashboard.

Apple need to prevent these types of attacks.

[via Slashdot]

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Potential server problems

Paul Westbrook | 08 May, 2005 18:16

Twice today, my server got unresponsive where I had to turn it off, and then turn it back on.  When it was in this state, I noticed that the hard drive was thrashing. After rebooting it the first time, I noticed that apache died because it wasn't able to allocate memory.

I think that one of the processes is leaking memory so bad that it eventually uses all of the swap space.  I don't think that this problem is caused by anything external, as I can see a log of all of the connections though my firewall.  Now I just need to find out what is leaking the memory.

Update:  I found out what causing the problem.  I had installed version 1.3.0 of munin.  Since I had a cron job that got the statistics every 5 minutes and it appears that some of the processes were not finishing, so eventually the computer would run out of memory.    I updated munin to 1.3.2, and it doesn't seem to have this problem.

Computer :: Comment (2) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (1)

Turning off FileVault

Paul Westbrook | 06 May, 2005 21:47

I have decided to turn off FileVault on my PowerBook.  When FileVault is enabled, your home directory is copied into an encrypted disk image, which is mounted when you log in.  This disk image is supposed to be a sparse disk image, which is supposed to increase in size to fit the contents of the image.  The size of the disk images is supposed to decrease when files are deleted.

It looks like Apple's implementation is not that good.  When you create a new file, the disk image size is increased.  This happens, even though a larger file was just deleted.  The only time that the disk image is compressed is when the computer is shut down, and I hardly ever shutdown my laptop, but instead I just put it to sleep.

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ecto 2.3

Paul Westbrook | 06 May, 2005 14:46

There is a new version of ecto, and it is pretty cool.  Now ecto has explicit support for tags from Technorati, del.icio.us, and Flickr.  This version allows you create and add tags from directly in the draft window.

Technorati Tags: ,

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