Posts
iOS iPhoto
Did you get the iPhoto app for iPhone and iPad yet? I did, and was disappointed at first.
Until I read this iPhoto review.
Now I love to use iPhoto to winnow my multiple shots of the same scene down to one and only one photo. I favorite the winner, then delete all of them from camera roll. iPhoto saves its own copy of any photo you favorite or edit.
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Deactivating iMessages on a sold/stolen iOS device
Apple maintains a table mapping your Apple ID to your iOS devices (probably by serial number but possibly by SIM card).
When you sell an iOS device, you should first turn off iMessage before restoring the software.
If you forget, though, or your iOS device is stolen, an alternative way to disable iMessages on the device is to go to apple’s support page, log in with your Apple id, and you’ll see all the devices apple has associated with that Apple ID.
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iWork, iCloud, And an iPad
In an attempt to plan more laptop-less trips, I wanted to get a few critical spreadsheets onto the iPad: the budget spreadsheet, and the car fuel-and-maintenance-tracking spreadsheets.
I exported them out of gnumeric in the Microsoft Excel 97/2000/XP format and imported them into Numbers ‘09 on my MacBook. Numbers threw open a sheet saying it didn’t have the fonts referenced in the spreadsheet and allowed me to pick new fonts. I spent a bit of time cleaning up formatting.
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New Car
A friend asked me to go test drive some BMW cars while he was getting the oil changed in his 528. I ended up driving the only car they had on the lot with a manual transmission, a 328 with no options whatsoever. I knew right away this car was not for me. granted, it was the base model, with the less-powerful engine, but I also didn’t like the seating position or the shifter.
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Managing time machine headlessly
A coworker’s mac just suffered a hard drive failure, causing me to urgently want to plug in all my Time Machine backup drives again.
I recently plugged a new external drive into my mac mini, to store movies on to be streamed through the apple tv. the mac mini only has two usb ports, and the other port was in use for the keyboard and mouse. so I unplugged the keyboard and mouse and plugged in the time machine drive.
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dot
This is a photo of the Earth, taken by Voyager 1 at a distance of over 6 billion kilometers. the Earth is the little bright spot in the upper right; probably about 4–8 pixels:
A bit of eloquence once written about that photo:
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
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Flickstacker
Flickstacker is the best flickr iOS app I’ve found yet, especially for uploading.
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Lamy 2000
Jeremy sent me a Lamy 2000 fountain pen for Christmas! I’ve been wanting one of these for a few months.
Currently, this has displaced my Vanishing Point as favorite pen. The vanishing point is smoother, but on good paper, it’s too smooth, and feels like writing on ice. The Lamy 2000, on the other hand, feels perfect on good paper. Still smooth, it also has some pleasant feedback. After writing with the Lamy, the Vanishing Point feels wild and out of control.
Posts
Headlight Fixed!
The headlight is working again.
After taking off the front bumper and removing the driver’s side headlight, I had to completely disassemble the headlight itself to change out the ballast. The ballast itself was accessible via a panel on the bottom of the headlight, but the part which plugged in to the bulb wouldn’t fit between the reflector and the body of the headlight.
I needed to remove the lens off the front, which was mainly secured by silicone sealant.