The Internet - Oh How I Love Thee
I still continue to be amazed at what I can find on the internet as well as what I can accomplish with it. For example just last night I was trying to fix my washing machine. I wasn’t sure how to open it up to gain access to the motor and wiring but I figured I could just take off the rear panel. After fighting it for an hour I decided to Google it, and sure enough I found the answer. A guy with the handle “Fyxer” posted videos on “How to Open a Kenmore Washer” at Metacafe. If I had searched first I would have saved a lot of time and frustration. It is amazing how much I rely on the internet. It has become my external brain and Google is my main access to that brain. In a New York Times article titled “The Outsourced Brain,” David Brooks explains this phenomena writing,
“…I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive servants - silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge. We can burden these servants and liberate ourselves.”
I just hope I don’t become so reliant on the internet that I cease to be able to think and do for myself in any meaningful way. I want the internet to augment my brain, not replace it.
Bookmark Search Tool
As I am surfing I use my bookmarks a lot. I currently have 1220 bookmarks and use many of them frequently. To keep my bookmarks sync’d across all of my computers (home, work, etc.) I use the great little Firefox extension, Foxmarks. With so many bookmarks though, I sometimes find it hard to remember what site I was on when I read a particular article. I would like a search tool that searches my bookmarked sites for specific content.
For instance, I might have read an article a few months ago about using gradients in Photoshop and now I would like to send a link to the article to a friend. I probably wouldn’t be able to find my needle in the Google haystack but then I remember that the article was on one of the 27 Photoshop sites that I have bookmarked. Using this new search tool I would be able to select multiple bookmarks (and/or bookmark folders) and search only those sites for the article using keywords. With the search results significantly narrowed down I should be able to find the article quickly.
I know Rollyo is an attempt to do something similar but I find it cumbersome to use. I don’t want to have to sign up to use it. I don’t want to manually add sites to the list; they are already in my bookmarks folder or on Delicious. Importing bookmarks from my browser doesn’t count either because it is still a manual process that I have to perform periodically to stay current.
Does anything like this already exist? Would you find it useful? Maybe you are an enterprising young programmer or know someone who would like to work on something like this. I think many people would find it useful. Leave a comment and tell me what what you think.
The LaPazz Graphic Tablet (WP8060-TAB08) on OS X
If you are having trouble with your LaPazz Graphic Tablet on OS X keep reading for the solution.
I recently purchased the LaPazz Graphic Tablet, WP8060-TAB08, from Geeks.com. The product advertises that it works on Intel Macs with OS X 10.2.6 and higher. As you have probably guessed, it didn’t work as advertised. After installing the driver software and plugging the tablet into the USB port on my MacBook Pro, all I could get the tablet to do is register mouse clicks. The cursor refused to move about the screen as I moved the pen. Downloading and installing new drivers from the LaPazz website didn’t improve the situation.
How to Fix the LaPazz Driver Issue
After poking around a bit I realized the driver is not loading at startup. LaPazz creates a new directory at /Library/StartupItems/PenTabletDriver and installs the driver there but for some reason it is not running at startup. Instead I setup the driver to run at login and it worked. To configure the driver to run at login follow these steps:
- Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu.
- Choose Accounts from the View menu.
- Click the name of the user.
- Click the Startup Items button
- Click the “Add {+}” button and select the PenTableDriver application at /Library/StartupItems/PenTabletDriver
- Reboot
The tablet should work now!
If anyone has any ideas why the driver doesn’t launch properly on startup I would love to hear from you. Anyway, I hope you enjoy your working tablet.
Faster Firefox
If Firefox is your browser of choice (and if it isn’t please see me after class) you may not be getting the speed you need. A short video clip over at Tekzilla shows you how to configure Firefox for faster browsing. Follow the instructions in the video or see my summary below and you’ll see quite an improvement. Before making the change I was only able to view 10 cute kittens in 1 minute but now I am up to 25 cpm [cats-per-minute]!
Faster Firefox Instructions
- In your address bar enter about:config
- In the filter field enter the word pipe
- Double click network.http.pipelining to set it to true
- Double click network.http.proxy.pipelining to set it to true
- Double click network.http.pipelining.maxrequests and enter a value of 30 or greater
- Restart Firefox
Backing Up is Hard to Do
I am trying to pick a good back up method for our home computers and have found quite a few options. I currently have a laptop with Windows XP and a MacBook Pro as well as a few old desktops floating around. First and foremost I would like a automated, reliable back-ups for both laptops. The back-ups need to include docs, pics, videos, email, addresses, calendars and browser bookmarks. I have considered online back-up services like Mozy, Carbonite and JungleDisk. With these services the back-up resides remotely which is nice protection against flood, fire and other depressing-to-think-about catastrophic events. I have also toyed with the idea of setting up a Network-attached storage (NAS). I could either buy one or use one my old desktops with FreeNAS installed. This opens up the possibility of using the NAS as a media server for music and videos as well.
What’s your back-up method?
- Online service (Mozy, Carbonite, etc.)
- Scheduled back-ups to another computer/eternal drive/server/NAS
- Periodically burn a DVD
- Pray and think good thoughts
VideoTrace - Amazing 3D Models Created from Video
I saw this post about VideoTrace over at the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics blog and was impressed. As a mechanical engineer with an extensive CAD background, I appreciate how difficult it is to create 3D models that look realistic.