How to

Cosmetically tweaking the laptop

February 9, 2009

Did you notice how laptops and netbooks are quickly becoming fashion accessories? Rather than toting around the dull black or obsidian tablet, folk are carrying around customized artwork, pimped and detailed to the point that the lowly laptop rivals anything Chip Foose would do to a classic Chevy.
Heck, someone even laser-etched all the levels from [...]

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eeePC Netbook Ubuntu mod and a bit of fun

January 28, 2009

As you can see, I’ve managed to get TweetDeck installed on my languishing eeePC 8G Netbook.
Originally we’d picked the eeePC up as a light web browser, but found the native Xandros OS a bit weak.
Time passed and we’d not had time to really explore the potential of this little guy…until now.
First off, the OS needed [...]

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Songbird solves my multi-multimedia player dilemma

December 17, 2008

Between home and work, I have various Windows, Linux and Macintosh computers. I centralize my media on a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device, accessible by all. As you can imagine, I use different media players on all.
My biggest hurdle has been consistency in user experience. I’ve had to run iTunes on the Mac, Winamp, FooBar2000 [...]

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Two resources for planning your lunar photography evening

December 12, 2008

A friend pointed me to this BBC article about tonight’s full moon. It seems that tonight’s full moon event will occur when the Moon is the closest it’s been to the earth (during a full moon) in 15 years.
Well, methinks. A perfect time to get out the photography and telescopy equipment and capture this event.
But [...]

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What to know when changing website hosts

December 3, 2008

A couple of weeks ago I found the following in an email from my webhost:
Your web hosting account for bradgrier.com has been deactivated (reason: site causing performance problems).
Although your web site has been disabled, your data may still be available for
up to 15 days, after which it will be deleted.
After a quick call to the [...]

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Live election night coverage online (Canadian Election)

October 15, 2008

Another Canadian election has come and gone. Programmed mainstream media coverage was again, less than inspiring. I found that to truly enjoy this national exercise, you have to watch it in the company of friends, as you would a Saturday afternoon hockey game.
I spent election night online. Using a variety of free sources, I was [...]

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2 More Simple Home Backup Solutions

October 2, 2008

photo credit: nickwheeleroz

With the financial crisis swirling around this week, I took another look at ways I keep my data safe. To best achieve this, offsite backups are a must. Should my computers become damaged or stolen, my data is still secure.
I’ve written before about Mozy, an effective automated online backup system, but recently [...]

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Telemarketing gains another enemy — the Canadian government

September 30, 2008

Previously I’d written about iOptOut, a free service, set up by Canadian Law Professor Michael Geist.
Well today citizens of Canada are now able to register on another Do Not Call list, this one run by the government.Â Marketers should realize that telemarketing is so 20th century.
But, even with this double-double assault on telemarketers, this new [...]

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Google Chrome: a quick look and how to block ads with Privoxy

September 14, 2008

photo credit: Randy Zhang

Google ChromeÂ is no Firefox (yet).
For the last week and a bit, off and on, Â I’ve been using Google Chrome (Google’s new entry into the browser wars). On the 3 XP-based systems I’ve used it on, I’ve found it to be very fast, very efficient, and stable. Pretty good performance for a [...]

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