Drinking whiskey clear!
The missus and I are growing all kinds of stuff this year: watermelons, cucumbers, cantaloupes, bell peppers, oregano, thyme… and a vast array of spicy peppers, like jalapeño, cayenne, Marconi and banana peppers. We’re even growing some habanero peppers! I’ve nicknamed the habanero plant “Julius” (after Carolina Panthers superstar Julius Peppers). And Julius appears to be getting ready to provide me with his first taste of spicy goodness:
I can’t wait to try it! 🙂
Backup, backup, backup… How many times have you heard a computer guy talking about “backing up your data”? Well, there’s a good reason for it – computers can crash, and when they do they can take down a lot of your personal data. Priceless information like pictures and financial data can all be lost in an instant. Sadly, most of the time it takes a crash with the complete loss of data for people to see the light.
Mozy.com is a website that offers a free backup service for people that use Windows and Mac. The free service offers 2GB worth of storage space, which should be plenty for most people’s truly important files. Mozy also offers an “unlimited” version for just $4.95/month.
To use the service, all you’ve gotta do is sign up on Mozy’s site, then download the backup software. Once installed, the software will automatically choose the most crucial elements to back up, or you can opt to manually choose which files and folders Mozy will back up. Backups then happen in the background whenever files are changed (you can also opt to have Mozy back up on a schedule you set). You can access your files through Mozy’s website, and also manage all of your settings and computers from the site also. Mozy also offers a lot of features that other backup sites either don’t offer or only offer with paid plans, like the ability to back up locked files, the ability to restore files from within Windows Explorer, and support for 3GB (or larger) files.
Mozy is easy to use and is free… so start backing up your data today! Check it out here.
There are a ton of “bookmark synchronization” extensions for Firefox out there. Many of you might have a favorite, but I recently decided to give Google Browser Sync a try… and I love it! As you might guess from the name, Google Browser Sync synchronizes your Firefox bookmarks between different computers. So if you use Firefox at home and work, you could have a unified set of bookmarks between the two computers. Which is cool and all… but Google Browser Sync also has the ability to synchronize your cookies, history, saved passwords… even your open tabs and windows! Imagine sitting at your desk at work. You’re surfing the Internet, but it’s time to go home. If you have Google Browser Sync installed, you just close the Firefox window. All of your open tabs and updated bookmarks will be copied automatically to Google’s servers. So when you come home you open Firefox… and start right back where you were at work! Neat, huh?
The Google Browser Sync extension for Firefox is free.
For years, I used a program called Bootpart to add non-Windows NT operating systems to the NT boot loader. When I played around with Linux, for example, I’d skip installing GRUB or LILO; instead I’d boot into Windows and use Bootpart to add the Linux partition to BOOT.INI. Since I never really got the hang of Linux – or had specific issues with specific distros – I was always going to want to boot into Windows by default. By using Bootpart I could continue using the NT Boot Loader; when the time came to uninstall Linux, I only needed to delete the Linux partitions and make a couple of tweaks to the BOOT.INI file… and Linux was gone!
Sadly, Bootpart hasn’t been updated in ages, and is not compatible with Windows Vista’s new bootloader. So last night, when I installed Windows XP on a system with Windows Vista already installed, I needed some way to add XP to Vista’s bootloader. Enter EasyBCD. This handy (and FREE!) program can add entries for NTLDR-based Windows operating systems (Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP) to the Vista boot loader, and also supports adding Linux, Mac OS X and BSD installations as well. It’s fast and easy, and it does what it says it’ll do. If you need to add a new operating system to your Vista bootloader, EasyBCD is the way to go!
Check me out:
You too can be “Simpsonized” – just go to this site and upload a picture of yourself. The picture needs to be at least 640×480 and for best results it should be a close up of your face. You can also add a “Springfield scene” to the background if you wish. Registration at the site is not mandatory, but registering will allow you to save your image online and come back to it at a later time.
So – what do you guys think of the Simpsonized Jim?
For years, shortwave radio enthusiasts have noted a curious phenomenon: radio stations that seem to pop-up out of nowhere, read a list of numbers, then disappear… sometimes forever. Because the sole purpose of the broadcasts is apparently to read lists of numbers, shortwave junkies started calling them “numbers stations”… although as we shall see, other names might be appropriate.
No one seems to know when the “numbers stations” started broadcasting. No one seems to know who’s behind them. Shortwave enthusiasts assume that someone somewhere knows the purpose behind the stations, but as far as I or anyone else knows, that purpose is a mystery. In fact, there’s not a lot about the numbers stations that we do know. In fact, all we can say for sure is:
– The stations are sometimes transient, sometimes not: Some numbers stations appear to broadcast once, then disappear forever; others appear in certain places on the shortwave dial with clockwork regularity. In fact, certain stations appear with such regularity that broadcast schedules are posted on shortwave enthusiast websites.
– The stations broadcast for hours… or minutes: Some numbers stations repeat their “messages” a few times and then sign off; other stations might repeat their messages for hours and hours.
– The stations broadcast in many languages: Recordings and verified “sightings” have shown that numbers stations are broadcast in English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Chinese, Hebrew… and just about every other major language you can think of.
Microsoft Exchange can host email for several domains. Many companies take advantage of this. For example, they may have a domain for their parent company and individual domains for each separate company or product. So the company could use a single Exchange server to get email for PARENTCOMPANY.COM, SUBCOMPANY1.COM, SUBCOMPANY2.COM, PRODUCTNAME1.COM and so on.
This is completely transparent for the end user, and that’s usually a good thing. However, if someone is getting emails from all Exchange domains, there’s no easy way for them to tell which domain the email was originally sent to. Let’s say that Bob works for ABC Company. ABC Company is the parent company of TUV Company and XZY Company. Bob has email addresses in the form of Bob@ABCCompany.com, Bob@TUVCompany.com and Bob@XYZCompany.com. The Exchange server will deliver email addressed to any of those addresses to Bob’s Exchange mailbox… but Bob won’t easily be able to tell which address the email was originally sent to. If Bob tries to create an Outlook rule to “move email with ‘Bob@XYZCompany.com’ in the recipient’s address” to a folder in his inbox, the rule will fail, because Exchange treats all SMTP addresses equally.
However, if Bob enters each email address into a separate rule that searches for the address as “specific words in the message header” the rule will work. This is because Outlook will scan the actual headers of each email for “Bob@ABCCompany.com”, “Bob@TUVCompany.com” and\or “Bob@XYZCompany.com”. Bob can then have Outlook move the email to “ABCCompany.com” “TUVCompany.com” or “XVZCompany.com” folders in his Inbox, or perform any number of other notifications.
This is not new knowledge or anything. For some reason, Microsoft has never made this explicitly clear to anyone, and there are tons of posts on Internet message boards looking for a solution to this very problem. Since Microsoft couldn’t be bothered to explain this clearly in Outlook (or simply make the “move email with ‘Bob@XYZCompany.com’ in the recipient’s address” rule work with Exchange SMTP addresses), this question comes up somewhat often.
Did you know that mailbucket.org will convert emails sent to any of its addresses to an RSS feed? And not only is it free, there’s not even a sign-up process!
All you have to do is go to the following address in a web browser:
http://www.mailbucket.org/USERNAME.xml
where USERNAME is the user name you’d like to use with Mailbucket. If you see an existing RSS feed, try another user name. If you see “No Messages” then you can assume that that user name is available. You can then use USERNAME@mailbucket.org as your email address and http://www.mailbucket.org/USERNAME.xml as your RSS feed’s address. Any email sent to USERNAME@mailbucket.org will be converted to RSS and pushed out to your client.
Why would anyone want to do this? Maybe you’re on several mailing lists, and rather than get 300 emails a day you’d prefer getting 300 RSS posts a day. Maybe you use an “online” RSS reader like Google Reader and want to access the information in the email\feeds from many computers. Maybe your company won’t allow you to receive personal emails at work, but is OK with you getting an RSS feed. Maybe your group\team needs to share information and would rather use RSS instead of email.
Whatever the case may be, this is still a pretty neat trick. I’m subscribed to several Yahoo! Groups, and instead of getting dozens of emails every day in several different folders, they all just come as RSS feeds into a single folder. Neat!
WARNING: Anyone can subscribe to this RSS feed simply by entering any random USERNAME into the Mailbucket address in their RSS client. So it’s best not to forward anything confidential and\or sensitive to your mailbucket address.
Not much to say, except for HAVE A HAPPY WEEKEND! I hope your weekend makes you feel this happy:
Carla Bruni is an unbelievably hot French supermodel and heiress. You might know her from her modeling days, or perhaps from her well-publicized affairs with Mick Jagger, Donald Trump, Kevin Costner and Eric Clapton. But that’s not important right now. What is important is that she left the fashion world in 1998 to become a singer and songwriter. Her first album, the mostly French Quelqu’un m’a dit (Someone Told Me), was a huge hit in Europe. Three songs from the album were featured in Hans Canosa’s excellent 2005 film Conversations with Other Women, which is how I came to know Carla Bruni as a brilliant chanteuse.
“Quelqu’un M’A Dit” is the title track from the album. It’s a mostly acoustic affair, with some violins and cellos thrown in for good measure. Of course, the song’s entirely in French, so I have no idea of what she’s saying. Here’s a brief translation of the first stanza:
On me dit que nos vies ne valent pas grand chose,
Elles passent en un instant comme fanent les roses.
On me dit que le temps qui glisse est un salaud que de nos chagrins il s’en fait des manteaux pourtant quelqu’un m’a dit…
Someone told me that our lives aren’t worth a thing,
They pass by in an instant like roses wilting.
Someone told me that times slides by like a bastard,
That he makes his blankets from our grief.
At least someone told me…
OK, so it’s not a very happy song. It’s about how short our lives are, how quickly time passes… and someone still being in love with someone else. But it’s so pretty! Have a listen for yourself:
[audio:bruni.mp3]