When I watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as a kid, I almost felt sorry for the geeky principal played by Ben Stein. Little did I know he was even more pathetic in real life. Don’t be fooled by his latest flick. Get the truth about Expelled before you go to the theatre. While you’re at it, pay tribute to David Bolinsky by watching his teaser displaying the inner workings of the cell on the internet rather than allowing Stein to spoof it.

I’ve been struggling with getting video from a Linksys WVC54GC web camera directly onto a machine running OS X. The only half-hack I’ve been able to come up with is, oddly enough, using QuickTime (no luck with VLC or MPlayer).

1. Open QuickTime Player.app.
2. Choose File->Open URL…
3. Type in the link to your camera: http://camerip:1024/img/video.asf (I’m using port 1024 for my camera.
4. Click OK and wait for the desired amount of time you’d like to record for.
5. Press Apple+A to select all, Apple+N to bring up a new viewer, and Apple+V to paste in.

QuickTime Player is highly non-responsive while this is occurring, but it seems to pull it off. Let me know if you have a better way.

I usually pride myself when I share that I am from the Twin Cities. I think of it as a progressive area in the heart of the Midwest.  Thats why I was dismayed to read that the Mall of America theatre manager catered to the religious right last night:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/expelled.php

I mean no slight of hand to the brilliant PZ Meyers, but can you say “Wrong man!?” Go RD and thanks PZ for being such a sport and entertaining such a distinguished guest!

I’ve bonked my head on a wall for a while helping people to send multiple attachments with Mail.app in Mac OS X to an AOL email account.   I think this is a working solution, although it is not very elegant in the Mac-sense. Before you read the solution, here’s the problem, as documented by AOL: http://members.aol.com/adamkb/aol/mailfaq/#attachmentsThe workaround is a cute two-step procedure if you have the appropriate software installed. So, if you want to attach a single file to an email message going to an AOL user, try the following:1) The attachment must be the very last thing in the message. Before attaching files, place the cursor at the very end of the mail message (keep using the down and right arrows to make sure the cursor is at the end of the document or in Mail, just choose Edit->Attachments->Always Insert Attachments at End of Message); and2) Erase the resource fork from your file before sending it by right clicking on it and choosing “GrimRipper” from your contextual menu.Before you try this for the first time, you’ll need to install “GrimRipper” using the link below (to install, download the file from the bottom of the linked webpage, and from the disk image on your desktop open the file called “Install GrimRipperCM”, and click the blue buttons whenever you’re prompted by the installation):

http://www.abracode.com/free/cmworkshop/grim_ripper.html

What’s going on behind the scenes? By doing these steps, Mail should be able to skip the appledouble encoding when you send an attachment and send a single base64 encoded data fork (i.e. your attached file)… Please keep me posted if this works for you. I believe you’ll still only be able to send one attachment at a time. 

As I was pulling my bag out of the car yesterday to begin my ride, I knocked the headlamp for my bike’s NiteRider Evolution Smart, from the inside of my car, about 12 inches above the ground, to the frozen asphalt near the Stone Arch Bridge.  Unfortunately, it was unable to withstand the fall and I found the bulb cracked loose inside the housing.  Desperate calls around the Twin Cities later that day to NiteRider “dealers” yielded no replacement bulbs and only promises of 7-10 day waiting periods.  I could have purchased a 35mm replacement bulb, Model #1063, directly from NiteRider for about $30 with shipping included, but my Dad recommended that I call Freewheel as they have had drop in/similar replacement bulbs that worked for him in the past. Lo and behold, he was right! They set me up with a Luks, PD23987, MR-11, dichroic, 6 volt, 15 watt, 20 degree 3200K replacement bulb that has a bluish white light and is apparently meant for NiteRider and Marwi light systems. It fits just as snug as the NiteRider one and cost significantly less (under $19 with tax). Thanks Kevin and Freewheel!

Why is there such a lack of information on whether the iPhone has the capability of tethering to a laptop in order to gain access to AT&T’s EDGE for dialup networking (DUN)? I’m determined to find the answer and hopefully before the launch date on Friday. I have a sinking feeling that the iPhone will not be allowed to tether to a laptop/computer. How else could AT&T justify to themselves an unlimited data plan to iPhone users that is substantially less than other smartphone plans?

Anyway, back to the point. I know that many Apple Geniuses and salespeople have finished their training (not to mention the AT&T folks), so surely someone, out of the several thousand who were trained, asked this same question.

Oh yeah, and if you get in towards the front of the line at the Rosedale store this Friday, please save a spot for me. I’ll even bring some treats with.

***Update, July 4, 2007***
As many of you have probably already found out, tethering is not possible with the iPhone, right now. I anticipate that Apple will add this functionality in a future update.

***Update, August 10, 2007***
I’m glad someone was able to figure out a way to make this happen… It doesn’t appear to be the easiest hack to implement, but its now “possible”:

http://cre.ations.net/blog/post/tether-your-iphone

Excellent! A few weeks ago, my poor lawnmower met the unfortunate fate of ramming a second tree stump in my backyard. It now puffs smoke like the aptly named dragon. Rather than immediately fix it, I decided to go green. This morning, I purchased a Brill Model 38 from Ingrid at Reed’s Sales in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Ingrid cut me a discount with the “Living Green Expo” pricing, so I bought in.

My first experiences with the mower are largely positive, but first a little background. My lawn is surrounded by very large maple and oak trees on all sides and my front lawn is a steep hill with a 7 foot drop. The backyard seems to be getting rather bumpy from a bunch of voles tunneling around (no, not moles). Other than that, its a smallish lot by American standards, about 50 feet by 200 feet.

Right, one of the first surprises I’ve found is dashing up and down the hill in the front yard with the 17 pound Brill is that it is definitely a relief over the lumbering Lawnboy. In addition, the lack of any ear damaging noise that emits from it, zero consumption of gasoline, and fewer planned blade sharpenings have me elated. It cuts grass quickly and effectively, particularly well when the grass is already fairly short and dry. My sweet spot for grass length seems to be 35 millimeters (hey, its German engineering so get use to metric). I think its fair to say I’m in decent shape and the Brill stresses my body no more than the gas powered mower it replaces.

The downsides are minimal, but I’d be negligent to not point them out. One is that it doesn’t doesn’t seem to cut the grass quite as neatly as a regular gas powered mower. I’ve managed to mitigate this problem by overlapping more with my mowing, but there are a few stubborn blades of grass that just resist the whir of the Brill. Despite my overlapping technique, I think the time to cut the yard is about the same, as you can walk much faster with the Brill versus a silly gas powered mower. A second drawback is that you cannot get as close to trees and other obstacles with the Brill, which is OK, because I use a gas powered trimmer (yeah, I’ll find an electric one later) to tidy things up. The last issue is something that I should have been doing with my gas powered mower too. Before you mow with the Brill, you better walk around the yard and pick up your dog’s excrement in addition to every little twig if possible. The Brill will easily get jammed on a small twig, but you just push the circular blade backwards an inch and it will dislodge. As I live in Minnesota, I live in the middle of the forest, and this hasn’t been a huge problem yet.

Overall, I’m very happy that I got it. When you first get it, don’t get down on it too fast. Spend some time learning the ins and outs and you’ll be happy with your purchase. Go Green!

Its ridiculous Apple doesn’t make this easier in Preview in Mac OS X 10.4.x, but… If you need to change the font size of text annotations made to .pdf files in Preview, I saw this posted at macosxhints.com. Quit Preview if its open, launch Terminal.app, and paste this in:

defaults write com.apple.preview NSSystemFontSize -int 9

This will screw around with the font size of the buttons for printing out of Preview, so if you get frustrated and need to change it back, follow the instructions above and paste this line in to Terminal.app instead:

defaults write com.apple.preview NSSystemFontSize -int 13

I really hope its easier than this when Leopard ships this year.

For some reason I need make a script executable once every blue moon and I always seem to forget how to do it. Getting old is frustrating.

To make a script executable in Mac OS X, fire up Terminal.app and type this in at the prompt (or add a space after the “x” below and then drag your script on to the Terminal window):

chmod +x /file/path/script_name.sh

Press enter and you’re done. The single line above makes the script, named “script_name.sh” located in the directory “/file/path/”, executable. There are probably easier ways to do this, but it works for me.

To execute the script, just type the following into the terminal (assuming you’re in the same directory as the script):

./script_name.sh

I wanted to bring the Macworld Keynote to a buddy of mine who’s in a nursing home right now. He doesn’t have internet access there, so I thought I’d just bring it to him by saving a stream from Quicktime… Quicktime doesn’t allow for such shenanigans, but the venerable VLC does.

To do this, fire up VLC, and open the stream for this year’s keynote by choosing “File->Open Network…” and enter the address of the stream: “http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/jan/j47d52oo/m_8848125_650_ref.mov”. Test the stream by playing it. Nice…

Let’s use the Streaming/Exporting Wizard to save the stream. Press “Apple+Shift+W” to launch the Streaming/Exporting Wizard and then select “Transcode/Save to file” and click “Next”.

Click “Existing playlist item” and select the stream in the window below followed by clicking “Next” to continue.

On the next screen, just click “Next” to continue, leaving both options blank.

Leave “MPEG PS” selected and click “Next” to continue.

Name the stream what you want it called and click “Next” to continue.

Click “Finish” to begin downloading the stream.

It should download at the pace of your connection, I believe, but mine only came down at real-time – maybe due to traffic…