life, and a little more

5,000 hits!

Nov 29

metalman777Life, tech, www 5000 hits, blogging, redesign No Comments

My little ‘ol blog has had over 5,000 hits now!  I know most blogs get that kind of traffic in just one day, but for me, that stat is pretty awesome!

I thought it would be a perfect time to celebrate and do some redesigning.  Thus the new look for the blog.  Cheers!

Gmail gets skinned!

Nov 21

metalman777tech, www gmail, themes No Comments

Google has given us many free things: Google Earth, Google Maps, Blogger, Youtube, Picasa, Google Reader, and yes, Google Mail.  I’ve been an avid user of Gmail for quite a while now and was pleasantly surpised that Google finally added Themes go its online mail service!

As you can see above, Google has given us 31 different themes to use.  Personally, I only like a few, but I sure appreciate the thought!

Below are my favorite themes:

If you feel Ninja-like, this is the perfect theme!

Give your email an office feel!

My personal favorite! Brings back many memories of being in front of my TSR-80 trying to get my tape drive to work!

This Just Isn't My Weekend…

Oct 25

metalman777Life, tech, www gmail, sucks!, youtube No Comments

crapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Google changed the way you log into youtube this weekend.  If you use Gmail, as I do, you can link your Gmail account to your Youtube account.  Somehow someway I didn’t link ‘em right and now my youtube account of 2+ years is gone!!! I had something close to 100 videos posted!  crapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe youtube is getting back at me because I have been publishing video to Viddler….yeah, yeah, that’s it!

Do not install iPhone 2.1 update on old iPhone!!

Sep 16

metalman777apple, software, tech, www apple, iphone, iphone 2.1, ipod, ipod touch, quickpwn 2.1 No Comments

So I got my wife the new iPhone 3G for her birthday.  She’s on it all the time and she is always wanting more storage space, so I thought it’d be a great idea.

But what do I do with her “old” iPhone?  We passed it down to my daughter to use as an iPod Touch.  The first gen iPhone could still be used without a sim card, as long as you had the 2.02 version of software.  It is a great gadget, and the wi-fi internet connection works great.

Today I was prompted to install the 2.1 update on Bekah’s iPod Touch (the 1st gen iPhone).  I updated like a good boy and BAM! her iPod no worky!  Said I had to install a valid sim card and activate the phone via iTunes!  Boo!

I did a quick Google search on how to downgrade the phone back to the 2.02 software found promptly found out that Apple made sure you couldn’t downgrade.  Thanks a bunch Steve!

Fortunately for me, I found this website on how to “jailbreak” the 2.1 software.  Turns out us Mac users are a lucky bunch!  This program does everything in one step, whereas windoze users have to jump through some major hoops to jailbreak their phones.  I ran the software and POOF! the iPhone-turned-iPod Touch was working great!  Yay for me!

Hellotxt.com – Cross Platform Greatness

Jul 25

metalman777Uncategorized, tech, www hellotxt.com, internet, status, tech, web 2.0 No Comments

WARNING: the following blog contains explicit tech talk and anyone not interested in geeky web 2.0 conversations (read: my wife) might just skip this edition of life, and a little more.

Try as I might, I just can not consolidate my online life into just one place.  I’m spread out all over the place.  Check out the sidebar to the right to see most of my online communities!

More and more I’m using this WordPress blog as my central web location, with all the aforementioned websites pointing here.  There have been some useful tools that let the Web 2.0 crowd interact with one another.  I’ve been using Facebook’s Twitter application to update my Facebook status from Twitter (as I can’t access Facebook at work, but can access Twitter).  I’ve been looking for something similar for Myspace.  Can’t access that website from work either!  What, my bosses actually want me to work?

So I finally stumbled upon hellotxt.com. It is a pretty useful tool if you are spread out all over the web like me.

To the right you can see all of the Web 2.0 services that Hellotxt works with.  Truthfully I hadn’t even heard of most ‘em!

Once you enter all of your information for all of your accounts you are presented with a text box to input your updates into.  I haven’t played with the picture or video feature, but it is nice to know that it is there if you need it.

Type in your update and it automatically sends it to the services you have selected.

Another nice feature of Hellotxt.com is the Social Time Line.  You can view all of your friends updates right in the Hellotxt framework.  Everything is centralized!  Facebook is not supported yet, but according to the website, it is coming soon.

Of course, Hellotxt wouldn’t be complete without the ability to send in updates via text messaging from your cell phone.  I only have a work cell with no ability to text, so I won’t be using this service.

All in all, hellotxt.com will be helping me out a lot. I’m just glad I can consolidate a little bit!

Online Video Comparison Matrix

Jun 12

metalman777tech, videos, www online video, video, web No Comments

Ok, I found this very cool page comparing all the different online video sites.

I’ve been using Youtube for a couple of years, but now the file size and film length limitations are making me look elsewhere.

In my googling, I ran across this very comprehensive matrix comparing almost all of the video websites.

I’m checking out blip.tv right now. I had no idea there were so many options!

Firefoxtunestwitterfied (trust me, it really does make sense)

Apr 10

metalman777tech, www firefox, twitter, www No Comments

I have finally joined to legions of devoted Twitter users to micro-blog and micro-text my way to insanity.  If you’d like to read a very good article on how to use Twitter, follow this link.

In order to take advantage of my newfound compulsion, I switched back to Firefox so I could use some very cool extensions for Twitter.

In switching back to Firefox, I was able to take advantage of Foxytunes, a plug-in for Firefox that let’s you control iTunes or Last.fm or Pandora right from your browser.

This is what the Foxytunes toolbar looks like.  It sits at the bottom of Firefox.  It isn’t in the least bit distracting. Clicking on the little orange music note produces the following:
Like I said, you can control all your different media players right from your web browser!  To the left, a scrolling text box announces what is playing (not seen in the above screenshot)

Now this is where Twittytunes comes in.  It is a plug-in for Foxytunes.  It will send a “tweet” to all your followers of what you are listening to.
You can let everyone know how cool you are by showing them what you are listening to; everyone know that people who listen to Whitecross are cooler than most, eh?

There are a few different options to send to your followers from Twittytunes.

You can keep everyone informed to the websites you are browsing, what you are reading; well, you can read the list from up above.  If you are using Twitter, than this is a fabulous tool.

One other extenstion I found is Twitterfox.  It lets you see all your tweets right from Firefox.  You can post and reply to all of your fellow Twitterers!

So, if you do join the Twitter community, send me a tweet at metalman777!

Google Reader's Unintended Consequence

Apr 03

metalman777Life, tech, www google, rss, tech, web No Comments

I’ve been a voracious reader since the time I could hold a book. I love books – how the feel and how they look, and if I had a sense of smell, I’m sure I’d love that about them too.

Ask my kids. We’ve told them since they were little. They are not allowed to not like reading. Reading is the stuff of life!

So you can imagine my horror as I find myself not reading so many books as of late! I’m reading the same amount, but it just isn’t in book form. I blame Google. It’s all their fault.

They invented Google Reader, a place where I can collect all the news and info I want into one single place to read. I’ve never been a news junkie, but it turns out I just never had the technology to cater to my needs!

Google Reader is an RSS collector. I can find a blog or news feed that I really like and import that content into Google Reader. Now instead of having to check that blog or news feed every day, Google Reader automatically updates that blog or news feed for me. Everything is in one place!

Above you see the blue graphic of all the different categories of news and info that I personally subscribe too. (No cracks on the Battlestar Galactica Cindy!! I’m in touch with my inner nerd and I’m proud of it! Dwight Schrute was right in loving this show!!) Within each of those folders are sub folders of the individual feeds.

Being the Apple fan boy that I am, we’ll start with that folder. I subscribe to eight different blogs that all deal with Apple. You can see that some of those feeds are in bold and have a parenthesized number after it. Those are feeds that have items I have not read yet. The other entries that are not in bold have all been read. The number in parenthesis is how many new articles there are. These feeds update as soon as the author writes a new article, so I can have real time news at my fingertips. Below you will see another graphic of the actual news part of Google reader. This is the pane that actually displays the content of each feed.

Inside the apple-stuff folder are listed all my feeds. I can easily scroll through them using the “j” key on my keyboard. It makes reading a lot of news manageable!