Archive for the ‘Random Junk’ Category:
Spilling Coffee on your MacBook Pro
I did it. After hearing all the horror stories and thinking it would never be me, I managed to dump a very full cup of coffee on my 17″ MacBook Pro. While attempting to squeeze in a few minutes of work this morning before I left for the office, I accidentally bumped my coffee cup. My reflexes fired and I tried to catch the cup. In the process of doing so I only made matters worse and thus sealing the fate of my beloved MPB. Luckily my instincts kicked in and I immediately tilted the laptop in such a way that hopefully all of the coffee that made it inside went to the bottom towards where the track-pad is, and away from the logic board.
So what next…
I’m not sure if what I did and what I am about to tell you next is the correct way to deal with the situation, but I guess in a few days we’ll see if I’m the proud owner of a worthless hunk of aluminum.
Step 1
Tilt the laptop so the moisture drains away from where the logic board is. The board is approximately located towards the back and extends down to about where the space bar is. It starts on the left side and ends about where O and P keys are.
Step 2
Unplug and power down as quickly as you can. The faster you do this, the more likely you are save your system from getting fried. Don’t worry about shutting down your system properly at this point. You’ll probably survive that, it’s the hardware we’re worried about. So – press and hold that power button until the screen goes black.
Step 3
Set your laptop on top of something absorbent like a towel, and get some air moving. Heat is probably a bad idea, so it’s probably best to just use a fan. Remove the back cover to expose the components inside. There are 10 screws holding the back plate on. It is probably a good idea at this point to find a small container to place all of your screws in, so you avoid losing them.
Step 4
Warning the next step will void your warranty.
Remove your battery from the system. Apple, being the jackasses they are, use special screws to hold the battery in place. After a trip to RadioShack, the MacStore and my local hardware store I found that nobody carries the correct screw driver for this. However, I found that my cheapo precision screwdriver set has a flat head 2.4mm one that will work anyway.
Make sure your warranty isn't important to you before proceeding! 
Step 5
Dry up any excess moisture you can. And keep that fan running
Mmmm. Coffee...
Step 6
Finally, and most importantly, DO NOT give in to the temptation of putting things back together and firing up your laptop before it’s had a chance to completely dry out. If you do, you might fry something (if it isn’t already). I plan on leaving my as is for a few days just to make sure.
Gratuitous nerdy shot. Hey, I thought it looked neat and was curious how well my macro settings worked on my Cannon XSi Rebel.
The best tractor fight scene evar.
I think that if you looked up the word awesome in the dictionary, it would reference this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E6q-m1tLn8
Tron Legacy Trailer
Oh man. I was super excited to see that there’s a Tron 2 in the works. I was a huge fan of the original movie. I hope they don’t disappoint.
Official Site trailers:
http://www.flynnlives.com/media/video/0xendgame.aspx
Controlling iTunes remotely
So I just got this shiny new MacBook Pro. Absolutely love the thing. I’ve been away from the Macintosh platform for far too long…
Anyway – I’m sitting in my office listening to music and realized that the speakers, while okay for what they are, suck by most standards. So I pop over to my PC and fire up iTunes, hit play, and use my sound system that’s hooked up to it. Sounds great. But, I’m lazy and I got tired of switching over to it change tracks, stop, pause, etc. I figured there had to be a way to control iTunes remotely from the Mac. Doing a bit of research, I found some stuff for the Mac and a PHP script that did me no good.
Finally I came across a Perl script (can’t remember where…) that simply runs a Daemon. Everything that I needed was already there! All I needed to do, was point a browser at the box and it had a nice simple stripped down interface for play, pause, stop, next, etc…
After some time, I realized I hated having to keep the browser window open. Enter MacOS dashboard widgets.
After some quick fiddling with Dashcode, I came up with this little dashboard widget to send the requests to the PC. The current track name only updates after a command is sent, so it isn’t updated dynamically.
Now my iTunes controls are at my fingertips, and I don’t have to spend the time moving my hands the whole 24 some inches to the right to do it on the PC.
Force directed node interface 2
Here’s an example of the force directed node interface that I’ve been talking about. It’s not complete. It’s just a working prototype. You still cannot load project details, but I’m waiting to add that if I decide I want to take this any further.
Since the dimensions of the interface have been reduced to fit in this blog post, things might be a bit small (try zooming in). You can also drag nodes around. Helpful when things get pushed off the screen. Nodes can be opened and closed by clicking on them.
Automated webcam capture/image downloader
The other day I was checking out a webcam at a local ski resort, and wanted to see what an entire day’s worth of shots looked like played in a movie. I’m sure there are apps out there that do this sort of thing, and might even be an easier way of doing this. Regardless, I decided to have a play.
Below is a simple VB Script file (sorry windowless folks) that will download and save an image to your hard drive. It will save the images in the same directory the script is running.
Dim imageURL
imageURL = "http://www.mtbachelor.com/@@/cams/wvskycam.jpg"
Function SaveBinaryData(FileName, ByteArray)
Const adTypeBinary = 1
Const adSaveCreateOverWrite = 2
Dim BinaryStream
Set BinaryStream = CreateObject("ADODB.Stream")
BinaryStream.Type = adTypeBinary
BinaryStream.Open
BinaryStream.Write ByteArray
BinaryStream.SaveToFile FileName, adSaveCreateOverWrite
End Function
Function BinaryGetURL(URL)
Dim Http
Set Http = CreateObject("WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5.1")
Http.Open "GET", URL, False
Http.Send
BinaryGetURL = Http.ResponseBody
End Function
Function doSave()
Dim image, fName, p_month, p_day, p_hour, p_minute, p_second
image = BinaryGetURL(imageURL)
p_month = padZero(Month(Now))
p_day = padZero(Day(Now))
p_hour = padZero(Hour(Now))
p_minute = padZero(Minute(Now))
p_second = padZero(Second(Now))
fName = p_month & "_" & p_day & "_" & Year(Now) & "-" & p_hour & "_" & p_minute & "_" & p_second & ".jpg"
SaveBinaryData fName,image
End Function
Function padZero(val)
If(Len(val) < 2) Then
val = "0" & val
End If
padZero = val
End Function
doSave()
Copy and paste the above script into an empty text file. Go find a webcam you'd like to capture. When viewing the webcam image, right click and copy the images URL. Change the imageURL variable at the top of the script. Save the script (.vbs extension). Next you'll need to set up an automated task to run the script. For help on how to set up tasks, check out this KB article. You'll want to schedule it run somewhat frequently, but no more frequent than the webcam updates.
That's pretty much all you need to do. If everything goes right, image files should start appearing in the directory that the script is located.
To create a movie from the sequence, you'll need to find some software to do that. Out of sheer laziness, I just use QuickTime Pro, but there's a bunch of shareware/freeware options available out there.
Have fun...
Microsoft Surface Parody
One day, your computer will be a big-ass table…
The most annoying behavior : Backspace = Back Button
This has got to be one of the WORST ever behaviors for a user interface. Who ever thought of this one, should be shot.
There is nothing worse than when you’re entering data in a form and hit backspace only to have your browser react as if you clicked the back button.
Arghhh.
Julien Dupont
I don’t want a pickle
Just want to ride on my motorsickle
And I don’t want a tickle
‘Cause I’d rather ride on my motorsickle
And I don’t want to die
Just want to ride on my motorcy…cle
Thank you Arlo…
Heavy Metal Umlaut – The Diacritical Mark of the Beast
While trying to find some information on umlauts and the German language, I came across this and about pissed myself: The Heavy mMetal Umlaut
Moan my IP
Forget ipchicken.com. I’d much rather use moanmyip.com.
Seam carving for content aware image resizing
Ariel Shamir and Shai Avidan have come up with a method for “retargeting” photos. An algorithm is used to detect horizontal and vertical seams of pixels with the least gradient magnitude. This path of pixels can then be removed from the photo, shrinking it in size, but preserving the rest of the photo. To increase the size of the photo, pixels are added along the determined seam.
You can view a higher resolution movie at Ariel Shamir web site. There is also a pdf available, however server speeds prevented me from actually downloading it.
Hip hop meets the violin
Paul Dateh and inka one, layin’ it down. You can find their myspace pages here and here
Tsukuba – nonsense instruments
Neural Interface – Controlling objects
Pretty sick. The applications are endless!
Helping the handicap and assisting astronauts is cool and all, but what about as a TV remote? Just think, you’d never have to waste your precious energy pushing those remote control buttons any more. If the consequence of sloth is only a pit full of snakes, bring it on.
Habanero Pepper – It’s just food. What could go wrong?
That’s 200,000 – 300,000 scoville units of mouth burning fun!
Wicked Pissah Games
Check out Bit-101’s new project Wiked Pissah Games. There’s only one game so far, but I expect good things to come.
Onslaught 2
This game is a total time suck! Prepare to get nothing done today