Category: how to

  • Imperfectly building my imperfect PC

    Had a couple of free hours last night after the kids went to bed so I went up to the attic to sling together my latest and greatest cheapie Windows box. This one, based on an ASUS T3-M2NC51PV all-in-one, barebones case and an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ Brisbane processor (actually running at 1.9GHz ),…

  • Solving Tivo download issues

    I’ve tried a variety of programs to get TV shows off our Tivo and onto my iPod, mainly so the kids can watch some of their favorites while traveling. The Tivo, which sits in our bedroom far from the nearest wireless access point, was connected to the Internet and our home net via a Netgear…

  • Cool new snapshot feature in Fusion

    I’ve been messing around with VMWare’s Fusion software that lets you run virtual machines under OS X. In my case, it’s Windows 2000 which is good enough to run Outlook 2003 and Sony’s horrible digital recorder software. Today I installed the latest and greatest beta version and it has a cool new feature. At the…

  • Getting more info with Feedburner

    (Updated 2/19 with widget info) I added a MyBlogLog account the other day to get more info about who’s reading my blog but the hole in that strategy is that MyBlogLog only counts people coming to my web site, not those who read entries via RSS. So I’ve now switched my RSS feed sign ups…

  • Plugins to the rescue on tagging posts

    (Updated 2/22) I was complaining the other day about WordPress categories not helping me tag things appropriately for blog search sites like Technorati. Andrew Watson, who writes the blog Changingways, commented that there are plug-ins for WordPress. So I’ve dropped in Bunny’s Technorati Tags and we’ll see how it goes. (Update) Well, this week I…

  • Lo hicimos, Lo hicimos — we did it

    Sunday night we put together the spare parts and made a new PC, a Shuttle XPC, actually. As I explained the other day, it’s made with loose ends, bits of the old MSI-based Windows 2000 system and bargains picked up around town for about $400. For the record, it’s based on an Intel Celeron D…

  • Good bye iBlog, hello WordPress

    Well, after making some changes in hosting plans, domain name pointers etc etc, it’s time to abandon the easy but less functional blogging program iBlog and switch to full-featured heaven aka WordPress running a site hosted by Bluehost. Couldn’t find a way to easily import the old entries (another weakness of iBlog?) so I’m reloading…

  • Google saves Outlook email search

    Like many Mac users, I suppose, I must make do with a Windows XP box at work. Blah. But the true horror is being forced to use Microsoft Outlook, likely the worst email program I have ever seen. One of the very worst features is the brain-damaged search function that works like a snail in…