Something I found that I though was cool.
Originally posted at the Urbin Report.
Filed under: Geek Skills | Tagged: humor | Leave a comment »
Local backup of GMail
Posted on March 1, 2011 by Mark Urbin
Wired has the details. I’m already using the Thunderbird method.
I’ll probably use the GetMail method on the linux box as well.
Filed under: Geek Skills, Google, Internet | Tagged: email, gmail, Google, LINUX, Thunderbird | Leave a comment »
Today’s Coffee Tip
Posted on October 27, 2009 by Mark Urbin
I found this interesting post on cleaning your coffee grinder.
If you aren’t drinking freshly ground coffee, you should be.
Ok, here is the tip from weeklyroast.com’s coffee blog, uncooked white rice.
A really great way to clean out your grinder is to use uncooked, white rice. If you use a blade grinder (and we highly recommend upgrading to a burr grinder!), fill it with white rice up to the blades. If you use a burr grinder, put about 2-3 teaspoons worth of white rice and set the burr grinder to a fine grind (espresso) setting and start grinding.
After you’ve finished grinding, you’ll notice immediately that large clumps of previously ground coffee are now clinging to the powdered, ground white rice and after dumping the grounds out, you should see spots you could never clean before coffee-ground free. The inside of the grinder should also be a lot cleaner than before as most of the old, rancid coffee oils also attached themselves to the white rice (they’re attracted to the starch in the rice – that’s why this technique works so well).
Repeat this process until the ground rice no longer has any black particles in it.
I was cleaning out my grinder fairly regularly, but this clearly did pick up some coffee particles that my regular cleaning didn’t get.
Originally posted at the Urbin Report.
Filed under: Geek Skills | Tagged: coffee, Gadget | 1 Comment »
100 Basic Geek Skills
Posted on July 12, 2009 by Mark Urbin
Wired has an article on 100 Essential Skills for Geeks.
I wasn’t surprised to see I have many of them. Here are some of my favorites.
Properly secure a wireless router.
Crack the WEP key on a wireless router.
Leech Wifi from your neighbor.
Screw with Wifi leeches.
Knowing how to screw with people stealing bandwidth from your website is good too. Not only did I have a commercial site leech bandwidth from me, they were using one my 3D images for their logo. So I replaced that file with a jpg of two Rhinos having sex.
Work from home or a coffee shop as effectively as you do at the office.
Wire your own home with Ethernet cable.
I had the house wired with Coax Ethernet, before I switched to CAT5.
Install a Linux distribution. (Hint: Ubuntu 9.04 is easier than installing Windows)
Just did an Ubuntu install yesterday, before I saw this article, and it was easier than installing Windows
Successfully disassemble and reassemble a laptop.
A valuable IT skill, along with knowing how to bypass OS login passwords.
Create a website using vi (or Notepad)
Be able to explain why it’s important that Han shot first.
Know why it is just wrong for Luke and Leia to kiss.
Stop talking Star Wars long enough to get laid
That last one is important.
Sleep with a Cricket bat next to your bed.
I have a Cricket bat, but it’s not my the bed. The Jo staff is much nastier.
An interesting list, I fail on being able to name all the Dwarves in The Hobbit, but I’m much more a hard SciFi fan than a fantasy fan.
Filed under: Geek Skills | Tagged: Geek, humor, Wired | 2 Comments »
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