A few months ago, my headphones broke. They were Sony MDR-NC6s, pretty cheap but the noise-canceling really helps cuts out the HVAC in a cube environment. They failed when I stood up and the cord was wrapped around my chair. The cord pulled out of the bottom of the headphones. I took them apart, and saw that there was probably enough room to fit a headphone jack in if I used a Dremel and some creativity. The cord now goes out the side of the headphones instead of the bottom, but the repair only took an hour and didn’t cost more than five dollars either. I now use an audio patch cable to connect my headphones to audio sources, and if I stand up with the cord tangled, the cord pops out of either end without damage.

I posted some pictures of the process on Flickr at the photoset Repairing my headphones.

The only real lesson learned is that I wouldn’t use the Radio Shack 3.5 mm stereo jack. It doesn’t grip the cable well. I will have to replace the jack next time I order from digikey.

I live in a pretty cool apartment building in south Minneapolis. While I’m lucky enough to have a office, the office doesn’t have enough space for a workbench. Even if it did have enough space for a workbench, I wouldn’t be able to keep work in progress on it without the room getting too cluttered. So I’m stuck hauling out a box labeled “Soldering Stuff” to the kitchen, constantly fearful of damaging the the kitchen table. I’m pretty handy with a soldering iron, but hey, fear is the mindkiller. I clean up after myself pretty well, but any stray lead solder bits that found themselves in a digestive tract would be dangerous.

When I lived in a 13×13 dorm room with a roommate, I used a lab bench I made from a melamine shelf on a pair of plastic saw horses. This was cheap, and fit under my bed when it wasn’t being used. The melamine held up well to solder burns and really added to the work surface. Once again, however, the bench needed to be put away or the room was unusable for anything else.

The time cost of setting up and breaking down an electronics workbench has been so high it had essentially eliminated my hardware tinkering–until now.

The office closet contained a half-height chrome wire shelfing unit, purchased at Target shortly after we moved in. It held around twenty clear plastic boxes, each about the size of a shoe box. These were labeled, and contained computer parts, electronics, and tools. Next to this was a toolbox, a tackle box I had already hacked to carry solderless breadboards and their projects, and a bunch of empty space.

I figured I could put a table in this space, use some clip-on lights as task and background lighting, and have a pretty functional work area. As long as the table didn’t stick out, I figured I would be able to close the sliding doors. With this, I would finally be able to have a workspace I could keep a project in progress on.

After measuring the space (33″ x 25″ x 65″), my fianceé found the Galant table at Ikea. It came with a melamine finish and fit inside the space perfectly.

While at Ikea, I grabbed a power strip with an on-off switch. Another department store had reasonably priced whiteboards. After I hung the whiteboard on the back of the closet and ziptied the power strip to the side of the wire rack, the workspace was complete.

Well, almost complete. I printed out a few pictures (1, 2) of everyone’s favorite DIY science heroes, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman of Mythbusters and stickytacked them to the wall.

I now have a pretty functional work bench that fits inside the closet of my apartment. I wouldn’t have thought such a tight fit would have produced the nice results they did, but I’m pretty impressed. I can just open the door, roll my office chair over, and work on my very own bench. When I’m done, I can close the door and put my chair back at my desk.

My favorite part that I didn’t anticipate? My soldering iron is much less of a hassle when the cord is out of the way, over my head, looped over the closet bar.

I’ve got more photos at the photoset Adam’s Workbench.

I had an easier time than I expected finding Jelly Babies. Our local grocery store had them in their tiny British section.

We used Betty Crocker “Party Rainbow Chip” cake mix. This is the Betty Crocker version of Funfetti, the best cake in the universe.

Amanda cut the Jelly Babies up in to little pieces, and we mixed them into the batter.

When the cake finished, we flipped it over. The Jelly Babies had melted, coloring the cake. The melted Jelly Babies kept the cake moist, and when they crystallized, the cake was almost crispy. Yum!

We cut the cake into the shape of the TARDIS, using some reference photos from the Internet.

Because we haven’t had a lot of cake decorating experience, I wanted to minimize the amount of detail work we’d have to perform upon the cake itself. We melted almond bark to make the letters and the windows. For the letters, I put the almond bark in a plastic bag and pierced a corner to make a piping bag. For the windows, I lined the bottom of some tin tea canisters with aluminum foil, and filled them with almond bark.

Although we weren’t able to match the blue of the TARDIS perfectly, we did as well as we could with a lot of blue and a few drops of red food coloring.

After spreading the frosting on the cake, we piped lines for the doors and other details.

We then added the white windows made of almond bark, the letters, and outlined the panels.

It was delicious. The melted Jelly Babies really added something special to the cake. A little Huon energy or something.

Next year, or perhaps for the Christmas special, we’ll have to do a few things differently. I’d like to match the blue better. I’d also like to use dark chocolate and white chocolate to make a proper “Police Box” panel. Maybe we’ll get fancy and use fondant and gum paste.

I have more pictures (and a slideshow) on Flickr.

Using this article, I fixed it and successfully combined everything.

IF YOU FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS, AND YOU LOSE ALL YOUR DATA AND YOUR MOM MAKES YOU MOVE OUT, IT IS NOT MY FAULT.

If you decide to do what I did, please understand what you’re doing. Please read all applicable man pages, and have recent backups.

I booted into the Mac Install CD, and opened the Terminal. Using gpt show disk0 and diskutil list /dev/disk0 and diskutil info /dev/disk0, I confirmed a little bit about how my disk was being managed. My Linux partitions were /dev/disk0s3 and /dev/disk0s4, which corresponded to gtp indexes 3 and 4.

I used gpt remove -i 3 disk0 and gpt remove -i 4 disk0 to remove the gpt entries.

I ran diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 limits to find out how large I could make the original partition. I then tried to run diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 *maximum size* but diskutil told me it couldn’t resize it. I rebooted, back into the cd again, and ran the diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 *maximum size*. It succeeded, I rebooted, and I had my space back.

The only change is that it now uses the database information stored in dbinit.php, so you don’t have to put in the information by hand into the php file.

Anyway, he pledges a sweet XHTML/CSS export eventually, but until then, there is no export. However, the data is stored in an sqlite database, so I wrote a little bit of python to export actions to plain text.

Pretty pictures first!

Screenshots:

This is a python script, intended for use in the terminal or in scripts. To use in the terminal, extract the zip, and open a terminal. Use cd to enter the directory of the zip, and run python actiontastic-exporter.py. For help and options, run python actiontastic-exporter.py -h.

If you extracted it to your desktop, it will be like this:

cd ~/Desktop/actiontastic-exporter-v0.1/
python actiontastic-exporter.py
python actiontastic-exporter.py -h

It can export the output to a file. It can read from an alternative input sqlite database. It can put a little more information in the exports if you want, and it will sort by project or context. It preserves action ordering within projects and contexts.

It ignores actions that are in the inbox, and ignores completed actions.

Actiontastic Exporter requires Python 2.4. This is newer than the python shipped with any Mac at this point, and I debated on writing my own sorted() so that people could use this without upgrading their python install. However, since Actiontastic Exporter requires pysqlite2, which doesn’t come stock, and the python install is *so* easy, I decided to use the builtin.

Requires:

• Python 2.4 or newer - Available packaged for the Mac at http://www.pythonmac.org/packages/
• Pysqlite2 or newer - Available at http://www.initd.org/tracker/pysqlite/wiki/pysqlite.

It never writes to the database, but if it destroys your Actiontastic database, please don’t be angry at me. Please backup your ~/Library/Application Support/Actiontastic.sqlite.

Anyway, you can download Actiontastic Exporter at the main project page at http://feelslikeburning.com/projects/actiontastic-exporter/.

Any feature requests, questions, or comments, feel free to comment below or email me using the contact form.

I would like to be able to print index cards on my Samsung ML-1740 in Linux. It can be done in Windows. Have any of you ever gotten this to work? I’m not averse to writing code. I’ve written a CUPS backend in python. It wasn’t that bad.

I’ve looked far and wide for this, and have only found one lonely mailing list post of a solution that doesn’t really work right.

You’re my only hope!

I use Gregarius for my feed aggregator and reader. I’ve had a busy semester, and have marked close to 2000 items as “sticky” so I can read them when I have more time. I don’t like the built-in “Browse Sticky” functionality, and would prefer something basic, but flat. I want to be able to save it, and use it to check off what I’ve read in my massive backlog of items.

I waded through the PHP and SQL, and talked with Matthew a bit, and came up with a little .php file.

You can download it at http://files.feelslikeburning.com/gregarius-sticky-exporter/gregarius-sticky-exporter.zip.

To install, download the zip, extract it, put your database information in, and upload it to your webhost. Hit the page with your web browser, and it should generate the list. It doesn’t modify your database at all.

It doesn’t contain all the information in the tables, just the title, the url, and the body of each feed. The title is linked to the url, and the body is displayed after the titles. If you’re interested in something extra in your exports, feel free to contact me.

I’ve read ebooks on a Palm IIIxe, a Palm IIIc, a Treo 600, a Treo 650, and a Nokia 770, and the 770 is the best ebook reader I have ever used. I would have bought it simply as an ebook reader. I’ve used the Nokia 770 to surf to Baen Free Library, grab an ebook off there, and read it, all without an extra computer.

The 770 is better in almost all ways than a paperback. I never lose my spot. I don’t need to turn off the light to go to bed, as the screen is backlit. I can fit more paperbacks than I could fit in a house on a single memory card. The 770 fits in a single hand, and I can change pages with the same hand. The screen is beautiful.
The only real downsides are the fact that the Nokia 770 uses electricity and costs more than a single paperback.

My Treo 650 arrived today! It’s a free replacement of my Treo 600 that no longer makes or takes phone calls. I haven’t had a lot of time to play with the new Treo, but because it has Bluetooth, I should be able to interface the Nokia 770 and the Treo 650 easily. This means that if I’m somewhere without free Wifi, but I get cellular signal, I can easily bridge the cellular signal to my Nokia 770 through the wireless magic of Bluetooth.

I’ve been meaning to post this except of a comment I ran across on Metafilter, but I wasn’t really sure how to introduce it. The setup is that there was a post on a video from the 70’s about ARPAnet, the precursor of the internet. A Metafilter user, loquacious, posted the following. The complete comment can be found at the original post.

Even in today’s realm of nearly pervasive computing, I’m still constantly astounded. I’m barely old enough to remember Pong. I sort-of remember the dawn of personal computing. I’m old enough to remember what 75 bps/baud felt like. Yes, I know that BPS != baud, but for the purposes of that particular modem and this argument, it’s fine - especially when confronted by the 9mbit cable modem currently providing my connection. I even remember the first single file in excess of 1mb I ever downloaded. At 300 bps/baud. With interruptions and download resuming, it took something like 2-3 days. My parents were furious when they got the phone bill that month. It was a local ZUM 3 zoned toll call. That 1mb file cost our household over $500 USD! And I don’t even remember what it was!!

And yet… for years now, people throw away working computers so powerful I would have chewed off at least one of my own limbs just to possess them, way back when. Though I jest easily, I jest not about such important things. Twenty years later it’s still difficult to even comprehend the fever that gripped me back then. Even now I go all clammy thinking about how potent those feelings once were. I am using such a throwaway computer now, and I have a few more such machines I use besides. Interestingly, it’s still faster than the modern WindowsXP laptop issued to me by my work!

I now carry around a now nearly ancient - and also thrown-away - Palm IIIC that has an order of magnitude more storage then my family’s first home computer. In fact, it’s nearly equatable in feel and power to a Mac Classic 512K. But in color. In my pocket. With, again, an order of magnitude more default storage space. This now obsolete device contains a dozen novels, assorted maps and transportation schedules, and dozens upon dozens of applications ranging from music creation tools to document editors, various utilities, a very complete interactive star chart, painting/art programs, numerous games, and even an infrared meter/detection tool - and more besides.

I also carry a rather bottom-of-the-line portable phone that has better graphics, a better display - in color rather than green monochrome, more CPU and more memory then my family’s first computer. That talks wirelessly. To most of the world. Much or all of it through varieties of packet switching networks. (And yet they still won’t let me connect to the internet, browse via WAP, send a proper email, or simply do an old-school data modem connection from it. Hrmpf. I use Cricket. No frills.)

People now routinely buy - at toy stores! - what were once astronomically expensive, experimental supercomputers, now packaged in slim, small, brightly colored enclosures, simply to play silly, inconsequential little games on. Rather than, say, simulating nuclear explosions on. By all means, play on! Chess?

I have nearly immediate access to more information then I could ever hope to consume or even glance at - even in a hundred lifetimes. Or even a thousand. In fact, even excluding all the boring stuff, more interesting text and data is created or transcribed and uploaded every day then I could consume in n number of lifetimes.

Barring catastrophe, I will never, ever again experience what it feels like to read every Sci Fi novel, every technical manual, every art book at the rather large central library that I spent much of my formative years growing up in.

Barring catastrophe, I will never, ever (truly) again experience what it means to be unable to communicate with someone, regardless of physical distance or time of day. Excluding the internet itself as a channel, but including the internet simply as the container for many channels, I have at my fingertips half a dozen ways of communication with a vast number of people. Hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands if I want to expand this to include the myriad number of ways of sending information to and receiving information from a recipient. Without even touching my stand-alone, battery powered phone.

Even without a computer and connection of my own, the cost of entry would be absolutely nothing at all if I just schlepped myself down to the local library.

—–

Amongst all this I’m still intensely aware of all of these things. They do not fade readily into the background as a much as a “given” (in the so-called civilized world) as running water fades into the background. As electricity does. As breathing itself does.

And sometimes I wonder if all this pervasive computing and connectivity will ever fade into the background for me as a given, taken for granted metabolic state, as it probably does for those just a bit younger than I.

And yet, this connectivity is already as essential as breathing is to me. Without it I would not have my current job, this apartment, even the computer itself which I now use. (Thanks you craigslist!) I wouldn’t have immediate access to transportation schedules, which maintain my job. Access to vital weather information, which helps me maintain my health and my job, and enables good planning. I haven’t touched a paper phone book in years.

I wouldn’t have entertainment. I wouldn’t have the art and music I enjoy. I wouldn’t be able to pick and choose the minds I find fascinating to interact with. I would be but a fraction of who I am today.

The internet has literally saved my hide from certain doom - if not at least prolonged discomfort - at least a dozen times. It has enabled the seeking of shelter when it was needed most, the provision of economic viability, transportation, communication, and so much more.

I would even personally argue that I owe the internet my very life - via the convoluted, twisting paths of life itself, with it’s occasionally fatal levels of frustration leading to ideations of self harm and hopelessness - upon which once a frightened call in the dark was answered so long ago, not merely by one concerned soul, but dozens upon dozens bearing not only firm, kind wishes - but bucketfuls of wisdom, strength, and love.

There is no price for such a thing. It cannot be valued, bartered, bought or sold, or even given away. The very concept and abstraction of price becomes meaningless in the face of it.

I have a hard time comparing, say, the mechanical printing press and this nebulous, cloud-like concept we call the internet. They do not sit rationally or comfortably together on the same scale in my mind. While one begat the other, one now dwarfs the other with such complexity and massiveness it is as crude a comparison as relating a simple wheel or lever to something as fantastic as a (yet) fictional faster-than-light starship.

And yet I still revel in it, awash, even drowning in such fantastic knowledge and access that - even if it were to vanish entirely, right now - my mind would gibber and reel at the incredibleness of it all for the rest of its days, forever changed. Leary was right! PC+internet > LSD!

Thanks, nerds and hackers everywhere. Have you ever been properly thanked? Or was the fact that the whole world pretty much just ran off with your countless inventions and started using them with gusto thanks enough for you?

Thanks DARPA/ARPA, and even the DoD. Thanks for letting the genie out, and making sure it couldn’t be put back in. Thanks Bell labs, thanks Xerox-PARC. Ma Bell? AT&T? G’way, you malingerers! Stern, strict great-grandfathers though you may be, a pox on you! Thanks MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Santa Cruz and everyone else. Thanks Apple, Intel, and even Microsoft. Thanks, Linus Torvalds. Thanks, Wozniak. Thanks, Lee Felsenstein. Thanks, Google, and it’s long-lost batty great aunt who once lived in a dorm closet, Yahoo. Thank you, thank you, thank you CERN. And thanks to all the countless others I’ve missed, both large and small.

You probably won’t be able hear me among the riotous, delicious cacophony you’ve enabled, but… Thanks for everything.

posted by loquacious at 4:59 AM PST on March 19

*nods*