Wednesday, March 3, 2010

SEO

I don't push this blog, I don't actively work this blog every week, but if I had questions from people I would do my best, as every blogger I have read seems to. So I threw a tweet out last night with the URL of the blog.. I am interested to see if there was a spike in my analytics reports... I will have to look at it later this week. Have to do the job that pays  money first.

Have a day!

Monday, March 1, 2010

Phone Numbers to block

Phone numbers I suggest blocking, based on 'cold calls' and/or either
violating the DNC list or pushing the limits of said list.

NRA Group     (800) 814-6580

Brivia Comm LLC   (561) 208-3307
Sterling Communications Group   (877) 481-7757
American Service Mortgage Company of Toronto (600) 233-1234
comnet marketing (541) 864-1492
automated bus g (602) 840-0462
American Financial (818) 727-9306
Ridgecrest Consulting (801) 878-8330
E COM CONSULT (516) 453-5577
E COM CONSULT (516) 453-5576
E Commerce Consulting (805) 309-5561
E Commerce Consulting (805) 309-5560
ECommerceConsultants (801) 869-1003
1-888-591-2190 Tradning Planet Ltd 9092393075222952220 (623) 239-4511

--Wow lots of 'E Commerce Consulting' numbers

quiet that loud dishwasher


http://www.soundproofing.org/infopages/soundproofing_appliances.htm

Home appliances sometimes create a lot of noise.  This happens when we run them, or perhaps when they run themselves.  This can be quite annoying.


Let's soundproof a dishwasher: We'll do this in a series of steps, each accomplishing a higher level of dishwasher sound reduction. This means we may need full access to all parts of the unit and it makes a difference as to whether it's a counter model or a stand alone cabinet type.
Step 1) The quickest noise control can be had without full access by just removing the front door cover.  This is usually done by taking out 2 screws at the bottom of the door and lifting out the front panel.  These panels are made easily removable in order to quickly change the color of the unit to match the kitchen decor.
You will usually find a piece of foam material floating loose about in the space between the inner door and the removed outside panel.  It is worthless for our sound control purpose and may be discarded. Measure the depth of the space and cut a piece of "Super Soundproofing"  absorbent mat of the same thickness or slightly thinner to fit into this space. Fit it right to the edge of the door, attach securely with contact cement to the inside of the washer, making sure you cover the entire area.  Now replace the panel and the screws.
Step 2) Under the door will usually be another, shorter panel held in place in the same way.  This will have (maybe) about a 2" thick fiberglass batting attached to it.  Remove and discard this useless material.  Cut a piece of 2" thick "Super Soundproofing " absorbent mat and glue intro place.  (Thin thicknesses of foam can be glued together to make thicker thicknesses). Note that you haven't blocked any of the cooling vents, just replaced the batting.  Put  that small cover panel back.
Step 3) Now we need access to the dish washer unit, so pull it out of the counter or remove it's case so we can drape soundproofing mass loaded vinyl (we call it "Floor mat") over the unit. Cut a panel of it so that it goes from the floor on one side, up and over the unit to the floor on the other side. Don't worry about the back of the machine, nor does it need to be attached.  Lay it over any insulation that may be on the unit. The material will be in the form of an upside-down "U".  A dab of "Goop" (a household adhesive from the hardware store)  here and there will hold it place.
Step 4)  Line the dishwasher cabinet or the counter it fits into with 1/2 " "Super Soundproofing" absorbent mat attached with contact cement to provide an absorbent compartment for the unit to fit into and slide it back into place.  Try to make sure the foam covers the entire area, without gaps.  Use a thickness appropriate to the space.
Step 5) Check the fit between the unit and it's cabinet or counter, if it's more than 1/2",  place a piece of wood molding along the edge with a strip of the soundproofing mat attached to it to provide a tight seal, thereby blocking sound from coming out around the gap of the washer and the counter cabinet.
One might be tempted to wrap the motor with soundproofing as motors might seem to make a lot of noise.  But these motors operate near the limit of their ratings and are generally of the open frame variety because of much needed cooling.  Thus it is not recommended nor necessary as much of the noise created is from the water washing cycles and we will have dealt with that very well!

What FF add-ons do you use?

Adblock 1.1.2

Better Gmail 0.8.1 (disabled)

Download Helper 4.6.5

ForcastFox 0.9.10.1

Gmail Manager 0.5.7.5

Google Desktop Search (not compatible with 3.5.5) 1.1

Google Gears 0.5.33.0

Google Notebook 1.0.0.22

Google Vaice Addon 0.9.1

Google Wave add-on 0.0.3

Update Notifier 0.1.5.5

User Agent Switching 0.7.2

Xmarks 3.4.6

XSL Resulst 1.6.9 (Disabled)

Ipod repair thoughts

Original Question
I think you said you have luck fixing ipods. I have a 4th gen (grey scale w/ click wheel) 20gB that gave me the unhappy iPod face about 2 years ago now. I looked it up online and it said "dude, you're screwed." This happened after I left in the car overnight during the winter, so I think it's probably a hard drive issue. At this point, cost wise, do you think its just as likely that it would cost more to fix it than it's worth? I would use this guy as a protable media library for my car, so battery life is not an issue.


Reply1
I have had really good luck with rockbox. I currently pretty much leave my 30G 4Gvideo in the car all the time, though I need to swap it with the rockbox30G-4Video.

There are a couple of other ones out there, but so far all but the Shuffle have been gifts to us, and the shuffle was a gift to me from Beth. It is the least uesed because I forget to turn it off. If you cant get to the HD from the IPOD FirwareOS, crack it open your self run diskwarrior or spinrite on it and see what is going on. There are plenty of hidden menus to let you know what is going on with the IPOD, I just don't remember them off the top of my head.


OP Response 1
It shows up on "My Computer" as a disk drive, but says no disk is available. Since I don't have Spinrite or diskwarrior, what if I sent it to you? would you be interested in fiddling with it?

Reply2
Diskwarrior is for macs, sprinrite for PCs. This is a DMG (Mac ISO) so you might be able to open it.

No, I am not splitting with my 4G_Videos.

SOME BLOG I LIFTED
Select+left to get to serv menu, and there are some diagnostics you can run.
Select+right to get to verbose boot
Select+down to get to disk mode
up stalls boot
down loads linux (with rockbox as bootloader)
Hold 'on'' loads apple boot loader

Happy Friday folks! This week's topic is all about helping Chuck out with recovering data from his daughter's corrupt hard drive. Before we begin, I cannot stress how important it is to backup your data, so that you do not find yourself in this situation. With that said, if you haven't backed up your data lately, get to it! Now, let's move on to the topic.

Well, Chuck, there are two possible ways a hard drive can become corrupt, one way is a physical failure (when something mechanically goes wrong within the drive--bad platter, bad circuit board, and so on), and the other way is logical failure (when the drive physically works, but data on the drive is in a corrupt state and it can be caused by a range of issues from viruses to file corruption.) If you read through the answers by our members, physical drive failure are by far more difficult to retrieve data from, as the mechanics need to be fixed, whereas logically failures, while not easy, are recoverable through third-party software, or costly services that specialize in data recovery. Either way, no method is guaranteed to recover your data completely.

This week, our members' solutions to your questions varied, as there are many methods to hard drive recovery--ranging from what software they used to retrieve date from logical drive failures, to the method of freezing the hard drive (which many recommend to be the last resort.) There are simply no wrong or right answers, just a bunch of different approaches. So, give all our members' advice and recommendations a read. I will mention that when it came to recommending a data recovery utility, a few titles that where mentioned more frequently than others were, SpinRite from Gibson Research and Ontrack Easy Recovery, both will cost you a bit of money. However, there were other options, which is to use Knoppix or Ubuntu Live Linux CD that are free to download. Overall, there were many helpful answers. I truly believe that after you read through these recommendations, you'll have some good ideas what to start with. I've selected a few answers to get you all going in the Q&A section, so check them out. Again, as a reminder to all you folks, back up your data and do it frequently, so you won't have to go through this stressful experience. Take care everyone and thank you all for your contributions to the question. Good luck Chuck and, if you have a chance, let us know what worked out for you.

Cheers!
- Lee


OP Response2
        hmm. so the process would be to attempt to load rockbox... then fix the HD, then see if I can plug it into my ipod car controller and get ti to play. if not, could I reinstall Apple firmware? I don't understand the sentences about getting to the HD from the iPOD firmwareOS.

I did some more research, and everything indicates that it is a hardware problem. got an old 4th gen (grey) that you'd be willing to sacrifice the HD out of? I was wrong about it showing up as a disk drive on My Computer... that's my printers memory stick reader.



Reply3
I know you have an ipod control but it would be cheaper to get a maestro GPS navigator, hack it, put on a mp3 player and use it for your music, albeit in 2GB libraries

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Got a lot to say... on Twitter?

http://techpp.com/2008/12/28/5-ways-to-tweet-more-than-140-characters/

One of the very few irritating things about Twitter is the limit of 140 characters per tweet. It becomes extremely hard especially when you try to share a link with your Twitter friends. So what to do? Just break the rules ;)
Below are the 5 ways to tweet more than 140 characters every time!

1. TinyPaste

tinypaste Logo
Tinypaste lets you type or paste in a large amount of text, and then assigns it with a tiny url, to put into tweets, Plurks etc… It also comes with a nifty Firefox extension that allows you to select, right click and get a url straight away, a handy little tool, which is useful more than just for tweeting!

2. Bigtweet

Bigtweet logo
Bigtweet enables Twitterers to send tweets of up to 280 characters even if you’re not on the profile page. It is a bookmarklet which breaks up tweets of up to 280 characters into multiple sections and sends it to your Twitter profile from any webpage you’re browsing. Not only that, this impressive Web tool provides tons of special unicode characters such as smiley face emotions, music symbols, trademark signs and many more. All these makes your tweets more lively!

3. txtB.in

txtbin logo
It is similar to Tinypaste and allows you to share text data with anyone in the world in two steps. You enter the text into the text field and hit the save txt button. It then gives you a shortened URL that you can share with your friends to read this text. Absolutely no restriction on the character size.

4. TwitLonger

twitlonger logo
TwitLonger will post it to twitter using your account with 140 chars, including a Read More link to the full tweet. You can write what you need and a link to what you said will automatically be posted. If it still asks for an invite – get a beta invite at hello@twitlonger.com

5. TwitBlogs

twitblogs logo
TwitBlogs is a combination of Twitter and Blogging where you get the features of both worlds. You can use your Twitter user credentials to login to TwitBlogs. Once you login, you can compose your posts like in normal blogging with title, basic formatting, tags etc. Once you are done with the composing you can publish the item. The post published with be available as a tweet with a link to the post. You have the option to directly use Twitter from TwitBlogs as well. If you want the best of both blogging and Twitter, then twitblogs is the perfect twitter companion for you.
Any other services available? Any better ones? Let me know!