Tuesday, March 10, 2009

X10 Smarthome Security

owned_house

I've been looking into home automation gadgets like X10 for quite some time now. My interest in home automation revolves around reducing power consumption, recording anomalous events with cameras as evidence and because I'm super lazy and only like doing things once (but the right way) and want my CFL's to flick on when I stumble in after a long day at work. I also want to build a DIY BIDS: Burglar Intrusion Detection System.

I even admit to visiting my local library and borrowing books on the subject solely with the goal of pimping the geek out of my home. So did I find true trekkie bliss, full of motion sensing lighting, sexy sounding verbal computer readouts, intelligent power management and enhanced security?

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Computer Security At Hotels

public laptop

When was the last time you visited a hotel, plugged in your laptop, and logged into your gmail account?

Do you recall the last time you connected to Free Public Wifi to quickly check your eBay actions? Looking back, don't you wonder who else may have been listening in on your Internet activity? Let's find out how to protect yourself against unwanted network 'wiretappers'...

Monday, March 2, 2009

Complete Unix Cron Job Crib Sheet

cronDo you only use unix once in a blue moon, need to setup crontab and can't quite remember the order? (Without peeking at the image on the left)
Try out this handy cron job crib sheet which you can paste directly into your crontab as a reference each time you make a scheduled job change.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

How to Read the NY Times Fast with Article Skimmer

[caption id="attachment_221" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="NY Times article skimmer"]NY Times article skimmer[/caption]

The NY Times has a new prototype page called Article Skimmer for displaying news. After being spoiled by the efficiency of Google Reader, I like where they are going with it.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Free dia-like webapp

[caption id="attachment_205" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="online flowcharting"]online flowcharting[/caption]

Lifehacker brings us lovelycharts for all our "free, I don't have time to download and install dia" needs.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Nice Desktop Setup ... For Windows Vista

Beautiful_Desktop

I found this beautiful desktop setup posted on lifehacker. Pretty nice. Inspires me to create something similar in OS X.