This is actually some pretty interesting reading. PCWorld rates some common computer advice as to it’s truth, everything from using your cell phone on a plane to whether a anti-static wrist strap is really useful. Most of these I already understood to be what they were, but there were a couple that were new to me. A good resource for the next time your friend rants about how Saddam caused a Playstation 2 shortage back in 2000. You’ll know the truth! Read more »

It’s true, well, sort of. It figures that some folks over in Japan have developed an Optical Camouflage suit. It works by projecting a video image of the background behind the subject onto the suit’s reflective material. In essence, the subject appears to blend into the background, as if they weren’t there. This could have all sorts of applications and I’m sure the military would give a few bucks to get their hands on this technology. Of course, there are some issues to be worked out, like how to have a video camera “floating” around the soldier in just the right place so the enemy doesn’t see them and…well, you Read more »

If you’re an old fart like me and actually grew up in the ’80s, you might remember a popular cartoon about a bunch of robots that ran around shooting each other, then changing into a big semi truck or jet plane and zooming off, all the while promoting the good-wins-over-evil mantra. The Transformers was one of my favorite cartoons back then and I watched it religiously. I recently acquired many of the episodes on VHS (they’re these long, black cartridges that people used to watch movies on, back in the day) and the local video store carries the Transformers movie if I really want a dose of the old days. Read more »

When I played it, Counter-Strike was loads of fun, but I always hated how poor I was at it and the thought of some 12 year-old pre-pubescent kid out there somewhere in the world knifing me while I fumbled with reloading my MP5. Frustrating to say the least and without the lack of responsibility of being a teenager (and the subsequent unending time to hone one’s skills), my interest slowly waned. Well, it was interesting to come across this site and realize that there are actually girls that play Counter-Strike, some of whom are quite good, enough to be playing at the World Cup level. Of course, what was even Read more »

Marathon Computer has developed and is now shipping a whopping 6U horizontal rackmount for the G5. The solution clamps the G5 into a 19-inch rack, the same amount of space taken up by a Power Mac G4, and rides its case on ball-bearing slide-rails that allow easy access to the computer’s interior and its rear connectors. The rack’s depth can be adjusted from 21 inches to 34 and it’s constructed of lightweight aluminum and steel. Pricing is US$250. This seems like a slick idea, but I nearly fell out of my chair when I read this little blurb on their product info page: We said we remove the handles… but, Read more »

If you are like me, you feel that, despite the glowing features and sexy, ego-boosting looks of your dual G5 (for a fun party treat, just take off the side cover and watch all your nerd friends go “whooooaa”), only having room for two hard drives seems, at best, frustrating. If you are also like me, you realize that by the time you actually fill up the 160gb of space, the price of 250gb and larger drives will have sufficiently dropped and you can double or even triple the storage you have now. But what happens when you fill up that additional space and are left wondering how you can Read more »

Written entirely in Perl, with a little help from Gtk2. Geez, a Sinclair. 1980s. Talk about old school. Read more »

Looking for something specific at the Apple Refurbished Store? Get frustrated when you hear there’s a new supply of G5′s available, only to find they’re all gone when you get there? Well, fret no more. Here’s an AppleScript that will check the Refurb store for a specific product and alert you when any are available. Set it up as a cron job to run every 60 minutes, every 30 minutes, heck, every five minutes and you’ll be sure to not miss an update. Read more »

Jay Allen comes through with a cool link to a simply-put process for doing a search and replace in mySQL. Granted, I could probably figure this out if I spent the time to research it, but it’s nice to find it neatly summarized here with an example. Read more »

Urly is a slick little utility to let you manage those “to-do” URLs, ones that don’t necessarily deserve a bookmark, but you want to save for later. It sits nicely in your dock and let’s you compile a running list of URLs without overcrowding. Adding a URL is as simple as dragging the favicon to the left or right side of your screen. It currently only supports Safari, but that’s all I use right now, so that’s fine with me. Read more »