The Digitante
Learn to turn your technology on…
Category Archives: links
Friday Night Links (06/25/2010)…
Welcome to a long overdue Friday Night Links. I’ve got an entire vat of links that need to be strewn across the internet, so I’ll try to pump out some extras over the next few weeks.
- DIY Flytraps – Granted flies around the Midwest aren’t nearly as numerous and large as they are in other areas of the world such as jungles and the tropics, but they are not fun either way. Personally, we’ve had some fruit fly issues and this guide covers traps from tiny to huge, so pick your size.
- 5 Ingredient/10 Minute Meals – The article links to a pdf, so you might want to print it out and keep it around your kitchen when you need to fix a simple meal in a pinch. If you don’t mind jumping straight to the pdf (warning: it’s huge), here is a link.
- Vinyou – This one is a beta project and many locales don’t have any events listed, but Vinyou is a tool for finding wine events (tastings, festivals) in your area. There is a nice large “Submit a Wine Event” button on the right side so you can let others in your area know about events in your area. Help these guys out as I’m sure they would appreciate it.
- Picrap – If you live outside (or within) certain countries, you can’t watch some online TV shows. Picrap attempts to fix that by allowing you to stream shows from countries you are barred from watching. I have not tried this out, but let me know if you do and how you fared. Hopefully this might help out some of my Canadian readers.
- Locals vs Tourists – Check out this Flickr set to find out where tourists congregate in various cities around the world so you can either join them or avoid them – your call. All the data is based on geotagged photos and isn’t specific to street names, just general areas.
Friday Night Links (4/30/2010)…
I had four links for tonight, but apparently someone wasn’t happy about the content of one of them and it was removed. Let’s just say someone had a little fun with Costco’s generic pricing signs. If you Google “Costco prank” you can find a couple of examples of what they were up to.
Also, if you every have links that you would like to see featured here, I am always open to suggestions. Anyway, on to the links!
- Homemade Snickers – As a kid, I used to see Snickers ads on TV all the time, but I don’t think I ever had a Snickers bar until I was 10 years old or so. Enough of my deprived childhood though. You, however, can give your kids the joys of Snickers bars by making them yourself. Sounds like a delicious Saturday afternoon project. As usual, please send any leftovers to me.
- Knife Sharpening – Ever tried to use a razor that had been used about a million times? Remember what it did to your face? Don’t do that to your food! Sharpen your knives. The article gives some great advice in the body, but the comments really shine because it is real people asking real questions and the author is there to answer every single one. Great instructional article.
- Boeing Makes a Plane – Pretty self explanatory, right? The plane they are making is for Southwest Airlines and is called Florida One. It has the Florida state seal on it and it is uglier than sin. Watching the process is really cool though. If you can’t see the embedded video, click for the link to YouTube.http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/zKnsyYbfC60&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b
Friday Night Links (4/23/2010)…
I’m going to tear down the four or fifth or twelfth wall (or whichever one we are on at this point) and let you in on a little secret: I don’t have to be present to hit the ‘publish’ button to send these posts into the wide open internet. Thus, I am actually typing this post up on Thursay night, but it will be published without my intervention at around 4pm EST on Friday. Crazy, I know, but it is totally true.
Alright, enough of these shenanigans, let’s get some links.
- Crazy Chess Story – Of course it SEEMS like an oxymoron, but this chess champ actually had an amazing journey trying to get from Frankfurt, Germany to Sofia, Bulgaria. When not watching Lord of the Rings: Super Extended Directors Cut edition, they were dodging countries requiring travel visas, getting pulled over, and avoiding some of the worst potholes in Eastern Europe. It’s an incredible story.
- Compound Butter – Next time you bring home a nice salmon fillet or spicing up some veggies, make it quick and tasty with some compound butter. Just add some spices, garlic, lemon, or a plethora of other flavors to butter and – BAM! – compound butter.
- Medical Toys – I am a sucker for a good gadget and I’m also a health nut, so when those two things cross paths, you can be sure I’m there. My two favorite items mentioned are the sleep monitoring alarm clock with the silly headband and the wifi scale. I bet you readers can’t wait until my scale starts posting the ups and downs of me standing on the scale. Yikes.
- You’re Doing It Wrong – Mrs. Digitante and I bring up those commercials where the person is trying to strain a pot of spaghetti, but the noodles all dump out in the sink until they get that handy-dandy pot with the lid that has holes in it. The terrible acting and mock frustration the “doing it wrong” people show is pure hilarity. Now you can watch a wonderful tribute to all those suffering souls – giant red X’s included. If you can’t see the video below, click right here.
http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/08xQLGWTSag&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b
TQT: Queue YouTube to a Specific Time…
Ever have a long YouTube video that you want to share with others, but the good part is at the end? Well here is a nice little fix for you.
Since I gave my iPad the boot last week, I thought it was only fitting to demonstrate this technique with a Blendtec video of an iPad getting bent in half, shoved in an industrial blender, and pulverized into a powder.
The link for the video usually looks like this:
If you click that link, you will end up watching entire 1 minute and 40 second clip. It’s very entertaining and you should definitely watch it.
If you want to get straight to the good stuff, you would want to start the video at the 55 second mark. You can easily have YouTube do that for you by adding the following to the end of the link:
#t=0m55s
You can modify the 0 and the 55 to whatever you want. The final link will then look like this:
Bam! iPad demolished!
If you want to watch another cool video starring The Digitante In Action!, check out the video below. If it doesn’t show up, click here to watch it at the YouTube site.
http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/JC5Qyqy7Pyg&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b
Friday Night Links (4/2/2010)…
Man, it is getting really tough to keep up here with everything I have going on. I’m not slowing down anytime soon though and actually my Tuesdays just opened up immensely. But who cares about Tuesday? What I care about is Good Friday Night Links!
- Crazy Airports – Ever thought about building an island that is 4 square miles in the middle of a harbor so you can have an airport? Why not? Everybody’s doing it. Everybody is also landing on the beach, driving their cars across the runway, and creating massive solar arrays to power their airport. Sounds like you have some catching up to do. Regardless, the pictures are pretty amazing and I highly recommend you check out the island airports on Google Maps satellite view. Here is one to get you started.
- Homemade Things That Should Not Be Homemade – If you know me, would it shock you if I said my brother and I have actually made very similar inventions in our lives? I’m sure it wouldn’t. But don’t let me yammer at you. You need to check out the pictures. My favorite: the scaffolding. Also, be on the look out for the thing. Digitante dollars to the person who finds it first and leaves a comment about it.
- Beet Hummus – My most popular posts in FNL has by far been the food postings. You’ll notice Jenny’s comments strewn about in each food post. Well, here is another one for you. I saw the color of that hummus and knew I had to have it. Gorgeous. Wonderful – now I’m hungry.
- Clothes Folding Robot – This robot is programmed to fold clothes, but he has never folded THESE particular clothes before. He analyzes the shape, size, which direction it hangs, and then folds it properly. Good luck trying that technique out on my dress shirt that sat at the bottom of a pile for a week. Even my iron on full blast can’t help that shirt. Here is a direct link in case you can’t see the video below.
http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/gy5g33S0Gzo&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b
Friday Night Links (3/26/2010)…
I would have to say that this week went much better than I was expecting since it was the first week that I was alone with the twin 1 year olds while Mrs. Digitante headed off to Florida for work. Fortunately I have two really good little girls who made my life easy.
Now it’s about time to cap of that week with gaggle of links. Let’s do it.
- Laws of Negotiation – In the United States, negotiating is something that is looked at with embarrassment and nearly shunned. However, in much of the rest of the world, negotiating is the only way to get what you want. Everything you purchase boils down to two things: 1) You have something the business owner wants (money) and 2) He has something you want (the goods or services). While negotiating is a good thing and you should definitely do it, you need to be sure you are fully prepared and know what to expect and what not to do. Check out this guide for specifics.
- Hidden Cost of Living – Typically, people look at rent or housing prices in the urban core of a city and instantly think it’s too high. However, the Center for Neighborhood Technology added transportation costs to housing costs to get the true amount of your income you are spending. Amazingly enough, most urban core costs are less than living in the suburbs. I can only imagine that will get worse if gas prices begin to rise again. Be sure to check out your location to see what the cost of living looks like where you are.
- Shine Stainless Steel with Flour – Over time, those shiny new stainless steel sinks tend to get cloudy and the finish turns to more of a matte. No need to spend money on expensive stainless steel cleaners and polishers when you have a bag of flour right in your pantry. Just sprinkle it on dry, grab a cloth, and start polishing till you get a nice mirrored finish.
- Magnetic Nail and Screw Holder – In high school, I worked construction. Part of my job was putting up shingles, screwing down deck boards, and hanging drywall. I had a nice tool belt (actually still have it) and it had a little pouch hanging on it that would hold nails and screws. The problem is that those nails and screws were not stacked uniformly in the bottom of the pouch. No, they were pointing every which way and each grab in there for another screw caused 4 or 5 screws to poke into my fingers. No fun. If only I had known about the MagnoGrip Magnetic Wristband. Makes me kick myself that I didn’t come up with it first.
Friday Night Links (3/19/2010)…
I worked with some spectacular clients this week and got some of their big computer issues put to rest. If you have any computer issues, be sure to contact me from the About The Digitante page. Otherwise, you can just move on to the linkiness to follow:
- Solitary Man in Detroit – When most people talk about living off the grid, it most involves government conspiracies and bunkers in Montana. But if you are Glendale Stewart, all you really need is an RV and a tax auction property in Detroit. He built a little fence, has a bicycle-powered battery that lights his RV, and a bucket under the toilet outlet that gets transported to the sewer when it gets full. He got laid off a few years back and his current situation arose out of necessity. It’s a crazy story, but it certainly points out the resourcefulness of some people out there in the world.
- Spinach Vitamin Boost – Ever wonder if the amount of vitamins in spinach and other greens increases as it gets exposed to light? Me neither. Fortunately, some nerdy scientist guy did and he found that green leafy stuff exposed to supermarket-like conditions actually increases its vitamin content. Buy the older stuff!
- Cubicle Fish – Do you get lonely at work in your cubicle? I know I do. ‘Maybe I need a fish!’ you think to yourself. But the big question is what kind of fish do you get to keep your company? My buddies at Lifehacker tackled this and all the logistics that go along with it: tank, supplies, and of course, the fish.
- Parallel Parking Tutorial – It seems like either people know how to parallel park or they just plain don’t. If you fall in the don’t camp, there are a some instructions and some videos that can teach you how to parallel park like an expert. If you are ready to graduate to All-Pro level, check out the video below to learn the advanced techniques. Click here if it doesn’t show up for you.
http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/P7Eqn_BiQus&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b
Friday Night Links (3/12/2010)…
I’ve got a big 4 mile run tomorrow bright and early. It’s the St. Patty’s Day Run and I am actually shocked to realize that St. Patrick’s Day is this week. Wow, time is flying by. Time for the links!
- Edmonton Water Usage (http://thedig.in/ce) – This one is pretty crazy: It’s a consumption map of the water supply for Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The green line is on the day before the Olympic Gold Medal game between the US and Canada and the blue line is the day of the game. That, my friends, is a lot of peeing Canadians. It is really amazing to see graphs like this, showing the pull things like sporting events have on our lives. You know a bunch of people are watching TV, but you don’t really think about how it affects other things like water consumption.
- Visualize the Internet (http://thedig.in/cf) – The internet has come a long ways since Al Gore invented it. The BBC has a nice little move/animation showing the internet spreading like wild fires across the globe. I would be interesting to see a similar animation for other tech like cars, TVs, and electricity. Let me know if you know where to find something like that.
- Milk Origins (http://thedig.in/cg) – If you are concerned about where your food comes from, you should definitely check out this link. You can find out, using the code on your carton of milk, exactly where it came from. This is helpful in finding milk that is produced near by, made by reputable farms, and most importantly, fresh when you get it. Try it out and see how long of a trip your milk takes.
- Complete Popular Science Archives (http://thedig.in/ch) – Alright, I’m a super geek, but anyone who’s even remotely interested in science and technology in general should head over to Popular Science and browse their archive of 137 years of magazines. They even left the period advertisements in there.
Friday Night Links (3/5/2010)…
Friday, Friday, FRIDAY…
The weekend is here and I’ve got some good plans: sis-in-law’s birthday dinner, moving a friend, fixing a computer, making USB flash drives filled with goodies, and a couple other odds and ends. But for now, I’ve got some links.
- Homemade Granola Bars (http://thedig.in/c3) – Man I love granola bars. I will point out that I love crunchy ones, but if someone happened to make these and drop them off at my house, I would definitely eat them and sing your praises. If you didn’t quite get what I said there, “Bring me granola bars.” Clear?
- iPod Auction (http://thedig.in/c4) – Pictures speak volumes. I’m heading over there to put up my ‘$52 reward’ sign tomorrow. Hopefully nobody is smart enough to put up a $53 sign. That would just be CRAZY.
- Survive a Tsunami (http://thedig.in/c5) – After concerns about tsunamis from the recent Chilean earthquake, I saw this guide from the US Geological Survey that has a ton of pictures, charts, stories, and tips on how to survive a tsunami. I think the amazing thing is how low and how high the water actually goes. Additionally, the pictures of the before and after are pretty scary as well. Below is my favorite chart.
Image from USGS website: http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/c1187/images/fig17.jpg
The Digitante 
