Easy integration with Picasa and Wordpress

July 4th, 2009
While setting up this blog, I needed a quick and easy way to get photos from my computer up onto my website.  I didn't want to be messing around opening my FTP manager, creating thumbnails and jumping through all those hoops.  I use Picasa to manage all my photos on my computer, so ideally it would hook up to that easily. What I came up with was using NextGEN Gallery for Wordpress.  It seemed like a pretty easy way to manage my albums and galleries without getting too involved.  I was also able to utilize Picasa's experimental publish to FTP feature. Heres how to get started:
  1. Install NextGEN Gallery for Wordpress.  Once you've got that installed, you'll want to make the following changes: In the Options menu -> General Options: Make note of

Product Demo for a Sawzall blade

June 21st, 2009
Not long ago, a wise salesman named E decided to give us one of his products to try out. The product in question is a Miwaukee Axe blade for a reciprocating saw - sawzall for short. This is a 12-inch long blade with teeth bigger than the ones in your mouth. I've heard these blades are marketed to firefighters doing search & rescue to help them cut their way through a house in as little time as possible. We thought we could find some better uses for these blades Continue reading...

Honda Civic Transmission Change

June 18th, 2009
The donor carSo a little while ago, my brother's 1995 Honda Civic Si seemed to develop some transmission problems.  Estimated cost to replace the transmission - $2000.  Thankfully for him, he happened to have a second Honda Civic ready for this exact occasion.  Same type of car, 4-door saloon instead of an si coupe, but pretty much the same.  So - we had all the tools we needed between him, myself, and our other brother, we had a place to do the job (his parking lot), and we had a spare transmission.  What could go wrong? Oh, but how things did go wrong - horribly too, might I add.  Our first problem was not having an engine hoist to you know… Continue reading...

How I built my Media Center

May 27th, 2009

Setting up a Media Center - top to bottom

I've been using an old laptop for the past few months to watch divx movies and downloaded TV shows on my TV. Its been working out pretty good, but now I've decided it was time to fully integrate a Windows Media Center into my home theatre setup. I wanted the media center to act as a server for all my media (music, tv, movies, photos).  I want to be able access the media on this computer from anywhere on my network and also outside my home netowrk as well. I had a few parts leftover from a recent upgrade of my primary desktop, add in a tuner, and I was set to go with the following setup:

The Setup

  • Intel Pentium D Dual core 2.6

Ghost Recon

May 24th, 2009
One of my favorite games of all time - Ghost Recon. Not Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, not Ghost Recon 2, but old school Ghost Recon Classic. I though I would post a few things here that are pretty cool about Ghost Recon. I've got some pic buried on my hard drive of playing Ghost Recon during the glory days, but for now all I have is a wicked awesome new mod compiled by Apex. It is called Ghost Recon: Heroes Unleashed. The website is here: www.heroesunleashed.net/ I have opted to mirror his mod, which you can download here (~900MB). You can view the thread at ghostrecon.net to see what Apex has done with this mod. Enjoy the mod, it… Continue reading...

Configuring Remote Desktop for Media Centers

March 29th, 2009

Remote desktop configuration

Ok, so now that you have a Media Center computer set up, there are many more things we can do with it.  If your Media Center is hooked up to your TV, you probably don't want to have to be sitting in front of that system to do all your housekeeping, such as installing updates, programs, or moving files around.  I've got two tips here to help make your life easier on remotely managing your Media Center.  These only work in XP Media Center, don't know about Vista.

Allowing multiple logins

Server guys already know and love this feature.  It allows you to have multiple people logged in to the same machine.  For example you can log in remotely to your system to move some folders around, or to update… Continue reading...

Hockey Weekend

March 24th, 2008
Well I'm just wrapping up the Easter (extra) long weekend, and have to post a couple of pictures.  On Thursday we were lucky enough to get some tickets and bring the kids out to a Senators game - thanks boss!  We have a great box available at work, and it was a great way to bring the kids out to the game Continue reading...