TechDiY.net

Trent Reznor

Musician, singer-songwriter, producer, and multi-instramentalist talent Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails (NIN) will be a guest on Digg Dialogg with Kevin Rose.  Kevin is the founder of Digg.com, a popular social news website featuring stories shared by the user community.

The way the Digg Dialogg works is very similar to Digg.com.  Users will post questions that they want asked and then others users vote (Digg) up or down the questions.  The popular questions are the ones that will be asked of the guests.

The questions are starting to pile up quick (about 2300 as of this post) and time is running out - Deadline for submitting questions is April 4th at 12:00PM PDT.  Do get over to Digg Dialogg ASAP!

I am a huge fan of Trent Reznor and all of his work.  He is a very talented and creative person.  He has inspired me many times with his brilliance and ambition to be the best.  Dedication to his fans and the use of web 2.0 has firmed his place of one of the most powerful and influencial musicians of our time.  I have had the honor of a front-row center at one of his shows and it was definitely one of my top 10 all-time, best moments.  Thank you.

Jason Random Thoughts dialogg, digg, nin, reznor, trent

Here is a cool trick my friend sent me.  If you have ever been in a band, you know how difficult it is to come up with a catchy band name, then album title, and then the album art.  Why spend all that creative thinking when you can be investing it in your music, right?
The random generator for you band is as simple as:

1. Going to Wikipedia and clicking “Random article” - Here is a direct link This is your band name.
   
2. Go to the QuotationsPage and select “Random quotes” - Here is a direct link The last 4 or 5 words in the last quote is your album title.
   
3. Go to Flickr and “Explore the Last Seven Days” - Here is a direct link The third picture is your album art.

This is not automated or a web 2.0 app (yet), so you will have to break out your favorite photo editing app to assemble all of this.  Here is how mine turned out:

My first shot at the random band generator. Not too shabby!

The original post and more artwork can be found here.

Jason Random Thoughts band, cool, generator, name, random

An iPhone friendly blog

TechDiY.net is now proud to be an iPhone / PDA / application browser friendly blog!  So maybe it’s the fact that I just got a shiny new iPhone that made me want to do this.  I’ll be honest; if I never would have tried browsing my own site with a mobile device, I probably would have never even bothered doing this.  I’ll bet I am not the only site admin out there that is in the same boat.

If you have a WordPress blog, you are in luck!  Imthiaz Rafiq (check out his home page here) has done a fantastic job of creating a plugin for WordPress that makes your site easier to read for mobile browsers.

The process is very simple:

1.  Download the plugin here:  Wordpress PDA & iPhone

2.  Extract all to your wp-content/plugins directory on your website server

3.  Open your site’s Wordpress admin page and go to plugins

4.  Activate the plugin

5.  Tada!  Your site can now be easily read and navigated with a mobile browser.

As of this posting, Imthiaz does claim that the iPhone portion is in a beta testing state.  However, I tried it out with my new iPhone and it looks great!

An iPhone quick tip: You can easily take a screen capture of the iPhone by holding the Home button and clicking the Sleep/Wake button.

Jason IT Best Practices blog, friendly, iphone, pda

Hulk SMASH his co-worker... with email

The neighbor’s dog was barking all night and kept you from getting a good nights sleep.  You can’t find your car keys in the morning.  The morning rush traffic was horrible and caused you to be late for work.  You have a list of things to do a mile long and someone took the last of the coffee without making more.  Today, you are a bomb with a short fuse. All it takes is a just a tiny little thing to set you off. You don’t want to cause a scene; that would be unprofessional and could get you fired on the spot.

Most people turn to email as a way to vent because it is non-confrentational and allows you to tell your side of arguement without interruption.  However, this is just as dangerous (if not more) than arguing in the office.  You need to think of a hateful email as a transcription for a verbal fight.  Everything is documented and can be used against you with very little room for debate.  Also, most companies are required to track email usage leaving your temporary moment of rage neatly preserved for years to come.

There is a very simple way you can prevent these emails from happening:

• Never fill in the To:, Cc:, or Bc: fields until the email has been composed

It’s that simple.  Most people are in the habit of filling out the recipients, writing a subject, composing the email, and then clicking send.  Skipping the recipients will throw an error if you try to hit send immediately after an email is writen.  This will give you time to (calm down) and proof your email before you click send.

If you use Gmail, sign into your account and head over to the Gmail Labs.  It’s the icon at the top right of the browser page in Gmail and looks like this .

There are lots of cool options in there, but there are to in particular that help prevent sending emails hastily:

Mail Googles by Jon P

Google strives to make the world’s information useful. Mail you send late night on the weekends may be useful but you may regret it the next morning. Solve some simple math problems and you’re good to go. Otherwise, get a good night’s sleep and try again in the morning. After enabling this feature, you can adjust the schedule in the “General” settings page.

Undo Send by Yuzo F

Oops, hit “Send” too soon? Stop messages from being sent for a few seconds after hitting the send button.

Jason IT Best Practices email, hate, mean, prevent, tip

An honest scammer

Jason Friday Funny friday, funny, honest, scammer

Get your free software here!

You may have heard of sites like woot.com or slickdeals.net that show you places to get heavily discounted items, but it’s always nice to get something for free!  That’s where giveawayoftheday.com comes in.

Welcome to Giveaway of the day project, the new initiative in the software distribution world! Every day we offer for FREE licensed software you’d have to buy otherwise!

Our new initiative, Giveaway of the day, is finally open to its visitors and ready to present hot software titles and best software authors from all over the world. For game giveaways check out Game Giveaway of the Day. We wish you a Happy Giveaway!

There are some really great commercial software packages that are given away for free on their site.  I would recommend subscribing to the RSS feed because (as the site name indicates) these deals are only available for one day.  If you find something you like, jump on it quick!

Jason Free software away, commercial, free, give, software

Lifehacker - Instructables' Best DIY Altoids Tin Projects

The weekend project that started out as some spare guitar strings, an empty Altoids Tin, and lots of free time is becoming quite the popular topic.  Yes, I am referring to the Altoids Tin Guitar.

The Instructable was posted March 16, 2008.  Shortly after it made it to Hackaday.com.  Then numerous other websites picked it up.  Around August of 2008, I was asked permission to be published in The Best of Instructables Volume 1 book.  If you know someone who likes DIY type projects, this would make an excellent gift:

The Best of Instructables Volume I

Jason Weekend Projects altoids, guitar, lifehacker, tin

I think I'll wait until The Force goes on sale

Jason Friday Funny force, friday, funny, Humor, star wars

The Clif Bar: Oatmeal Rasin Walnut is FANTASTIC!

I added a new category to this website; Fitness.  Yes, I am a geek and yes I do have an office job.  When I am not at working on my computer, I am at home working on computers (or playing video games).  Well, my sedentary lifestyle has caught up with me.

I got my results from my annual checkup and they are not good.  Fast food and stress make Jason an unhealthy boy!  I decided it was time to do something.  No, I did not just start eating protein bars (BEEFCAKE!).

I have started commuting by bike to work again.  I have started up some exercises in the evening (I am not a morning person).  And I have also started eating healthier.

Sometimes after a workout or just when I feel hungry in the middle of the day, I need a snack.  I try to keep fruits and vegetables close by, but that afternoon temptation of a candy bar is just too much.  That’s when I found the Clif Bar: Oatmeal Rasin Walnut.   I tried Clif Bars in the past, but they were very thick and chewy.  They sat heavy on my stomach and made me feel sluggish.

However, this Oatmeal Rasin Walnut bar is awesome!  It reminds me of an oatmeal rasin cookie with walnuts.  It had great taste and made me feel more energetic.  I bought a box of them (because it was cheaper and I am frugal) and I am glad I did.  I will be buying more when these run out.

Jason Fitness clif bar, Fitness, protein

WuInstall allows you to update Windows from the command line!

I am a big fan of doing things from the command line.  I can script with the best of them and I am always on the lookout for good CLI utilities.

A good use for this tool would be testing a new WSUS server.  Or maybe you need to update some computers outside the regularly scheduled update time.  You can script it and have GPO run this script at login.  Or you can use another one of my favorite tools (PSExec) and run this tool remotely anytime!

Very awesome utility and I highly recommend adding it to your computer toolkit!

Click here to visit their website and download WuInstall.

Jason Free software cli, command, free, line, update, vista, windows, xp