Archive for the ‘hack’ Category

Clever Chipotle Line Hack

This is smart. When there’s a long line at Chipotle, she takes your order and does the credit card transaction. Then you take the receipt, get your burrito, and you’re done. Nice time saving hack.

Filed under Washington DC, hack : Comments (0) : Jan 22nd, 2010

iTunes Analyzer

Love it or hate it, iTunes has become the de facto king of music library managers. (Thanks, Steve!) One of the neat things about iTunes is that it keeps some very detailed records of what you listen to. This data is stored in the iTunes library files and is used for things like smart playlists and Genius recommendations.

Some clever coders over at Nosleep Software produced an iTunes analyzer that lets you peer into your own music habits. Super Analyzer is a java app (Win + Mac friendly) that does some neat things with your data.

Here’s an overview of my listening habits over the past five years:

Here’s the real answer to the question “what are your favorite bands?”

This chart proves that the 1980s were a dry spell in music:

Very cool. Go check it out!

Filed under Music, hack : Comments (2) : Jan 16th, 2010

Mac Hack Attack

I have a 24″ iMac for home and a 13″ MacBook Pro for work. I love the small form-factor of the MacBook, but the limitations on screen real estate is sometimes a drag. The iMac has a gorgeous screen, but no video input to let me hook up my MacBook. What to do?

Mac Hack Attack!

The Mac platform supports a feature called Target Disk Mode. If you reboot a Mac while holding the T key, you can access the hard drive over Firewire from another computer. So for my setup, I boot my MacBook in Target Disk Mode, then plug it into my iMac using FW800. I then restart the iMac and tell it to boot from the MacBook’s hard drive.

End result: 24″ of screen real estate with no cross-contamination between the two systems. Reason No. 5967810 why I love the Mac platform. It just works.

Filed under hack, technology : Comments (3) : Jan 12th, 2010

How is this possible?

I was moving a bunch of junk the other day using a Toyota pickup (from ZipCar!). I had to drive about 30 miles, both highway and city, to get back to my apartment.

When I started unloading, I noticed that the two locks I had set down on the side of the truck (then promptly forgotten about) were still there, unmoved. I don’t know what gods I pleased or how many laws of physics I violated, but I thought it was pretty incredible.

Filed under hack : Comments (3) : Dec 30th, 2009

Quick & Dirty Bicycle Headlight

Last night I was riding across town to fetch a drink at a new Milwaukee bar (Sugar Maple in Bayview). It’s about 5 miles from my house, so I wanted to ride my fast bicycle (as opposed to my slow-but-utilitarian bicycle). Problem is, I don’t have a headlight on that bike. What to do?

Hack.

The ingredients:

Small LED flashlight
Old bicycle innertube
3 medium zip-ties

I cut a length of rubber from an old innertube (you do save your old innertubes, right?) and wrapped it around the base of the flashlight. This would help to increase friction to make it stay put and protect my fancy bicycle from scratches. It also provided a bit of a shim to angle the light appropriately. I placed the rubber-wrapped light where my stem meets handlebars. Finally, I fastened the light securely with zip-ties so it wouldn’t fall off when I hit a pothole going 30.

In no more than 5 minutes, for no more than $5 in parts (all of which I had lying around the house [thanks to Chris for zip-ties]) I had a perfectly adequate headlight and I was off. Hurray!