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If you’re unemployed, like me, you’re looking for things to do with your time.  If you’ve got a few extra minutes, make yourself a friend — lots of friends.  MAKE Magazine/KQED show you how to make a desktop biosphere.

Link to the KQED Page

Via [Boing Boing]

Home Zone is a small application that manages your screen-saver password settings and other security features.

When you’re at home, security is not as important as when you are on the road. Enter Home Zone. You establish a set of criteria (in this case, bluetooth or wireless networks) to trigger a script that will either enable or disable your security system. I use this program in combination with Apple’s File Vault. I don’t worry about my personal data being compromised now should my laptop be stolen.

The program is still in development, but it seems to work really well so far.

My email address for this domain gets hit with a lot of spam. It doesn’t bother me too much; I don’t use this account very much, and Apple’s spam filter does a good job of catching it. What I have noticed, however, is a change of subject lines.

I peak quickly through the list of email headers to make sure the filter hasn’t been too aggressive. For a while, I was getting spam that had incomprehensible subject headers. Now I’m getting news headlines. Do the spammers want to keep me up to date on the latest news while selling me black market Viagra? If I was more gullible, and if I didn’t get 50 copies of the same email, I might think that these letters were legit. That is, until I opened them.

I’m upset with the folks as Lifehacker. Apparently, I’m not good enough to comment on their stories, so I’ll post it here.

Lifehacker has a story about how to turn your iPod into a backup drive. I suppose they think they’re being clever by using the iPod’s “Enable disk use” feature. Since thousands of iPods are lost or stolen every year, your backup simply becomes an image of all your sensitive documents.

Way to go, Lifehacker. You’re encouraging people to make identity theft easier.

I’ve more or less declared victory in the war on blog spam. Using some nifty filters, I’ve been able to catch automated posts on my site and prevent them from being posted. Like email spam, I’m having a hard time figuring out what the point of it all is.

I have two theories why people write bots to scour the net looking for blogs. The first is pecuniary. If there wasn’t money to be made, I doubt many people would spend the time and effort to write these programs; there certainly would not be the continued battle against filters and other preventive means. The second is for spite. For some reason, there is an entire subset of society that enjoys nothing more than to disrupt normal behavior and functioning. However, given that the links connect to other spam sites, it seems unlikely that disruption is the sole reason for blog spam.

I’m curious about other experiences people have had in dealing with blog spam. Feel free to post. Hopefully, you won’t be caught up in my spam filter.

My MacBook Pro was running a bit slow recently. At first I thought I might need more system memory, then I came across this little nugget on the Apple discussion boards. Apparently, duplicate fonts will cause a major slowdown.

The solution? Open up Font Book, delete any of the duplicate fonts (they are the ones with a bullet next to them), and restart. You will see a noticeable difference immediately.

Incidentally, I was on the Apple discussion board because I think one of my system fans has stopped running. I think my notebook is going to make a trip to the Apple store after finals.

A while back, I wrote about some OS X freeware that I’d been using. I now present the second round of my software adventure, in no particular order.

1Passwd by Agile Web Solutions
Cost: Free to $29.99

1Passwd is a password manager and form filler for OS X. It has a wide array of features that range from simple password management to secure password generation. It integrates quite will with the operating system and seems like a nifty little add-on.

Skype by Skype Ltd.
Cost: Free (additional purchase necessary for full functionality)

Skype is not a new application by any means, but I feel that it is worth mentioning, especially given my upcoming trip. Skype is a Voice Over IP (VoIP) application. It allows users to make free “calls” to other comptuers and to phones at a very low rate. I’m planning on using this on my trip to the Netherlands to keep my phone costs low (and, consequently, my beer fund up).

Quicksilver by Blacktree, Inc.
Cost: Free

I’ve recently discovered this application, and I must say, I’m in love. Quicksilver is an powerful application launcher for OS X. It simplifies the interface process so I never have to take my hands off the keyboard again. I was using Apple’s Spotlight to perfom some of the same functions, but Quicksilver is so much faster, not to mention that it learns what I’m doing. I highly recommend trying this one out.

ChocoFlop by Santiago (Jacques) Lema
Cost: Free

ChocoFlop is a non-destructive image editor for OS X. It runs natively on my Intel Mac and does more than enough for me so that I don’t have to *buy* Photoshop.

UPDATE: I almost forgot an app I use all the time.

Inquisitor 3 by David Wantabe
Cost: Free

Inquisitor is a plugin for Safari that enhances the web search bar. It not only will auto-complete, it will also add search suggestions. “Oh, and it’s free.”

There are many conduits by which information travels about the internet. Two of the largest sites on the internet are Slashdot and Digg. Both sites bring news and information about technology. Slashdot is moderated; Digg is not, opting to be run solely by its readership. For this reason alone, I will always prefer Slashdot to Digg.
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