Joel’s Scattered Thoughts

I’ve been thinking about something along the lines of GeoPic II for the office. It would be useful to know exactly where and when photos are taken, particularly for damage claims. Now to actually get a digital camera for the office…

FastMail: fast, professional email services with web, SMTP, POP & IMAP access looks like it might be a good option if I don’t end up setting up IMAP mail on my own domain.

Going inbox-zero on your paper mail - (37signals) looks interesting. I’d love to be able to scan in more office documents easily. The price tag is a little steep though.

decTOP $100 personal computer - Lifehacker looks really interesting. I’d love to get a couple of these to scatter around the house.

» Declutter your desktop: an organizer for those cables and gadgets for less than $10 - Efetividade.net

We’re planning to buy an iPod for our trip out to Alberta. Product Roundup: FM transmitters is the best review of car radio transmitters that I’ve seen.

Renamer NG is a handy utility when I’m too lazy to reboot into Linux to rename a bunch of files.

Thanks to Wordpress Theme Generator I’ve changed the look of this blog a bit. We’ll see if I stick with it.

Gmail Craze: 40 + Tools and Hacks for Gmail » MakeUseOf.com

Geek to Live: Back up Gmail with fetchmail - Lifehacker

How to automatically back up your computers with rsync - Lifehacker I should look into this. RIght now I’m just using a batch file to do backups.

Mark Lyon’s GMail Loader (GML) - Import Your Mail into GMail might be useful so that I can search my email when I’m at different computers. (via Paul Thurrott’s Internet Nexus)

Hack Attack: Burn almost any video file to a playable DVD - Lifehacker

Another rainy day project - I could burn a bunch of machima to DVD for my kids.

Seeds for Change - workshops and training for grassroots campaigners
How to do Brochure Printing in OpenOffice.org

Open Office does Brochure Printing - ie it’ll help you make a nice A5 booklet, with all the pages sorted out so that it can be stapled together in the middle. (ie with the last and first side printed together on the first page and so on through your booklet - complicated isn’t it!)

There are many ways of doing this, but unfortunately the Open Office Help section isn’t very clear how it’s done…

Step 1 - open a new document and make it A5 size (that’s half A4 size) by clicking on Format then Page.Choose the page tab, and select A5 under Paper Format. Select your margins etc as usual in this tab too.

Step 2 - when you’re ready to print, open up the print dialogue File -> Print, and choose Properties screenshot of the print menu

Step 3 - In the Properties window, choose A4 under Paper Size and Landscape under Orientation. Click OK.
screenshot of the properties menu

Step 4 - You should now be back in the normal Print Dialogue, click on Options at the bottom.

Step 2 - In the Options window look at the middle column (called Pages) and click on brochure.
screenshot of the options menu
If you have a posh printer that does duplex printing (prints both sides of the paper automatically) then you don’t need to do anything else, just click OK and print.

If you have to print one side of the paper, then put the paper back into your printer to print the other side then make sure Right Pages is ticked, and Left Pages isn’t. Print, then do all of the above again, put tick Left Pages, and print on the other side. (First of all you’ll have to work out how to print on both sides of the paper with your particular printer).

How-to Download Videos from Websites Like Google Video, YouTube, MySpace, and Others | Gil’s Method (via Lifehacker)

dissension: How to Configure an $80 File Server in 45 Minutes looks like a worthwhile project. I have an extra box or two at home that I might use for this. (via Lifehacker)

FinchSync is supposed to synchronize from Thunderbird to a PDA - I’ll have to see if it works. (via Forever Geek)

Lifehacker has some good tips on how to Consolidate Firefox’s chrome - Lifehacker

Put your idle computer to work for you - Lifehacker

I’m thinking of using this to get tasks like defragging my hard drive done. My home computer is usually (not always) idle in the day and my work computer is usaully (not always) idle in the evenings. If this works, it would be extremely convenient.

This post gives one method of finding the image dates for the photos used in Google Earth.