I read a lot of Lifehacker and other organizational blogs. The trend these days is GTD. Basically, you keep and manage lists and ideas on a series of cards, in folders, whatever. This is my implementation of that. (this has also been called a Hipster PDA as well.)

What I use are Mead Ringdex cards..

I've been helping my mother set up a website for the business she started recently. I gave here a straightforward drupal setup, with TinyMCE for some WYSIWYG HTML authoring.

That's obviously not enough though. If she's going to make her own content, she needs to at least understand the basics. Here's an email I sent her on the topic of why the content she created isn't available anywhere, while some of it is. (there are no links to it.)

Maybe it'll help someone else as well.

I was reorganizing my file cabinet recently (after neglecting the project for many years and building up a severe organizational deficit.) I was getting all fired up and ready for making a word template for the folder tabs I would need, when laziness (and therefore invention) struck.

Why not just cut the cool colorful letter head off of one of the bills in each folder and slap that on there? I don't really care to define that 'comcast = cable bill' I know that.. I just want to come up with a tab that tells me what's in there.

Now I've got recognizable icons that generally match the thing I'm holding in my hand when I go to file the crap for my records. Yay!

I use google reader in an effort to more efficiently waste time every day. It's quite handy for RSS/news reading.

Every once in a while they change a feature here or there.. sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. The other day Scotty and I noticed that f5 no longer refreshed google reader.. instead it brought up a tagging box... and I noticed that If I hit f6, it'd make the left pane with the subscription list hide or show itself.

A week or so later, it quit both behaviors. I didn't like the f5 one.. (as I use it exclusively to refresh webpages) But I was kind of attached to the f6 one.

So I googled, and came across this:
http://www.google.com/help/reader/faq.html#shortcuts

Google helpfully documented all the shortcuts they've got. Also, you can view a cheatsheet while using google reader, by typing "?".

It looks like "u" was what I needed.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) just got useful.

With the release of QTFairUse6 2.5, you can finally, quickly and effortlessly, strip Fairplay DRM infection from your iTMS files without screwing up your iTunes library or playlists. This handy little app scours your library for offending files, captures them to non-DRMed AAC files, and replaces them in the database, so everything continues to work as before. It also backs up the infected ("protected" in industry parlance) files to a folder of your choosing, should you find that something didn't work right.

There is no command line to fuss with, no obscure settings, nothing. Just fire up the application, tell it to process all, tell it whether and where to save the original files, and hit "Start Conversion."

Since this was released last week, I have spent about $50 at the iTMS. I still don't like the sound of the files that much, but for things like re-buying CDs that I stupidly sold when I was strapped for cash in college but that I don't care that much about (Nirvana's In Utero, for example), it's quick and easy. And now that I know that I can keep the things I buy, I have no qualms about using the iTMS.

Hey Apple and RIAA thugs, if you're reading this: Do you understand what I'm saying? I will give you money if you let me keep what I buy. If you don't, I won't. It seems pretty straightforward to me, but then again, I don't have shit for brains.

Anyway, get this app and clean up your tracks before Apple makes you upgrade iTunes again and you have to wait for that to be cracked!

UPDATE:
For those of you (I'm looking at you, aaron!) who are unwilling to read the post linked above, here is a direct download link, which includes the files necessary for cracking iTunes 7.1.1:

I felt it was necessary to respond to this YouTube video with my proposal of a better way of wiping your butt. My method retains the hygienic properties of the crumple method, while preserving the economical and environmental properties of the fold method.

I present to you: The Rolling Method: Best of Both Worlds!

Since the weather has been so unpardonably warm these days, I decided to finally get out on the tarp in the empty parking space next to mine and get this expansion chamber / muffler installed and recalibrate the CVT to take advantage of it.

An expansion chamber is a neat little exhaust hack for 2-stroke engines that causes the engine to burn more fuel/air mixture on each stroke, giving you increased power (and decreased gas mileage, but what can I say, I'm a fashion of slavery). Read about how they work here, and look at an informative animation of one in action here.

This HOWTO will illustrate how to install the Racing Service Zero Super Euro Chamber Corsa on my 2006 Yamaha Jog ZR Evolution.

The particulars should be the same for any late-model (2000 or newer) Jog, and the concepts and procedure should be the same for any Japanese scooter.

More after the jump... (i.e. click "Read more" below!)

A more aggressive drive pulley on a scooter with a continuously variable transmission (CVT) will improve performance by reshaping the power curve of a CVT and increasing the ratio of the top end.

This HOWTO will explain how to upgrade the drive pulley in a 2006 Yamaha Jog ZR scooter, but should be applicable to any late-model (2000 or newer) Jog or CV50 (frame number SA12* or SA16*). Basic concepts will also be applicable to any scooter with a CVT (I learned much of this from reading about Italian scooters.)

For an excellent explanation of CVT technology, see Howstuffwoks' article on the subject.

Top speed before modification: 65kmh

Top speed after modification: 70kmh

Link to Flickr set.

A high-flow air filter can get more oxygen into your engine every stroke, which increases combustion and gives you more power. It's also quick and easy to do.

This HOWTO will walk you through installing a Daytona-brand Turbo Filter on a 2006 Yamaha Jog ZR, but should be applicable to any late-model (2000 and newer) Jog or CV50.

Link

So my friend Nik asked me something about emulating launchbar and quicksilver on the mac, where you can basically type a command at the mac and it will figure out what you're looking for with pattern matching.

This won't do that. Not by a long shot. ; )

The thing he asked me was about the windows run menu, and getting things to run from there with simple commands.

If you're on a windows box, you can do the following:
hold down the windows key,
press 'R'
type 'calc'
hit enter.

Bam! you've got the calculator. Well.. that's handy and all.. but what if you want your own programs in there.

Nik pointed me to the PATH environment variable as the place to change what the run menu searches in.

If you know what your environment variables are, then you probably don't need my hand holding. I added one that points to My Documents\bin\ as I preserve my my documents folder across formats, and I like to keep everything there.

For the rest of you. There's already an environment variable in there pointing to your systemroot. that's C:\Windows\

If you go there, and drop any windows shortcut in that directory, the name of that shortcut becomes the keyword you enter in "run".

Yay! Make a shortcut that points to photoshop, name it 'ps' and put it in C:\Windows\

Then, windowskey-R, type 'ps', hit enter BAM! Photoshop! I'm never going to use my mouse again!

UPDATE

I hadn't a clue how cool this would have been!
1. It passes arguments along.. so.. i made a shortcut called 'ff' that points to firefox. if i use the command 'ff google' firefox opens up and runs google. also, because firefox is soo damned smart, if it's already running, it'll just put google in a new tab.

2. you can do shortcuts to sites. take a firefox shortcut and add a url as an argument after 'firefox.exe'. That pretty much give limitless capacity for web application shortcuts.

3. firefox will take multiple arguments. guess what
"ff aaronpropst.com google.com" does... ; )