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Category Archives: Gizmos

Sparkzy’s future Smart fortwo?

I did it. I put down the $99 (refundable) needed to reserve a Smart fortwo passion coupe.
I’ve been interested in Smart cars for awhile. I looked at one back in 2006, took photos of one in Mexico last year, and have been captivated every time I’ve seen one since.
At the end of 2007 I reserved […]

A laptop bag for the Asus Eee PC

The REI Boarding Bag is the perfect size for carrying the Asus Eee PC. The power adapter fits in the front pocket. A mouse, pens, pencils, flashdrive, cellphone, and a Moleskein Cahier notebook fit in the middle compartment. The final (largest) compartment holds the laptop and a Kensington security cable. What else do you need?
01/28/08 […]

Burning Man tip 11 - Solar-powered LED light strings

If you’d like to add some solar-powered blinking to your camp or project, and you’re not afraid of future maintenance or the need to do some hacking, you might want to buy these lights from geeks.com. Just be aware of a few things:

The case and LED string aren’t waterproof
The connectors won’t stand up to any […]

Testing Jott: a mobile voice to email gateway

Jott is a free web service that will email a transcribed voice message to someone in your Jott contact list. You call the toll-free number, speak the name of the contact, then speak your message (up to 30 seconds).
As a test, I sent a Jott message to the address that allows me to post to […]

Flickr tools, toys, and things to try

On my “someday” list, I had this entry, “Upload photos to Flickr.com account.” I had created the account a year ago, but hadn’t used it.
My comet McNaught pictures inspired me to give it a try. It was easy. Real easy. I installed a helper program that I got from the flickr site, uploaded […]

My Hewlett Packard HP4600 scanner is a piece of junk (that’s why I backed my car over it)

Keywords: junk, HP, Hewlett Packard, HP4600 scanner, broken, out-of-warranty, waste-of-time, dissatisfaction, stinks, unhappy, garbage, catharsis
I was trying to scan my journal for a future blog post, when I reached a point where it was no longer worth my time, or sanity, to work with the scanner any longer. Here’s a graph showing that point, […]

Burning Man tip 01 - Water bottle lantern

There are 34 weeks until Burning Man 2007. Every week I’ll post a new idea, tip, or suggestion. Some of these will be things I’ve learned the hard way, other ideas are clever solutions my friends have developed.

Week 01 idea: Because hydration is so important at Burning Man, and it gets pretty dark at night […]

2007 articles, ideas, and possibilities

I have a few articles in the works and a number of ideas for future articles: using a slide and photo scanning service; the second parts of the time-lapse video and EL wire butterfly prop articles; Burning Man tips; some sculpture and bookbinding projects; and a GPS datalogging idea that I’ve been think about.
I also […]

Do the math

I’m reaching the end of my T-mobile cell phone contract and I’ve been looking at options. Based on the few calls I make, prepaid makes sense. The “helpful” T-M service rep. offered me a 75 minute/$19.99 per month plan that isn’t available for new contracts ($29.99/300 minutes per month is the plan I currently […]