Category: Geek Stuff

Blogger Made Rich

I never thought blogging could make someone rich and “famous”. But apparently it’s possible. Slashdot carried an article about Darren Rowse, an Aussie, making his first $10+K (a month) from Google’s Adsense.

Darren blogs professionally with three or four sites, reviewing laptops, cameras and cell phones. Hmm… aren’t there MANY sites doing exactly just that all over the Internet? But I guess Assuies like the way he reviews stuff.

Darren’s site lead me to another site about how to become rich with Google’s Adsense. Well, this is not the first time I’ve seen something like that. A while ago, I saw another equally awfully constructed site, GoogleCash, talking about something similar. Perhaps they are making so much money as the way the sites are, the owners don’t feel the urge to change anything.

But still, ugly sites annoy me.

Xmail Hard Drive.com

Xmail Hard Drive logoWhen Gmail first came out, there were a couple of hacks that allowed users to make their Gmail accounts as remote drives. But of course they didn’t really catch on. Found this today: Xmail Hard Drive.com. It effectively makes your Gmail account a remote storage. But it requires that you provide your login name/passowrd to a third party… I am not so sure about that…

via [LifeHacker]

MythTV — Part IV — If It Works on Windows…

I finally got my replacement PVR-150 card from Buy.com a couple of days ago. Immediately I put it back into the Dell Precision 410 box where I have Windows 2000 installed from the last exercise. Fingers crossed.

At first Windows complained about drivers not being properly loaded and other related usual crap that is normal for a Windows operating system. The only way to really “fix” this was to uninstall all the drivers and related apps and reinstall them from scratch. So I did; and that did the trick.

Half an hour after I got everything installed; I got the DVR app that came with Hauppauge working. It receives signals, captures, pauses and does everything else. Even the remote worked flawlessly. So hardware is fine.

Then I downloaded and installed BeyondTV from SnapStream since I am already running Windows and have been told that BeyondTV is very easy to work with.

And sure enough, BeyondTV worked like advertised except that features allowed in the demo version were so limiting that there was no way for me to truly evaluate the package. And SnapStream is asking for $80 for the package. That’s $80 too much for me. And besides, I am determined to have a Windows-free home computing environment.

I think I will go back to trying on Fedora Core 3 again when I get more time. Between running errands in preparation for the new baby, my freelance job, classes and all the miscellaneous stuff that’s going on, time is getting more and more scarce. So whatever happens, I’ve got to get it to work before the baby arrives or else I might never get to it anytime soon… 🙁

Vlogging — A How To

Yeah. This is just the thing I need. A how to on video blogging (Man Cleans Freezer, Film at 11). How do those people find time to vlog? Damn it.

Freevlog has a good tutorial. And apparently vloggers recommend using Internet Archive (free hosing) and Ourmedia to archive video clips.

I would include more helpful links and descriptions, but the article at Wired News did a really good job. So I’ll just stop here…

I wonder when iTunes will start including a feature to download vlogs? And how long before mainstream media caught on and start offering vlogs as a source of news outlet for the general public?

Editing CSS with Ease

Found this nice little app — Xyle Scope.

It’s a WYSIWYG application that makes editing CSS style sheets way easier than “edit-save-refresh browser” method. And because it’s got a built-in browser, you can see the changes as you go. This is also a good way for beginners to learn how other people utilize their CSS files on their sites.

Xyle Scope Screen Shot

Xyle Scope Icon

Styled Checkboxes

There hasn’t been a lot of changes on styling check boxes and radio buttons on HTML forms. But this article Styled Checkboxes took CSS to the next level.

With XHTML, some Javascript and a bit of creativity, form fields can look really nice with this example. Check it out!

And as usual, Slashdot has a flood of comments about this.

Blogging + Video = Vlogging

Great. I finally caught on to blogging. But now this new “Vlogging” thing is slowly creeping into people’s RSS feeds.

Where do people find time for all this?! Damn it.

UPDATE: Like I was saying, Vlogging is catching on. Someone in NYC caught this on his video phone about a bank employee and a customer going off on each other.

Vlogger image of a fight