You may have seen recent tweets from me ranting about my frying pans. I’ve ruined a few (very expensive) pans and replaced them with dirt-cheap pans which are actually much better. I would like to share my experiences and solutions with you, so that you can buy the right (cheap) pan without having to go through the same thing. Links to all the pans are in the article below.
Author: rolfje
Review: Lamy Pico pen
A few weeks ago I saw this amazing pen design by Lamy, the Pico. I’m a heavy computer user so I don’t do much handwriting, but I do like nice tools so I thought I’d get this. Particularly the small form factor when retracted and the sleek design attracted me.
There are some things about the Pico that nobody is telling you, so I thought I’d write a little review.
The Useless Machine
The past year, you may have seen me tweeting some “#secretproject” tweets. Last week, the project was finally revealed, and here is the video, in case you’ve missed it:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nkebVQL5zc]
This is what is known on the internet as a “Useless Machine” or “Leave-me-alone Box”. In case you want to make one, there are plenty of instructions online. I think you can build a basic version of this in about a weekend, and it will cost you less than ten euros.
Catnip Watering System
Here’s a one minute how-to on growing catnip without having to water your plants every day.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jyqNzNeQeE]
Strange fix for SMB problems in Linux
Last week, the upgrade to Ubuntu 11 severely broke all carefully selected menu colors, graphics settings and icon sets. I gave up the fight after a few hours of effortless restoration work and switched to Linux Mint 11.
While setting up my machine and restoring the links to the company Windows file servers I could not connect. The password window would re-appear without any feedback. The fix was even stranger than the problem.
Having fun at J-Fall 2011
This year’s Dutch Java Nerd event called J-Fall was held in Nijkerk, in a beautiful location called “Hart van Holland” . With plenty of sessions by speakers from all over the world it promised to be a great day for Java enthusiasts, at a great location for meeting friends and colleagues. I took a day off from work and it was well worth it.
Gmail: Save an email to disk
Want to save a single email from gmail to disk, in a readable format for Outlook, Thunderbird or Apple Mail? Here’s how:
- Open your browser and log into your gmail account.
- Open the email you want to save.
- On the top-right, there is a little triangle next to the “Reply” button. Click that, and select “Show Original”.
- The original, raw email opens in a new window or tab.
- Right-click on this new window, and select “Save as…”.
- When saving the file, make sure the extension of the filename is “eml“. So for example “MyEmail.eml”.
All done. Now you dan open the file in Thunderbird, Outlook or whatever email viewer you have out there and see the original mail, in all it’s marked-up glory.
Month view Redesign
True to their tradition on the Mac, the Calendar and Addressbook applications on the iPhone are, let’s say “lacking finesse”. As good as Apple can design products and user interfaces, their focus is clearly not on calendars and address books. I’ve read somewhere that “iCal is proof that Steve does not maintain his own calendar”.
After trying out various replacements on the iPhone, I finally stuck with a pretty darn good calendar for the iPhone called “Week Calendar”. The main reason for switching to that app is that it actually has a week view, but when I started using it more intensely I found myself using the month view the most. Until somebody at Apple stopped the show.
Steve Jobs
Dear Apple,
I am truly sorry for the huge loss and wish every Apple employee, family, and friends of Steve strength in these tough times. Through Apple, Steve improved the lives of many people in the world, including mine. By hiring great people and (re)building the Apple brand, he will continue to do so even long after his death. Steve lives on in all of us.
“Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
Joining our virtual group hug,
Rolf
The €2800,- Roaming Gigabyte
We all know the stories about how vacationing smartphone users became the victim of high roaming charges, resulting in monthly bills sometimes exceeding €1000. To put an end to this, the EU has come up with a rule stating that carriers can no longer charge more than €50 per month for roaming, and are obliged to warn the user before reaching this limit. That all sounds nice and consumer friendly, but I recently tested this, and received an “interesting” monthly bill from T-Mobile.