only 61 days left till xmas-better cover your tracks

let's say you're browsing the innerwebs in search of a little holiday joy for your honey...( get your mind outta the gutter) take for example an online store-could be any store, but for this example, say we're shopping for wifey and we stumble upon a diamond store. on no! we don't want to seem obvious as to where we've been, but at the same time, don't want to blow our cover and raise a bunch of flags by deleting all the browsing history. well, here's a simple and practical approach to being sneaky this holiday season. keep in mind, this is only a very basic technique and does not deal with removal of cookies, saved search fields, or stored passwords.

for the example, we're using the latest version of mozilla firefox and i've chosen 2 sites which look pretty obvious as to what they are-zales dot com and diamonds dot com. annnnnd let's assume for the time being that they were both entered into the address bar at the top.



at this point, they are now logged in the browser history. when we click the dropdown list of recent sites or begin typing, we see, they are in fact, visible.

to make them make like a tree and get outta here McFly, click history, and choose "show in sidebar" you'll then see splayed before you, a neatly organized (and hopefully smut-free) history of every site you've visited.


to remove the offending entries, simply right-click and delete.you may have to be pretty thorough, depending on how much you're trying to get away with...although they should be organized by domain.



now, when we look at the drop-down of recent sites, it's clear as a whistle. close the side bar and you're set.

planning a trip to space? better shave those tin whiskers...

while chuck norris' beard may be hiding not a chin, but a third fist, his stubble ain't got nuthin on tin whiskers. tin whiskers are kicking electrical components' butts. from tivo to the flight control systems of the space shuttle, "green" electronics- named for their lead-free components, have consisted of tin and tin alloys to harness electricity for years. problem is: when tin is stressed, either through electrical heating and cooling, vibration, or tension, over time the plating shoots out a metal 'whisker' much like that of a human hair. once these hairs make contact with other components, zap! your iPod is cooked. this could explain why our favorite toys just one day up and quit.

engineers at nasa are working round-the clock to find solutions to these phenomena.

Somebody set us up the Leopard...

With less than 8 days till launch, Leopard is hunkered down in a tree, set to pounce all over the pregnant baboon microsoft. like others, I've found myself on the brink of taking the plunge back to XP after working with vista for nearly 6 months. Vista leaves a lot to be desired, a lot of broken apps, and millions of obsolete PCs. many of the "off the shelf" computers sold barely meet the minimum requirements to run any version of Vista, while nearly any Mac as old as 5 years will run Leopard without a hitch. while i wouldn't go so far as to call it "windows ME 2", i do agree with many who feel the price, lack of support, and the general feeling of 'tell me again, why this is better than xp' settling in.

Number of versions at launch:

Vista: six
OS 10.5: one

price at launch:

Vista Ultimate: $399(full version)
OS 10.5: $129, 5 licenses for $199(full version)

$40/computer, sounds like a bargain to me...


...and now for someone thinking different

Dog at 80 mph...

one of the coolest gadgets to come along in a while has to be the camera phone. wireless phone companies have unwittingly deployed armies of photojournalists around the globe(with 2 year committments) over the last 5-7 years. recent models allow for cameras with zoom, flash, and video.

using a cell phone video cam, i shot video of my dog with his face in the sunroof. there's nuthin like the feeling of bugs in the teeth and wind in the gums...

bending soft metal tubes- or, twist my brass you son of a smith

...so i was watching this show-"how it's made" or something like that and they were talking about how trumpets are made. before they bend the soft brass tube, they cork or stopper the bottom and fill it with a soap solution. once it's filled, they freeze it. the top is left open to accommodate expansion. the frozen solution keeps the bend from collapsing on itself, and the soap helps give elasticity to the ice, preventing it from breaking.

this may come in handy someday...

what's that? you say DVDs suck on that new HDTV? check those settings!

In what may go down as a pretty good example of RTFM(read the *expletive deleted* manual), i was this close to buying a new DVD player to go with the HDTV i picked up a few months ago. my existing DVD player, using what was once the holy grail of video throughput-component cables, was leaving me a bit...let's say...underwhelmed. picture was fuzzy, sometimes a little blurry, and black was not black. black was a few shades off gray. the picture never fit the screen and when it did, was pixelated.

So i start shopping. with prospect of a new toy, and trying to steer clear of the HDDVD vs Blu-Ray crap, i consider the "upscaling" dvd player. this is supposed to take care of the conversion and make everything "fit". so i asked a friend for advice. he obliges. but in doing so, gets the wheels in motion and i go back and check the manual of my existing DVD player. turns out i never changed the aspect ratio to fit the 16:9 ratio as opposed to the 4:3 ratio of the old tube.

ugh. it's 2007. shouldn't these things just take care of themselves?

what's in a techblik?

i've started a blog about tech, geeks and gadgets, and a hearty dose of camaraderie. some of it will make sense. some will make sense drunk...

babel fish translated from dutch->engrish, a blik is as follows:

it has been thinly rolled language that by means of by galvanisation laagje introduced a tin is protected against corrosion. An important application of can is packing foods, such as (tins cans or drankblikjes). The materiaaldikte of drankblikjes are variable. The floor is 0.3 mm dik, the partition 0.11 mm dik and the collar are 0.16 mm dik. The cross-section is optimised so that the blikje are strong enough if there fluid worries about (practises very from) and so that the also easy plat to press is if it is empty. Up to some decades suffered can was used for the making of simple domestic Article (for example for stoffer and can) or for child toy. Can has been replaced in the course of years for many applications by plastic. Advantages of plastic concerning can are among other things: lighter, cheaper, not subject for corrosion, more vormvariatie possible. For packing materials, like in drankblikjes, also dungewalst plate material of an aluminium alloy are used. Thin language is used already age-long, for example for body protection in war in early times. These steel plates were hammered with the hand to the desired cross-section; a very labour-intensive activity. Since in the 19th century mechanical to roll had been invented, had become the however cheap material. By the invention of galvanising was employed it among other things in the food packing industry

so, in a way, all your technology in a can. (or on the can for those of you reading this on the throne...)