Mac OS X only: Free application Tune Instructor adds advanced ID3 tag editing for your iTunes library through a smart third-party utility. The iTunes helper boasts features like search and replace for your tags, or it can set ID3 tags from a filename or set filenames from ID3 tags. It can automatically search and embed album art or lyrics—though I ran into issues with German-language lyrics sometimes showing up rather than English. The application has a lot of potential, and works well overall. I did run into a few peculiarities when testing it, but overall it offers advanced, worthwhile ID3 editing beyond what iTunes offers by default. Tune Instructor is freeware, Mac OS X only.
Had to share this awesome pattern for a DIY cardboard cat chaise originally posted at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. Since we all know that cats love cardboard, why not try your hand at making one of these for your moderncat?
Complete instructions with photos are provided along with a downloadable pdf pattern. The design can be easily modified to fit into any decor including a modern home. If you come-up with a great modern variation, please send in the photos and I’ll post them!
Thanks to Minna and Jason for the tip.
images herevia Dave of umop.com
"Check out my brother's crazy-ass new electronic drum rig... he's spent months planning it & working on it!"
...
"OK folks... Here it is, in all its '80s glory: the 6-sided Red Rig. Made to mimic the look of the vintage drum pads, it's made of 100% PVC pipe and copper pad fittings. All custom designed - made it up as I went along. The wiring harness took about a day to make, and is almost completely hidden inside the tubes themselves. The ends just hang in place for quick connection to the pads when setting up, and to connect to the snake that feeds the equipment rack.
Black and red cymbals are made by Krest out of Brazil and took 8 months to get the order finalized and shipped. (There is only one U.S. rep.)
Not in place in these shots is the standard hi-hat stand (although I might try to paint it, too) which also uses black cymbals. "Gong" at rear works, and can trigger any sound source I feed it. (Sadly, I don't have an actual gong sound - yet. Need a rack-mount sampler.) The entire rig uses no standard metal pieces - except the hi-hat stand - and breaks down into smaller pieces. The top and bottom "rings" split in half, held together with quick-release hood pins - like from a race car.
The footprint is not significantly bigger than my old setup, considering my amp and rack can reside inside this space. It's 6'8" point-to-point. Biggest challenge is that the paint - which supposedly is formulated for plastic surfaces - scratches easier than a bag of rabid cats, even with multiple coats and 3 layers of urethane. This is what prompted me to go to the next level: I'm going to give it the Eddie Van Halen 'Frankenstein' look. May start doing it this weekend."
Update: new pics added to the set. "He Frankenstein-ified the red rig."
Curried Egg Salad (via jakub_hla)
Make egg salad with hard-boiled eggs, mayo, curry powder, Dijon mustard, lime juice, salt, pepper, parsley, onion and apple.
Shared by cjw333
cómo es triste :(
The ubiquitous green and white Volkswagen bugs that serve as cheap taxis for millions of Mexico City residents while damaging their lungs by spewing ultra fine particulate matter and other pollutants will be phased out by 2012, according to the Spanish news agency Efe. The cars, known fondly as "vochos," proliferated in Mexico decades after Volkswagen began manufacturing them in the city of Puebla.
The municipal transport and road ministry, known as Setravi...
If you don't like outlet multiplyers that stick out into the room, here's your hero: a design that has an extra socket, but simply replaces the existing, wall-flush outlet box.
Three Outlets In The Space Of Two [Toolmonger]
The Multimedia Desk awakens for another episode of tech-infusion. The last time we talked about a cool Cmoy headphone amp being made from the same wood used to make the table. Before that we built the table itself. This week it’s something simple: an integrated powerstrip.
Think of it this way: the closer your electrical products are to the outlet, the less the wires have to snake around, making a tangle of confusion to disrupt your Zen décor. This new approach requires some little tricks to make it all work properly, though... The power strip (From Fry's- we got it at a physical location, not the website- but here it is anyway.) we picked up has [an even] nine outlets spread out across a 36” rail. It has a well-built steel chassis which will be anchored by four ¾” drywall screws to the support beam installed on the bottom of the table. Being black, this product will blend into the shadows like a ninja (Not because they wear black, but because they can blend into the shadows. Ninjas actually wore more brown or whatever was appropriate for the mission at hand. The black colored uniforms were introduced more for movies and comics and so forth, though they are much more commonplace today.). The first thing we did was mark where the screws were going to go in. Then we drilled very small pilot holes to prevent the wood from cracking when we put the screws in. Then we engaged in all sorts of unnecessary drama to make it look like it we were rocket engineers. Then we screwed the FOUR screws in and we were done. To be fair, there was one more step: Plugging it in. Which we did. Cleverly.
The fun part is how you suddenly make all of your cords shorter after you have brought all of the pluggables within inches of their respective outlets. We have shown you many ways to capture your cords here on Unplggd, but as a stopgap measure, we used twist ties. Ha! So Designery! We will prolly look at something more permanent to help contain the mayhem in the near future.
Now all we have to do when we go on a trip is hit the switch and all associated electrical odds and ends are fully disconnected from the wall- No more electrical fireball damage!
So that’s all folks. It’s easy to attach one of these to most desks- you could even put it on top or on a leg or wherever your magical creativity takes you.
Enjoy!
Related Links:
DIY: Multimedia Desk, Built From “Scratch”
DIY: Multimedia Desk, Chapter 2: Cmoy Headphone Amp
Untangling Wires: Best Peripheral Cable Management Solutions
Top Ten: Cord Control Solutions
It's true - those professional-looking headphones look great, but only when they're tucked away or hanging from a beautiful headphone stand and not sprawled all over your desk like a dead rabbit. No wait, we love rabbits, seriously. But that doesn't fix your headphone problem. Luckily, Wiretap from IKEA Hacker has a solution to enlighten us all.
Here are a few parts you'll need:
Main stand portion: Bjarnum Shelf Bracket 11''
Headphone holder post: Capita Leg 4''
Wire wrapping posts: Attest Knob
The idea is to drill a bunch of holes in the main bookshelf stand and use those as the primary hook for your headphones, with the smaller hooks for (we're guessing) some sort of wire management solution. Either way, it looks a whole lot better than having a fat pair of headphones taking up room on our desks, so cheers!
[via IKEA Hacker]
I am an architect and have been working with programs like Photoshop for years, but Spoonflower really opened up a new world for me: fabric design. It's a service that let's you upload an image to a web site and the company prints the design as a pattern on 100% cotton fabric. Their customer service is great, and I think the fabric is reasonably-priced: it costs $18/yard, not counting shipping, and an individual 8x8-inch swatch is $5. The site is still in beta, so I had to request an invite to use Spoonflower, but a week after contacting them I was experimenting with patterns and ordering fabric.
So far, I've placed three orders with three different designs (3x3 yards worth) at $ 66 per order, shipping included. The trickiest part was preparing the image file so the pattern matches up. I used the "define pattern" command in Photoshop to test my image files before I uploaded them. I defined the image size (150 dpi), set colors to LAB color space and saved the files in TIF format. After I uploaded them to the Spoonflower site, they were automatically tiled to fill the desired fabric size. Then I specified the shipping address, paid using my credit card and that's it! The turnaround was reasonably quick: my fabric arrived in a month (I live in Switzerland). I made a skirt with the fabric from my first order -- a present for my Mom (pic below).
A couple caveats: I have noticed some distortion after washing the fabric and there was a little color shifting from my original designs. Still, the color shifting and fabric distortion really are minor. Overall, I'm happy with the color accuracy and I've been very satisfied with my orders. I have been having a lot of fun with Spoonflower and will likely place my fourth order very soon. I am even considering setting up an Etsy shop to sell some of my fabrics.
-- Isabella Kuntz
Skirt:
Pattern:
NOTE: definitely check out this blogger's enlightening side-by-side close-ups of fabric printed from her artwork. One of her conclusions: "strong graphic lines turn out better than images with subtle shading." Also, check the Spoonflower pool on flickr for more fabric samples, including this skirt. --sl
Related items previously reviewed on Cool Tools:
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Shuttle's latest miniature desktop computer is even more miniature than usual — and that goes for price, too.
The X27 mini-PC is a little larger than genre mainstays like the Mac Mini, but slashes the tag to $189, which is $60 cheaper than the recent Eee Box from Asus. Inside lurks an Atom CPU, GMA 950 video and a gigabit ethernet controller. It has 4 USB ports.
Uses? Heart of a MAME cabinet; carputer; NAS with extras like reliable web and music serving; monolith to awaken nascent gerbil civilization.
Shuttle's Atom-powered mini desktop gets a price: $189 [CNET]
Filed under: Household
Some striking work from Banksy in New Orleans.
Shared by cjw333
happy b-day mj
If you don’t, it’s OK, because this face does not exist. It’s an age-enhanced childhood picture showing what Michael Jackson would look like now if he’d never had cosmetic surgery or other physical alterations. The picture was made to accompany a Daily Mail article on Jackson as he turns 50 years old today. Link -via mental_floss
Heated car seats are nice and toasty for your bottom, but it may prove be too toasty for men’s sperms:
Optimal sperm production requires a temperature 1 to 2 °C below
the core body temperature of 37 °C. This is one reason why the testicles hang outside the main part of the body. To test whether heated car seats might be raising scrotal temperatures above this threshold, Andreas Jung at the University of Giessen in Germany and his colleagues fitted temperature sensors to the scrotums of 30 healthy men, who then sat on a heated car seat for 90 minutes.An hour in, and scrotal temperature had already risen to an average of 37.3 °C, with a maximum temperature in one man of 39.7 °C. [...] Although that’s only a slight increase due to the heated seats, Jung notes that it may nevertheless be enough to damage the sperm production process.
Americans are too attached to their kitchen cupboards. It's as if they'd never considered storage other than upper cabinets. Open shelving can actually make a kitchen feel open, relieving the tight, cramped feeling that many kitchens have, in addition to leaving space to display artwork and other decorative elements. But if you don't have matching dishes or you're not diligent about stacking them neatly, open shelving can look sloppy. And of course, open shelves attract dust more easily.
Source
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