Tag Archive

Unlimited Gmail aliases

Published on June 15, 2010 By Todd Lyons

A helpful tip from Google, if you didn’t know about this already: Gmail doesn’t offer traditional aliases, but you can receive messages sent to your.username+any.alias@gmail.com. For example, messages sent to jane.doe+notes@gmail.com are delivered to jane.doe@gmail.com. You can set up filters to automatically direct these messages to Trash, apply a label or star, skip the inbox, [...]

Building an RT Twitterbot

Published on May 27, 2010 By Todd Lyons

Creating a ReTweeting Twitterbot used to be easy. My colleague Peter Smith originally pointed me towards Tweetalert, a service which scanned Twitter Search for the hashtag of your choice, then retweeted the associated posts via your own Twitter account, or another you’d created for that specific purpose.  This is how the GCPEDIA and GCconnex Twitter [...]

Do-It-Yourself Degree Milling for Fun and… well, Just Fun

Published on May 2, 2008 By Todd Lyons

When I was younger, I liked to hang my degrees up in my office.  I suppose that until I had a well established sense of identity and self worth, those framed bit of paper helped me feel like I belonged in the world of professionals. While they still have some importance to me—primarily as legal [...]

Enabling MMS streams in Firefox

Published on April 10, 2007 By Todd Lyons

If you’re sick of seeing “MMS is not a registered protocol” when trying to view streaming content, here’s the fix (compiled from a few half-correct or half-clear descriptions from around the net). I use Debian Linux with the KDE desktop, but this should work so long as you’ve got Firefox and Kaffeine installed. Mplayer or [...]

How To Speak Tamarian

Published on February 15, 2006 By Todd Lyons

Too stupid to learn Klingon? Relax! Have you been rejected by the Über-nerds at Star Trek Conventions? Rejoice! Tamarian is the language spoken by the Children of Tamar, first heard in the episode “Darmok” from the fifth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Unlike traditional earth speech, it relies on metaphor and allegory to [...]

Enabling mailto: in Firefox

Published on October 4, 2005 By Todd Lyons

As of Firefox 1.0.6 (Debian), FF still does not respond to email links in webpages. I have no clue why configuration of an external email program isn’t built into FF’s preferences yet, but it’s simple enough to configure if you haven’t already done so. (1.) Open Firefox, type “about:config” (no quotes) in the address window, [...]

How to make a Favicon for your website using Debian Linux

Published on October 3, 2005 By Todd Lyons

To make a favicon (that icon that appears before http:// in the address bar of your browser): (1.) Install xpm2wico (xpm to Windows ico converter) using APT. (2.) Capture and shrink or create/edit a 16×16 graphic in GIMP, KIconEdit, etc. (3.) Save your image in X PixMap Image (xpm) format. (4.) Open a console to [...]

Beginning Bass: Posture and Finger Technique

Published on August 27, 2001 By Todd Lyons

What’s so hard about playing bass? You pick it up, hang it on a strap, and pound the crap out of it with your hand. You can play it around your knees like Geezer Butler, or play it with the headstock pointed at the ceiling like Fieldy. It ain’t rocket science. Is it? If you’re [...]

Beginning Bass: How To Choose The Right Gear

Published on July 22, 2001 By Todd Lyons

New bassists, young and old alike, ask this question all the time: What gear should I buy? I generally answer them with a level of detail that makes their eyes glaze over. Is it fear? Boredom? It’s difficult to tell sometimes. To spare you the pain of experiencing this yourself, I felt that writing an [...]