Altoid speakers

The winner of "McGyver contest" to find a creative use of Altoid tins produced mini speakers using materials I have. I'll have to try this. Found via Engadget and they quoted the original site in saying the sound from these is tinny. Ugh.

Extensions for Mozilla Firexfox

For those of you already using Mozilla or Mozilla Firefox instead of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, you should take a look at some of the extensions available. You can view the full list from the source. Or, start with two articles from wired.com -- the first gives an overview and the second is the author's response to all the email she received about favorite extensions overlooked in the first article.

For those of you who are still using Internet Explorer, please take a little time to read more about what Firefox has to offer and read how the U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team recommends using an alternate browser to reduce exposure to IE vulnerabilities.

Which way to TiVo?

Every few months I think about getting TiVo. Sometimes it's when I forget to set my VCR for a regular episode of The West Wing, sometimes it's when I want to record something and don't want to take the time to hunt for a tape with available space (and then again when I am trying to find the tape to watch the recorded show). My primary interest is the convenience of the digital recorder itself, but I like the TiVo service's Wish List and Season Pass features, too.

I started thinking about this again recently with TiVo's announcement that they'll more easily support network connectivity. This is kind of nice in that I could stream music from PCs and do remote programming... but, I've also considered the DirecTV option which doesn't do the network stuff, but it's all in one convenient box. On the other hand, if I drop my current cable provider for the TV feed, I'll have to pay an extra $10/mo. for the cable modem.

I've started to explore these options by scanning the boards over at tivocommunity.com, but, like most very active forum sites, it's a little overwhelming for the casual reader*. Electrophobia's TiVo Wiring Guide proves that just about any setup will work -- I just need help deciding.

So, my TiVo-enabled friends, if you were to start today, what would you do? Standalone series 2 TiVo? DirecTiVo? Second-hand TiVo?

* When shopping for noise-reducing headphones I was astounded by the level of passion some people have for headphones over at head-fi.org. I was astounded, but I shouldn't have been -- this is, after all, the internet.

Gmail update

Two of my earlier gripes about gmail have been fixed. When viewing a message there's now a "Add sender to contacts list" link and I've learned today that it is now possible to import addresses into gmail .

Marney & Costello

How things can go awry when trying to help a toddler perfect her language usage:

Me: Marney, do you remember who is coming to visit tomorrow?
Marney: What?
Me: No, who
Marney: I don't know.

Moleskine mania

While in Germany, I purchased a pocket Moleskine notebook. Thinking that this would be a good gift for somebody, I did a little searching and found that much like everything else these days, there's a weblog devoted to these notebooks.