The Wikipedia Game

My friend Nikki brought this up as something she'd done from time to time, and I thought, "How have I not done this before?!"

You see, I can spend HOURS clicking through Wikipedia, going from one random article to another to another. How did I not see the potential game involved! Here are the rules, but let me quickly explain:

You click a "random article" on Wikipedia, jot that down. Click the "random article" link once more, and manage to find a path from the two articles ONLY using hyperlink clicks. If you're doing this in parallel, the winner is the one who does it the fastest and/or the one who finishes first.

Here's one I just did:

Begin: North Branch Correctional Institute
End: Brazilian science and technology

My Path:

1. North Branch Correctional Institute
2. Maryland
3. National Institute of Standards and Technology
   
4. United States Department of Commerce
5. International Trade Administration
6. World Trade Organization
7. Brazil
8. Brazilian science and technology

Enjoy!

LED LCDs Explained

Thanks to Gizmodo for the great explanation!

Command-line remote windows restart/shutdown

If you're running a windows machine and would like to restart (or shutdown) a remote windows machine, just type the following at your command line (Start-> Run -> "cmd" [enter]):

• shutdown -r -m \\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

where '-r' reboots the machine (remove that to just shut down the machine) and replace the xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx with the remote machine's IP address.

Alternatively, you may connect to the machine through Remote Desktop Connection, and run the following from the command line:

• shutdown -r -f

You can also obtain a list of commands by typing the following from any windows command line:

• shutdown -?
  

Access to Royalty-Free Images.... Legally.

Also wanted to share this link, knowing all too often we snag images from Google or various parts of the Internet -- and that can end up getting you into trouble. It's unlikely, but if you wanna be sure you're using some images legally, there are a few options...

The one I like to use is: iStockPhoto.

A few things:

1. They have Photos, Illustrations, Vector-Formatted images, Flash animations, Audio files, etc.
2. Pricing is pretty reasonable -- you can download a small image for around a buck. And that gives you pretty much free reign on use. Unless you wanna print it an indefinite number of times.
3. If you do some digging yourself, you'll find that the images are pretty easy to search for. For instance, if you search for something like "Computers Green" you'll get quite a few images, most of them all with computers and with a large green component... So if you're trying to match stuff, it could be pretty easy.
   

I recently spruced up my website on campus, and my own blog with a few images -- and it was so cheap. :-) Guaranteed not to get a letter from someone's lawyer down the road, "You need to stop using those images..."

Email Aliasing

In an attempt to reduce spam... and because I'm tired of giving out my regular Gmail email address, I stumbled across this site.

LiquidID

Seems to work pretty well; though I'm gonna try out a couple other sites, and see how I feel.

Macbook iSight green light issues -- EASY FIX!

That is, if it's not actually broken.

So, I was really freakin' out for a moment when my Macbook's iSight froze up for the 2nd time. The green indicator light (which says the camera is on or broken) came on as the computer booted, and then when I tried to open an application that uses the iSight, it gave me a black screen.

The first time, I just removed the battery for a few hours, and upon reboot, it was just fixed. I thought it was some fluke.

This time, I began to worry -- why was this some kind of recurring issue? Well, seems like you can pretty easily fix the issue by resetting your PRAM (parameter random access memory) and your NVRAM (nonvolatile random access mem). There's an apple.com post here describing how to do just that.

Wheew!

They've got an app for that!

Can I just say... why are there so many cool apps for the iPhone?! I mean, I know there are some awesome ones for the Android phones, but ... come on!

http://lifehacker.com/5256519/

Like most inventions and ideas, it makes perfect sense once someone's come up with it. This one lets you see what's going on "through" the phone (using the phone's camera) while you're typing out emails or text messages... Multitasking at its best!

But, I still don't advocate texting while driving!!! Infact, it's illegal in many many states!