Category: starred

Mac: With the release of OS X 10.6.8, Apple introduced TRIM support for its solid state drives that makes the drive a little faster. Apple’s operating systems don’t support non-stock drives though. Chameleon is a simple tool that allows you to speed up that third-party SSD drive.

TRIM makes your solid state drive a little faster by automatically cleaning up blocks of old data. Subsequently, with TRIM enabled, your SSD is a little quicker. Chameleon removes the lock on the driver so you can enable this feature on any SSD drive. It’s a pretty quick process that’s easy to revert if something goes wrong.

Chameleon | via One Thing Well

via Lifehacker
Chameleon Optimizes Non-Apple SSDs on Macs

Rockets fly over bell tower of Agios Markos church during Greek Orthodox Easter celebrations on the eastern Aegean island of Chios on April 26, 2008. Two rival parishes of Vrontados village fire thousands of rockets every Easter Saturday aiming at the opposing church’s bell tower in a centuries-old tradition.

via In Focus
The Easter Rocket War of Vrontados

It’s time for our weekly break from the gear for a few minutes so we can enjoy another round of reader photos from the Photography Bay Flickr Group. Check out the rest of the photos below. You can mouse over any photo for title and photographer names. Additionally, clicking on the photos will take you to […]

via Photography Bay
Reader Photos Roundup: April 20, 2014

As some folks know, I’m a pretty big believer in standing while you work rather than sitting. It takes a little while to get used to, but these days I greatly prefer standing. While the first few weeks are a bit difficult on your legs and (especially) feet, once you get used to it, it’s pretty easy. There’s definitely been a trend in sit-stand setups lately, so for this week’s awesome stuff post, I thought we’d look at three new crowdfunding projects concerning standing desks.

• First up, is a the StandDesk — which is a standard sit/stand alternating desk. There are lots of these on the market, though they can get a bit pricey. StandDesk’s sole claim to fame seems to be that it’s a lot cheaper than the competition — which is true. It’s an automated sit-stand desk going for about $400 (not including shipping). Standard automated sit-stand desks tend to be closer to $1,000 or more. When I switched to a sit-stand setup a couple years ago, I deliberately didn’t buy such a desk, because it seemed to expensive. Instead, I retrofitted an existing desk with one of these. But the StandDesk definitely brings the price down. It appears people are pretty excited about this cheaper sit-stand desk as it’s already raised over $350,000 (much more than its $50,000 target) with nearly a month left to go.
• I’m always intrigued by people trying something new and different, so the ChairBot certainly caught my eye. It’s an attempt to still let people get the best of both sitting and standing, while minimizing the harms. I have no idea if there’s any real science behind it, but the idea appears to be to have the chair set at your standing height, and the chair splits in two, with either side going down to remove support from one leg or the other. The end result is that you end up "standing" with one leg while "sitting" with the other. And the ChairBot has a timer, so that every so often, you’re prompted to switch. The theory is that you get the better posture associated with standing, but not the fatigue that often comes with it (though, again, I’ve found that goes away after a short adjustment period). You kind of have to watch the video to understand how this works: While new and different ideas may be interesting, that doesn’t mean they’re compelling. And this one definitely falls into the not-very-compelling camp. Especially at the insane price of $2,700 (which is apparently the "early bird" price before it goes to $3,700!). You’d have to (1) really, really believe that this is a better system (2) have extra money to throw away and (3) trust that this device that you haven’t tested would really work for you in order to plunk down that kind of money. So, it’s little surprise that almost no one has actually done so. As I write this, only 1 person has signed up, so it seems unlikely that this project will come anywhere near the $100,000 it seeks by the project completion in two weeks.
• Finally, many people point out that you don’t need a fancy contraption to have a standing desk. You can just pile some boxes or a shelf on an existing desk and get basically the same thing. So it’s interesting to see someone trying to offer a collapsible desktop riser for exactly that purpose. Of course, I’m confused why this is a Kickstarter project, as there are tons of similar desktop risers on the market, and this doesn’t appear to be new or unique in any significant way. Nor does it appear the creator put much effort at all into the campaign. It’s one of the rare Kickstarter campaigns that doesn’t even have a video. Given that, it’s not too surprising that so almost no one seems to be interested in buying one (there’s just one backer).

That’s it for this week. Stand up and stretch.

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via Techdirt.
Awesome Stuff: Stand While You Work

Old-fashioned casts are nasty, a festering stinksleeves that you wear like a medieval torture device for what seems like forever. 3D-printed casts take care of the smell and itch issues , and now Deniz Karasahin has designed the next step: a custom cast with an ultrasound device to speed up bone healing.

Read more…

via Gizmodo
A 3D-Printed Ultrasound Cast That Looks Awesome and Heals You Faster

If your Mac is having intermittent problems when it’s under a heavy load, you can perform a simple stress test in the terminal to try and reproduce the problem.

All you need to do is run the "yes" command, which will push the CPU until its limit:

yes > /dev/null &

If you have a CPU with multiple cores (which most modern Macs do), you’ll have to run it as many times as you have cores. For example, if your CPU has four cores, you’d run:

yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null &

The fans will often kick in so you can see how loud they are, and see if indeed your mac is crashing under a heavy load. Putting this heavy of a load will also help discharge the battery. Just remember to kill the process when done or you’ll wonder why your Mac is running so slow.

Stress Test a Mac by Maxing Out CPU | OS X Daily

via Lifehacker
Stress Test Your Mac with the “Yes” Command

It can be hard to find good smack without leaving the comfort of your own home. At least it used to be. A new search engine for black markets is making it easier than ever to find anything from high quality heroin to assault rifles. The site even looks just like Google. It’s called Grams, and it works remarkably well.

Read more…

via Gizmodo
Google Clone Makes It Easy to Search for Drugs and Guns on the Dark Web

“My cheeks are attuned to her lips. I will know if they tremble.” Jesse Parent reads his poem, To The Boys Who May One Day Date My Daughter. This guy should join a battle rap event. The crowd sure acts like they’re in one. “Eat ‘em!”
via The Awesomer
To His Daughter’s Future Dates

Standing. It’s just something you do, right (like breathing)? The truth is, there’s a perfectly aligned and balanced way to stand…and the imbalanced way many of us do.

Good posture helps relieve and prevent pain, improves your attitude, and also positively affects your brain. Even if you don’t think you’re not guilty of the worst posture mistakes (hunching your shoulder or rounding your back), you might be missing one key part of standing properly: complete balance.

AZ Central notes that starts with the foot, your base of support:

To stand upright, you must balance your body over your feet. Your spine should be aligned over your pelvis, with your weight evenly distributed between your feet. Many people stand with more weight over one foot or with their weight over only part of their feet. While standing, become aware of your feet. You should feel even pressure on the balls of your big toes, little toes and heels. This is the tripod of your foot. If you feel more pressure on one of these points, you are not in alignment. Relax your toes and knees and adjust your weight so the tripods of both feet feel equal pressure.

Putting too much weight on one foot, leaning too much forward, and even turning your feet outward or inward while standing (they should be pointing forward) could mess up other parts of your body. Do this for too long (for example, at a standing desk or if you stand a lot on your feet), and it’s a hard habit to correct.

You can test the other parts of your posture against a wall, but don’t neglect the balance over your feet too.

Read more standing posture tips at AZ Central’s Healthy Living page.

The Influence of Foot Position on Standing and Balance | AZ Central

Photo by Kontramax.

via Lifehacker
You Might Be Standing All Wrong. Here’s How to Fix Your Imbalance