Saturday, August 18, 2007
Stay healthy while traveling
11:00AM Kyle Pott | Minding your diet can be extremely difficult while traveling. Late nights, fast food, hotel rooms and the glow of vending machine lights can leave your healthy lifestyle miles away. Plus, finding the time to work out can be equally challenging. Fitness weblog 60 in 3 sheds some light on how you can keep from packing on the pounds while traveling for business or pleasure. 60 in 3’s tips start with the airplane and cover the hotel and business meals. Bring your gym gear—Most hotels do have a gym. It may be small and underequipped but it’s still a gym. A simple workout doesn’t have to involve much equipment. Pushups, situps, lunges, squats and other exercises can be done with just body weight. How do you maintain a healthy lifestyle on the road? Share in the comments. How to stay healthy while traveling [60 in 3] More »
Save YouTube videos for any device with vConvert
10:00AM Adam Pash | Web site vConvert.net grabs videos from YouTube and converts them to compatible formats for your iPod/iPhone, mobile phone, PSP, and more. What’s more, if you only want the audio from a video, vConvert can convert just the audio to an MP3. We’ve seen desktop apps that promise the same conversions (and one other web site), but if you don’t want to install an application to handle this simple transcode, vConvert is a very good and simple alternative. Just give it a YouTube URL, select what you want to convert it for, then click Convert and Download. After a minute or two of processing, you should see a download link for the video. vConvert [via Mashable] More »
Compare and merge files and folders with WinMerge
9:30AM Gina Trapani | When several people are updating and making copies of the same files, multiple versions easily blossom out of control. Figuring out what’s changed, what hasn’t and merging it all back together can be a huge pain in the ass, but it doesn’t have to be. Say your kids downloaded images from the digital camera repeatedly to folders all over your hard drive. You and your co-worker lost track of who made the latest changes to that PowerPoint presentation. You want to merge the changes between two updated files into one. Fear not. The free, open source, WinMerge is a powerful utility that can help coders and civilians alike merge and compare data on their hard drives. Let’s take a look. More »
Read comic books on your computer with ComicRack and FFView
9:00AM Adam Pash | Windows/Mac only: Freeware applications ComicRack (Windows) and FFView (Mac) manage and read Comic Book Archive files (with .cbr, .cbz, or .cbt file extensions). I’d never stumbled onto a file compressed into one of these formats until last night, but if you’re a comic book lover you’ve probably seen these before. ComicRack helps you manage your comic books (as a library or using iTunes-like smart lists) and read them in fullscreen glory. FFView, on the other hand, is a viewer-only. ComicRack is freeware, Windows only, requires .NET. FFView is freeware, Mac OS X only. ComicRack More »
Free Mac icon set, OSX-flat
8:00AM Kyle Pott | Mac OS X only: Spruce up your Mac’s look with the OSX-flat icon set, which is split into black-and-white and colored icon sets. Coupled with LiteIcon, replacing the default icon set and theming your Mac has never been easier. Remember that if you use LiteIcon to replace your icon theme, you will need to relaunch Finder for the changes to take effect. OSX-flat is a free download for Mac only. OSX-flat [Apple Downloads via Cool OSX Apps] More »
Get free air conditioning with a DIY heat exchanger
7:00AM Adam Pash | If you’ve got a water well full of cool water, you can take advantage of that coolness to build a heat exchanger to air condition your home. DIY site Instructables details how to turn some copper pipe, aluminum fins, and a box fan into a very successful, well-powered air conditioner. I noticed that the water from our well is really cold, under 10 degrees. I built this heat exchanger to take advantage of that cold source for use in the house in the summer…the only actual cost is the power to run the box fan that moves the air through the copper piping. How well does it work? We hit a high temperature in summer of 44C, hottest that I can remember. The temperature inside was 24C with the cooler running all the time. More »
Repel mosquitoes with these 4 plants
6:00AM Adam Pash | The Gomestic weblog lists four common plants than can work as natural mosquito repellents in a pinch: citronella (naturally), catnip, rosemary, and marigolds (the author mentions a fifth, called mosquito plants, but they’re are actually just citronella). Keep in mind that most of these repellents, to be effective, would need to be crushed and rubbed onto your skin and not just sitting around. In addition to the plants mentioned, the commenters also recommend mint, orange peel, and garlic for a little DIY bug repellent. If you’ve ever used any of these plants—or any other homespun remedies—let us know how they worked for you in the comments. Five Plants That Repel Mosquitoes [Gomestic] More »
