Mac OS X Leopard only: One of the nice things about Stacks—or annoying things, depending on how you look at it—is that the topmost document icon appears on your Dock, instead of an indicator of which folder contains it. To solve this problem, the icon designer at Optica Optima’s offering a set of icons for download that add a drawer-like image to your Stacks. The screenshot above displays the Downloads, Applications, and Documents folders as Stacks sporting the drawer icons. Pretty! To add the icons to your Stacks, just download and unzip the package, and move the appropriate icon to the folder. For more fun along the same lines, here’s how to add custom icons for your Mac hard drives.
Stacks Overlays [XD via OS X Hacker]Sure you try to eat healthy, but hey, sometimes you want to drop a handful of fries and a burger into your gullet, and who are we to judge? But next time you get a hankering for some fast food, check out previously mentioned web site a Calorie Counter’s comprehensive comparison of fast food nutritional facts. Comparing everything from fries and burgers to breakfast sandwiches and bread sticks, this sortable guide can steer you toward the lesser of all evils. Alternatively, you could skip the fast food altogether and try out the comparatively healthier microwave diet.
Fast Food Restaurants & Nutrition Facts Compared [a Calorie Counter]If you live out of your inbox and don’t have the luxury of a human assistant, check out newly launched webapp Sandy, an information tracker you interact with via email. Register for a free account and you’ll get an email address you can send your to-do’s, contacts, bookmarks, notes, and appointments to in keyworded messages. Sandy receives the email, parses, stores, and organises the information, and emails you back reminders and agendas only when you need ‘em.
Windows only: Freeware application Free DVD to MP3 Ripper does exactly what its name says: Rips DVD audio to your hard drive as MP3s. A while back when we asked readers how to rip a concert DVD to MP3, most of the solutions were either a touch on the complicated side or required shareware software. Free DVD MP3 Ripper does the job (and can also rip audio from MPEG files and VCD and SVCD movies) with relative ease, and best of all, it won’t cost a dime. Free DVD MP3 Ripper is freeware, Windows only.
Free DVD MP3 Ripper [via One Tip A Day]If the high price tag for Apple hardware has kept you from buying a Mac but you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and get adventurous, you can build your own “Hackintosh“—a PC that runs a patched version of OS X Leopard. What?!, you say. Apple’s move to Intel processors in 2006 meant that running OS X on non-Apple hardware is possible, and a community hacking project called OSx86 launched with that goal in mind. Since then, OSx86 has covered major ground, making it possible for civilians—like you and me!—to put together their own Hackintosh running Mac OS 10.5. Today, I’ll show you how to build your own high end computer running Leopard from start to finish for under $800.
Health blog Diethack has a helpful guide rounding up some of the best advice and actions to prevent the office routine from making you unhealthy and unhappy. Among some advice that should be familiar to long-time Lifehacker readers was this surprising (and debatable) advice: Discard the Headset for a mic: For those of you who are always on a conference call on Skype, then it is time for you to get rid of the headset and to simply use a mic and your regular desktop speakers. Constant use of a headset can impair your hearing, your movement, and stability. It also irritates your ears.
Diethack’s other tips are worth reacquainting yourself with, including workouts at work and how to sit at your computer. Photo by archie4oz
19 Hacks to Stay Healthy at Your Workstation [Diethack]Regular eBay auction browsers know the search box is often the first step in a long series of clicks and term refinements. GetItNext, an eBay-linked search site, lets searchers specify and eliminate keywords to find, say, just a “Mac Mini” and not all the cords and accessories for it. Search results come back with slightly bigger pictures and the seller’s feedback visible, but the niftiest upgrade may be the “Find a Deal” tab, which shows auctions with no bidders and less than four hours left—yet another tool to help you become an eBay sniper
GetItNext [via eHub]TextMate is a super-powered word processor beloved by coders and productivity geeks like Merlin Mann and Matt Haughey and available in a Windows port, but where does that leave Linux users? If they haven’t already fallen under the sway of Vi or Emacs, they can download a few files and plug-ins to give GNOME’s default text editor, gedit, many of the features—including word completion, quick file browsing, and highlighting switches—that Mac users have enjoyed for so long. Some of the plug-ins touted by the handy guide below are installed by default in gedit and just require an enabling click, while others require a bit of unpacking and placement. For writers and coders just getting started, it could make gedit a great learning tool with a gentler learning curve.
Textmate-like Gedit in a few steps [via New Linux User]Wired’s How To Wiki offers some powerful ammunition for dealing with the spam-pushing, typo-leeching domain name squatters that capitalise on slight variations of your personal or business website address. The basic path is to register as many misspellings, abbreviations and variations of your domains as possible and take the miscreants that do pop up to domain name court. There are, of course, ways to reclaim your online name even if the bad guys won’t give up, and you can avoid squatter spam yourself by using OpenDNS. But it never hurts to arm yourself with knowledge of the laws and authorities you can turn to when johnsmith.co starts leeching your traffic.
Reclaim Your Site From Domain Squatters [Wired How To Wiki]
