Sunday, September 28, 2008

DIY Cat Litter Box Ventilation System

8:00AM Gina Trapani | Cat-lover Alan couldn’t stand the stink of the litter box in the garage, so he built in a bathroom fan that vents out the side of the house. To smarten up the system, his Mac mini automates the whole business so it’s not running continuously: In front of the litter box sits a motion detector. When the detector “sees” the cat, it tells the computer to start a timer. After 5 minutes (hopefully enough time for the cat, unless he’s reading), the fan kicks on and vents the box for 15 minutes. That’s just about enough time to take care of any major business that occurred. Out of respect for the neighbours, he added a dryer sheet on the vent to mitigate the outgoing fumes. How do you automate litter box stink management? Let us know in the comments. Alan’s DIY “Cat Jet” litter box ventilation system [Boing Boing Gadgets via Make] More »

Clean Your Shower Head With Vinegar

7:00AM Gina Trapani | Tutorial site wikiHow says you can get rid of nastry, goopy build-up on your showerhead without using chemicals—instead, simply simmer it in white vinegar and wipe off any mineral deposits. More »

cli.gs Brings Short URLs With Detailed Analytics

6:00AM Tamar Weinberg | Webapp cli.gs transforms your long URLs into short URLs with detailed click-through statistics. Unlike previously mentioned dwarfURL, cli.gs gives analytics junkies a rush with interactive AJAX graphs and detailed referrer data in addition to search engine references to the particular URL (or “clig”). cli.gs doesn’t stop there: any time someone mentions your clig in social media, be it a blogger, on Twitter, or via delicious, the source is also calculated and treated as coming from “social media.” Call it TinyURL on steroids. Clig are also supported by LongURL so you can get the details of the destination URL before you actually click. cli.gs More »

iTunes 8 Visualizer’s Undocumented Keyboard Controls

5:00AM Gina Trapani | iTunes 8’s new default music visualizer, based on the beautiful Magnetosphere plug-in, has several keyboard shortcuts that customise its look and behavior—not listed in the iTunes help file. Macworld lists them: + and -: Increase or decrease the intensity (brightness) of the particles; multiple presses further increase or decrease the intensity. A and S: Add or Subtract particles to the visualizer. You can make the visualizer as complex (or sparse) as you wish. R: Reset the intensity and particle count to their default values. E: When in nebula mode (press N), this greatly accentuates the nebula clouds, making them very easy to see. (If you’ve used the M key to change modes, you may find that the nebula clouds aren’t visible; it seems they’re only used in certain modes.) More »

Top 10 Ways To Stay Energised

2:00AM Kevin Purdy | Even if you’re a hyper-organised, task-oriented worker with an expansive mind and endless ambition, you won’t get a lot done if your mind and body are demanding you curl up and doze off. Luckily, you can overcome a late night of net surfing, a rough morning, or just the post-lunch stupor without becoming an over-wired mess. We’ve put together 10 of the best ways to jumpstart your brain and get back into a productive groove, and all of them are tricks you can put to work this Monday. Photo by neps. More »

In Quotes Displays What US Politicians Said About A Keyword

1:00AM Gina Trapani | Google Labs launches an addictive little webapp called In Quotes, which searches and compares things politicians have said in the news by keyword. So you can see what Obama and McCain have said recently about Iraq, health care, or energy. Hit the “Spin” button to get another quote (with a link to the source news story), or hit the politician drop-down to get quotes from the vice presidential candidates and others, from Hillary Clinton to Ron Paul. In Quotes [Google Labs via Google Blogoscoped] More »