Category: Featured

Categories
Featured Productivity Web

If This Then That: How To Automate Your Web

There’s a cool new web application that you may want to check out. It’s called “If This Then That”, and it lets you connect your social media and web application accounts and create “triggers” that will automatically do things for you. The possibilities are endless, you can basically do anything with this tool. Like, for example: You can set up an auto-response when you get a new follower on Twitter. You can automatically email yourself when the weather forecast says it’s going to rain. And you can automatically move files between different services including DropBox, YouTube, and Photo sharing services…



It’s kind of hard to explain, it’s probably best to just try it yourself. The website is http://ifttt.com. Have fun! And feel free to ask me questions in the comments if you need help figuring it out.

Categories
Featured Uncategorized

Putting Alcohol In My Gas Tank

image

I’ve been reading this really exciting book called Alcohol Can Be A Gas, and it argues that the technology for a sustainable fuel economy is already here, and we can start driving on carbon-sequestering biofuels with our same cars, already today! What’s better news? Because the nautral economics of alcohol fuel produxtion, rhe market will davor small to medium size farms, supporting family farms and young organic entrepreneurs. Not only is it going to instantly turn driving into an environment-healing activity, it’s also already cheaper! (At the pump, if you can find it where you live).

image

Now, alcohol fuel, or Ethanol, is a historically controversial issue- the current popular methods of production are literally insane from a sustainability standpoint, only making sense because of the skewed economics of grain subsidies causing resource-intensive and destructive farming methods to dominate our fields. I am in full agreement that we should not be harvesting corn with diesel-powered tractors and petrochemically fertilized soil. It’s stunningly inefficient environmentally. However, taking advantage of the best permaculture techniques, we can build fuel farms capable of sequestering up to 13 times the amount of carbon than the amount that is released in the production and consumption of the fuel. Literally reversing global warming with your choice at the pump. This fuel can be produced locally and organically. We just need to demand it, and it will come…

Farmers can make a lot of money from growing and/or producing alcohol fuel. The integrated production methods described in the book include many different integrated farm business models ranging from raising livestock to fish to selling  earthworms or animal feed or premium vegetables or compost.

Update: I noticed my engine kind of hesitating when idling. This was when gasoline/alcohol ratio was approximately 55/45 ratio. I’m still looking for a garage that can help me install the kit, also replace the fuel filter on my 2001 Acura CL-S. I could possibly do it myself, but the fuel filter on this car is located in the gas tank, so I need to drop the tank to replace it =… That sounds pretty messy, and it would probably be a lot easier on hydraulic jacks haha. I’m still looking for a garage that can help me with the installation. Please contact/email me if you know someone who could help with this flex fuel conversion!

Categories
Entertainment Featured Hacks Mac Music Productivity

Applescript: Fade iTunes to Selected Track

Ever playing music for other people from iTunes? And want to change the song without everyone noticing? Trying to do a manual fade is tough. This script lets you select the next song you want to play, and then fade the volume out and in to that track. Download: itunes-fade-to-selected-track.zip


property initialVolume : null
tell application "iTunes"
set speed to 5 -- lower means slower fade
if sound volume = 0 then -- if volume is all the way down, fade in
play
set initialVolume to 60
repeat until (sound volume) is greater than or equal to (initialVolume - speed)
set sound volume to (sound volume + speed)
end repeat
set sound volume to initialVolume
else -- fade out, skip to selected track, fade in
set initialVolume to (get sound volume)
repeat until (sound volume - speed) is less than or equal to 0
set sound volume to (sound volume - speed)
end repeat
set sound volume to 0
play selection
repeat until (sound volume + speed) is greater than or equal to initialVolume
set sound volume to (sound volume + speed)
end repeat
end if
end tell