how to apply the ghostly decal 02. Mar 2012
One of my favorite record labels have created a laptop decal which works especially great on Macbooks. When applying the decal however, great care needs to be taken. Basically, if you mess it up, you don’t get a second chance (well, maybe you do). So if you’re more the clumsy type and ordering internationally, you might want to buy two sets from the start.
With this being said, if you know what to watch out for, it’s actually not that hard getting it right the first time. If you’re unsure how to get it done, see my little how-to below. I’m not saying this is the smartest way to get it done, but it worked great for me.
Step 1: Remove the protective cover of the decal so that the sticky surface is exposed. Be careful not to touch it. Then place it on the laptop with the non-sticky side downwards. Adjust the position of the decal so that the actual artwork completely covers the logo. Now mark the edges with something that stays firmly in place. I used regular household grade plastic tape, which is certainly not the best solution, but it did the job.
Step 2: Carefully apply the decal by gradually lowering it on the surface while applying gentle pressure. If you mess it up there will be air bubbles.
Step 3: Remove the tape with the help of a tissue (using your uncovered finger nails might leave scratches on the surface) and remove the glue rests with a mild cleaning fluid.
Step 4: Enjoy!
save a youtube video as mp4 with title 23. Feb 2012
The following one-liner fetches a video from Youtube and saves it to an mp4 container with a reasonably safe file name generated from the video title.
youtube-dl -q -o - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH2-TGUlwu4 |
ffmpeg -i pipe:0 -vcodec copy -acodec copy "`curl -s \
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/QH2-TGUlwu4 |
w3hxselect -c title | tr -sc '[A-Za-z0-9._{}\(\)\]\[\- ]' '_'`.mp4"
If you want to install the prerequisites via MacPorts: youtube-dl is available and w3hxselect is included in the html-xml-utils package.
peter sunde explains irl vs. afk 20. Jan 2012
safariomnibar port for powerpc 13. Jan 2012
I did a port of Olivier Poitrey’s SafariOmnibar for Macs with PowerPC processor running Safari 5.0.6 on Mac OS 10.5.8. Go ahead and grab the current version over at Github.
old swedish mailbox in helsinki 16. Dec 2011
In the staircase of my current residence in Helsinki I have discovered traces of swedish language history. The mailbox sign says “Bref och Tidningar” which is swedish for “letters and newspapers”. It is not uncommon to find swedish labels in Helsinki since there is swedish speaking minority but this one caught my attention because it had a non-standard spelling. Since the house has a Jugendstil architecture my assumption was that maybe it’s an old spelling from the turn of the last century. I did some research and found some statements supporting my assumption.
Before the spelling reform of 1906 the v sound was represented by hv- at the beginning of some words, -fv- medially and -f finally. One may still encounter forms like hvad (vad), hvem (vem), gräfva(gräva), bref(brev) in older texts. (Swedish: a comprehensive grammar, Philip Holmes and Ian Hinchliffe, Routledge, 2003, page 584)
Furthermore I found out the house was actually built 1900 by the finnish architect office Usko Nyström, Petrelius & Penttilä which is six years before the spelling reform so it seems quite reasonable they’ve used the old spelling on the mailbox.
