Eddie On Everything

How To Join or Combine MP3 Files With Windows

eddie — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 19:30:30 +0000

I’ve been listening to a lot of audio books lately.

I like to listen to them while walking, or while at the gym.

The problem with audio books is that they often come in multiple files, and I don’t like having to set up a playlist for each book.

The Android app that I use to listen to these audio books (DoggCatcher) does a pretty good job of keeping track of my place in each book, so I’d prefer that each book be one large file.

I thought I’d look for free, easy to use software that combines multiple mp3 files into one single large mp3. It did take a bit of searching, but I finally found MP3 Album Maker by MakeitOne.

This software is really easy to use – you just drag and drop the files you want to combine onto the window, reorder them if necessary, and hit “go”.

Voila – a single large mp3 file from as many smaller files as you want. Easy as that.

If you haven’t heard of MP3 Album Maker, check it out today.

Who wants free MyCokeRewards codes?

eddie — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 16:45:32 +0000

The On Everything household has been going through a lot of soda lately. And by “a lot” I mean on the 1-2 two liter bottles per day level.

The poison of choice used to be Canada Dry Diet Ginger Ale, but I’ve recently moved on to a new caffeine-free poison – Fresca.

0 calories, tastes like grapefruit, and a favorite of the late LBJ. What’s not to like?

Anyway, I keep accumulating these My Coke Rewards points on the bottle caps, and I don’t know what to do with them. Up until now I’ve just been throwing them away. But I thought, hey, I know, I’ll take a photo and maybe someone on the internet will want them.

So here they are, folks: 4 My Cokes Rewards points from 2 liter bottles of Fresca. First come, first served. You can click on the picture to make it bigger.

This is kind of an experiment – if people are interested, I’ll save up my codes for a while and post them again. If not, I’ll just keep throwing them away.

Let me know what you think.

How to make Protein Bars at Home (Recipe)

eddie — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 22:47:18 +0000

Who doesn’t love Power Bars & Clif Bars? No one!

OK, so that probably isn’t exactly true.

But if you do happen to love protein meal replacement bars, you may be tired of paying so much for them at the store.

Luckily, it’s pretty easy to make protein bars at home, at a fraction of the cost, with this recipe.

And the best part about making them at home is that you can make them to suit your taste preference. Hey, maybe you’d just love a Vanilla / Strawberry / Raspberry / Banana bar, and are sick and tired of waiting for Clif’s kid to get his act together and produce one. Well don’t fret – the wait is over.

These bars are great for a post-workout recovery snack, and are also great as an on-the-go meal replacement.

The recipe:

Homemade Protein Bars

Ingredients

1 cup Raw Oats

8 scoops Protein Powder (Chocolate flavor, or other if you prefer.)

3 tablespoons Peanut Butter

1/2 cup Skim Milk

(optional) Dried Fruit

Method

Mix the oats and the protein powder together

Add & mix the peanut butter. (Tip: If the peanut butter is too thick, microwave for 10 seconds)

Add the milk to mixture & mix. Keep slowly adding more milk until the mixture is pliable.

Mix in dried fruit, if desired. You can also add a sweetener here if you’d like, like stevia or Splenda, though I don’t use one.

Spread the mixture evenly into a greased tray & refrigerate for a few hours. The mixture will firm up and you cut it into bars.

Depending on the types of ingredients you used, if you cut into 10 bars, each bar will have roughly 200 calories, 30g or protein, and 8g of carbs.

Enjoy!

How to Format a New SD Memory Card for your Optimus V Phone

eddie — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 20:35:47 +0000

I picked up a shiny new 8GB SDHC memory card for my Virgin Mobile Optimus V phone.

I connected my phone to my PC, and transferred all of the files from my old card onto my computer. I then disconnected, inserted the new card, and fired things back up only to find that my computer didn’t recognize the phone with the new card in it.

The computer assigned the phone a drive letter, but when I clicked to open the folder it said something along the lines of “Please insert a disk into drive F:”.

I tried opening up the Windows XP disk manager, thinking I could format the card from there, but no dice – Windows knew the phone was there, but wouldn’t ‘read’ the card. (The Optimus uses a FAT32 filesystem, btw.)

“No problem,” I thought. “I’ll just format it via the phone.” I disconnected the phone from the computer and went into the phone’s SD card menu, only to find that the “Format card” option was greyed out.

I tried unmounting the card, but the phone just hung. Probably because I had been swapping memory cards without unmounting them first. (Yeah, I knew I wasn’t supposed to do that, but I thought that Android would figure it out. Turns out no, not so much.)

So I rebooted the phone, then went back into the same menu, and chose to unmount the card. This time it worked!

The “Format card” option was now not grayed out, and I was able to format the card right from the phone.

I then connected the phone up to my computer and transferred all of the files from the directory I had created earlier.

If you’re having problems getting your computer to recognize your new card, and if you don’t have an SD card reader for your PC, this method should help you get your new card up and running.

Step 1: Copy the files from your old card onto your computer.

Step 2: Shut down your phone.

Step 3: Insert the new memory card

Step 4: Go into the Android Settings menu and choose “SD Card & Phone Storage Options”

Step 5: Choose “Unmount SD card”

Step 6: Once unmounted, the “Format SD card” option will become available. (that is, not grayed out.)

Step 7: Choose “Format SD Card”

Step 8: Connect the phone up to your computer with the new card in it, and transfer all of the files you created in Step 1 back to your phone.

Windows Desktop Icons Keep Flashing On & Off? In my case, VNC was the cause.

eddie — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 18:20:13 +0000

The icons on my Windows XP machine have been flashing on & off intermittently for quite a while. The problem would come & go, and it wasn’t my primary computer, so I never bothered looking into it, though I did have a few suspicions as to the culprit.

I had a little extra time today, and the desktop icons were flashing so much it looked like a little icon disco over there, so I decided to look into the problem a little bit further.

I suspected that the problem was related to VNC, (UltraVNC in my case), and as an experiment, I shut down the VNC daemon. Sure enough, the icons stopped flashing.

I figured that the icons were flashing each time a remote machine tried to make a VNC connection to my computer, so I did a second test. The second part of my test was to restart the VNC server & choose the option to to “Display Query Window.” What this will do is pop up a little notification each time the machine receives an incoming connection request.

After enabling that option, it didn’t take long until I got the following pop-up:

So, who is this remote machine? A “hacker,” of course. Actually, more like a script kiddie. In case you’re unaware, people use scripts to scan your computer hundreds of thousands of times per day, looking for vulnerabilities. Since I have my VNC running on the default port (5900), it is a prime target for these unsophisticated rubes.

Not that I’m too concerned about it – I have a strong password and am not worried about an intrusion. More than anything, I just want the flashing to stop.

Here are few ways you can fix or minimize the problem

Only run VNC when you have to. This isn’t a great solution for me, as I like to have it running 24/7. But if you use VNC infrequently, it may work for you.
Change the default port to something other than 5900. Many of these scripts are configured to only check the default ports. It won’t stop the more sophisticated port scanning apps, but it’ll stop most. Of course, you’ll have to configure your VNC connection software to use this alternate port.
Configure your router to only accept connections from certain remote IP’s, if you know the remote machines you will be connecting from. (Or only from your local LAN, if you only use VNC on your local network.)
Turn off VNC port forwarding on your router, and configure your router so you can connect remotely & turn it back on when you need it. This eliminates the flashing problem & keeps VNC running, but adds another level of security headache by making your router configuration accessible to the public. If you have a good username & password, it shouldn’t be a problem.
Change the “Display Query Window” settings to timeout after a longer period, and then accept the connection by default. These kiddie scripts work on brute force, and many time out after 10 or 20 seconds. Configuring the server to wait 60 seconds before replying will cause many of them to go away uninterested after the first timeout. When you connect remotely, you’ll have to wait 60 seconds for the connection, obviously. And you may have to deal with a pop up notification about an incoming connection every once in a while, but it’s better than the constant flashing.

Right now, I’m experimenting with option #5, with good results so far. I’ve had a few pop ups, but after that first initial inquiry, the remote machine just goes away. (Instead of trying its list of 100 common passwords, causing 100 flashes.)

Number 4 is a good option (for me) too, but if #5 works, I’ll stick with that because it’s only less step to perform when connecting remotely. (Just have to wait that extra 60 seconds.)

A Great Snack: Baked Garbanzo Beans (Chick Peas) with Moroccan Spices

eddie — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 06:14:19 +0000

I want to share a great recipe I recently came across.

This recipe is from Kalyn’s Kitchen, a website I’m unfamiliar with, but bills itself as a “home-cooking blog where I share recipes that show how I’m combining my love for delicious food with a commitment to healthy, lower-glycemic eating.”

This recipe is for “Crispy Roasted Chickpeas (Garbanzo Beans) with Moroccan Spices.” I first made these in the OnEverything household about 2 months ago and they’ve been a huge hit. They’re a great anytime snack, and now that we’ve discovered them, we like to have them on hand at all times.

You don’t need all of the spices to make this recipe work. I skipped the allspice, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves, because I didn’t have those on hand, and it still turned out beautifully. Garbanzo beans (chick peas) seem to be a great base for a lot of different spice combinations. Feel free to experiment!

The Spice Mix:

2 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. ground coriander
1/2 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground allspice
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
Pinch ground cloves

The Rest:

1 can chick peas (garbanzo beans)
1-2 T olive oil

The Procedure:

Preheat oven or toaster oven to 350 F.

Drain garbanzo beans into a strainer and rinse well with cold water. Let beans drain, then pat dry with paper towel.

Toss beans with olive oil and about a Tablespoon of the spice mix. Don’t use all of the spice mix you just made – it will be far too much. Save the extra spice mix for other recipes.

Arrange the beans in single layer on baking sheet. Roast 50 minutes, or until they are slightly browned and make a rattling sound when you shake the baking sheet.

That’s it. How much easier can it get? Sure, it’s a bit cumbersome to make the spice mix the first time around, but once you make it, you’ll have enough on hand for a few more batches.

Personally, I like to cook my garbanzo beans for about an hour, because I like them extra crispy.

Thank you Kalyn for the recipe!

Trig Razor Blade Review

eddie — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:05:20 +0000

I’ll get right to the point – Trig razor blades are by far the worst blade I’ve ever used.

The blade doesn’t seem all that sharp. It pulls out more hair than it cuts.

Because of its dullness, it’s always getting caught & bouncing on my face, rather than gliding smoothly. This would normally cause a lot of nicks & scrapes, but because this blade is about as sharp as a lemon I managed to walk away relatively uninjured.

Took me three passes with this blade to get to a decent level shave, and that’s being generous. I still have stubble, and I still have missed patches.

I was surprised to find that some people really like Trig blades. (Which are manufactured by the Treet corporation.) One poster at Badger & Blade just loves them.

I’m always surprised I don’t see these excellent blades discussed more on the shave forums as I find their price to performance ratio hard to beat. A popular UK seller offers these at ten for £2.60 GBP (€3.10 EUR) and I’ll be stocking up.

Others, though, have experiences in line with my own, like this fellow at SMF.

I think your being generous with a 6.25, one of the worst blades along with all the Treet blades made in Pakistan, just did not suit me at all.

I’m sure it would suit some people, but not me.

If that’s the case, I may be tossing all of my yet-untried Treet blades in the trash.

As everyone in the wet shaving world is fond of saying, “Your mileage may vary.” Hey, maybe I got a bad batch. But the Trig blade is, by far, the worst blade I’ve ever tried.

How to Properly Thaw or Defrost Chicken in a Few Hours

eddie — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 22:58:47 +0000

I don’t eat a whole lot of meat, but I do like to have a chicken breast every now and again. For that reason, I like to buy frozen chicken breasts and keep them in the freezer for whenever I get that urge.

Problem is, defrosting chicken in the microwave never seems to go well, and I always end up with half-cooked chicken. When the oh-so-smart defrost cycle finishes, and tells me that my chicken has been defrosted, I check and see a half-cooked monstrosity. Defrosted? Really? You’ve half cooked this thing!

I’m always left feeling like I’m eating “twice-cooked” chicken. Twice baking a potato is good. Twice cooking chicken, eh, not so much.

If I planned ahead, I suppose I could simply move a piece of frozen chicken from the freezer to the refrigerator and let it thaw overnight. Unfortunately, I never seem to have that sort of foresight. Like I said, I only have chicken when the fancy strikes me, and that fancy doesn’t strike with 24 hours notice.

I used to thaw chicken by leaving it out on the counter for a few hours, but I recently learned that this is a very bad idea – most (something like 80% I think?) raw chicken carries harmful bacteria like salmonella. These bacteria are dormant at lower temperatures and are eradicated upon cooking. Problem is, when you leave chicken out on the counter the surface of that chicken comes to room temperature long before the inside does. And that’s when the bacteria start multiplying.

It takes the salmonella bacterium only about 30 minutes to replicate itself. And each time a cycle completes, the number of bacteria doubles. Each time!

Here’s an example: Let’s say you leave your chicken at room temperature for three hours. And let’s say you start with 100 bacteria. (You actually start with millions, but hey, it’s an example.) After one-half hour you’ll have 200 bacteria. Then 400. Then 800. Then 1600. And finally 3,200. 100 bacterial grew into 3,200 in just three hours!

Here’s my new method of thawing chicken, and it only takes a few hours of waiting.

1. Put chicken breast in a container.

2. Fill container with cold water*.

3. Cover the container.

4. Place the container in the refrigerator.

5. Check back in a few hours.

* Don’t use warm water! Warm water only helps the bacteria. Warm water only thaws the surface.

If you’re feeling adventurous, go ahead and add things to the water to make a marinade. I like to add some combination of soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, white wine, garlic, salt, pepper, lemon juice, orange juice, oregano, thyme, rosemary, etc. (Not all at once, obviously.) Experiment! Who knows, maybe you’ll discover something you really like. The worst that can happen is that you’ll have some funky tasting chicken. But at least you’ll learn what *doesn’t* work, and you’ll be wiser the next time around. My little tip: I’ve found that some of the fancier whole peppercorns can really make the meal.

That’s it – the water helps the chicken thaw faster than it would otherwise, and you’re able to thaw the chicken in the refrigerator, suppressing bacterial reproduction.

Why Can’t I Remove Items from the Kindle Fire Home Screen Carousel?

eddie — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 23:48:01 +0000

Psst. Hey, Amazon.

You know all those eBooks I’ve bought at your site over the years?

You know which ones I’m talking about?

Yeah, you do. And so does everyone else who picks up my Kindle Fire, because every book I’ve ever purchased from you is listed in the carousel!

Never mind the fact that I’ll never need to re-read the dozens of trashy titles that I finished years ago, which only clutters up the interface. Never mind the fact that this carousel thing is a mess with its jumble of apps, documents, videos, web page screenshots, and book covers.

But did you ever stop to think that I might not want my friends, family, and anyone who wants to play with my Fire at a coffee shop knowing that I secretly read Twilight?

Or that some people might be *embarrassed* for others to know they’ve read “Coping with Depression,” or “Transgender Explained For Those Who Are Not?” Maybe someone had to check out “Understanding and Addressing Adult Sexual Attraction to Children: A Study of Paedophiles in Contemporary Society” for research project 3 years ago, and here it is on display on their Kindle, for all comers to see, for the rest of eternity.

Or maybe I recently became pregnant and don’t want my family and friends to know just yet. But that “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” sure is a mighty big hint, don’t you think?

You’d think you’d know better.

Sure, you’ll probably respond by saying, “The Kindle is a personal device.” Yep, sure is, Amazon. It’s so personal that I can’t let anyone else ever touch it. I might as well keep it on my nightstand, locked in a small safe. Or, hey, maybe I’ll just send it back.

Fix it now, Amazon.

Or I’ll start getting my eBooks elsewhere.

Asco Super Stainless Razor Blade Review

eddie — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 02:47:14 +0000

When I started working through my double edged blade sampler pack, I thought I would write a review of each blade, or at least each blade that I liked.

But there was a problem with that plan – namely, I don’t have all that much to say about these blades. Only “I like these,” or “I didn’t like these other ones.” I’m not enough of a shaving connoisseur that I can assign numbers or ranks to different aspects of the blade.

Pretty lame, eh? I know.

So, I’m here to report in that I like these Asco Super Stainless blades a lot. Actually, I’m writing this more as a reminder to myself, so when it comes time to purchase new blades, I remember that I liked the Ascos.

From what I’ve read, they’re made in Egypt, and the shaving geeks call these the “orange-boxed Ascos.” Some people have reported getting up to 7 decent shaves from a single blade. I’ve only used the blade for one shave so far, so I don’t know if that’ll be my experience. But if is, I’ll surely be picking up bunches of these.

Interesting tidbit I saw in this forum post about the Asco blades – one commentor says that in Spanish, Asco means “it makes you sick. like puking kind of sick.” I checked the definition using Google translate and Google tells me that Asco means “disgust.” Ha ha. Maybe as in “disgustingly awesome!” Or, “it makes me sick how long these blades last.” ;-)

Eddie On Everything

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