All Narfed Up photography and words by Bryan Villarin

My host just emailed me this evening, quietly announcing that he installed RoundCube Webmail for me. Sweet!

When Alex King first mentioned RCW, I really wanted it instead of SquirrelMail. Perhaps I’m a sucker for a gorgeous interface. At least when I’m checking email at a friend’s house or at school, it’ll be in style.

Unfortunately, I can’t import my address book from Thunderbird. Until that feature rolls out, it’ll be tough to switch to using RCW full-time.

Oh yeah, and I’d be without Thunderbird’s Bayesian spam filters. I don’t think I have SpamAssassin - my host is running DirectAdmin, and there’s just an adult filter.

I hope Alex King gets his tabbed email proposal accepted, because the RCW mock-ups he created looks really good.

Anyway, if you have SquirrelMail, I think you should ask your host if they could install RoundCube Webmail. It’s awesome!

Last week, I bought a Kingston 1GB USB 2.0 flash drive. I didn’t need it, but it was on sale for $17. I think it’ll prove to be a worthwhile purchase.

So far, I’m using it for portable apps, a digital inbox (random files I’ll capture, process, and organize later), and a private blog to mess around with.

I’m doing my best to make sure the programs I choose don’t write to the flash drive intensively. (I’d hate for it to only live for a year, even though it has a five-year warranty.) I’m pretty confident John T. Haller’s PortableApps are optimized for the least amount of disk writes. I got a bunch of others from PortableFreeware, too. So far, the gripe I have is that opening apps seem a bit slower than I think they should. (Mainly Thunderbird, Firefox, and Gaim.) Maybe it’s in my head, but anyway, if speed is what you want, don’t go cheap.

For simple file transport, it’s all good. Since I’m still a college student, I’ll finally be able to take huge files around with me and not have to email them to myself.

I just read Podz’s tutorial, “Putting WordPress on a USB stick“, and now I have a blog is housing more private thoughts and aspirations.

I think I’d like a portable RSS news reader, but haven’t found yet. I’m currently using Bloglines.

Any other ideas? It doesn’t matter how far fetched you think it sounds, it just might be the next big idea!

If you’re looking into trying Linux, you should look at the Linux Distribution Chooser to narrow down the choices. The quiz was straight forward and easy to answer, and only took a few minutes. Everytime I think of trying Linux, I step back because there’s isn’t a pressing issue for me to try and make that switch. In any case, I took the quiz and was recommended: Ubuntu, Mandriva, or Kubuntu.

Looking through Digg, it’s been there for over seven months. I must’ve overlooked it.

[via Camieabz forums]

I made a note to myself to research about gas stations and the reasons why they charge for air and water. From the California Department of Food & Agriculture:

Gas stations are required to provide air and water free to customers who buy gasoline or diesel. You may have to ask the attendant for a token or to turn the equipment on for you. If the attendant does not give you a token or turn the equipment on, posted on the equipment is the 1-800-356-7057 number where you may call to file a complaint. You may also submit a complaint form online to the Division of Measurement Standards.

Related to that, here’s some tire pressure links:

• Check & Fill Tire Air Pressure (Gemini Automative Care)
• Air Pressure - Correct, Underinflated, Overinflated (Tire Tech)
• What’s The Right Tire Air Pressure? (VIA Online)
• Tire Air Pressure (TrustMyMechanic)

As of yesterday, I’ve been blogging here for two years. Incredible. Here’s a list of random things to wrap up my second year:

• If you wrote a quality post that you think a lot of people will like, find a site that posts similar topics and email them!
• According to Bloglines, I have 7 subscribers. I should really switch to FeedBurner to keep track of this, huh?
• I’m subscribed to about 110 feeds. Out of those, four are comics, three are deals sites, two are for music album releases, 23 are productivity-type blogs. The rest are personal or tech blogs.
• In terms of content, my blog has been all over the place for a long time. Fortunately, I think I’ve narrowed it down to tech and GTD pretty well.
• I miss the forums. I’ve lost contact with the majority of people that used to participate there.
• I’m trying not to reblog. I figure lots of people subscribe to most of the popular sites out there already.
• It’s funny when I look through the busy months and I’ve barely posted anything. What isn’t funny is knowing that there’s a lot of people who still don’t use news readers and might’ve deleted my bookmark because of inactivity. Crud.
• Along those lines, I wish news readers/aggregators became more mainstream. I’ll follow my own advice and see if emailing Kurt the Cyberguy will persuade him to do a report on the importance and effectiveness of news readers.
• The more I’m away from the computer, the more I can notice things to write about.

Now, for some posts (which I deemed interesting) from this last year in blogging:

• How [do] timesheets work? (Humor)
• My methods of troubleshooting computers (Computers)
• Trash bags in your car (Cleanliness)
• Reduce Windows XP size (Computers)
• ScanR (Camera phones)
• Spamgourmet (Email)
• RSS Tutorial (Productivity/websites)
• Protect yourself from check washing (Identity theft)
• Hamachi (Computers/Connectivity/Security)
• Train others how to use email (Email)
• One task at a time (GTD)
• Utilizing [the grouping tag] with iTunes (Music/iPod/iTunes)
• Power strip liberator (Electronics)
• Get back to them later (GTD)
• Using a Post-it with ATM cards (Lifehack)
• A blogging epiphany - trying to remove the stereotype (Blogging)
• Chill a bit (GTD)
• Why is Outlook broken? (Email)
• Have a laugh with some comics (Humor)
• How to speed up podcasts for free with Audacity (Podcasts)
• Fight traffic tickets with Ticket Assassin
• Review of Yahoo! Maps Beta (Web 2.0)
• Hack your cell phone to save minutes (Cell Phones/Lifehack/Money)

You’re one of the main reasons why I keep blogging…that, and I hope I become famous. Thanks for sticking around, and I hope I help you even more in the years to come!

Tom Raftery wrote a quick-and-easy guide on how to insert images in his blog posts. In this case, he uses Flickr. (I do, too.)

When I want to use an image in a blog post I use the copy of the image which is stored on Flickr. This has the advantages that:

1. it saves me diskspace from my hosting account,
2. it saves me bandwidth from my hosting account and
3. it is easy because Flickr provides the code to use the image from their site!

Tip: You might like the Flickr Photo Album plugin (related post), but only if you’re running your own install of WordPress. (That means you’re not using WordPress.com.)

[Read "Adding images to your blog post"]

In the theme of cell phones here these past few days, I figured it’d be cool to post another tip for LG VX8100 users: Keep the outside LCD on!

If you’re one of many that have an LG VX8100, the outside LCD screen dims after a few seconds then turns completely black after a few more. The only way to see the time is to press one of the buttons. Grab that phone, this’ll take less than 30 seconds:

1. Open the phone
2. Press the Menu button
3. Press “0“
4. The service code is 000000 (there’s six zeroes)
5. Navigate to 10. “Battery Test“
6. The screen will prompt, “LCD Backlight ON, Key Light ON, Power Save OFF”. Select YES.

Sure this setting is there to save battery life. The screen doesn’t need to stay lit when it’s in your pocket or purse. But yeah, I get lazy sometimes.

[via HowardForums]

I’ve had my LG VX8100 since October 10th, 2005. Between then and today, my lifetime calls timer is at 111:45:31. My Lifetime KB amount is 63,495 KB.

Today, I decided that I need a new battery. I needed to charge it every night. If I talk for an hour during the course of the day, with sporadic texting, it won’t make it before I get home.

After a lot of reading at HowardForums, and a helpful customer service rep at Verizon Wireless 611, I have an extended battery and a confidence in battery charging habits.

I took a trip to the Verizon Wireless corporate store Pasadena around 11am this morning. I told them about the severe decrease in battery life, and I’ve only had my phone for eight months. They basically agreed that I needed a new battery, but I’d have to buy it. At least they’d prorate it at 25% off. (I’m still not sure what “prorate” means.) I was hoping that they would replace it for free, since some of the people in the forums were stating that they got hooked up.

I also asked tech support in the store about the best battery charging methods. I was told to let it run down before charging, as opposed to charging it every night.

When I got home, I called 611 to find out if the above held true (for charging the battery). Truthfully, the CSR told me the opposite. She has a Samsung SCH-A970 and she charges her phone every night. Her three daughters all have LG VX8100s. They use theirs a lot, and got the extended battery because the standard one died too quickly. In addition, the battery doesn’t get overcharged - she insisted that charging stops once its full. She suggested I do the same.

Since the extended battery was about $8 more, I went back to the Verizon store to exchange for the better one.

Back at the forums, this huge thread on battery conditioning brought about this post referencing Battery University.

“How to prolong lithium-based batteries”

My current thoughts on the extended battery:

It’s not too much thicker. I have high hopes for it since it’s a 1700mAh battery, whereas the standard battery is 1000mAh.

I sent a couple TXT messages while it’s still charging, and it definitely feels more comfortable typing on the keypad. (As comfortable as it can get typing on a small keypad, of course.)

I’m not sure if there’s a more exhaustive review, but forum member “fillthemup” wrote a brief one and included five photos.

Any questions?

Update: After a full charge, 54 minutes of talk time, 2 days, 17 hours standtime, 47 TXT messages, 4 PIX messages, and a handful of songs listened to at full blast, my battery was only at two bars. Nice.

I think I got banned from a lot of Counter-Strike servers earlier today. Why?

I was itching for some fy_iceworld2 (a map with no real purpose except to kill each other). I found one with a small number of players, but ended up going 1-on-1 with some other guy. I killed him 4 times in a row. Not sure what the rules were, but that was it. I didn’t get any error message, Counter-Strike just “ended” on me. No warning, and he didn’t chat with me.

To be honest, I’m not even that good. I guess I picked the wrong guy to kill 4 times in a row. He probably was an admin. (They should do background checks on those guys.)

I’m in good standing on the VAC server. I asked for help at Steam-powered Support.

Ridiculous. It’s amazing that so many people continue to play Counter-Strike, compared to all the other Steam games available.

Thoughts? Do you agree? Am I a geeky dork for wanting to play this game again? Lemme hear ya!

Update: I got a reply 16 hours later and was directed to an FAQ article titled “Admin Slowhacking.” That did the trick. Thanks JeffH!

I went a few minutes over on my cell phone plan this month. Fortunately, my billing cycle starts over tomorrow. I went wrong because I had long conversations with people who I knew didn’t have Verizon Wireless IN calling, and I had access to a landline phone or Skype.

Optional step, but highly recommended

I suggest going through your contacts list and writing “VZW IN” or “Not VZW” in another column. (I have Palm Desktop, so I was adding this manually.) If you have any doubt that a contact might not have Verizon Wireless, I found a gem: the “Are your friends and family IN?” phone number lookup!

I made up the name.

Main step

For the people who you know do not use Verizon Wireless, add a plus (+) after their name. You can use any symbol you want, but on my LG VX8100, the plus sign is on my first page of the symbols list.

That’s it.

When these friends/relatives/coworkers call, and you see a plus after their name, you can selectively call them back right away on a landline/Skype, or answer and make sure the conversation remains short.

I have no idea if there’s a phone lookup service for other cell phone providers to see if they’re on the same network. I’m pretty stoked Verizon Wireless has this.

Can you digg it!?! (No really, I’d love to say I got dugg once!)

Update: Welcome Lifehackers! Thanks for granting my wish and posting this, Adam.