How to Do It Yourself!

Got a Weird Icon in Your Android Notification Area? Here’s How to Remove It

I have only had this happen twice, and it has annoyed me to no end until I figured out what was causing it. What I am talking about are two different issues caused by the same piece of adware; one issue is a weird icon appearing in your Android notification area. Another is an icon just showing up out of the blue on your main Android home screen. What causes this is an app called Airpush. Airpush is an evil adware app that does this to help fund application developers. Airpush is not an app in and of itself, but can…

Which Ham Radio Should I Buy?

In my continuing series on the subject of Ham Radio, I’ll now attempt to answer the great unknown question: Which ham radio should I buy?? Well What do you Want to Do? In a lot of ways, this is almost the same as asking which phone one should buy. The first question you should be asking isn’t which radio do you want to buy, but what do you want to do, or what is your goal? Knowing what you want to do is important, because if you buy the wrong radio and try to do something it wasn’t really designed to do, you could get…

How to Do It Yourself!

How to Get a Ham Radio License

After my last ham radio post, one of the first things I wanted to write about is how you can get your Amateur Radio License. Well, it’s not as difficult now as it used to be. When I last tested to get my General Class license, I had to be able to receive Morse Code at 13 words per minute. Not long ago, the FCC and agencies in other countries removed this as a requirement for any class of license, so now all you have to do is pass one to three theory exams depending on what class license you want to…

How to Do It Yourself!

SBCGlobal Users, Are You Having Trouble Sending Your Mail? Here’s Help!

Image courtesy of OrganicKuwait blog Hi there, SBCGlobal users! I’d like to speak to those of you who work on Macs or Macbook Pros; I’ve been off Windows for a while (wow; I make it sound like heroin, don’t I), so I don’t know if what happened to me today is true on Windows boxes as well as Macs. Read on if you like, though, because maybe you’ve bumped into this problem, too! One of the things that pleased me when I upgraded to OS X Lion was with regard to the email program. I like Apple’s email program; I…

eBooks, How to Do It Yourself!

How To Replace a Kindle Keyboard Battery

On a recent game day, I charged up my Kindle in anticipation for the long trip since it was not my turn to drive. I planned on staying relaxed before we played while following the adventures of Katniss Everdeen fighting to survive in the arena, but when I laid back with my neck pillow, the Kindle refused to let me into the depths of the Hunger Games. It would be another long, boring ride without the comforts of the Kindle Keyboard. Upon arriving at home, I plugged it back in and once again charged overnight only to discover it would…

How to Do It Yourself!

How to Keep Up-to-Date and Share Information with Colleagues

The other day one of my Rabbinic colleagues asked what “system” I use in the synagogue to keep track of all of the various lifecycle “events” that take place in the community as well as make sure that all of my colleagues have as accurate and up-to-date information as possible. I wrote up my answers and then, after sending them to him, realized that while our uses for the services I mention are rather specific, the way in which we use them can easily be adapted to a host of different work-settings. Here’s what I told him.

Editorials, How to Do It Yourself!

Replacing the Fan: How My MacBook Pro Avoided the Trash, Part 3

In part 2 of this series, I took the fan out of my 13″ MacBook Pro, cleaned it and lightly lubricated it. For about a day, the fan noise was almost non-existent and the heating issue was mildly approved. Unfortunately, the noise quickly returned along with the hot CPU. This problem had to be fixed one way or another or I was going to have to throw the computer out of the window since it had become painfully slow and buggy. The next plan was to buy a new fan and replace the loud, failing original. I also decided to…

How to Do It Yourself!

Arch Linux: Only the Hardcore Need Apply

In search of a different distro (term of endearment for Linux distributions) to try, I decided to try installing probably one of the harder distros to install, Arch Linux over the weekend. I thought I would gather some thoughts into a post and share what I think of this interesting distro that doesn’t get the press that Ubuntu does. Arch Linux is a bit different than most Linux distributions out there. For example, it doesn’t have a default graphical interface. It boots directly into a Linux command prompt from the CD. You get into the install by typing in: /arch/setup in…

Gear Bits, How to Do It Yourself!, Music Diary

A Few Cool iTunes Match and iTunes Cloud Things to Remember

Having used iTunes Match along with iTunes in the Cloud for the last few months, I have developed a few habits that I don’t even realize are new anymore! This weekend I gave my younger son my 4th gen iPod Touch to use as his own, as he was constantly pushing beyond the limits of his 8GB iPod Touch that was the pseudo 3rd gen that was really a 2nd gen model holdover. Since I almost never use it, I had no qualms since I’d rather it actually get used than sit idle. But while going through things with him…

How to Do It Yourself!

Cleaning the Fan: How My MacBook Pro Avoided the Trash, Part 2

In part 1 of this 3 part series, I discovered that my computer was not acting happy due to a fan issue. Catch up with the post here to follow my MacBook adventure. One goal of this project is to avoid the Apple Store and keep the cost down as low as possible. The fan noise is definitely out of control, the machine is running hot and it has become super slow. My next plan of action is to open up the case to clean and lubricate the fan. I took a few photos to explain how to open the…

How to Do It Yourself!

The Diagnosis: How My MacBook Pro Avoided the Trash, Part 1

I pretty much live on my Mid 2009 13″ MacBook Pro. The computer literally goes everywhere I go, and it contains most everything I need for work and home life. The past few months, my amazing little machine has developed some annoying problems. First, the fan started making a loud noise. At first I thought that it was running too fast, but after adding iStat Pro to my Dashboard, I quickly found the fan to be running at normal speeds with extra noise. Soon after the loud fan issue came the heat. My CPU was regularly running a temperature up…

How to Do It Yourself!

Setting Up a Sonos Home Audio System

My biggest personal tech find of 2011 has to be the Sonos home audio system. I got a review loaner and bought one within a day. I was that impressed with it and continue to love it. You can read the the initial review here and read the review of the new, smaller PLAY:3 here. During the inaugural Gear Fest last summer I had Carly film a quick walkthrough of setting the Sonos system up. It never made it into a post… until now.

How to Do It Yourself!

Antenna + Roku HD + Netflix = $90 Savings Per Month

I hate bills. I also hate paying for things I can get for free. I was at Thomas’ house last year just hanging out. We were watching a movie on his Roku box, and I realized that the little box was giving him everything that I watch on TV except for local channels. That was the beginning of my quest to get rid of my cable bill. At first I searched the web and found that all you need is an antenna to pick up local television stations. I could remember back to my childhood, and how we had an…

How to Do It Yourself!

WiFi Sync your iPhone and iPad using Personal Hotspot

One of the coolest features in iOS 5 WiFi syncing, which I now use far more often than USB syncing. Being able to hit “Sync” on my MacBook for my iPad while it’s still in my bag (it only needs charging every few days) makes me giggle every time I do it. It’s just so simple, and works so effectively every time. With it, new music, an updated playlist, and a few new apps are just a click away. Obviously this functionality is normally used over a WiFi connection at home or the office, but it turns out you can…

How to Do It Yourself!

A Day in the Life: Using a Bluetooth Headset as a Remote Recording Device for Lectures

I have been teaching for the past few years and have found that recording my lectures is helpful for students that are sick or that need assistance due to attention deficit issues. Many of the programs to record lectures are costly, so I set out to see if I could use my MacBook and a Bluetooth headset to accomplish the task. I found that not only can I, but that it works remarkably well. The Bluetooth Device: The Bluetooth device I opted for is the Jabra BT3030 Bluetooth Stereo Headset [affiliate link]. Not only is it a good headset, but…

How to Do It Yourself!

iOS 5.0 QuickTip: It is Worth the Time to Set Up Keyboard Shortcuts

I’m a huge fan of the application TextExpander. It is, in fact, one of the key Mac utilities I cannot do without. TE offers a good deal of power but the primary reason I use it is that it allows me to create text shortcuts that have saved me a great deal of typing. For example, instead typing in Gear Diary’s URL constantly I simply type “ggear”. Less than a second later TE converts that combination into “www.geardiary.com”. That’s five characters instead of seventeen. It is even more helpful when using HTML code in a post. For example “llike” yields…

How to Do It Yourself!

Macbook Pro Utility You NEED for Better Battery Life: gfxCardStatus

Perhaps it was because I was using the Sony Vaio S-series laptop with its 15-hour battery, but I never really looked critically at the battery life on my 2011 15″ Macbook Pro. But recently I have been using it almost exclusively and have felt that I should be getting more hours between charges. My assumption – particularly how the fans would spin up even when I was doing nothing particularly challenging – was that there was something related to the graphics card. So I looked around and found that the dynamic switching on the graphics cards will often leave the…

Events, How to Do It Yourself!

Red Bull “Creation” Event — the Official Gear Diary Report

If the apocalypse comes, I want to spend it with the teams who competed in the Red Bull Creation event. They were given 72 hours and a pile of junk, along with the mission to illustrate “Energy in Motion”. Any scraps were fair game, from metal to electronics to slabs of wood, and the creations were just astounding. What they created was absolute brilliance, from hamster wheels to see-saws, and did I mention they did it in 3 days? If you left me in a room with a pile of junk and Red Bull, you’d come back to find a…

How to Do It Yourself!

Mac Quick Tip: Use Faces to Find People and Organize Out of Control iPhoto Libraries

Sometimes it is the little features in a program that can make the biggest differences. iPhoto’s facial recognition is one example of this. I knew the feature was there in the ’11 version of the software but never used it. Last week Elana’s grandma Pearl died. It was and is sad, but at 87 she had led a long, good life and is remembered fondly by many. We should all be lucky enough to have the same said about us when we are gone. I wanted to put together a montage of pictures to share with Elana and her family,…

How to Do It Yourself!

Using Technology to Train for My First Triathlon

I am currently in the final weeks training for my first triathlon here in DC on June 19th. The race lengths are an 800m swim, 20k bike ride, and 7.5k run, mostly along the National Mall. (Here are more detailed maps of the swim, bike, and run routes.) What makes this race particularly challenging for me is that when I began my training on March 19th, it was four weeks after I had hernia surgery, I couldn’t jog for more than 60 seconds without getting out of breath, had never swam freestyle in my life and couldn’t hold my form…

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