Locks

The deadbolt on our back door broke about two weeks ago. We could still lock it from inside, but the key would spin endlessly when we tried to open it. Our landlords came by and brought a new deadbolt and handle lock.

What do you do when something breaks? You take it apart. Locks have always fascinated me. I've wanted to learn to pick locks since I saw The Saint, starring Val Kilmer. Matt Watson in junior high could open combination locks while putting them to the back of his ear and listeninging. One friend purchased a lock picking gun at the Spy Store in LA. I downloaded the MIT Lockpicking Manual ages ago but still have it on my computer.

As you can see, my love affair with locks has lasted a long time. I've never completely taken one apart, however. Until now. Here's a short animation of how locks work:



I took the entire thing apart. Every pin and every spring. And then I put it back together. Here's what I learned that interested me:

1) All the top pins are the same length. The variation is only in the bottom pins.
2) The bottom pins are in the lock cylinder plug, which slides out of the lock cylinder housing (which holds the top pins and springs).
2) You can purchase kits to rekey locks yourself. They come with a plug to prevent the top pins and springs from falling out when you slide out the lock cylinder plug. They also have an assortment of bottom pins of different lengths.

It was a lot of fun to learn. This guy had a similar experience.

Importing from Blogger to Tumblr

I shared a TechCrunch article on Google Reader last week entitled "John Mayer Clarifies: Twitter Isn't Dead, Tumblr is Just Better. Join Me."  I shared it because I enjoy learning how people use technology, and especially how they market it. I didn't take the time to actually check out Tumblr.

Brooke did. She showed it to me last night, and it's great. It's simple to use and understand, provides a rich variety of options, and is heavily integrated into the social web. I've been building a custom Drupal website with similar functionality (i.e. different types of posts, etc). Instead of reinventing the wheel (although I do love learning and will still probably build my own anyway), I may just leverage Tumblr.

One thing it's natively lacking is an easy way to import from Blogger. A Tumblr user wrote a program to fix the problem. You can find it here. It asks for your Tumblr password. Before using this tool, change it to something temporary. After the import, change it back. I imported my BeforeWeGetStarted blog, but it only pulled in 25 posts. Curious, I began to investigate.

It turns out that the default Blogger RSS feed length is only 25 posts. I use FeedBurner, which is based on the default feed. To get all of my posts to import to Tumblr, I turned off FeedBurner in order to have access to the source feed. Then I typed the original Blogger source feed address in the tool, but added this custom code in the URL: ?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=200. I found that search help here.

Voila! It worked perfectly. The only problem I had was deleting the imported posts from my first two unsuccessful attempts. Tumblr doesn't have a good content management dashboard.

Google Chrome Speed Video

Beth Dies (Spoiler Alert!)

There's a lot of background information necessary to truly appreciate this post.

My baby sister loves Jane Austen and Emile Bronte and Louisa May
Alcott and everything written in that time period. She owns the five-
hour version of Pride and Prejudice. Anne of Green Gables was a staple
in our household. Meg, Beth, Jo, and Amy were also common visitors.

I don't know how it started, but whenever I would see her reading one
of those books or watching one of those movies, I would say "Beth
dies". She would roll her eyes and say "Derek, this is Northanger
Abbey." It became a ritual between us.

When my roommate Ryan started reading Little Women, I casually said
"Oh, Beth dies." He looked up at me with tear-filled eyes and cried
"What!!!"

Oops...

He approached me a few days later and said, "Derek, I'm not enjoying
the book anymore. Every chapter I keep on expecting Beth to die."

Sorry Ryan. I thought everyone knew! Here's a picture of Louisa May
Alcott's house as a peace offering. She grew up here, and it was her
experiences with her sisters which inspired her to write Little Women.



Interesting facts: it's about a mile away from Emerson's house, and not
far from where Nathaniel Hawthorne did some of his writing. Walden
Pond is also less than two miles away.

iPhone Stands

Simple, elegant design is in style right now. Minimalist. Less is more. I came across this MoviePeg stand on Google Reader the other day and I'm coveting it.

However, I just don't feel like forking over $10 for a stand I don't think I'll ever use. Instead, I followed a link to the iBend. It's a flimsy piece of plastic that also holds up your iPhone.

I saw it and thought to myself "I could make that". I cut the plastic cover off an old notebook and started shaping my own iBend. My results were decent, but nothing spectacularly stable. Then I had the bright idea to poke around the website some more. I found a bigger image that was the perfect size to trace (bigger than the one below, so don't trace that). I traced it, cut it, and had my very own iBend.

We'll see if I use it. Perhaps when I watch TED Talks during my flights to Minneapolis.

Pano

I took this picture with Pano, a great iPhone app I downloaded the
other day. I've always loved panoramic photos. Remember when Kodak
came out with the film which had a panoramic setting? I always wanted
one of those.

If this clock were a different color...

Remember Matt, the guy who dances all around the world?

I posted his YouTube video here. As we were wandering around MIT on Saturday, we saw a crowd gathered around. We walked past without stopping, but then Brooke's mom saw his book and realized who he was.

What Are You Putting Out There?

This website, Spokeo, aggregates all information you've posted publicly on a social networking site. It's more than a little creepy - it'll make you want to revisit all of your privacy settings.

Spokeo charges a fee to access detailed information. You can also request that Spokeo remove information about you from their site. This won't remove that information from the social media site you posted it on, so be sure to go to the source. Spokeo isn't the only social media aggregator out there.

MIT