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Random Links for June 3

dustin — 2008-06-03T07:00:02-04:00

How to Survive A Disaster.

GiveMeaning - Free Online Fundraising Tools for Charities.

Kiva - Loans that change lives.
Awesome micro-credit lending organization.

Global Agents for Change.
Biking from Vancouver to Mexico to raise money for micro-credit loans.

Random Links for November 15

dustin — 2007-11-15T07:00:02-05:00

World Sunlight Map

12 Amazing Photographs from Earth Shots

How to Migrate Your Custom Domain's Email to Google

Not the Daily Show, With Not John Stewart [4 min video]

Mainly How Gay It Is

goodladd — 2007-11-05T10:32:57-05:00

Those of you who used to hang around the Stanley palace back in the heady days of McGill Improv might remember this awesome clip from the Daily Show. I particularly like Jon Stewart's early Noughties hair.

Blogger Play

registeredname — 2007-09-30T22:28:21-04:00

I'm not sure if you have to be a member of Blogger to view this but recently they launched Blogger Play ( http://play.blogger.com )
Basically it's a random slide show of countless of photos that are posted on public blogs within the Blogger Community.

It's really cool to check out.

Grizzly battle of wits

Bryan — 2007-04-21T20:27:12-04:00

Which of these planes crashed moments after this picture was taken? (Let's pretend the pilot was ok.)

How to get discounts on the internet

dustin — 2007-01-07T06:02:50-05:00

If you're ever buying something on the internet and you see a Coupon Code or similar field on the checkout page, take a moment to look around for a coupon that you can use.

RetailMeNot.com is one site that is dedicated to collecting coupon codes. I searched it for godaddy.com and got 10% off a couple of domains using digg as the code. Nice.

Google is another option, running a search for XYZ coupon can turn up results that Retail Me Not doesn't have. I just checked and it works for Sillysoft.

It's comin' up, it's comin' up, it's there

Chronomorph — 2006-10-31T13:47:39-05:00

Without Annette has two shows comin' up in the next two weeks. You can see us challenge Team Danson at Theatre Ste-Catherine this friday @ 11 for $1000000 and you can see us rock the house at the Comedy Nest on Nov. 10th @10:30. It's insane!

HOWTO make your own devil sticks

dustin — 2006-07-31T04:51:47-04:00

This article describes the simple process of how to make your own Devil Sticks. The only materials you need are wood dowels and hockey tape, and it should take well under an hour.

MATERIALS:
- Wooden dowels: 4 feet of 5/16" diameter and 2 feet of 1/2"
- Hockey tape: one roll (more for colors)
- A saw to cut the dowels.

Get this stuff at a hardware store (or maybe a sports store for the hockey tape if you don't live in Canada).

STEP 1: Saw vs Dowels
Cut the thick dowel to be 2 feet long. This will be the middle devil stick.

You need to cut 2 pieces of the thinner dowel, the same length. Recommended: 20-24 inches long. (shown above - note I have 2 thick dowel pieces when only 1 is required).

STEP 2: Sticky Tubes

Pull down a long roll of tape (don't cut it).

Spin the roll so the tape rolls into a tube. Sticky-side out.

Wrap the sticky tube along the thick dowel as shown. Cut it off at the end.

Repeat this a second time, but reverse the direction so the 2 sticky tubes intersect regularly.

STEP 3: Exterior Tape
Wrap the thick dowel with one big piece of tape, only cutting off at the end. You can still just stretch the tape away from its spool a little at a time.

STEP 4: End Weights
Wrap some bulbs of extra tape on each end of the middle stick. This provides counter-weight for the devil stick in the air. You don't need too much, start small and test it out.

STEP 5: Hand Stick Exterior Tape
Repeat the exterior tape step on both of the hand-sticks. EXCEPT make sure to make small bumps as you tape. Vary the angle you wrap around to get these. This gives you increased friction and better handling.

STEP 6: Rock your Devil Sticks
Here's a grainy video of mine in action:

PS: Thanks to my bro for teaching me this years ago.

HOWTO make your own board game

dustin — 2006-07-25T23:01:24-04:00

Here's the story of how independent board game designer Peter Morrison conceived, developed and self-published his own strategic board game VIKTORY (and now its sequel VIKTORY II). Pretty cool tale I think. I found out about this when Peter emailed me asking if I wanted to become an affiliate and help market VIKTORY II. After reading more about the game I said yes. The game mechanic is pretty unique, and has some lovely consequences.

Anyone who has played a lot of Risk (or Lux) will understand that getting into big battles near the start of the game is a sure-fire way to lose. The other players not fighting will grow stronger and eventually eat you for your cards. VIKTORY's mechanic is totally different, with players who attack (early and/or often) being at an advantage. The worst-case scenario of attacking is that your units get sent back to your towns at the end of your turn (rather then being completely removed from the board like in Risk). The consequence seems to be a fast-paced attack-full strategy board game.

Of course, this is just from reading about the game (and watching a video). I want to get myself a copy and try it out for real. If you feel the same then you could use this link and I'll get a little cut of the sale for my marketing efforts ;-).

How to buy a domain name and set up a website on it

dustin — 2005-05-15T21:58:13-04:00

A friend asked me today how to go about buying a domain name and setting up a website on it. Here's the process:

1. Buy a domain name from a registrar. There are tons of different places you can do this. I recommend GoDaddy.com because they're cheap and popular (aka no bankruptcy). On their site you can play around by entering different domain names and they will tell you what's available. When you find one you want you can buy it online using a credit card.

One thing you should know about GoDaddy is that they keep their prices low by trying to sell you all kinds of other services in addition to the domain you want. Just click 'No thanks' for all the stuff they offer you and it will all go well. The price of a domain name there should be $10 per year or less. You can buy it for 2 or more years at the start if you want. This means you won't have to bother renewing it in a year, and sometimes there are further discounts for buying many years at once.

2. After you buy a domain name you need to get a webhost to serve a website on it for you. If you have a friend with a server then you could ask him to host it there. Otherwise there are a million commercial webhosts out there. I have only had shitty experiences with cheap webhosts, so I can't recommend any personally. I've heard some good rumblings about DreamHost though. A cheap webhost will probably charge from 5-20$ per month.

Once you have a friend or company ready to host your site you will have to login to your registrar's control panel (this would be at GoDaddy) and change your nameservers to whatever your webhost tells you to. This way the registrar knows to point everyone looking for your domain to your webhost, and your webhost then serves up the content.

That pretty much wraps up the lesson. Any questions?

Clearing the DNS cache on Mac OS X

dustin — 2005-04-21T00:27:15-04:00

Once Mac OS X resolves a domain name into an IP address it will cache the IP address for a while. If you want to clear out all the caching to make it resolve the IP address again you can do so using this simple command:

lookupd -flushcache

Thank you random internet page.