I switched over to LinuxMint full-time this year. More about that later. But I’m learning the tools now available in Linux. So… I had an occasion of combine multiple PDF files. Not having Adobe Acrobat Pro or otherwise, I was unaware of how to do it with Linux. A quick Google search later and I...
Author: Russ Turley
Where can I get my own personal beach table?
Every time we pull this little Personal Beach Table out of the bag someone asks me where I got it. My wife got it at Ross, locally, but they have them on Amazon for only $16.94 and free shipping with Amazon Prime. It’s the perfect table to accompany the Tommy Bahama Beach Chairthat everyone is...
Straight Talk Wireless APN Settings for MMS
Around September 2013 I decided to ditch AT&T for my mobile phone service and move to Straight Talk Wireless. I love the service, especially the price. The service is $45 for unlimited talk, texts and data. I have not tested the limits of “unlimited”, but it works well. One caveat is MMS. Straight Talk has...
Amazon Raising Prime Service to $99/year
It was inevitable. I received the following email today from Amazon informing me that the price of their Amazon Primewill go up from $79 to $99 per year. Dear Russell Turley, We are writing to provide you advance notice that the price of your Prime membership will be increasing. The annual rate will be $99...
Great Gifts for the Geek in Your Life
People are always asking me if this tech gift or that geek gift is right for their significant other. The one rule that I try to follow is this, “most electronics are crap”. This is particularly true for many of the gifts that are marketed for “the geek in your life” around the holiday season....
Become a GMail Ninja
As a GMail user I tend to search for emails a lot. Rather than organize by labels I just use the search function. Search for a keyword from the email and up it pops in the results. You want an email from john@smith.com, searching for the email address gives you all the interactions with that...
Amazon Prime Hobbled
While making a purchase on Amazon today I ran into a problem that I hadn’t had before. The thing that I wanted, the USB to Micro USB adapter pictured at the right was listed as an “Add-on Item”. I wasn’t adding it on to anything. I just wanted to purchase the cable and have it...
Why I’m Passing on Apple Products in the Future
I was recently talking to my wife about not buying any more Apple devices. We have a few Apple computers in the house. Both of them are Mac Minis, one old G4 version, and an Intel Mini that I use as my main workstation for producing podcasts, writing, paying bills, etc. We also have a...
Learning to Code
Most of the new projects that I come up with usually need some sort of programming. Often open source software can be used, but it almost always has to be tweaked in some way or another. The skills to make those tweaks yourself can be invaluable. Today, over on Reddit, I saw a post of...
Mobile Podcast Web Apps
Quite a few years ago I created the mobile version of the Fat 2 Fit Radio site. I took the main functionality from the main WordPress site and translated it using some neat tools, iWebKit and Simple Pie. The main thing that I wanted listeners to do was listen to the podcast on their iPhones....