Hiking Volcan Cerro de Oro, Lake Atitlan, Guatamala

On the northern foot of Volcán Tolimán is a lesser climbed lava dome, Cerro de Oro (“Hill of Gold”). The hike and summit provide gorgeous views of Lago Atitlan, Volcán Tolimán, Volcán San Pedro, and Volcán Atitlán.

And… we discovered a Mayan ceremonial site along the way, and some ancient Mayan stone statues at the summit.

The most popular volcano to climb is San Pedro, but that requires a good 5am departure and a full day to climb. Atitlan and Toliman are even more difficult to get to, require more logistics, and take a full day plus to climb. Continue reading “Hiking Volcan Cerro de Oro, Lake Atitlan, Guatamala”

Disabling Controls on a Brightcove Video

At last, we figured out how to disable the playback controls on a Brightcove video. It was far from easy to figure out, but it IS possible to do in a few simple steps.

Why Disable Playback Controls?

Why would you want to turn off the play/pause options on a video and disable the scrubber at the bottom?

Well in my case, we often put up sales pages online and a) don’t want folks skipping to the end of the video and b) have tightly controlled timing of things like when the Add to Cart button pops up.

With other players (JW Player, FlowPlayer, EZS3, Easy Video Player and MORE) you can easily disable the controls. Continue reading “Disabling Controls on a Brightcove Video”

Unmerging Two Contacts on Android

AndroidOne day, I went to email a contact on my Android tablet, and as I started to type his email address, a different name came up. Oddly, I noticed that all of Chris’ email addresses were now showing up under Leo’s name (along with Leo’s email addresses).

Additionally, in the Google Voice call log and text history on my tablet, any calls or texts with Chris showed up as calls/texts with Leo.

This was not expected. In Gmail on the web, and in Gmail on my Android phone, both contacts were still distinct, but not on my tablet; they were merged together somehow… Continue reading “Unmerging Two Contacts on Android”

Google Docs – How to Find Documents Shared With Someone

Google DocsIn the old version of Google Docs, you could search for documents shared with someone. In the new version you can not. After much searching, I finally found a list of search codes you can use to search Google Docs and voila, you can indeed search for documents shared with people by using the “to:” prefix, i.e. to:bob@somewhere.com. Continue reading “Google Docs – How to Find Documents Shared With Someone”

How To Attach an Ice Axe to Your Pack

Ice Axe attached to an Ospey PackWhen you bought your pack, it may have had a loop (or two!) on the bottom to hold your ice axe(s), but… how do you attach the axe to your pack?

I never knew how myself, but on a recent snowshoeing and backpacking trip, George showed my how and the solution rocks!

First, drop the ice axe down through the loop, so the head is above the loop and the shaft is through and below the loop with the pick side facing the middle of the pack.

Now fold it up and secure it to your pack using whatever the manufacturer put in line with the folded up shaft. Continue reading “How To Attach an Ice Axe to Your Pack”

[Errno 32] Broken pipe in s3cmd

Broken Pipe in s3cmdI’ve been looking for a fast and easy way to deal with Amazon S3 from a Unix command line prompt, and came across s3cmd which seemed great, until it didn’t work.

After running s3cmd --configure to configure it and then running a test successfully, I tried to upload a file using  s3cmd put filename s3://bucket/filename and got an error, specifically [Errno 32] Broken pipe.

The program would continually throttle the upload speed and retry until it couldn’t get the file up at any speed, no matter how slow. Continue reading “[Errno 32] Broken pipe in s3cmd”

Fun Pyramid Set Math

Push Up PyramidsIf you’re doing work out sets with a pyramid, i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 1 , there is some really cool math to figure out your totals, or work backwards from a total to get your max count in the pyramid.

Pyramids are a great way to increase your max rep in a given set, for example in pushups, pullups, and situps. For example, with a maximum number of reps at 5, you can knock out a total count of 25.

Now, for the fun math. Continue reading “Fun Pyramid Set Math”

Reducing PDF File Sizes on OSX

ColorSync UtilitySometimes when I print a file to a PDF, the resulting file is HUGE. There’s no reason for a print-ready 1 page, mostly text page made in Microsoft Word to be 7 – 40 MB.

Fortunately, there’s a little-known, but super-effective solution to reduce the size of your PDF files dramatically.

Open ColorSync Utility (search for it using spotlight) and then drag your PDF file to the ColorSync Utility icon in your dock to open it. From there, you’ll see a drop down on the bottom left.

Choose Reduce File Size and click Apply. Save the file and note the drastically reduced file size. I’ve gone from 7MB to 500kb with two clicks and even better in some cases.

Goodbye bloated PDFs!

Copying and Pasting Non-Hidden (Visible) Cells in Excel

Selecting Visible Cells Only in Excel
Selecting Visible Cells Only in Excel

Every have a huge spreadsheet with some hidden rows and columns, only to find that when you copy and paste the data, all the hidden data comes along for the ride?

Guess that would be helpful sometimes, but other times, you just want the visible data to be copied leaving the hidden rows and columns behind.

I searched the web and found solutions that involved filtering, re-hiding the data you didn’t want to see, and even using macros to get the job done.

The best answer, though, goes to April, who shows how to select just the visible cells and then copy and paste away. Continue reading “Copying and Pasting Non-Hidden (Visible) Cells in Excel”

7 Fun Tips and Tricks with Skype Chat

If you use Skype chat all day every day like I do, you may enjoy these few fun tips and tricks:

1. The “hidden” Skype emoticons

Skype EmoticonsSkype has a great set of built in emoticons, but there are dozens of more… “fun” ones that you can’t access from the menu. If you mouse over all of the icons in the menu, you’ll see what the code for them is, i.e. (giggle) (h) (y) etc… If you type those codes in (parenthesis and all) you’ll get the respective emoticons. Click on the chart to the right for an example.

But… there are some other emoticons Skype doesn’t tell you about. Try the following for a little fun: (drunk) (mooning) (smoke) (finger) (poolparty) and (rock)

These “hidden” emoticons can add a bit more fun to your IMs when used appropriately.

2. Kicking someone out of a group chat

Sometimes you have someone in a group chat and you want to boot them out of the chat. Perhaps it’s a work group chat and you’ve terminated someone and don’t want them coming back in the chat. Continue reading “7 Fun Tips and Tricks with Skype Chat”