Author Archives: ayn

Making Mailplane steezy

After about 8 years of using Apple Mail on the Mac (that is if you don’t count NeXTMail on my NeXTstep back in CMU), I finally got fed up with it and had to find a better solution to access my Google Apps gmail accounts. It pretty much came down to Mailplane and Sparrow. I went with Mailplane for reasons I don’t really want to get into here. Very happy with it so far. One thing is that there are a lot of stuff in the gmail web interface that doesn’t make sense to have in Mailplane, most of which actually open up in your default browser when you click on them.

To make Mailplane a little bit more minimalistic, you can include your own stylesheet, and it’s super easy to do coz you can inspect the page right there with the webkit inspector inside Mailplane.

Minimal changes, but makes the experience a lot better. I’ve put up the stylesheet here, mostly for @seoulfully to grab and keep up with my changes easily: https://github.com/ayn/Mailplane-Steez

WaterField’s iPad 1 suede jacket fits iPad 2 + Smart Cover perfectly

With the original iPad, I wanted something to protect the iPad from other objects in my bags, but I prefer using it “naked”. WaterField Designssuede jacket was the perfect solution. With iPad 2, the Smart Cover is a really neat accessory as it protects the screen and also tilts or stands up the iPad. From looking at the specs I had suspected the iPad 2 with Smart Cover might fit inside the suede jacket for iPad 1, last week when my iPad 2 arrived, I confirmed that it is indeed a perfect fit. I think this is the best option by far.

Waterfield

Waterfield

Don’t run MySQL 5.5 on OSX

So while setting up a Rails2 development environment with RVM for one of my clients on my new Mac, I came across the infamous uninitialized constant MysqlCompat::MysqlRes error. Typically this is because the mysql gem isn’t compiled with the right archflags, but of course that wasn’t the case. After messing with it for a bit, I found out that the MySQL server I was running was 5.5.10, and 5.1 is supposedly more stable. So I downgraded it and everything worked.

credit: this post helped a bit.

2010 Pummelvision

Had to wait at least a week to make another one because I can’t justify Vimeo Plus, this one with only photos in 2010. Stuff happened last year: sold my house in Austin (thus a few Craigslist forsale/free ad pics), half dome hike, more snowboarding in Tahoe and CO, queued up for 5 hours for iPhone 4 in Austin, Banksy visited Sf, Giants won the world series, Hipstamatic and Instagram.

2010 in Pummelvision from Andrew Ng on Vimeo.

Made with Pummelvision: http://pummelvision.com/

Music by Friendly Ghost: http://friendlyghostmusic.com/

Switch your Flickr login from Yahoo! ID to Google or Facebook

Flickr/Yahoo just added Facebook Connect and Google OAuth support to their sign-in, this is great, coz now I no longer needs a Yahoo! account to use Flickr. (I assume you all loathe Yahoo! as much as I do right?)

Here’s how to change your Flickr account from your Yahoo! ID to your Google or Facebook account:

  • sign into Flickr with your Yahoo! account if you’re not already logged in
  • go to http://www.flickr.com/account/transfer/
  • hit “use existing Yahoo! ID”:
  • Flickr: Transfer your account

  • Hit “sign in as a different user”:
  • Dock-26

  • Choose Google, or Facebook (if you must):
  • Sign in to Yahoo!

  • signin and authorize your Google or Google Apps email and password, or if you chose Facebook, you probably will see a familiar oauth authorization window requesting some permissions
  • Click the “Okay, do it” button:
    Flickr: Transfer your account