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Showing posts from 2012

How to get anything on EBAY for free (and get away with it)

This article explains how to get anything for free on Ebay. This is very simple, proven and guaranteed to work. You can get, for example, an IPhone 4, a 64GB IPad 2, or even a Macbook Pro laptop for free. 1. If the seller does not use delivery confirmation, you already won. Just tell ebay you never received the item. They will always side with you (bhe buyer) and refund your money, including shipping, AT THE SELLER'S EXPENSE. There is nothing the seller can do. Ebay will not investigate further, they close the case.  I have hard numerous reports of this happening.  See this facebook thread  and this article . The buyer now has no item, no money, and in addition he is out the cost of shipping. Totally screwed. 2. If you are dealing with a savvy seller, they will use delivery confirmation. Don't worry, you can still get your item for free. After you receive the item, open a case and claim the item broken. Let's use an IPhone 4 as an example. Open a claim and say the medi

How to tell if your password was leaked on LInkedIn for Dummies (Not Idiots)

 Download the hash file here:  http://www.mediafire.com/?n307hutksjstow3 ** Warning - if you had a stupid password like "linkedin" or "password" it's already been cracked and removed from teh file. You lose. Go here,  http://duckduckgo.com/?q=sha1+password  and replace the 'password' portion with your actual password.  This site doesn't know who you are, so this should be safe.  Copy the result, you'll need it.  The SHA1 hash for 'password' is  5baa61e4c9b93f3f0682250b6cf8331b7ee68fd8. Open the text file and search for the password.  Use your favorite tool for this.  If it's found, the good news is your password isn't cracked yet, but the bad news is it's been leaked and could get cracked soon, depending on complexity. bonus: Next, repeat steps 1 and 3, except prepend 00000  to your password.  So if your password was password , you would get the sha1 for 00000password.   If you get a positive match, your password has alre

Choosing the perfect travel backpack

Going on a trip?  Need new luggage?  Purchasing new luggage is no joke.  Take your time, understand the field well, don't pull the trigger too early.  When you find the right one though, don't hesitate. It will have a drastically positive effect on your life, till death do you apart.  Along the way, you'll be tempted by the sexy, tall, internal frame hiking packs such a the Granite Gear Nimbus Core . It's quite paramount to not act on this temptation, or you're in for a life of regret.  So listen up, the advice in this article could change your life. Forever. My scenario: I'm heading on a camping trip to a small island in the Caribbean.  One boeing flight, then a small prop plan, then taxi or public transport to the beach. Rent gear, set it up, camp, swim, kayak, capture some amazing  http://gopro.com/hd-hero2-cameras/  HD GoPRO2 footage and head home. First, we must understand what types of packs there are. Not even this is documented.  The key metric you

Power napping 101

Tired? Take a nap. It's a powerful and not so well understood technique.  I normally need 7-8 hours of sleep and wake up to an alarm. Yesterday something incredible happened.  I slept only 4.5 hours and I woke up naturally (beat my alarm by over an hour, boom). I had a very active Sunday - I cycled at least 15 miles, including a 50 minute Soul Cycle NYC session with Avicii and Calvin Harris.  I tried to work, but around 9pm started falling asleep.  So I set my alarm for 25 minutes and went to sleep. I woke up  after 20 minutes, had a strong coffee, and started coding.  I remained completely alert until 4am, when I decided to go to sleep for the sake of sanity, not because I was tired. I woke up at 9am, completely refreshed. I'm at work now, still completely refreshed. The 20 minute nap + strong coffee might be the answer to a longer life, and living off only 5 hours of sleep. A 3 extra hours per day is a valuable asset.  That's an extra 21 hours per week, or 84 hour

Black bars in exported Premiere dslr CS6 film, solution.

If your exported movie has black bars on both sies and the top, it's because your'e using an SD sequence with widescreen aspect ratio.  Modern DSLR cameras shoot widescreen. This was shot with a Canon T3I, Magic Lantern, Cinestyle techincolor. You don't have to start from scratch.  Just click on File/New/Sequence to create a new sequence choose the widescreen format.  Next, go back to your old sequence, and select and copy everything on the timeline.  Go back to new sequence, paste it, and voila, your black bars are gone! FYI this slow motion was shot with these setttings: 1/250 exposure 1920x1080 60hz movie reorder 70-200mm shitty canon lens wide open at I believe f/5.6 (I need a new lens!) Magic Bullet Looks for color correction The really really important rules for slow motion filming: -Shoot at a short exposure time (unlike regular film) -Shoot at 60hz, not 24hz -Focus so that the objects are IN focus when they are NEAREST to the camera.  This is

Is IMDB and the internet fundamentally broken? SEO takedown.

Food, Inc:  Rotten Tomatoes "approved reviewers" give it 96%.  "User votes" only 80%.  IMDB only 79%.  Why the discrepancy?  I just watched this movie, it's certainly not a 76% movie.  Heck, it changed my life. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/food_inc/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1286537/ If enough people really hated this movie to give it 79%, surely there must be criticism.  I looked - oddly, this movie is very loved.  Furthermore, why the rotten tomatoes discrepancy?  Are the approved reviewers so out of touch with what people really like?   I would expect to see a close match. Case in point. Saving private ryan is a 92%/93%. Almost a perfect match, as expected: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/saving_private_ryan/ So, I have another theory.  The China SEO.  Ask yourself this: If you're an international, multi billion dollar food mega corp who largely depends on your reputation, and a very edgy documentary is released that has the potential to a

Food Inc review.

Food, Inc is one of the most disruptive documentaries I"ve ever seen.  Watch it. Make your family watch it.  It's tough, you may want to throw up during a few scenes, but it might be the most important film you ever see. I scanned for criticism expecting to find controversy, embellishments, and half truths as the norm with documentaries where the director really wants to drive his point home (Michael Moore is somewhat infamous for this). To my disbelief,  it appears to be completely accurate. I found 2 camps of critics: 1) vegetarians.  understandable - they said the movie sucked because it didn't preach avoiding meat products altogether.   I sympathise, but doesn't make it a bad movie.  Baby steps. 2) farmers.  they were offended at how menacing it made them look. But, they generally agreed that everything in the movie was true. Best documentary of 2012 so far (despite being released years ago. I missed it.)

Removing watermark from income tax PDF file

Boom, you need to refile you income tax forms for IRS and the only copy you have is a PDF from h&r block or TurboTax.  The problem is, they are watermarked with giant 'DO NOT FILE, COPY ONLY' letters. Solution :  open up in any basic image editor (Gimp, photoshop).  Drag contrast up to about 90%.  The watermark letters will magically disappear. Poof.  It causes some quality degradation in the rest of the text, so ideally you'll want to only change contrast in the area where the watermark exists.  Highlight with rectangle select tool. Quality is good enough to be readable by IRS agent.  Heck, drag that contrast all the way up to 100% and make them squint a bit.