5 surprising facts about my OS Lion install

Last night I finally installed OS X Lion. What makes this surprising: I waited three whole weeks from the time of release! A new record of personal restraint in holding off from the pain and suffering of early adoption. The tipping point for me to finally make time...

Diary of a yak shave: Or, How to get an Excel file into Scrivener

I need to write a draft document that borrows from my previous blog posts. A sane (non-techie) person might just write the freaking document, already. But that is not the Geek Way. So I’m now in the middle of an epic yak shave: Installed a WordPress plugin that...

Mac users, meet your menu bar

Can you recognize the signs of SMBB? Selective Menu Bar Blindness affects millions of Mac users, but has yet to be widely recognized as a chronic and debilitating condition. Patient X — let’s call her “Shmalexandra” — was treated for a...

Should you buy an iPad?

Last weekend we made the great pilgrimage across the border so that we could get iPads on the day of their release. The iPad won’t be available in Canada until the end of the month, and it seemed unfathomable to wait 20 days for a product that actually describes...

The geek’s guide to child-proofing: how to keep your tech safe from baby

With the wisdom earned from six years’ of childraising, two destructive children and four or five figures’ worth of maimed technology, I’d like to weigh in on the neglected side of childproofing. Because once you’ve figured out how to keep your baby safe from your stuff, it’s time to figure out how to keep your stuff safe from baby.