As I'm now officially freelance again, it was definitely about time to finally update my personal web site, which until now was really just an online CV I used to use when applying for work while traveling and hadn't been updated since 2006!
Working freelance I've found it's actually just as hard or even harder to find the time to work on your own stuff but this was long overdue so I spent the last week or so working out what CMS I was going to use, getting some graphic art done and putting a completely new site together. It's very basic at this point - it's purpose is essentially just to give existing and potential customers a point of contact and referral. It will be expanded over time to include some new work examples / clients / case studies etc and will be updated form time to time with news, blog posts etc.
This new site also introduces my new domain name benhare.com which until recently resided in a parked state on a domain squatting whore company's servers. Lucky for me, they must have decided there were no takers for their domain ransom scam and so benhare.com is now under it's rightful ownership and control. You can still access the site via the benhare.org domain however, now that I am working freelance, I will be using the benhare.com domain in the future.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
new music site - free mixtape hosting and downloads
i'm currently developing a new music site Xtapes. The site offers mixtape hosting and mixtape downloads with new features being added regularly. Currently in alpha/qa release stage.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Painting car door mirrors - 1998 Toyota Starlet EP91R
The latest task in my '98 Starlet Glanza project is to paint the door mirrors. There's no point getting the Glanza mirrors especially when you'd have to find them in the same colour as your car and would be expensive when you can do a nice job painting them yourself.
1. Get your car's colour code. This is located on the VIN plate ( where the vehicle identification number is ) which is located on the firewall in the engine bay. My car is Platinum Metallic aka bluish silver which is Toyota colour code 1A0. To get your colour from the code just search for it: Toyota colour code or similar.
2. Get a spray can custom mixed with this colour. Autobarn does this for ~ $30. You also need a can of undercoat / primer ( ~ $10 Autobarn ) and a can of top coat / clear coat ( ~ $10 Autobarn ).
3. Remove the mirrors from the car:
* remove the triangular shaped interior panel on the inside of the door frame which covers the mirror connection to the door. This is a clip on panel. The way I usually do this is to gently insert a flat head screwdriver where there is room under the cover at the closest end to you ( rear of car end ), move it round a bit til you find the right spot to pry it up, then gently twist the screwdriver to pop up the cover. Gently pull up on the end closest to you and wiggle it out, minding the clips on the other end ( towards front of car ).
* undo the nuts locking the mirror in place and gently remove mirror unit.
4. Clean the mirror unit. You can also take this opportunity to remove the underside panel of the unit and clean out any debris inside it. In my case I had a lot of hidden dirt in behind the actual mirror itself, on the inside of the housing. Give that a thorough clean with high pressure water and dry it out ( hair dryer if it's cold ).
5. The actual mirror cannot be removed from the unit without damage to the rubber seals providing water proofing for the unit and the car, however I still want to paint as close to possible to the entire mirror surround for a smooth, clean look. To this end, I am going to mask just the face and edge trim of the mirror with newspaper and masking tape, essentially wrapping the mirror up, then paint the entire mirror housing, letting paint cover as far as the eye can see on the inner side of the housing down and down behind the actual mirror itself. This way when removed the mirror glass and trim will remain as they were and the inside of the housing should look completely covered.
6. Mask off the rest of the mirror casing ie; the bracket mounting it to the car, we want that black / original colour.
7. Sand back the mirror housing and paint. There's plenty of how tos around for that part.
I'll be posting pics up shortly when the job is done..!
1. Get your car's colour code. This is located on the VIN plate ( where the vehicle identification number is ) which is located on the firewall in the engine bay. My car is Platinum Metallic aka bluish silver which is Toyota colour code 1A0. To get your colour from the code just search for it: Toyota colour code
2. Get a spray can custom mixed with this colour. Autobarn does this for ~ $30. You also need a can of undercoat / primer ( ~ $10 Autobarn ) and a can of top coat / clear coat ( ~ $10 Autobarn ).
3. Remove the mirrors from the car:
* remove the triangular shaped interior panel on the inside of the door frame which covers the mirror connection to the door. This is a clip on panel. The way I usually do this is to gently insert a flat head screwdriver where there is room under the cover at the closest end to you ( rear of car end ), move it round a bit til you find the right spot to pry it up, then gently twist the screwdriver to pop up the cover. Gently pull up on the end closest to you and wiggle it out, minding the clips on the other end ( towards front of car ).
* undo the nuts locking the mirror in place and gently remove mirror unit.
4. Clean the mirror unit. You can also take this opportunity to remove the underside panel of the unit and clean out any debris inside it. In my case I had a lot of hidden dirt in behind the actual mirror itself, on the inside of the housing. Give that a thorough clean with high pressure water and dry it out ( hair dryer if it's cold ).
5. The actual mirror cannot be removed from the unit without damage to the rubber seals providing water proofing for the unit and the car, however I still want to paint as close to possible to the entire mirror surround for a smooth, clean look. To this end, I am going to mask just the face and edge trim of the mirror with newspaper and masking tape, essentially wrapping the mirror up, then paint the entire mirror housing, letting paint cover as far as the eye can see on the inner side of the housing down and down behind the actual mirror itself. This way when removed the mirror glass and trim will remain as they were and the inside of the housing should look completely covered.
6. Mask off the rest of the mirror casing ie; the bracket mounting it to the car, we want that black / original colour.
7. Sand back the mirror housing and paint. There's plenty of how tos around for that part.
I'll be posting pics up shortly when the job is done..!
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
rare hip hop / r & b / funk / house vinyl records for sale - latest listings
Rob Natrule - A night on the Tiles
Blackalicious - Melodica
Notorious B.I.G / Biggie - Juicy b/w Unbelievable
The Rize & Tarkee - Let Yourself be Yourself b/w Called to Add Mind
Beastie Boys - She's On It b/w Slow and Low
Visit my ebay store for current listing.
Feel free to contact me with a list of any hip hop vinyl you're after. If I have it available for sale I will make an ebay listing for you: benhare at gmail dot com
Blackalicious - Melodica
Notorious B.I.G / Biggie - Juicy b/w Unbelievable
The Rize & Tarkee - Let Yourself be Yourself b/w Called to Add Mind
Beastie Boys - She's On It b/w Slow and Low
Visit my ebay store for current listing.
Feel free to contact me with a list of any hip hop vinyl you're after. If I have it available for sale I will make an ebay listing for you: benhare at gmail dot com
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Connecting a Motorola Motorazr V8 to a Macbook Pro AKA mounting your phone as an external hard disk drive
The main title of this post "Connecting a Motorola Motorazr V8 to a Macbook Pro" may in fact be misleading. It describes what you want to do but usually you will find it easier to actually do this the other way around - connect your Macbook Pro to your phone.
Bluetooth is nothing new but I've only recently started using it and I must say I'm converted. Forget the USB cable and Motorola "Phone Tools" software. I don't want to buy that ( it should be free with the phone IMO ). I don't want any of it's features so don't want to install it and clutter my PC with software I don't want and don't need. All I want to do is connect my phone to my laptop as an external drive and browse it. I used to do this via USB and you can do it that way. But bluetooth means you don't need the cable ( which you haven't got with you, you forgot, or has the "other" type of micro-USB connector on it ), is easier and around about the same speed wise; file transfer rate is about 90Kbps for me.
Connect your Macbook to your phone:
Browse your phone from your Macbook:
Bluetooth is nothing new but I've only recently started using it and I must say I'm converted. Forget the USB cable and Motorola "Phone Tools" software. I don't want to buy that ( it should be free with the phone IMO ). I don't want any of it's features so don't want to install it and clutter my PC with software I don't want and don't need. All I want to do is connect my phone to my laptop as an external drive and browse it. I used to do this via USB and you can do it that way. But bluetooth means you don't need the cable ( which you haven't got with you, you forgot, or has the "other" type of micro-USB connector on it ), is easier and around about the same speed wise; file transfer rate is about 90Kbps for me.
Connect your Macbook to your phone:
- Turn your phone on
- Turn bluetooth on on your phone in "Settings / Connections"
- Set "Discoverable for 3 minutes" or similar option on in Bluetooth settings
- Click: Apple / System Preferences... / Bluetooth
- Check the "On" checkbox to turn Bluetooth on on your Macbook if it's not already
- Click the "+" icon to add a new bluetooth device. This will start your Macbook searching for a device.
- Once your phone appears select it and save. Ignore all the dial up / modem stuff unless you want that as well just get your phone in the list.
Browse your phone from your Macbook:
- Click: Apple / System Preferences... / Bluetooth
- Select your phone from the list
- Click the Apple options icon below the list ( the cog thing ) and select "Browse device" from the drop down menu that appears
- Click "Accept" on your phone which is prompting you to accept a file transfer connection from your Macbook
- Joy. There is your phone disk. You can now "Get" and "Send" anything to anywhere
persistent log in problems? getting continually bounced back to log in page for gmail, ebay etc?
The problem of a site you regularly use and remain logged into suddenly "bumping" your login and refusing to let you log back in is something that's happened to most people at one time or another. Yet no matter how many times it happens, it's easy, if you're like me at least, even if you are quite a competent computer user, to forget the most likely cause of the problem and jump straight to the usually incorrect conclusion that there's a problem with the site.
For large sites such as gmail / google and ebay this will almost never be the case and when it is they will usually notify you that there's a problem on screen.
If a site you remain logged into suddenly bumps you out, requests you to log back in again and then refuses your login the causes can vary but the fix is almost definitely to:
1. Clear your browser cache
2. Clear all cookies related to the site in question
In Firefox 3.6.17 on Mac OS X I would do this as follows:
9 times out of 10 your login problem will now be solved and you won't have altered your browsing experience for any other sites you visit by removing their cookies.
For large sites such as gmail / google and ebay this will almost never be the case and when it is they will usually notify you that there's a problem on screen.
If a site you remain logged into suddenly bumps you out, requests you to log back in again and then refuses your login the causes can vary but the fix is almost definitely to:
1. Clear your browser cache
2. Clear all cookies related to the site in question
In Firefox 3.6.17 on Mac OS X I would do this as follows:
- Clear your browser cache:
- Go to: Tools / Clear Recent History...
- Leave "Time range to clear" set to "Everything"
- Ensure only "Cache" is selected in the checkbox list
- Click "Clear Now"
- Clear all cookies related to the site in question:
- Go to: Firefox / Preferences...
- Click "Privacy tab"
- Click "remove individual cookies link"
- Type "<site_name>" into search box ( replacing "<site_name>" with the site you are having a problem with ). NOTE: Ensure you do this in a manner that will find all cookies related to the site. For example if the problem site is "www.ebay.com.au" type "ebay" into the search box.
- Select all search results
- Click "Remove all cookies"
9 times out of 10 your login problem will now be solved and you won't have altered your browsing experience for any other sites you visit by removing their cookies.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
rare hip hop / r & b / funk / house vinyl records for sale
I'm currently selling selected records from my collection. You can check out my current listing here and follow my ebay account or check back here for future items. If you have any requests, leave a note here. I may have it.
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