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.

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..!

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

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:

1. Turn your phone on
2. Turn bluetooth on on your phone in "Settings / Connections"
3. Set "Discoverable for 3 minutes" or similar option on in Bluetooth settings
4. Click: Apple / System Preferences... / Bluetooth
5. Check the "On" checkbox to turn Bluetooth on on your Macbook if it's not already
6. Click the "+" icon to add a new bluetooth device. This will start your Macbook searching for a device.
7. 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.

Done. Your phone is now saved as a bluetooth device in your Macbook and next time it will just appear in the list.

Browse your phone from your Macbook:

1. Click: Apple / System Preferences... / Bluetooth
2. Select your phone from the list
3. Click the Apple options icon below the list ( the cog thing ) and select "Browse device" from the drop down menu that appears
4. Click "Accept" on your phone which is prompting you to accept a file transfer connection from your Macbook
5. 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:

1. Clear your browser cache:
   
   1. Go to: Tools / Clear Recent History...
   2. Leave "Time range to clear" set to "Everything"
   3. Ensure only "Cache" is selected in the checkbox list
   4. Click "Clear Now"
2. Clear all cookies related to the site in question:
   
   1. Go to: Firefox / Preferences...
   2. Click "Privacy tab"
   3. Click "remove individual cookies link"
   4. 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.
   5. Select all search results
   6. 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.

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.

sometimes good things do come to those who wait - rear parcel shelf

After persistent searching on ebay and calling and visiting various wreckers i've finally found the long saught after rear parcel shelf for my new Toyota Starlet. I've also found a great wreckers - good quality stuff at reasonable prices. I picked this parcel shelf up today for $70. It was in good nick, no speaker holes etc, and after a high pressure clean for the underside and carpet clean for the top it's like new. hoorah!

This is my new favourite part of the car! It just never felt right to drive without that parcel shelf there in place!

Shocking customer service list

If there's one thing that really shits me it's companies that think they can get away with treating you like shit. How places that do this stay in business is beyond me. Usually when they do it's because they're a monopoly company with little or no competition. Not much you can do about that but wait for the smaller competition to arrive and go with them. However, smaller businesses that think they can treat their customers rudely, almost with contempt in a lot of cases and stay in business are another story. You can do something about them. You can stop going there, tell your friends and write bad reviews via google etc.

Here is my personal list ( in no particular order ) of companies I've had such a bad customer service experience with that I would never under any circumstances use their services again.

* Europcar
* Virgin Money
* B.I.P Toyota Spares - just google them and read the reviews - you'll get the picture.
* Autobarn - PRESTON BRANCH ( NOTE: Autobarn are an excellent company overall. I am a regular customer of the Melbourne City branch who provide EXCELLENT customer service and who I would thoroughly recommend . This dishonourable mention applies only to Preston branch. )
* Biggin & Scott Real Estate - BRIDGE RD. RICHMOND BRANCH
* Melbourne City Toyota - Service Department ( pay through the nose for appallingly rude, totally complacent attitude customer service. no thanks. Shame too because the mechanics that actually do the work are great people and do an excellent job. )


Please feel free to "dis-recommend" any companies to me based on your own poor customer services experiences in a comment. I'd appreciate advanced notice of companies to avoid.

screen start of line / end of line shortcuts without remapping escape key

i like the escape key in screen as the default [ctrl]+a so don't want to remap it. this of course interferes however with the emacs command line start / end of line shortcuts.

i've finally found the way around this problem without remapping the escape key - hoorah..!

start of line: [ctrl]+a a
end of line: [ctrl] [ctrl]+e

these shortcuts are so quick and easy and similar to the emacs shortcuts that i far prefer this method to remapping the screen escape key.

diff - how to make it output what you probably want to see

i find:

diff -EbwBtrcx '.svn' | less

is clearest when recursively comparing directories with large numbers of files and changes.

another windows/linux to mac conversion helper

one thing i missed on moving to mac from windows/linux was using the tab key to "tab" through all elements on a page. by default on mac this only applies to form elements. to change the mac tab key behaviour to tab through everything on a page ala the default setting on windows/linux ( which is what i find i usually want ) go to: apple/system preferences/keyboard and change "Full Keyboard Access" to "All controls".

Control+F7 is the shortcut for this setting if you need to switch it often.

toggle between firefox windows on a mac

thank god for these kind people who finally told me how to toggle between firefox windows on mac osx! my conversion to mac is now complete..!

oh btw, it's:

[cmd]`

even better is the fact that that is the mac shortcut to toggle through windows in *any* program. hooray..! goodbye windows. i'll see you via the mac RDP program 'Remote Desktop Connection' ( which incidentally runs better than the *windows* RDP program! ) next time I need to test something on windows..!

Replacing stock front car speakers with Sony Xplod XS-GTF1027s

After upgrading the original Toyota car stereo in my new car to a new Sony I decided to upgrade the speakers as well. The '98 model Toyota Starlet I just bought only has front speakers so I decided to simply upgrade the existing ones to Sony Xplod XS-GTF1027 speakers to match the new Sony car stereo. The 4" model are only $49 for the pair from Supercheap Auto ( the stock toyota front speakers are 4" so it's a simple swap ).

This was a quick job. Remove the dash panel and the existing speakers. Unclip the existing speaker wires. Screw the new Sonys into place using the existing mount points. Connect the new Sony speaker wires to the car speaker wires. Give it a test and if all's well, replace the dash panels and done!

The new Sonys are decent speakers with nice sound quality and are louder than the original Toyota ones at 30W / 130W Peak. With such an easy install ( about 1 hour ) and with them so cheap at the moment it's definitely well worth upgrading the speakers to go with your new stereo..!

I definitely miss having rear speakers though. They would be quite easy to add on to this car on the hatch boot lid / tray however unfortunately that tray was missing from this car when I bought it so I have to find one of those first..!

Installing a Sony CDX-GT290 car stereo into a '98 Toyota Starlet

I recently bought a 1998 Toyota Starlet and after driving it for a while I was reminded just how much I hate commercial radio so I decided to get a CD player for it.

I had always been told that installing a new car stereo unit was not an easy job. Searching around I found a lot of information that was very confusing, over-complicated and essentially useless. However with a little research I got the new unit installed in about 1-2 hours and found it was surprisingly easy to do.

Here's what I did.

1. Choose a car stereo

I wanted the cheapest decent unit I could find. I ended up getting the Sony CDX-GT290. It looks OK and plays data CDs and has a front auxillary input. $117.00 from JB HIFI. All car stereos ( at least for recently late model cars ) are a standard size so it was pretty much guaranteed to fit in the car.

2. Get the tools / accessories needed

Amazingly, all i needed was a #2 philips head screw driver ( the 'standard' size ) and 2 adaptor leads.  The adaptor leads simplify the installation immensely as they eliminate the need for any rewiring and soldering and means you don't alter the original car wiring in any way. I got one '98 Toyota to Sony adaptor and one Sony to '98 Toyota adaptor. $20 each from Autobarn.

3. Remove old unit

Remove the faceplate covering the car stereo and other controls etc in the centre of the dashboard by undoing 2 size 2 philips head screws at the top and then gently pulling out and releasing the clips at the bottom.

Undo the 4 philips head screws connecting the stereo unit bracket to the car dash frame and pull out the stereo and brackets.

Unplug the unit connectors and aerial lead from the back of the old stereo and remove the brackets. Keep these brackets - they will be used for installing the new stereo.

4. Install new unit

The instructions for the Sony are very unclear and disorganised and seem to be written for the case of installing the unit in a place where there has never been any kind of stereo before. So what I ended up doing was following the initial instructions; remove the protector plate ( ironically named as it broke while I was removing it! ) and bracket, then attaching the bracket that came with the car to the stereo without using their bracket at all ( just use their screws to attach the bracket instead of the old ones ). The not-so-aptly-named "protector plate" doesn't fit into the dash ( sticks out too far ) and is not needed anyway so i left that off. The dash panel fits flush against the edges of the front of the unit once put back into place so it is fine with out it.

Attach any other fittings you want to the bracket; I attached the tray that came with the car that was under the original stereo. Click the adaptor leads together then connect them to the car leads first, then the new unit. Plug in the aerial lead. Push the assembled unit, tray and brackets into position on the dash frame and screw it in with the screws from the original assembly. Note: It's a good idea to test everything's working at this point before actually screwing the bracket into place. Rest the unit in place using the "holders" on the dash frame ( or just hold it ) and test it out. ( When you first plug in the power and other leads you will hear the CD player make a few noises but if you wish you can now test it out more thoroughly ).

Push the dashboard cover back into place; easiest to push top in first then click bottom clips into place. Screw in the two philips head screws at top of cover to secure in place.

Done! New stereo installed!