Tool of the Week: Put Portable Apps on a Flash Drive

Posted on by mrsoltys
[caption id="attachment_1313" align="alignright" width="300"] A small sampling of the free flash-drives we have at our house. Any other good uses for flash-drives?[/caption] I like it when i don't have to bring my laptop to campus: it results in a nice and light backpack.  But the campus computers don't have my browser of choice (Google Chrome). Turns out you can install...Read More

Tool of the Week: Performance Air-Filters

Posted on by mrsoltys
Living in colorado, my car sometimes struggles at high elevation on hills... especially when loaded down with friends and gear. I did some reading about how I could improve performance, and came across performance air filters. [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="384" caption="About to head out for some adventures in Suzi"][/caption] Performance Airfilters are pretty cheap (compared to many car upgrades), but can increase...Read More

Tool of the Week: LaTeX

Posted on by mrsoltys
Think of LaTeX as the nerdiest word processor you'll ever see. LaTeX focuses on content, and does all the formatting for you (kind-of).  The end result is beautifuly typset documents based on style sheets with auto labeled equations, figures, and tables. I love using LaTeX in conjunction with BibTeX to automatically format my citations and build my bibliography based on the citations I've used...Read More

Tool of the Week: Mint.com

Posted on by mrsoltys
Mint is an online personal finance tool, and the most helpful and easy to use budgeting tool I've ever used.  Simply enter in your user-names and passwords to the accounts you want it to track, and then Mint will automatically download your transactions and assign them to budgets. It also does a great job tracking investments. Mint is complete with...Read More

Tool of the Week: NOAA hourly weather and point forecasts

Posted on by mrsoltys
[caption id="attachment_354" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Example of hourly weather for Boulder, CO. Notice temperatures falling from the 70's today to snow in 48 hours... typical Boulder weather!"][/caption] Weather you're a data lover, or a flexible planner, I love using NOAA's hourly weather graph feature. Go to www.noaa.gov, type in your zip code (or city and state), and then scroll down and...Read More

Tool of the Week: LMGTFY

Posted on by mrsoltys
Let Me Google That For You is a real awesome way of telling people not to bother you with dumb questions that they could ask google.  Just type in a question, get the link, and e-mail it to them.  It will show them how easy it is to search for things in google, instead of asking you. Here's an example scenario:...Read More

Tool of the Week: Web of Knowledge

Posted on by mrsoltys
Research can be a real pain.  I've already given a tool to keep track of where you've been, but sometimes it seems hard to know where to go. Web of Knowledge is not only a useful tool for searching through loads of journal articles, but it has really useful citation linking.  Once you find a relevant article can search backwards...Read More

Tool of the Week: PayPal

Posted on by mrsoltys
"Every Time I see a bunch of checks taped to the fridge, I just roll my eyes." -William S. (Roommate) [caption id="attachment_324" align="alignright" width="273" caption="Just make sure you select the "Personal Tab" to avoid fees!"][/caption] You've probably heard of PayPal, maybe you even have an account to buy stuff off of ebay or other online retailers.  But I think the most awesome...Read More

Tool of The Week: VPN

Posted on by mrsoltys
Sometimes you want the privlidges you get when you're on campus computers, but you don't want to be on campus.  Maybe you're working from home, your favorite coffee shop, or on the road.  VPNs allow your computer to appear to have the IP address of another network.  This means is you get the benefits that you normally get on campus, from anywhere....Read More

Tool of the Week: Gmail Ninja

Posted on by mrsoltys
It's no secret I love google products.  I've used just about every mail client out there and I really think Gmail is the best.  They're always on the forefront of innovation, and a lot of features you see coming out in other mail clients are copied from google. Gmail has made a guide to optimize your e-mail exerpience on gmail called "Become...Read More