Category Archives: Geek Tricks

Sharing Files Across Multiple Devices Part 1: Dropbox

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I use several different applications for storing and accessing files across the different devices I use: Mac and Windows computers, iPhone, iPod Touch, sometimes Linux, occasionally Android, formerly Blackberry. Today I want to tell you about Dropbox:

 Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring all your photos, documents, and videos anywhere. This means that any file you save to your Dropbox on any device will automatically synchronize to ALL of your devices where you have installed it: computers, smartphones, iPod Touch, and also to your account on their website. In addition you can designate certain folders or files to share with other people by giving them a link address. If you lose or crash your computer the files will still be in on their site to restore.

Here are some ways I use Dropbox:

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Minimize Options For Misconnecting Stage Gear

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Unless your band is performing at a very high-level venue, you are usually lucky to get a brief line check – you jump on stage, plug into the sound system for the first time at the start of your set, and the sound person give you a thumbs-up that he has a signal from you – before you start to play, let alone a full sound check.

So if you don’t get that thumbs-up, your band starts losing time from your set while you and the engineer try to figure out the problem in your signal chain! While you can’t always prevent an issue caused by sudden gear failure, you can avoid issues caused by misconnections…

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Tip/Warning: Long File Names in Bandcamp (and Other Zipped Downloads)

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I recently purchased a new album as a zipped download from the site Bandcamp.com to my Windows PC at work (because the network connection there has a much bigger “pipe” than at home). The zipped file contained eight MP3 files which when extracted should have gone into a folder with the name of the band and the album title.

I clicked to “extract all’ the files, and the program did so… until it reached the eighth and final track. At that point it failed and gave me the error message:

I tried again and got the same error, “Path too long”. After some research I determined what was wrong and how to work around it, plus told the band – they fixed it so that other buyers will not have this problem:

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Preserving Cell Phone Power During An Electrical Outage

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For better or worse Hurricane Sandy will be past us on the east coast in 48 hours. But winter is coming, bringing yet more opportunities for electrical service to be interrupted.

Cell phone towers have backup batteries that can last for some hours or longer, so keeping your cell phone available for emergency calls is a good idea. Here are some tips to maximize the juice in smartphones:

– Turn off your phone’s wifi side (since your cable modem isn’t on, so there’s no sense it letting the phone keep searching for a signal) and Bluetooth services.

– Turn off most of its location services. On an iPhone go to Settings-Privacy-Location Services. You can either turn it off altogether, or leave Location Services on but go in and turn it off for most individual apps – if you have emergency notification apps like Ping4Alerts and CodeRED leave those on to get warnings from your city/state emergency management).

– Adjust the screen illumination to be as dim as possible, and to turn off the screen with the shortest available idle time.

– If you don’t plan to use your laptop for offline work, charge your phone from its battery.

– If you have a car, get a 12V charger for your phone (and gas up the car before the storm!).

– Plan ahead: this 12V storage battery (designed for powering Celestron telescopes) has two 12V jacks plus built-in small and large lights. Also pick up a DC/AC inverter and you can charge your phone plus power some other gear (e.g., recharge a laptop).