By Leslie Horn, Gizmodo – January 16, 2013 at 10:20AM
Dads of the world, take note: you don’t have to leave the hairstyling to mom. Got a vacuum? Great. Got one of those snakey tube attachments? Perfect. Pop a rubber band on that bad boy, suck your daughter’s hair up in the tube, and voilà! A perfect ponytail. Cue touchdown dance. More » 
By Justin Pot, MakeUseOf – January 16, 2013 at 12:01PM
Edit your partitions from outside your operating system. The GParted Live CD is a simple Linux distro you can use to change the size of your partitions – or wipe a drive entirely. Built around GParted, the ultimate partitioning software, the GParted Live CD is probably the simplest way to use GParted on any computer – regardless of what operating system it runs.
If Parted Magic is a complete toolbox for your computer, the GParted Live CD is more like a single tool. While the latter includes some tools besides its famous partitioning software, it’s decidedly a less diverse offering than the former.
That doesn’t mean the GParted Live CD is not worth having around, though. With a footprint of under 140MB, it can fit on even the smallest flash drives on the market, and its singular focus on partitioning software might be just right for you. With Fluxbox as its desktop, it’s lightweight in a way few distros are anymore.
Boot this Linux distro up and one program will load immediately – GParted. This makes sense, as GParted is the reason for its existence, but there are other tools offered. You’ll see icons at the top.
I’ve already shown you what GParted can do so I’m not going to get into that here, but rest assured that you’ll be able to create, delete, move and otherwise edit your partitioning scheme.
As always – back up your data before messing with your partitions. Even if you’re an expert, stuff will break occasionally. You’ve been warned.
This being Fluxbox, you can also browse a menu by right-clicking the desktop. There’s not a lot of non-GParted software to explore here, but must-haves like text editors and Midnight Commander are around if you need them.
There’s also a simple web browser if you need to look something up, but note that you’ll have to run the networking wizard on the desktop before you can use it.
This CD supports every file system supported by GParted, so if there’s something you can’t do on this CD, it’s because GParted itself cannot do it. Here are my choices while trying to create a partition:
Choice is good. For quick references: Windows uses NTFS, Linux typically uses EXT3 or EXT4, Macs use HFS+ and all three systems can read FAT32 partitions. Good luck, and remember: back up everything before editing partitions. You’ve been warned, multiple times.
Ready to give this a shot? You’ll find the ISO file at the GParted home page. You can burn this ISO to CD with most burning software, or you can create a bootable flash drive using LinuxLive in Windows or by using the cross-platform tool uNetBootin.
If you have trouble booting from USB or CD check your BIOS and change the boot order. If you can’t figure out how to do that messing around with partitions might not be the best idea anyway.
The centerpiece of both Parted Magic and the GParted Live CD is, of course, GParted itself. If you’ve got an Ubuntu live CD kicking around you can also use that to run GParted – but it’s far bigger than both disks.
Whatever tool you used, if you feel like you messed up completely don’t worry. It might be possible to scan your reformatted hard drive to recover files. It’s worth a shot.
How do you like the GParted Live CD? Let me know in the comments below, along with any other quality partitioning software you’d like to point out. I look forward to the conversation, as always.
The post The GParted Live CD: A Quick Way To Edit Your Primary Partitions [Linux] appeared first on MakeUseOf.
By Andrew Liszewski, Gizmodo – January 16, 2013 at 11:46AM
Dust and moisture are the main enemies when it comes to keeping your photography gear in top working condition. That’s why everything comes with lens caps, and why you should maybe consider upgrading them all to BRNO’s dri+Caps which feature a compartment for a small packet of moisture-trapping silica gel. More » 
By Simon Slangen, MakeUseOf – January 13, 2013 at 08:00PM
People are always going on about the Mac user experience; how it just works. For the most part, I agree with them. The operating system is like a smooth breeze, and most of the default applications are top notch quality. There’s really only one standard application that’s painfully lacking in power: Finder.
Finder used to be a pretty good way to browse your computer. It’s still an action-packed application, with many advanced features at the ready, but the user experience just hasn’t sufficiently evolved over time.
There are a number of Finder alternatives, PathFinder ($39.95) and TotalFinder ($18.00) first among them. In fact, Jeffry Thurana reviewed TotalFinder on MakeUseOf back in 2010. However, both applications come with rather serious price tags. I never did find any decent free alternatives, until XtraFinder came along.
Perhaps ‘Finder alternative’ is not the best way to describe XtraFinder. Rather than running as a standalone application, XtraFinder tweaks Finder with a variety of features; both cosmetic and functional. Below these additions, you’ll find the same basic Finder functionality that you’re used to.
XtraFinder is a lot like TotalFinder. It has the same look about it and a lot of the same features—and then some. In retrospect, TotalFinder is still a bit more polished than XtraFinder. Nevertheless, it’s a great deal. Especially considering that XtraFinder is completely free.
Perhaps the most important (and most overdue) addition to Finder is the tabbed browsing. Open multiple instances of Finder in one Finder window, similar to how you browse the web. Drag and drop tags to rearrange them, or give them their own window.
In the XtraFinder Preferences, you’ll find a number of settings pertaining to XtraFinder’s tabbed functionality. Cosmetic options, like the option for narrow tab bars, allow you to save even more screen real estate. You can also change the tab style, maybe to match your browser experience. The Google Chrome and Opera tab styles are shown in the screenshot above (in that order).
Other options allow you to change tabbed behavior; opening tabs with the same path, and saving the state of your tabs when you quit Finder.
Most of the navigating actions are already blessed with keyboard shortcuts, but you can tweak these shortcuts in the tab settings as well. Some menu items may not be provided with shortcuts by XtraFinder. Fortunately, Mac OS X provides an easy way to define your own shortcuts.
Another feature that is added to Finder by XtraFinder can be found in the Tab settings, but really deserves to be highlighted separately. Dual Pane mode allows you to open two tabs side by side, in one finder window. This is incredibly useful for organizing related folders.
XtraFinder allows you to give this second pane its own tab as well. However, I found this to be slightly more unreliable than TotalFinder (which offers a similar feature). If you use a conventional mouse, you can instead configure XtraFinder to open sidebar items in the second pane using the middle-click.
By default, XtraFinder adds an icon to your Mac OS X menu bar. This provides a convenient way of opening a dual pane window. Interestingly, you can also choose whether to divide the window horizontally or vertically.
The features covered above are the most noticeable, as well as the features you’ll likely use the most, but XtraFinder comes with a small arsenal of additional tweaks. Almost all of these are disabled by default, but you can play around with them in the XtraFinder preferences, in the Features tab.
Many of you who are converted Windows users should be delighted to see the comeback of cut & paste functionality. XtraFinder also caters to Finder nostalgics, who want to see folders on top again, and preferred the colorful icons in the Finder sidebar. Similar to browser navigation, you can set folders to open in a new window or tab when middle-clicked, and go back in history using the delete key. These are only some of the most prominent options. Refer to the screenshot above for a complete list of additional (and optional) Features.
A lot of actions are accessible through a variety of Finder menus. XtraFinder lets you add some of these to the (often static) right-click context menu. Some of these are especially useful for developers, like New Terminal Here, Launch as Root and Copy Path (in multiple formats).
Other options are just generally useful for organizing files, like New File, Copy to, Move to, Show Hidden Files and the ability to open a dual pane window from your right-click context menu. All of these options can also be extended with a self-specified keyboard shortcut. Per your preference, these shortcuts will work within Finder, or system-wide.
What features do you miss when using Finder? Does XtraFinder provide an alternative, or do you look somewhere else? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below the article!
The post Give Finder The Upgrade It Sorely Needs With XtraFinder [Mac] appeared first on MakeUseOf.
By Melanie Pinola, Lifehacker – January 10, 2013 at 12:30PM
The Egg McMuffin is an iconic breakfast sandwich packing a fried egg, bacon, toasted bread, and cheese in one to-go package. McDonald’s Executive Chef Dan Coudreaut demonstrates how to cook it yourself at home.
You only really need a few simple ingredients and equipment to replicate the Egg McMuffin. The only thing you might not have is a ring mold (to make the fried eggs round), but a mason jar ring could be a good substitute.
Besides the step-by-step instructions here, Coudreaut offers several useful tips (as he did when sharing the company’s Big Mac instructions). For example, you can easily break the egg yolk just by tapping the center of the yolk with the egg shell (around 2:18). Another tip is to add a little water to the pan; this creates steam for cooking the egg and getting it nice and fluffy.
For your future reference and if you don’t care to watch the video, Yahoo!’s Shine has the directions and recipe in one page.
Olympic Games: Best of Our Best Taste – Egg McMuffin | YouTube
By Jeff Starr, Perishable Press – January 10, 2013 at 02:55AM
![[ 5G (2013) ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2013/5G-Blacklist.gif)
Following up on much feedback (and this post), here is an update for the 5G Blacklist for 2013. As explained in the 2012 article (and elsewhere), the 5G Blacklist helps reduce the number of malicious URL requests that hit your website. It’s one of many ways to improve the security of your site and protect against evil exploits, bad requests, and other nefarious garbage. If your site runs on Apache and you’re familiar with .htaccess, the 5G is an effective way to secure your site against malicious HTTP activity.
The 5G Blacklist is a simple, flexible blacklist that checks all URI requests against a series of carefully constructed HTAccess directives. This happens quietly behind the scenes at the server level, saving resources for stuff like PHP and MySQL for all blocked requests.
Blacklists can block just about any part of a request: IP, user agent, request string, query string, referrer, and everything in between. But IP addresses change constantly, and user agents and referrers are easily spoofed. As discussed, request strings yield the best results: greater protection with fewer false positives.
The 5G works beautifully with WordPress, and should help any site conserve bandwidth and server resources while protecting against malicious activity.
Here is the third version of the 5th generation blacklist:
# 5G BLACKLIST/FIREWALL (2013)
# @ https://perishablepress.com/5g-blacklist-2013/
# 5G:[QUERY STRINGS]
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (\"|%22).*(<|>|%3) [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (javascript:).*(\;) [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (<|%3C).*script.*(>|%3) [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (\\|\.\./|`|=\'$|=%27$) [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (\;|\'|\"|%22).*(union|select|insert|drop|update|md5|benchmark|or|and|if) [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (base64_encode|localhost|mosconfig) [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (boot\.ini|echo.*kae|etc/passwd) [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (GLOBALS|REQUEST)(=|\[|%) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F]
</IfModule>
# 5G:[USER AGENTS]
<IfModule mod_setenvif.c>
# SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent ^$ keep_out
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent (binlar|casper|cmsworldmap|comodo|diavol|dotbot|feedfinder|flicky|ia_archiver|jakarta|kmccrew|nutch|planetwork|purebot|pycurl|skygrid|sucker|turnit|vikspider|zmeu) keep_out
<limit GET POST PUT>
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
Deny from env=keep_out
</limit>
</IfModule>
# 5G:[REQUEST STRINGS]
<IfModule mod_alias.c>
RedirectMatch 403 (https?|ftp|php)\://
RedirectMatch 403 /(https?|ima|ucp)/
RedirectMatch 403 /(Permanent|Better)$
RedirectMatch 403 (\=\\\'|\=\\%27|/\\\'/?|\)\.css\()$
RedirectMatch 403 (\,|\)\+|/\,/|\{0\}|\(/\(|\.\.\.|\+\+\+|\||\\\"\\\")
RedirectMatch 403 \.(cgi|asp|aspx|cfg|dll|exe|jsp|mdb|sql|ini|rar)$
RedirectMatch 403 /(contac|fpw|install|pingserver|register)\.php$
RedirectMatch 403 (base64|crossdomain|localhost|wwwroot|e107\_)
RedirectMatch 403 (eval\(|\_vti\_|\(null\)|echo.*kae|config\.xml)
RedirectMatch 403 \.well\-known/host\-meta
RedirectMatch 403 /function\.array\-rand
RedirectMatch 403 \)\;\$\(this\)\.html\(
RedirectMatch 403 proc/self/environ
RedirectMatch 403 msnbot\.htm\)\.\_
RedirectMatch 403 /ref\.outcontrol
RedirectMatch 403 com\_cropimage
RedirectMatch 403 indonesia\.htm
RedirectMatch 403 \{\$itemURL\}
RedirectMatch 403 function\(\)
RedirectMatch 403 labels\.rdf
RedirectMatch 403 /playing.php
RedirectMatch 403 muieblackcat
</IfModule>
# 5G:[REQUEST METHOD]
<ifModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^(TRACE|TRACK)
RewriteRule .* - [F]
</IfModule>
# 5G:[BAD IPS]
<limit GET POST PUT>
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
# uncomment/edit/repeat next line to block IPs
# Deny from 123.456.789
</limit>To use: include the entire 5G Blacklist in the root .htaccess file of your site. Remember to backup your original .htaccess file before making any changes. Test thoroughly while enjoying your favorite beverage. If you encounter any issues, please read the troubleshooting tips and/or leave a comment to report a bug.
Note: in some cases it may be necessary to place the QUERY STRING rules before WP-permalink rules.
The changes made for 5G 2013 are aimed at maximizing compatibility. Unfortunately, a number of required changes are due to improper coding and ignoring HTTP specifications. As mentioned previously, using unsafe characters in URLs obsoletes security measures that are based on pattern-matching, which is integral to the process of blocking malicious activity.
To illustrate, it is possible to protect against a wide range of malicious requests by blocking unsafe characters such as unencoded question marks “?” included within the query string. Firewalls, blacklists, security plugins and scripts are able to safely block such bad requests UNTIL some widely used service such as Google Adwords decides to start including multiple unencoded question marks in their query strings. Suddenly blocking potentially dangerous “?” requests is useless because nobody wants to block legitimate (Google) traffic.
Moral of the story: if you develop for the Web, contribute to its security by encoding your URLs according to spec. If you use security plugins, firewalls/blackists, and scripts that rely on pattern-matching to protect your site, please encourage and educate others about the importance of adhering to HTTP specifications.</rant>
Removed from QUERY STRINGS
[” and “]” (details):” (details)\?” (WP’s preview feature, Piwik, Adwords, et al)(menu|mod|path|tag)\=\.?/?” (WP menus, WP Super Cache, Joomla, Googlebot, et al)environ” (common string)scanner” (various WP plugins)%3E” (common string)\” to “\\”Removed from USER AGENTS
^$” (PayPal, WP-Piwik, et al)libwww” (used by Lynx browser)Removed from REQUEST STRINGS
//” (Pingdom, gtmetrix, et al)/cgi/” (Fancy indexes, Authentication)Added to QUERY STRINGS (5G 2013)
TRACE” and “TRACK”base64_encode.*\(”\|%3E”GLOBALS(=|\[|\%)”REQUEST(=|\[|\%)”`”(\"|%22).*(<|>|%3)”(<|%3C).*script.*(>|%3)”(javascript:).*(\;)”(\;|\'|\"|%22).*(union|select|insert|drop|update|md5|benchmark|or|and|if)”Other changes
Optimized syntax, improved formatting.
If there is an error, remove the code and make a backup of your original .htaccess file (if you haven’t already done so). Investigate the URL for whichever page is blocked or not working, making note of any non-alphanumeric characters or anything else that looks unusual. With a good idea of what to look for, examine the 5G directives to see if anything looks similar. If so, try removing (or commenting out) the offending line (or characters) and see if that resolves the issue.
If that doesn’t work, further investigation is required, and there are numerous ways of going about it. Here is a good walkthrough of my halving method of isolating problematic code, which I recommend unless you have your own favorite way of troubleshooting 😉
If you benefit from my work with the 5G and would like to show support, consider buying a copy of my book, .htaccess made easy. You’ll get a complete guide to .htaccess, exclusive forum access, and a ton of awesome techniques for configuring, optimizing, and securing your site. Your generous support allows me to continue developing 5G/6G and other awesome resources for the community. Thank you!
The 5G Firewall is provided “as-is”, with the intention of helping site administrators protect their sites against bad requests and other malicious activity. The code is open and free to use and modify as long as the first two credit lines remain intact. By using this code you assume all risk & responsibility for anything that happens, whether good or bad. In short, use wisely, test thoroughly, don’t sue me.
To learn more about the theory and development of the 5G Firewall, check out my articles on building the 3G, 4G and 5G Blacklist. The 6G beta article also contains some good information. And if all that’s not enough, a quick search for “blacklist” in the sidebar should also yield many results.
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By Jason Kottke, kottke.org – January 09, 2013 at 10:36AM
This f*cking guy shows you the f*cking pool, the f*cking ice cream bar, the f*cking ocean, and every other f*cking thing on the ship.
(via @nickkokonas)
Tags: video
By Alan Henry, Lifehacker – January 08, 2013 at 05:15PM
If you’re getting your own business cards printed and you don’t have a ton of money or access to professional printers, there are great online services willing to help you out. Most of them offer high quality cards, great selection of size, card stock, and designs, and fast delivery. Last week we asked you which sites you thought were the best, and then we took a look at the five best business card printing sites based on your nominations. Now we’re back to crown the winner.
Moo easily took the top spot with close to 56% of the overall vote. The service, which offers great customer service, a broad set of designs and card options, and great-looking cards that you can customize almost every inch of, took the lead early in the voting and just never gave it up.
In second place with 26% of the overall vote was the budget-friendly VistaPrint, which offers super-cheap (and in some cases, free) business cards if you have the right coupon codes. JukeBox took third place with over 7% of the votes cast, thanks to its beautiful paper and stock options, truly unique designs, and great customer service. In fourth place with 6% of the vote was OvernightPrints.com, and bringing up the rear with close to 5% of the votes cast was GotPrint.
The Hive Five is based on reader nominations. As with most Hive Five posts, if your favorite was left out, it’s not because we hate it—it’s because it didn’t get the nominations required in the call for contenders post to make the top five. We understand it’s a bit of a popularity contest, but if you have a favorite, we want to hear about it. Have a suggestion for the Hive Five? Send us an email at tips+hivefive@lifehacker.com!
By John Goerzen, Lifehacker – January 08, 2013 at 05:00PM
Two years ago, my son Jacob (then 3) and I built his first computer together. I installed Debian on it, but never put a GUI on the thing. It’s command-line, and has provided lots of enjoyment off and on over the last couple of years. The looks of shock I get from people when I explain, as if it’s perfectly natural, that my child has been able to log in by himself to a Linux shell since age 3, are amusing and astounding. Especially considering that it is really not that hard. Instead of learning how to run an Xbox, he’s learned how to run bash. I like that.
Lately, Jacob (now 5) hasn’t been spending much time with it. He isn’t really at a stage where he wants to push his limits too far, I think, but yet also gets bored with the familiar. So I thought it was time to introduce a GUI in a limited fashion, perhaps to let him download photos and video from his Vtech toy camera (that takes real low-res photos and videos which can be downloaded over a USB1 link). He’s familiar with the concept, at least somewhat, having seen GUIs on Terah’s computer (Gnome 2) and mine (xfce4 + xmonad).
So last night, Oliver (age 2) and I went down to the basement on a mouse-finding expedition. Sure enough, I had an old PS/2 mouse down there that would work fine. The boys both helped string it through the desk up on our play room, and were tremendously excited to see the red light underneath it when the computer came on. Barely able to contain the excitement, really. A bit like I remember being when I got my first mouse (at a bit of an older age, I suppose.)
I helped him them in as root for the very first time. (Jacob typed “root”, and I typed the password, and provided the explanation for why we were telling the computer we were “root”.) Jacob and Oliver alternated typing bits of some apt-get command lines. Then while we waited for software to download, I had to answer repeated questions of “how soon will the mouse work?” and “what does ‘install’ mean?”
Finally it was there, and I told Jacob to type startx. I intentionally did not install a display manager; more on that later. He pressed Enter, the screen went blank for about 5 seconds, and then X appeared. “Excited” can’t begin to describe how they acted. They took turns playing with the mouse. They loved how the trash can icon (I started with XFCE) showed trash IN the trash can.
But they are just learning the mouse, and there’s a lot about a typical GUI that is unfriendly to someone that isn’t yet proficient with a mouse. The close buttons are disappointingly small, things can be too easily dragged on and off the panel and menus. When I sat down to think about it, the typical GUI design does not present a very good “it always works the same” interface that would be good for a child.
And then it occurred to me: the perfect GUI for a child would be simply xmonad (a tiling window manager that can be controlled almost entirely by keyboard and has no need for mouse movements in most cases.) No desktop environment, no file manager in the root window. Just a window manager in the classic X way. Of course!
So after the boys were in bed, I installed xmonad. I gave Jacob’s account a simple .xsession that starts a terminal and xmonad.
Today, Jacob informed me that he wanted his computer to look “just like yours.” Playing right into my hands, that was! But when he excitedly typed startx, he said it wasn’t just like mine. Uh oh. Turns out he wanted the same wallpaper as my computer uses. Whew. We found it, I figured out that xli(1) loads it in the root window, and so I added a third line to .xsession. More delight unlocked!
Jacob mastered the basics of xmonad really quickly. Alt-Shift-C to close a window. Alt-Shift-Q to quit back to the “big black screen”. Alt-Shift-Enter to get a terminal window.
We launched thunar (the XFCE file manager) and plugged in his camera. He had a good deal of fun looking at photos and videos from it. But then I dropped the true highlight of the day for him: I offered to install Tuxpaint for him. That’s probably his favorite program of all time.
He watched impatiently as apt-get counted down 1m30s for tuxpaint and its libraries. Then we launched it, and he wanted to skip supper so he could keep playing Tuxpaint on “my VERY OWN COMPUTER!”
I’d been debating how to introduce GUIs for a very long time. It has not escaped my attention that children that used Commodores or TRS-80s or DOS knew a lot more about how their computers worked, on average, than those of the same age that use Windows or MacOS. I didn’t want our boys to skip an entire phase of learning how their technology works. I am pleased with this solution; they still run commands to launch things, yet get to play with more than text-based programs.
At bedtime, Jacob asked me, very seriously:
“Dad, how do I start tuxpaint again?”
“First you log in and type startx. Then you can use the mouse.”
Jacob nods, a contemplative look on his face…
“Then,” I continue, “you type tuxpaint in the terminal, and it comes right up.”
Jacob nodded very seriously a second time, as if committing this very important information to long-term memory. Then gave a single excited clap, yelled “Great!”, and dashed off.
I introduced my 5-year-old and 2-year-old to startx and xmondad. They’re DELIGHTED! | The Changelog
John Goerzen is a programmer, sysadmin, Debian developer, and dad from Kansas. He writes about all these things on his blog.
Image remixed from shooarts (Shutterstock).
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By Brett & Kate McKay, The Art of Manliness – January 08, 2013 at 04:09PM
During the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, the use of “propaganda posters” were popular for encouraging good behavior — teaching safety, boosting worker morale, and rousing wartime sacrifice. I’ve always enjoyed the art and design of these posters, and decided to have Ted whip up a set of originals to address an area of behavior where modern society is often lacking: smartphone etiquette. Enjoy.
Posters illustrated and designed by Ted Slampyak
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