My project for this weekend was to soft-mod my Wii in order to install and run Homebrew applications. Why mod your Wii? The homebrew scene offers tons of useful and fun games and applications for free! Also, once you soft-mod your Wii with the Twilight hack, you can run back-ups and even play DVD movies on your Wii. (If you choose to do that!)

This isn’t a tutorial, this is just to get you pointed in the right direction. Hopefully, save you a few hours of pain and all the time spent surfing the internets for directions, etc. Mostly, I put this stuff up here to refresh my memory when I have to mod my next Wii.

In order to run homebrew and install the Twilight hack, you will need a copy of Zelda: The Twilight Princess and you have to be running version 3.3 or 3.4 firmware on your Wii. You can check this by going into settings, it will show you the version number on the top right of the screen.

I can’t say for sure if you will be able to run it or not, depending on your firmware. If it doesn’t work for you then you may need to downgrade your firmware. Which is very risky and could brick your Wii, rendering it a pretty little paper weight.

In my case, I had to downgrade my firmware, but all went well. You can find the software to do this on the internets. I found a great and reliable source on PirateBay.

The Soft-Mod

And that’s it! The Homebrew channel also has a Homebrew browser, similar to the Wii shop, you can download everything right from your Wii.

If you want to run back-ups on your Wii, here is another great tutorial at instructables, How to Play Back-ups on Your Wii and another great tutorial here.

Anything you do to your Wii, you do so at your OWN RISK. Modifying anything on your console will void the warranty! Good luck!

I’ve tried Google’s browser, Chrome, although it seemed a bit faster than most browsers, it wasn’t enough for me to part with Firefox. Chrome doesn’t offer extensions or plug-in capabilities as of right now, however, Google plans to change this in May.

I have entirely too many plug-ins that I rely on in Firefox to switch browsers, but I will definitely give Chrome another try when plug-ins/extensions are made available for it. Until then, Firefox and I will not be breaking up.

Chrome does offer some great features that aren’t available in Firefox natively, however, with the power of plug-ins and extensions you can add a few of Chrome’s features to Firefox.

Chrome’s Features in Firefox Via Extensions:

• Download Statusbar - Get rid of that separate download window and put your downloads in the status bar
• Locationbar - Highlights the root domain of the website you are on (helps reduce spoofing risks)
• Stealther - Leaves no trace of your browsing session
• CyberSearch - Adds advanced Google Search capabilities to the address bar
• Chromifox - Chrome theme for Firefox

Now I have some of Chrome’s features in Firefox to tie me over until Chrome adds extension capability. Until then, Firefox will remain my default browser.

Have an old thumbdrive just taking up space on your desk or maybe you got a new one over the holidays, portable apps are a great way to maximize the usage of your portable drives, both new and old.

• PortableApps.com Suite - An all-in-one suite that features a complete collection of portable apps including a web browser, email client, office suite, calendar/scheduler, instant messaging client, antivirus, audio player, sudoku game, password manager, PDF reader, minesweeper clone, backup utility and integrated menu, all preconfigured to work portably. Just drop it on your portable device and you’re ready to go. This is by far the most featured suite available and is extremely easy to use.
  
• TinyApps.org - A catalog of portable apps for Windows, Palm, and OS X
• Portable Freeware Collection - A massive list of freeware for your portable device.

Never be without access to your favorite software, favorite games, & bookmarks again.

Ever wanted all of your favorite Google features all in your Gmail? Now you can essentially turn your Gmail inbox into your start page with the Firefox add-on, Integrated Gmail.

With the Integrated Gmail extension for Firefox, you can seamlessly add various Google apps into your Gmail, like my personal favorite, Google Reader. Google already allows you to add gadgets to your sidebar, but this plug-in will give you full access to your favorite Google apps in collapsible groups.

To get started you must have Firefox installed. If for some bizarre reason you do not have Firefox installed, it’s imperative that you install this web browser now, use it, and never, ever look back.

Then grab a copy of Integrated Gmail. And fall in love with your Gmail all over again.

I suppose this is actually old news, but like most people, I never received an e-mail from TextAmerica to inform me they were no longer keeping free accounts. TextAmerica was a free MoBlogging service, allowing those with camera cellphones to send their pictures to TextAmerica and then have them published on a blog hosted at TextAmerica.

I just recently purchased a new cell phone and went to logon to my TextAmerica account only to find out that my account no longer existed and was completely locked out with no way to retrieve my photos. Apparently they will only support paying accounts. However, their site does not inform you of this. It simply states that they aren’t currently accepting new registrations.

All isn’t lost though. My pictures were still available on their server, as my RSS badge of pictures was still working and showing my most recent photos. So I was still able to go directly to my RSS feed for my account and get some of my pictures back.

Get Some of Your TextAmerica Pictures Back:
All you have to do is add “/rss.aspx” (no quotes) to the end of your TextAmerica URI, and you will be able to access your RSS feed of recent photos. However, you will not be able to retrieve ALL of your photos, but you will be able to get some back.

Fortunately for me, I didn’t have many photos published to TextAmerica and was able to get all but maybe 3 or 4 of my photos. Which I’ll be uploading over on to Flickr now, as they support pictures by e-mail, allowing me to publish my camera phone pictures once again.

I don’t think TextAmerica will be around much longer. Seriously, you can’t charge for something that you were just giving away for free! You add a pro account!

Thanks for nothing TextAmerica!

I love my Mac Mini. It took a bit to adjust to OS X at first. My only memory of being on a Mac prior to my Mac Mini was playing Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? when I was just wee one in elementary school. Once I learned to stop resisting and allow OS X to work for me, it wasn’t long before I became very attached to my Mac.

While I was still adjusting to OS X, my 40 GB hard drive seemed almost like too much space. But then the more I used the Mac the more it started to become my default desktop. I passed my 15″ FPD from the Mac to my Debian box and gave it share rights to my 19″ FPD with my main PC desktop. In a matter of weeks my 40 GB hard drive shrunk to 8 GB of available space. :gasp:

Where the hell did all that space go? Using this handy tool, Disk Inventory X, I was able to see graphically what was clogging up my drive. Obviously: music, videos, pictures, and software.

Much of my music and videos can be burned and deleted to free up space, however, having a more permanent place for such things is beginning to be more appealing than the infinite number of disks that I have that get stuffed into drawers.

It was time for an upgrade. I love taking things apart and I’ve wanted to take apart the Mac Mini since the day I got it, but have never gotten around to actually doing it. But instead of just upgrading the hard drive and having another spare drive used as a paperweight, I decided an external drive would be a great solution. Not just to free up space on the Mac but essentially freeing up space for all the computers on the network and keeping all of our media in one place.

Thanks to Danielle, for Xmas I received the LaCie 160 GB fire wire hard drive. The LaCie drive is designed to be stacked under the Mac Mini. Brilliant.

Keeping the LaCie drive formatted with HFS+ Mac format, I used MediaFour’s MacDrive on my Windows computers to allow the new drive to be seen under windows and the ability to read and write to the disk, I now have a drive strictly for media storage that everybody can use.

Now that I have a central storage place for all of my different media files, I needed to change my library location for iTunes and iPhoto so that everything will now be stored on the external drive. An easy task for iTunes:

Changing Your Library Location for iTunes:
I just copied my original iTunes library over to the new external drive, deleted the original folder, then in iTunes under Preferences->Advanced-> Change folder location. Or you can do it the proper way.

Changing Your Library Location for iPhoto:
In iPhoto, there is no option for changing the default folder location. I have no idea why. But if you hold down your Option key while clicking on iPhoto from the dock, it will prompt you to create a library or choose a library. So first, I copied my iPhoto library to the new location and holding down the option key and launching iPhoto, I chose the new library. Ta-Da!

The LaCie drive is an excellent solution to maximizing storage space for both Windows and Macs, more specifically, the Mac Mini. I recommend it to anybody looking to expand storage space.

I’ve been browsing through my hit logs and noticed quite a few search requests for calibrating the Dreamcast laser. I decided to post a quick, small tutorial to reviving a dead Dreamcast. Within the past couple of weeks, we had a total of 6 Dreamcasts in the house.

First we bought a complete system for my mom, yes, she loves video games. We had given her our old NES but it wasn’t working very well so we bought her a Dreamcast and I made her a disk full of her favorite NES roms. Anyway, the other 3 dreamcasts I picked up for $5.00 a piece because they were broken. One thing I’ve learned with taken apart my first Dreamcast is that the setup is very basic and with most Dreamcast problems you can fix them quite easily. Which is what I did with all three of the broken Dreamcasts. So technically I got 3 Dreamcasts for $15 and I know some of my friends aren’t complaining because I’ve been passing them out.

Here’s a quick trick for those of you that have a Dreamcast that has suddenly stopped spinning disks:

Open up your Dreamcast by removing all of the screws.

Push the laser to the back and lift it’s casing out towards the back.

Unfortunately my picture is a little blurry, but there’s a little knob-type things that I’m gripping with pliers, all you have to do is turn it clockwise just slightly. What I do is turn it, test it, repeat.

Here is a clearer image submitted by eniacpx. (Thank you!)

It’s so easy I taught my ferret to do the work for me:

That should do it. You might have to turn it a few times or just once but it’s been flawless for me.

12/29/2007 Update:Thank you dreamcast-scene.com for caching my post and saving the images for me!