How to mania

Last week when I was guest-posting a bit on Lifehacker, I found the motivation to write a bunch of how-tos I've been meaning to do for my own site. Basically it boiled down to spending a couple hours each night writing, editing, and putting photos and links together for each one. It was a bit of a grind, but helped me pass the time between late night feedings when I was on baby duty. So here they are:

Reducing intake of sugary drinks - I really love Honest Tea, and it's helped me get down to drinking cola once a week or so.

Sharing dual-platform desktops with a single keyboard/mouse - I've written about Synergy, VNC, and my dual platform setup before, but with the recent release of a Synergy GUI app, it's now easier than ever to share multiple systems as one giant desktop.

Learning to love Audiobooks - I find that I love audiobooks more than printed books for a lot of titles, and I seem to have more time for audiobooks than reading. I ran down all the things that make a good audiobook experience and a few of my favorites. There are many more I forgot to mention (like Bill Bryson's great stuff), including bad audiobooks (Jared Diamond - great speaker, great writer, but the publisher pays a drone to read his text).

Using firewire networking - Upgrading to tiger seems to have improved firewire networking in my setup. I now get very fast transfer rates between my mac and PC.

How iPod mounts work - I've come to the conclusion that my $65 iPod holder is an expensive, but necessary accessory, for the sake of safety.

How to setup a drip system in your garden - I can't tell you how much I love not having to water the plants by hand and how easy this stuff is to set up. This little system eliminates the one thing about gardening I disliked most -- being a slave to the watering can.

Uptime server monitor review - I've been happily using uptime for years. It just plain works.