How to turn off the iPhone display while talking on the phone

I love to turn off my iPhone display when my iPhone is doing something that doesn't require my fingers to input anything. First of all, because it saves battery; and second, because then you can't accidentally mess something up by accidentally pressing something. For most tasks (e.g. playing music), all that is required is to press the button on the top of the iPhone. The iPhone keeps on doing it's thing (like playing music) and the battery isn't wasted. This would also be nice when you're talking on the phone, especially if you're using a head-set. However, for talking on the phone, if you press the top button, it will end the conversation. That being said, you can still turn off the display. It just takes a couple more steps.

0. Phone call is already happening.
1. Press iPhone home button (the button on the face of the phone). This takes you to the home-screen and leaves a bar at the top of the display to indicate that there is a phone call happening.
2. Press the iPhone sleep button (the button on the top of the phone which usually turns the display off). This will lock the phone, but the phone call is still happening.
3. Press the iPhone sleep button again. This turns off the display, but the phone call is, as before, still happening.
4. If you want to end the call, mute yourself, etc, press the home button or the sleep button and you will go back to the lock screen.
5. Talk away.

Windows Vista: Volume Control has Disappeared

Here's how to fix it:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/945011/en-us

Coffee and Beer

Coffee to morning, beer in the night--
helps me to know that the world is alright.
Beer in the evening, coffee at dawn--
puts me at peace and turns the world on.

Why the New York Times did us all a good deed by charging for (or limiting) online content

Do you remember the brouhaha about the New York Times establishing an upper limit on free articles you could read each month? There was quite a bit of debate about the pros, cons, business, and ethics of such a move. It probably was a good business move, because they haven't reversed it. Ethically, I never had a problem with it, because is there content, so they should be able to do what they want with it. But I'm starting to believe that the move was beneficial not only for them, but also for society as a whole.

I recently hit the monthly article limit for the New York Times. It also happened with the Wall Street Journal. Then today, the same thing happened with the Economist. And if you're anything like me, you might be able to guess that each of those events happened in one sitting. It starts out innocent enough. I visit one of my serendipity pools like Twitter, Facebook, or Hacker News, see an interesting looking link, and open it in a new tab. When I get around to looking at the article, I see three other article that look interesting and open each of them in their own tab as well. Pretty soon...tab explosion. Not only that, but I've reached my monthly limit. To top it off, I probably read all of one of the articles, the first paragraph of a few of the others, and the title and sub-title of the rest of them. Now I have the pleasure of knowing that my productivity for the rest of the month will be higher, because I can't read anything else from NYT, WSJ, or whatever the website happens to be.

Now I don't necessarily think this is a good habit. In fact, I think it's a bad habit. Because the internet puts more information than one person could ever comprehend at our fingertips, we think that information is "free." And it mostly is if you are only talking about money, but what is monetarily free is often not healthy for us. Plus, it has other costs, such as time, attention, and our ability to enjoy things. Enjoyment often comes from something being new. It springs from a sense of surprise, serendipity, or awe. Am I in awe of the fact that humans can go to the moon? Yes of course, but then I quickly move on to the next thing.

Some people like to draw an analogy between information and food, and I think it's a good one. A good diet of food does not consist of eating everything in sight, even if it is kale, carrots, beets, and kefir. A good diet consists of eating what you need and then using it (exercise, living, etc)--and don't forget rest either. What would be the informational counterparts to exercise and rest?

So, it may seem like I got off topic (which I kind of did), but here's the point, the tildra, the aphoristic wall-hanger: By limiting the number of articles someone can read each month, the New York Times (and other websites) are retraining us to do what we should be doing (and used to do out of necessity)--choose what we really want to read and focus.

ssh: connect to host ____ port 22: connection refused

Contact the person who set up the site and ask them which port is supposed to be used for this.

What does Philately mean? [a conversation story]

A: Today you can meet my brother, Jeff.
B: Okay, cool. Tell me about him.
A: He's really into philately.
B: What's philately?
A: Stamp collecting.
B: Stamp collecting. Okay...uh, how do you spell philately?
A: P-H-I-L-A-T-E-L-Y
B: Philately does not sound like it could mean stamp collecting.
A: Why not?
B: Generally, if a word has "ly" at the end of it (i.e., the letters 'L' 'Y'), which Philately sounds like it does, then it is an adverb, something that modifies a verb, but stamp collecting should be a noun. How can Philately mean stamp-collecting?
A: Ummm
B: Okay, let's think about this. Really, stamp collecting is the present participle (or is it gerund) of "collect stamps," which is a verb phrase, so we can get a little closer to an adverb there, but really, adverb and participle seem to be opposite directions, grammatically--at least to me. What do you think.
A: I'm not really following what you're saying. Why is this such a big deal to you?
B: It was the first think you said about your brother, so it seems to be important to your family at least. When I learn a new word, I want to know where it came from.
A: Okay, fair enough, but I'm still a bit lost on the grammatical direction issue.
B: Let's try a different tack. What language do you think philately comes from?
A: Um, Greek probably.
B: Right, a P-H together usually means that, so...philately is probably a greek word.
A: What if L-Y means something different in Greek?
B: If it did, there probably would be some other words ending in L-Y that are nouns, but I can't think of any. Of course, there could be, but I think we would probably know that. In fact, I think the L-Y suffix might be Greek. What do you think?
A: No idea. Maybe we should just look it up.
B: Wait, before you do that. What about the "phil" connection?
A: Like stamp collecting is loving being late.
B: Um, yeah, something like that. What does "ate" mean in Greek?
A: Stamps! of course.
B: Really?
A: Well, that was just a guess. I mean, if philately means stamp collecting, then there has to be a stamp meaning in there somewhere, right?
B: Yeah, I guess you better look it up now.
A: Okay, here's what Google says: "The collection and study of postage stamps."
B: Okay, we already knew that. What about the origin.
A: Wait, I've got an idea. What if it's just a 'Y' at the end, not at L-Y.
B: Um, like...Philately is a form of Philatel or Philateling.
A: Exactly. Look, someone who does philately is a philatelist.
B: Okay, perhaps. So that would mean that the Greek word for stamp is probably either 'atel' or 'latel', right? Or maybe even 'ately'.
A: Good call. Okay, here's what dictionary.com says about the origin: It's from the French word philatélie, which comes from the Greek words phil- and atéleia. (Hopefully I pronounced those right.) Atéleia means "freedom from charges (taken to mean recipient's freedom from delivery charges by virtue of the stamp which sender affixed to the letter), literally, want of taxation," equivalent to a- a... + tél ... tax + -eia -y3"
B: Here, let me look at that.
*Pause while B reads the description. Let B also press a couple of links.*
B: I see. So you were right about the 'Y' being separate from the 'L'. Basically, this means that "ately" was originally "a-TEL-y" or something like that. The "a" is "not", the "tel" is "tax", and the "y" is making the "tel" into a noun, like inquiry. Cool, now I know all about Philately.
A: Um, no. You really don't. You know about the word, but you probably don't know much about the actual activity.
B: Good point. I'm sure your brother will be happy to tell me about that.

How to you make the thingy go over the n in the Spanish n?

You mean this thing: ñ ? It's called an eñe or enye (pronounced EN-yay). To write it, you hold down the alt key and type in 164 -- but it has to be on the number pad on (usually on the right side of the keyboard), not the number line above the keyboard. At least that's the way it is on my keyboard. For the capital letter, hold down the alt key and type in 0209. Warning, it may take a few seconds for the letter to actually appear (not sure why, there must be some calculation that it needs to do).

TLDR version:

Ñ = alt-0209
ñ  = alt-164

Use the num-pad (right side), not the num-line.

How to scan with an HP Photosmart printer

This feels dumb, but today was the second time that I couldn't figure it out immediately, so here are instructions for my future reference.

1. Go to the list of printers and scanners
2. Double-click on the HP Photosmart printer
3. Click on the "Scan a document or photo" link

Step 2 was the part that I got stuck on, because I kept on trying to right click, which does not give you an option for scanning.