I've been using this method for about 10 years. It isn't overkill. If you have a master link (like the Sram Powerlink), which most modern chains come with, this is a LOT easier, tidier and more effective than cleaning the chain on the bike.

I'm also partial to ncftp (+ cygwin if I'm in windows) to quickly send or retrieve a file or two.

@deverbative: Get Gimp. There are lots of tutorials on the web for how to do these things manually, which isn't that hard and gives you more control over the results. Or there might be some similar GIMP scripts out there.

I had this for my palm pilot years ago, but it's nice to see that Android and iOS are finally catching up. :)

@takaides: tell me about it.. and they also dropped manual mode on the affordable A series. They probably want us all to buy G12s, but CHDK is the one and only reason I picked Canon over Panasonic. And for that much money, these days I'd get an Olympus Pen with changeable lenses and a bigger, cleanable sensor.

@jupiterthunder: but Facebook needs more of that than most sites. It's by far the most annoying social networking site I've ever seen, even ignoring their obvious contempt for the very concept of privacy.

If I was putting Linux on a low powered computer I'd probably pick a faster distro than Ubuntu. And a desktop manager that wasn't Gnome or (yuck) KDE 4 based.

That's the problem I've noticed lately. It's not just spam, it's a flood of irrelevant results when I'm trying to search for something specific. I think it's because Google is trying too hard to read people's minds (by "correcting" spelling or searching similar spellings, for example), so it's harder to craft a…

@OscarNJ: Palm OS and Windows Mobile never had such restrictions, long before Apple copied them. There's no legitimate technical reason for it, it's all about control and skimming profits.

@corneliuscrab:

Palm OS. It didn't do everything I wanted but it did pretty much everything I actually needed, tons of free apps, no jailbreaking required to make it useful, if I wanted read in the park and be left alone I could bring my PDA with me and "forget" my cellphone, and no choosing between an exorbitant no-contract price…

@priyankvira: Why not? It turns iOS from a tarted-up, locked-down ripoff of PalmOS into a pocket computer, almost like Windows Mobile.

Why? I didn't even want my Mac to look like a Mac, back when I had a Mac. I always thought OS X looked like it was designed by Sanrio.

@valmorphorize: Don't reinstall, just ghost everything over to the new drive. My new internal drive even came with the software.

Will it reverse the trend of wondering what they broke this time (or "upgraded" with a not-quite-ready, feature-poor development version) , and where they hid that configuration option that used to be in the GUI, that's been bugging me about every Ubuntu release since 7.10? If so, I just might put Linux back on…

@Fiona Conn: 50mm f/1.8 primes are cheap and almost as good as the 1.2, and a flash system that will actually give tolerable results costs a lot more. Shoot wide open in aperture priority and exhale when shooting. Lean against something if possible.

@rocker9455: probably

@rocker9455: You want regular old black and white photographic paper (it's not really special). Ilford even makes it in the UK. You can buy it at good photographic supply stores or on-line.

Huh? Windows has far better keyboard control than OSX. I miss Windows keyboard shortcuts when I have to use a Mac.

@Unionhawk: White noise or rain or some such uniform sound is a lot less distracting than sirens, barking dogs, people talking, and doof-doof cars going by.