Do you have an old firewire ipod laying around, or multi use storage device in your pocket? Now you can turn it into a Mac OS X diagnostic, repair, and maintenance tool. DasBoot allows you to take any third party boot CD and quickly create a bootable diagnostic device that contains any of your own utilities you may wish to install.

RELATED WEBSITE LINKS

DasBoot - http://www.subrosasoft.com
Tech Tool Pro - http://www.micromat.com/
Disk Warrior - www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/

1.Start with a good photo. Since we are mimicing graffiti and stencil art, use a photo with an urban feel.
2.Create a vibrant colour palette. For this image we are using blue for the sky, yellow, orange and dark orange for the buildings. White and Black will be used for highlights and shadows.
3.Start by colourizing the background and continue layering the images on top. The puffy clouds are replaced with blue skies and sun rays.
4.Isolate the first section of buildings. Colourize the selection with yellow, the lightest colour in the pallette.
5.Duplicate the orginal photo on to a new layer. Mask out the buildings to match the existing building selection. Adjust the hue of the photo. Adjust levels and threshold. Use the cutout filter. Set the layer opacity to multiply at 60%.
6.Isolate the second section of buildings. Colourize the selection with orange.
7.Duplicate the orginal photo on to a new layer. Mask out the buildings to match the existing building selection. Adjust the hue of the photo. Adjust levels and threshold. Use the cutout filter. Set the layer opacity to multiply at 80%.
8.Colourize the remaining area with the dark orange.
9.Duplicate the orginal photo on to a new layer. Mask out the buildings to match the existing building selection. Adjust the hue of the photo. Adjust levels and threshold. Use the cutout filter. Set the layer opacity to multiply at 100%.
10.Finish the artwork off with brick wall texture, lines and stenciled text.

You may be under the impression that when all of your electronic equipment is turned off that you’re not using any power — and you would be incorrect in thinking that. A good portion of the electronic equipment we have in the house — be it televisions, computers, cell phones or MP3 players — use electricity even when they’re powered down. In fact, one estimate claims that up to 5% of the electricity used in North America is used by products that are turned OFF.

That’s understandable when it comes to items like cell phones and MP3 players, which use power to keep the battery charged, but it’s surprising when you think of things like your television or your home computer, which don’t use battery power. What these items use, however, is standby mode: by keeping power running through the device, it doesn’t have to go through a full power-up when you finally press that button. It also allows the device (such as a TV) to be able to be powered up from the remote control, and the keep onboard clocks running properly. In some of these cases, you may want those devices to stay powered up, but in other cases, you may want to stop the power consumption — in many cases, the only thing that’s produces is heat, with no appreciable benefit.

One easy way to deal with the issue is to place any items that you don’t need to keep powered up full-time on a power bar, and when you’re not using them, simply turn the whole power bar off. Another is to plug items like the television into an outlet that’s controlled by a wall-switch, and remember to turn it off when the TV is not in use. And for electronic gadgets that need to be charged up, charge them and then unplug them from the wall — or only charge them just before you need them.

The podcast Treehugger TV has a movie spoof with a serious message about “vampire power” here: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/10/treehuggertv_vampire.php

As a quick test, we tested power draw from various devices that were already charged but plugged in, left over the weekend:
- Logitech MX Revolution
- Nikon battery charger
- LG Fusic phone
- Motorola S9 headset
- 19-inch LCD monitor
- one PC tower

All devices were left OFF, but they still consumed .57 kWh over the course of one weekend. That doesn’t seem like much but measure that over the course of one year, and that’s over 100 kilowatt hours. In BC (where we measured) that would be $6.65 over the course of one year; in San Francisco it’d be more like $21.10. Keep in mind that’s just a small group of gadgets…compare that to the number of electronics spread around the typical home, and then multiply that by the number of homes in the country, and you have a substantial amount of electricity that’s being used for…nothing.

We also measured the load on the line when all of the constantly-charging gadgets were removed from the equation — just one PC and one LCD monitor—BOTH TURNED OFF—had a power draw of 6 watts. A quick flick of the switch on the power bar and that load goes down to 0.