Update (October 2026) These are the 2013 sizes, and they’re all out of date now. Google+ shut down in 2019, Twitter is now X, and every network has changed its image sizes more than once since. Check each site’s current help pages before you design anything. Social Media Dimensions Quick Reference The following is…
Update (October 2026) Google Play Music shut down at the end of 2020, so these steps no longer work. Google moved its music service over to YouTube Music, and the Music Manager program was retired along with it. Here’s a quick how-to for downloading your music with the Google Music Manager. Open the Music Manager…
Update (October 2026) Google Play Music shut down at the end of 2020, so these steps no longer work. Google moved its music service over to YouTube Music, and the web download option went with it. You can download with the desktop Music Manager or from the web. This will show you how to download…
Update (October 2026) Google Play Music shut down at the end of 2020 and was replaced by YouTube Music, so this sale (and the Android Market name) is long gone. The link now goes to YouTube Music. For a limited time, music is on sale in the Android Market: $0.49 per song and $4.99 per…
Update (October 2026) I stopped using SyncDocs a good many years ago. Google’s own Drive for desktop app does the same job now, keeping a folder on your computer synced with Google Drive, so that’s what I use. If that’s what brought you here, grab the free Drive for desktop app from Google Drive. Working…
Google’s data centers are so large that they use a water-based cooling system to keep all those servers cool. This video shows how they run an entire water treatment plant, just for cleaning up the water so it can be used to cool their server facility. It’s a fascinating look at the sheer scale of…
Here’s a look inside one of Google’s data centers. I’ve been into computers and the internet for a long time, and this stuff is fascinating to me. The scale and engineering behind these places is hard to believe. The video has a full tour.
Update (October 2026) Looking back, most of this held up. Monthly subscriptions really did replace buying software once, and services really do disappear: MobileMe, Picasa and Google Play Music are all gone now. The part that changed the most is speed. That 768K upload I was fighting with is a tiny fraction of what a…
Someone from Japan visited my blog and left the address of their own bonsai blog. It’s called Bonsai and Japanese Heart. You can run it through Google Translate to read the posts, or just watch the videos of Japanese gardens at the top of the site. Nice to connect with bonsai folks from the other…
⚠ Safety note: I am not a licensed electrician. This post shares my own DIY experience for general information only. Home electrical work is hazardous and is governed by local code. Always shut off power at the breaker and confirm it is off before touching any wires, follow the codes that apply where you live,…
My first (large) batch of Picasa uploads have completed. It took about 8 days and I now have used up 46.2GB of my google storage. I have many videos that I am working on uploading to YouTube, a very slow process. I also have another hard drive full of my older photos, which I am…
Update (October 2026) Google retired Picasa in 2016, and yes, those 6Mb DSL speeds look pretty silly now. On a fiber connection this whole upload would be measured in hours. Google; What would be really cool is if you could make a % of upload completed, for the entire upload, of all albums in queue…