I love Growl . Odds are, if you're a Mac user, you do too. Or at least you've heard of it.

But did you realize that it can do really amazing things? All it needs it a few tweaks and an application or three.

One of the latest and awesomest things you can do is receive Growl notifications on your iPhone with Prowl ($3, app store ).

You'll need to install the Growl Plugin and then configure your system to send notifications from Growl to Prowl.

But just what sort of amazing notifications should you be sending?
What about Twitter notifications?

Go grab yourself a copy of Tweetie and sign in to your account. For reasons that escape me, the Growl notification preferences are sort of buried in Tweetie. To enable them, go to "Tweetie" -> "Preferences" -> "Accounts" -> Click your account name -> "Notification Options"

Check the bottom field marked "Growl Notification". You probably don't want to send every single tweet you receive to your iPhone though.

Go to "System Preferences" -> "Growl" -> "Applications" Choose Tweetie, the click "Configure". Change the notifications option to assign a priority of "High" to Direct Messages and Mentions (or as you prefer).

Back in the main Growl Preferences, go to Display options. Remember where you set up Prowl? Change Prowl to send notifications when Priority is at least High. I also chose to wait until the computer is idle for a period of time, since I don't need two notifications at once.

What about some other applications? While I have the excellent Delivery Status app for my phone, I really want to have push notifications. Guess what? They have a free Dashboard Widget that supports Growl.

Or (one of my favorites) HellaNZB:"http://www.hellanzb.com/ . In fact, that reminds me of another great Growl feature: Notifications don't have to be local. My home server runs HellaNZB, which can be configured to send Growl notifications to a remote machine. Back in your Growl preferences, you just need to enable listening for incoming notifications and allow remote application registration.

And then yes, you can push those updates out via Prowl too.

Remember though, it's a good idea to only send messages assigned a high priority, otherwise you are (probably) going to be swamped with mundane messages and IMs.

Oh yeah, IMs. Zachary West, author of Prowl, also happens to be an Adium developer.

A long time ago Rob told me about this wireless gear he was using from a company called Ubiquiti Networks . I of course promptly forgot who made it or the specifics. Then we (as in my company) bought a few to evaluate for a project. I'm. In. Love. I highly, HIGHLY recommend the PowerStation2 to anyone who might have use for such a thing. Awesomesauce.

I set up a Tumb/Micro/Mini/Whatever blog over here
The whole thing originated on the Mailing List .
Basically, I'm just keeping track of all the crap I buy. Too bad I didn't start this 6 weeks ago, I've been single handedly supporting the local economy.

I bought a searsucker suit. I'm really excited to have it, but damned if I know when I will wear it.

I'm going to see Nine Inch Nails several times in the upcoming weeks. At the Pittsburgh show, I've got meet/greet + backstage passes , I'm very, very excited.

Speaking of crap I bought, finally broke down and got a Mac Pro.

A while back, I ordered the SLG book Jellyfist . The concept was simple: Jhonen Vasquez wrote, and "Jenny" JR Goldberg drew pretty pictures to go along.

It was silly, beautiful and immensely entertaining. Recently, JR Goldberg began selling things on Etsy , so I thought I would take a look. Surprise surprise, I found a hand printed mini-book called "Squelch" for a whopping $5. That's right, five US of A dollars. And there was one left. I snatched it up.

I've been following JR Goldberg for a while on Twitter, and I decided to ask for an autograph on my order, didn't know if it would work..but what they hey.

Today, I finally received my order (it takes a while, I live in the UAE, so it has to be shipped to New York then here). I am absolutely stunned.

Not only did I get my copy of Squelch, it was Autographed..

..with a bunch of nifty extras!

That whacky JR Goldberg not only signed it, she threw in a pin, a nice little note, and a business card (from none other than MooCards , one of my favorites).

So, here is the point:

I love DIY. Not only did JR Goldberg undercharge me for this really great piece, but she went the extra mile. I didn't expect any of this, and I asked only for an autograph. She took it upon herself to really show that she cared about the product (her art) and her customer (me, her audience).

I've mentioned more than a few times my love for another Etsy Alumni, Hard Graft (neé Working Class Heroes ), and I love them for the same reasons. They create a superior quality product with a brilliant focus on detail and craftsmanship. How many companies ship you a piece of Austrian chocolate with your order?

Only one I know of.

Which is why I've continued to do business with them. When I got a new laptop, the first thing I did was place an order for a new laptop sleeve from Hard Graft. When a co-worker needed a laptop sleeve, I convinced him to buy one as well. (He did, and he loves it). He in turn has recommended them to other people as well.

Which is the point.

Goods from small companies (or even individuals) with the DIY mentality / ethic are wonderful things to purchase. Yes, often times the products cost a bit more, but in the end you know that you are getting a product that someone has a personal interest in. Their name and reputation hang on the quality of the product they personally create and sell to you. They care.

Etsy is a great place to find these individuals / products. There is a lot of crap, to be sure. (Seriously...how many people are selling keychains of random crap that they hot glued to a fob? No, I will not pay $15 for your Lego Man keychain, idiot).

Last night I was looking over the toledo source code thinking about how I should really update it.

Something shiny caught my eye, and I ended up doing everything but. A few minutes ago, I got an email from a guy in Holland who is working on making the AM03128 work with a microcontroller. He's using my code to figure out how to "talk" to the sign.

I often wonder if there would be anyone else in the world that would get any use out of my code. Now I know there is at least one person, and that's pretty freakin' awesome.

After running 10.5.6 on my local machines for a while, I finally decided to go ahead and update the server.

Which of course is when the problems set in.

Turns out, Apple helpfully reconfigured my configuration so that it insisted on listening to local connections only. Which wasn't documented, anywhere.

Foolishly, I assumed the problem existed in my own configuration files (it's been a loooong time since a restart), and I thought I bunged something up.

Had I done a diff on the configs, I would have immediately spotted the difference. ::sigh::

Easy enough to fix, once you know about it. Fix