There’s a lot of people who have the desire to shoot video while driving, but then quickly give up the notion after realizing how much of a pain it can be. However it’s not all that difficult if you know how to do it in a safe way that doesn’t inconvenience you.

One way is to build a mount, like this:

There are a few immediate issues with the above method:

1. Both seats must be at the exact same angle in order for the bar to work.
2. Not everybody has a vehicle with headrests that extend (my truck doesn’t).
3. You have to physically fabricate the mount from scratch; it requires drilling, bolts, nuts and so on.

The second way – which is far easier – is to use a Flip secured tightly high on the passenger seat via a bungee cord wrapped around it.

I tested this and the result was surprisingly good.

(Note: The video below is admittedly boring. The point was to test shooting video this way to see if it would actually work.)

Although I didn’t get the angle quite right (it is pointing down somewhat), the video is clear and mostly stable. I purposely drove down a residential road with speed tables just to see how the Flip could handle bumps in the road video quality-wise, and it fared out much better than expected.

Flip camcorders do not record to videocassette but rather internal Flash memory, and has its own built-in USB connector for easy Flip-to-PC transfer. The newer HD models sell for $200, but the Flip Ultra (which is what I have) will record up to 30 minutes with its 1GB internal memory and retails for around $80 depending on where you shop. It also has the convenience of running off just 2 AA batteries. The 60-minute record time 2GB versions are 10 dollars more.

Also, there is the Flip action mount, however this may not work for in-car use (but does work great for bicycles and motorcycles).

So if you have the itch to shoot video from the car, now you’ve got some easy and moreover safe ways to do it.

To close out, here are things you should never do with camcorders and cars:

Holding a camcorder while driving. Dumb. Just plain dumb. It takes a hand off the steering wheel and concentration off the road. Bad, bad combination.

Putting a camcorder on the dashboard. Bad idea. Most of the time it will block your field of view and if there are any emergency situations where you have to make a hard stop or turn, the camcorder will go flying – and possibly hit you.

Mounting a camcorder near or on the rear glass. Blocks field of view in the rear direction. Bad idea.

Mounting a camcorder with suction cups to glass. Not smart. It will fall off. And yes there are some fools who have actually tried this.

If the camcorder is not secure, it’s just bad news all around. The steel bar method is rock solid. The bungee method keeps a Flip (and only a Flip or like type camcorder) very secured.

What about tripods?

A standard tripod is very bulky and will compromise the space behind the driver/passenger seats. In addition it’s not easy to set up at all.

The GorillaPod (in particular the Go-Go) is not secure enough for in-car use.

People see videos like these:

…and really want to do the in-car video thing. But trust me, this was not an easy setup. Not at all. Cool yes, but not easy.

Periodically I am asked whether it’s “safe” to leave a computer on all the time. The answer is yes if it’s a desktop (meaning not a laptop).

Chances are if you’ve been using computers long enough you’ve encountered at least one instance where some type of hardware failure occurred right as you turned on the box – and I’m betting it had something to do with a part that continually rotates when active.

Continually rotating parts in a computer are fans and hard drives (on the inside), and the most “grunt” needed is when they spin up from an absolute stop. When spinning they don’t have to work as hard.

To note: A DVD drive does not continually rotate. This is because when not using it, it doesn’t spin at all whatsoever even when the box is on.

Concerning hard drives:

It’s a good bet if you’ve ever seen a hard drive failure, it probably happened from a “cold” start, then the infamous “disk not found” message appeared.

Concerning fans:

Fans accumulate dust whether you want them to or not. This adds weight to the fan blades and can also dry out the bearing(s). If the fans stay spinning they will continue to do so almost indefinitely. However if they’re old and clogged up with dirt (including the dirt you can’t see or clean out), one day they simply won’t spin up from a cold start at all.

Starting up a hard drive from an absolute stop requires the most effort from it just to get it spinning – and this follows suit with coolant fans.

I sincerely do subscribe to the theory that having the computer on all the time is safe and does make it last longer.

In the way I have my personal desktop box set up, I specifically set the hard drives to never “sleep” because it’s essentially the same as starting a drive cold.

I want to note this is my personal opinion on whether leaving a computer box on all the time is safe or not. Based on my personal experience, anything the moves in a computer is better off if you keep it moving and helps to prevent premature failure.

KeePass Password Safe is a free password manager utility program that I’ve written about before. One question that came about is "Okay, so you can save a password file locally. But how about backing it up to a server?"

KeePass does in fact have the ability to do this via FTP.

Using the latest version 2.06 beta, you open your database and click File then Save As then Save to URL, like this:

From there a new window opens and looks like this:

Your URL is entered as ftp://ftp.example.com/MyDatabase.kdbx or something similar to it. After that you enter your FTP username and password in the fields below, then next to "Remember" you can opt to have the application remember your user/pass, remember user/pass for this session only or not remember at all.

"But I don’t have an FTP server!"

Your ISP most likely offers you free homepage space which is accessible via FTP. You can use that to store your password database to. See your ISP’s "personal homepage" options for more information on that.

"How do I know my password database is secure if on a remote server?"

Place a strong master password on the database. You do this from within KeePass itself. Never place a password database on a remote server that doesn’t have some kind of strong authentication to access it.

"Can I retrieve my password database from a remote FTP server without having a local copy?"

Yes. Click File, then Open, then Open URL. Enter your FTP information there and you can download the password database direct from FTP without ever having to save it locally. And if you modify it, yes it will save to the FTP location as well.

KeePass Password Safe is a free open source password manager for Windows. If you happen to be using something other than Windows there are contributed versions for PocketPC, Smart devices, Linux, Mac OS X, Blackberry and others.

One very cool feature of this app is the ability to use custom icons from any image to represent entries. Being that images are stored within the database, the app won’t "lose" them for any reason.

When you use Google image search you can quickly find the logos you need for your password entries.

For example, let’s say you have a Yahoo! Mail account stored. It looks like this:

You’ll notice the icon at top right is a key. We want to change this over to a Yahoo! logo for easy reference later.

From Google image search I searched for yahoo logo and found this:

This will work just fine.

Even though this image is large for an icon, that’s okay because KeePass Password Safe will auto-resize it.

I save this image locally, then click the icon button in the application next to "Icon" (see screenshot above where the key is), then click "Use custom icon".

Looks like this:

At the moment the Yahoo! logo I downloaded isn’t in there, so I click the "Add" button, locate the image I downloaded and added it in.

Now it looks like this (note the little Y! logo under Custom icons):

I select this entry and now this is what it looks like in my list:

When you start accumulating a lot of accounts for stuff you sign up for on the internet, having visual representations of what the service is by icon is very helpful.

If you get into the habit of image-searching a logo for the respective web site each time you add in an entry to the database, you’ll quickly discover that the visual reference really does make a difference. It may be small and seemingly insignificant, but in fact is a really good way of locating things quickly in KeePass Password Safe.

In addition this is also helpful if you have multiple accounts with the same web site.

Here’s a few examples:

Some PCMech specific stuff using the PCMech logo.

Some RoadRunner (my ISP) specific stuff using the RoadRunner logo.

Ustream accounts that I administer.

As said above, the visual reference really does make a difference.

Final note: KeePass Password Safe does not require the image to be .ICO specific. It can be GIF, JPG/JPEG, BMP or ICO. It all works.