camping

Finally, a way to put that boiling pot of water to some good use besides making a box of mac and cheese.

The PowerPot is a Kickstarter project that looks to heat things up by adding the ability to charge gadgets while the pot is over a heat source. The heat source can be an open fire, a camping stove, or even a natural hot spring. What is important is that the liquid inside the pot is colder than the heat source. It is this temperature difference that is used to generate the energy necessary to power small gadgets.

The … Read more

Getting back to nature doesn't have to mean getting away from it all.

You know how it is. When camping with family and/or friends, everybody finds themselves enjoying getting back to nature. It's not hard to do: the rustle of the wind through the trees, a nearby babbling brook, stars you can actually see. Then it hits. The need for a frozen pizza.

Modern convenience is never far away when camping with the Coleman Signature Outdoor Gear Portable Propane Stove/Oven. Capable of producing full meals just like the big oven back home, the propane-powered (it uses … Read more

Apple's move to Intel processors for its Mac systems in 2006 opened up many opportunities for Mac users, one of which was the ability to install and boot Windows directly on the Mac hardware without any emulation. To facilitate this for those who needed it, Apple introduced Boot Camp to easily partition the hard drive and supply drivers to the Windows OS for various features like iSight cameras and multitouch trackpads.

Boot Camp is a great option to have on the Mac, but unfortunately its support from Apple is rather limited, especially if you need to migrate from your … Read more

Per the video, couples can use the SwissRoomBox to shower and have pillow fights.

The Swiss took a simple pocket knife and made it open bottles, burn ants with a magnifying glass, and saw down trees. So we are not terribly surprised to see the SwissRoomBox. Its red-painted sides conceal a stove, sink, shower, table, and bed, and it can be fit into different types of cars.

This promotional video shows a couple on a splendid car camping adventure somewhere in the European countryside, taking advantage of the many uses of the SwissRoomBox, and proving that the Swiss do, in fact, wear leather underwear. … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed in by our readers. This week readers wrote in with questions on disabling Launchpad in Lion, reinstalling Windows XP with later versions of Boot Camp, restoring a deleted Garageband application, and concerns over negative reviews of MacKeeper. We continually answer e-mail questions, and though we present a few answers here, we welcome alternative approaches and views from readers and encourage you to post your suggestions in the comments.

Question: Disabling Launchpad in OS X Lion MacFixIt reader Jim B. asks:

Apple has released a couple of updates that are relevant to people running Boot Camp on their Macs, and for iMac systems. The Boot Camp update brings the version of the drivers to 3.0, and according to the Boot Camp updater Web page, it addresses some critical problems with the version 3.2 driver set. Therefore if you are running Boot Camp, then Apple recommends you install this latest update.

The firmware update for iMac systems will flash their Radeon graphics cards to a new version that will address a problem where the systems were hanging when performing some … Read more

The OS X 10.7 upgrade should work independently of your Boot Camp installations, but some people may find that after upgrading to Lion their Boot Camp installations are no longer accessible. In some instances the Boot Camp partition will disappear and will not show up in the start-up disk preferences or in the Finder. In other instances the volume may still be present in OS X but will not boot when attempting to load Windows. The reason for these problems may be as simple as an improperly configured driver or because of custom partition configurations on your boot drive.… Read more

An interesting note for people using either Windows XP or Windows Vista with Boot Camp is that you will not be able to install the latest version of Boot Camp (version 4) on your system. In a recent knowledgebase article, Apple outlines the system requirements for Boot Camp 4, part of which is the requirement for "an authentic, single, full-installation, 32-bit or 64-bit Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate disc."

While Boot Camp 4.0 will run in either Snow Leopard or Lion, it is a requirement for setting up new Windows installations in Lion even … Read more

When I was a kid, I went to my fair share of educational summer programs: language camp, clay animation camp, invention camp (and I loved them all). But those are so 20th century. These days, the hot, educational activity during the summer months is tech camp, the obvious choice for kids who are obsessed with playing on their computers, conquering video games, and mastering the thousands of apps for their iPods, tablets, or smartphones.

Now in its 13th season, iD Tech Camps is a ubiquitous program that offers summer courses in a wide range of techie topics at 60 universities … Read more