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Archive for the ‘Tech’ category
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August 16th, 2010Nook
August 5th, 2010
About three weeks ago I purchased a Barns and Noble Nook and I LOVE it. In answer to your’s and my mom’s first question, because its half the price of an iPad.
The background:
I found myself in an awkward situation. I did not want to buy any more physical books but the iPad (the obvious choice) was not yet where I wanted it.
I am against physical books for the following reasons: books are heavy, expensive, not searchable and can only be one place at a time.
On the other hand you have the iPad out there. Buts its a 1st gen device. Normally I would be all over a first gen device, being the early adopter that I am, but the iPad has some obvious upgrades coming. It will inevitably get the “retinal display” as well as a front facing camera.
Why the Nook?
Well to start it cheaper than the Kindle. Both devices are solid. The Nook has a wifi-only version that saves about $40 bucks. Where as the Kindle does not (Its new, really new). I also liked that I could go to a Barns and Noble store and play with one. I know, kinda ironic of me to say I want to buy in a bricks and mortar store and do away with physical books.
There is one other issue: DRM. The Kindle is a very closed platform. There is very little you can do with a Kindle other than read books from amazon. Because I am occasionally given large PDFs to read or books in PDF format, the Nooks compatibility features were very welcome.
have had this post in the queue for a while. Since I originally drafted it, Amazon came out with a new Kindle. Its has a newer generation of eink and is $10 cheaper. It looks like a seriously good device. DRM issues aside, it would be hard to go wrong with the Kindle.
User Interface
The Nook has a touch screen and I am against keys on portable devices. Sounds great until you use it. The Nook’s touch screen is nothing to write home about. Once you have played with an iPhone/iPad every other touch screen seems like garbage. Additionally, the first think I did was poke the etch-a-sketch… err… eink screen.
I could also tell you about the eink’s terrable refresh rate, but that would be missing the point (which I will talk about a bit later). Its an ereader. The only interface that should really matter is the page flipping buttons.
Again, you compare the Nook to an iPad and it looks bad but when you evaluate it for what it is, its a great little device.
Getting Up To Speed:
This was my first ereader so I was pretty much as dumb of a user as you can get. It was obvious that Barns and Noble had thought about the this. The Nook came loaded with a user manual, a humorous short article and a sample book. The total effect was a great walkthough of the device.
The Screen…
…Is always on. The typical on off does not really describe eink. Its more like the device wakes up, switches screens and goes back to sleep. Furthermore, for a black and white screen it can show so great images. As I mentioned earlier, the refresh rate blows, but thats not why you would use a device like this.
Conclusion:
I think the Nook is a great device. It would be hard to go wrong with a Nook or a Kindle. I think if I was reading textbook the Kindle DX would be killer but for occasional pastime reading and travel, the Nook is the winner for me.
iPhone 4 Reception Problem
June 28th, 2010Today I get back to work and the buzz is the iPhone 4 has reception problems. I am on day 5 with the iPhone 4 and have yet to have a problem.
This weekend we drove up and down the Columbia River Gorge on our way to Spokane. The iPhone 4 performed just as well as my old 3Gs (which is now my wife’s) and my brothers Verizon Droid.
So I do not believe rumors about reception issues.
Red Dot vs Holographic in Real Life and Modern Warfare.
March 11th, 2010
Ever wonder why Modern Warefare 1 and 2 offer you both a red dot and holographic sights? I did and it turns out there may actually be some real life differences that the game applies.
Both a red dot and a holographic sights are reflex sights. Meaning they reflect a reticle. The advantage of these it you can have booth eyes open and the reticle retains its true point of aim. This is unlike iron sights where improper sight alignment screws your point of aim.
So back to Modern Warfare, in theory the red dot gives you a greater field of vision while the holographic it more restrictive. The holographic sight is more accurate due to parallax error. Essentially, what I stated before about retaining your true point of aim is not entirely accurate. When you get to the limits of the sights viewing angle, you will experience increasing deflection from your true point of aim. Holographic sights are better and retaining their true point of aim but the trade off is decreased viewing angle. Thus in Modern Warefare the holographic is more accurate than the red dot but dominating more of your field of view.
Most red dots like the Truglo that I recently bought use LEDs and the light source while EOTech uses a laser.
So there you go. Next time you are on the range or playing MW2 with your friends you can impress them with big words like, “refraction” and “parallax”, that is if you also read the Wikipedia articles I link to (which I found fascinating).
Later I will blog about my experiment with red dot sights and shotguns.
Successfully Dual Booting Windows 7 and BackTrack 4 with GRUB
March 10th, 2010Warning: The is a more technical post. You have been warned.
Ever try and dual boot Windows 7 and Linux?
Here is the back story. I bought a Compaq Netbook. It came with windows 7, which was all fine and good until you want to do anything fun (ie using BackTrack 4 to pen test your wifi). So I used Unetbootin and created a BackTrack 4 live cd, then used their install script to create partitions and install Backtrack. This all went great. I p0wned some WEP, bla bla bla. So yesterday I am at a conference and I think to my self, “I should use Win 7.” Just at MS Bing’s Directory was stepping up to deliver his Keynote, the fail began.
Windows 7 apparently freaks out when it sees Grub and offers to help.
Then it pulls a suicide bomb maneuver where it reinstalls itself, deleting everything along with your GRUB (the dual boot lintch pin). So wanting my dualbootness back I re-up GRUB buy booting with a Live CD and doing the following:
find /boot/grub/stage1
- It tells you (hdx,y)
root (hdx,y)
setup (hdx)
And WERE BACK… to Windows not working… F…
So I investigate:
The problem is partially Windows and partially Grub. Windows 7 splits its boot loading across two partitions. So when GRUB says, “Windows 7 Partition GO!”, Windows thinks it’s files are missing and reverts to fail. So persevered through A) the desire to gratuitously slander MS for not playing nice with others, B) millions of restarts and C) metric shit tons of not so helpful forums and blogs. So what is the answer?
First we need to understand what partitions I had happening:
load up Linux and “fdisk -l”
/dev/sda1 (hd0,0) This is essentially windows “c” drive
/dev/sda2 (hd0,1) Not really sure
/dev/sda3 (hd0,2) The Win “Recovery” drive (Its A Lie… the Recovery part)
/dev/sda4 (hd0,3) Again labeled “System” but not sure
/dev/sda5 (hd0,4) BackTrack 4
/dev/sda6 (hd0,5) BackTrack 4 Swap
As I said ealier Winsuck 7′s bootloader is a little spread out, so you have to do some workaround crazyness. Your normal Windows GRUB entry would look like this:
root (hd0,4)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1
Note: I have a partitioned drive so everything is on hd0. hd0,x x would be the partitions.
For Windows to boot you need to map the “c:” and the “Recovery” partitions together.
map (hd0,0) (hd0,3)
map (hd0,3) (hd0,0)
rootnoverify (hd0,3)
chainloader +1
More Notes: I used “rootnoverify” but you might be able to use just “root”.
Once that was set up, the problem was solved. I now have a dual booting system using GRUB and booting to BackTrack 4 and Windows 7. Some people might tell you that you have to wipe you drive, reinstall windows then use windows to configure the partitions, obviously they are wrong. I still might shitcan Win 7 for Ubuntu, you never know.
iPad: Tablet PC or Reader?
January 28th, 2010
I came away from yesterdays iPad news with mixed feelings. A giant iPod touch? Hmmm…. Not sure that’s something I want. After all it lacked some of the features I thought it should have. But when I thought about it, I was wanting more of a computer and what they released if much more of a reader.
With that in mind I set out to evaluate it against the Barns and Noble Nook and the Amazon Kindle.
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| Features | Nook | Kindle | iPad |
| Screen | 6″ E-inc/Color | 6″/9.7″ E-inc | 9.7″ of LED Backlit Apple Kick-ass-ness |
| Wireless | Wifi/3G | Wifi/3G | Wifi/3G |
| Wireless Plan | Free 3G | Free 3G | $15 |
| Books Cost | Around $9 | Around $9 | $15? |
| Book Store | Barns and Noble | Amazon | Apple, and Probably Amazon and BN via their Apps |
| Interface | Partial Touch Screen | Buttons | Multi-touch |
| Maybe | Extra | Oh Ya | |
| Expandability | SD Cards | None | None |
| Hackability | Its running Android/Linux… | I guess it can be done | Steve Jobs is watching you |
| Other Things it Does | Not Much | Not Much | Various other Multi-media, Games, Apps from the Apple App store. | Lowest Price Model | $259 | $259 | $499 |
Conclusion: The iPad, although lacking free 3G, is a reader +. If you are going to buy a reader you should strongly consider the iPad. If you are looking for a small computer you should consider the MacBook Air or any one of the unwashed masses of netbooks.
I think its important to remember that Apple Steve was not looking to reinvent the laptop.
Tomorrow! Apple!
January 26th, 2010Unless you actually live in a cave, or don’t have internet access (its really the same thing), you will have sensed that the intertubez are climaxing over the whole Apple tablet thing. Prepare for orgasm, unless there is no tablet in which case the internet will be seriously pissed off.
If I remember I will post where the best live blog is happening. Already a great bet will be FakeSteve.net.
Size Matters: Especially On WiFi Antennas
December 8th, 2009I large part of my computer using life has been spend trying to get them to do things they were not designed to do. In high school we were breaking NT boxes. In college, messing with the schools firewall. Now I get paid to encourage search engines to like my companies site (I am a white hat if anyone is wondering). Now that I have my netbook set up with VMs all that was missing was the right wifi antenna and my mobile wifi auditor would be complete. At the recommendation of the guys over at Hak5 I bought the Alpha AWUS036H. Basically the word on the interwebz is this is the best you can buy.
Remember: just like with a gun, just because you have one does not make it ok to use it on other people. Play with your own set-up or ask your grandmother if you can practice on hers.
Remember (x2): You lock your doors and close your windows, so freaking password your wifi and don’t use Internet Explorer… Please god don’t use Internet Explorer.
World of Remote Blogging
September 14th, 2009I just descovered the WordPress app for iPhone. Look out blogosphere my goal of shorter, more frequent updates might become a reality.
Jaadu VNC for iPhone. Remote Control Computer from Your iPhone.
August 25th, 2009
Want to impress your friends and bore the crap out of your wife? I have got the app for you! Jaadu VNC allows you to remote control your home or office computer from your iPhone.
Warning: you need to have a little geek in you to a) want to do this b) understand the technology to get Jaadu VNC to work. If you feel like your home router is not that scary, this is easy.
» Read more: Jaadu VNC for iPhone. Remote Control Computer from Your iPhone.
