Extreme Tolerance » Tech

Magpul iPhone 4 Case

Admin — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:01:05 +0000

After a year of waiting I finally got the magpul iPhone case. I have to say I was perfectly willing to say all kinds of bad things about it. Especially considering the wait.

Its also important to note that this is not the original case I was after. When Magpul first announced the iPhone field case the iPhone 3GS was the latest and greatest. In the intervening time the iPhone 4 dropped, which being a giant nerd, I immediately bought. So I was pleased when I got the email blast from Magpul saying they case was shipping and there was an iPhone version.

By basis for comparison is the many cases I have had for my past iPhones and the Apple iPhone 4 Bumper.

It seems to me that the Magpul, iPhone 4 Field case is very thin. It adds virtually no bulk to the phone. Plus is seems to slide in and out of my pockets easier. Additionally, with the Apple Bumper I still always felt like the phone was about to slip from my hands, the Magpul case makes the phone gripper, yet again without really high friction surfaces that turn your pockets inside out when you pull out the phone.

If you have every tried typing on an iPhone 4 you know the ergonomics is weird. The thinness and flat back seem to be not optimal. Somehow the Magpul iPhone 4 Field Case solves this problem. Most likely its the ridges that run along the sides of the case.

The iPhone 4 clipped into the case perfectly. It does not move or wiggle. Basically, I get the feeling the quality of this product is much greater than the cases you will find at the Apple Store or Best Buy.

What pushed me from liking the case to loving the case was actually something that was on the packaging. There was a small stamp that said “Revitalizing America. Designed and Manufactured in the USA”. I was floored. I guess the USA part explains why the product was so nice, but how can they only charge $9 for it?!?! I thought for sure this was going to be a plastic fantastic China special. Especially since the market rate for a generic iPhone case is $30.

So for all you people saying, oh the Magpul iPhone 4 case is just a Tacti-cool Mall Ninja accessory. Ask yourself, what has your case done for America lately?

P.S. The Otterbox is imported. And MidwayUSA.com finally has the Magpul iPhone case in stock.

Xbox Kinect

Admin — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 01:09:19 +0000

My wife and I debated buying a Wii for a long time. We would talk about it because the games are fun and something that people can enjoy doing together. However I objected to the controller quirks and the lack of HD.

When the Kinect came out I was thinking Wii without controllers. Thusly was not in a hurry to buy one. So Christmas rolls around and my wife and I are looking at the myriad of non-hardcore gaming options and there is the Kinect.

At $149 bucks its about the same price as a Wii, if you already have an xbox, otherwise its $299 for both the Xbox and the Kinect. However my Xbox is putting out HD (we can debate actual game video quality some other time). Also I thought the Kinext is cooler than the PS3 offering because there are no controllers.

Getting one was hard. We were looking after Thanksgiving. Every store was sold out. Luckly we were able to find one at a local grocery/department store that I (along with everyone else in my area, apparently) had overlooked.

So we hook this thing up and right off the bat its apparent this is no Wii. Where you can cheat by flicking the Wii controller the Kinect does not give you that option. When it wants you to jump, it expects both feet to leave the ground.

The game the Kinect comes with, Kinect Adventures is fun. But definitely family oriented. The best part of the Kinect Adventures for me is the game where you stand on a platform moving along a track, as the platform moves you dodge several obstetrical. At one point on a track called “The Olympian” it asks you to do a min of squat jumps. I did this after a lower body workout. I was sore for the next week.

Kinect adventures is really cool about the barge in barge out approach to players. At any time a second player can jump in, really cool.

After playing the crap out of Kinect Adventures we bought Kinect Sports. It was immediately apparent that whatever tech for interpreting what the Kinect is seeing, in the game, it better in Kinect Sports. It seems to lack the barge in barge out but it also seems to track moments more precisely.

The Kinect has facial recognition built in, when you stand in front of the Kinect it logs you in. Spooky. Kinect sports also irrily placed a ring on my Avatar’s left hand…. Also spooky.

Now its not perfect. It seems that in some games like Boxing, continuous flailing is better than tactical punches. But its bleeding edge tech, what do you expect.

So now instead of doing cardio at the gym my wife and I have mursiliously pwn beach voleyball n00bs 2v2 on Xbox live.

Best Model For The Networks: Apple TV v Hulu

Admin — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:49:11 +0000

This is a departure from my normal subject matter but I think it is interesting.

Much has been made of the networks rejecting Apple’s $.99 price point for TV show rentals. So I tried to figure out how much they would have to charge an advertiser on Hulu to make the same amount.

The Apple TV (because believe it or not, some people live in a cave): The Apple TV is a device that you plug into your TV and your internet connection. It allows you to view content purchased form Apple on your TV.

Question: What CPM (cost per thousand impression) does a media creator (ie ABC, NBC, ect) have to demand to do better than renting their shows from .99 on the Apple TV?

Assumptions:

2 people watch the same screen, meaning there are two impression for every sale.
There are an average of 8 ads in an hour long show on Hulu.
The media creators make similar percentages from Hulu vs Apple, thus I will not calculate. (a .99 iTunes download yields .80 to the media creator/network).

Calculations:

Target Value per Impression $.99 divided by the 2 people watching = $.495.
Number of ads shown during play 8.

.495 cost per impression / 8 advertisers = .0618 cost per impression per advertiser
.0618 cost per impression per advertiser * 1000= 61.87 CPM

CPM needed from each advertiser to beat Apple TV $61.87.
Just for fun: the effective CPM in the Rental model is $495.

Comparison:

A 2010 Superbowl ad costs around $2.6 million and will probably yield around 90 million impressions. This is a CPM of $28.88.
If you want to reach a really niche audience Revision 3 podcasts go for around $32 CPM.
Google TV advertisers can get cable inventory for around $3-$4 CPM, granted those may not be the latest and greatest shows.
Either way the media companies are not going to get anywhere near the $.99 value per rental from an advertising model.

I guess I don’t understand the thought process over at the networks. It seems from my calculations they would want to push all their sales thought the Apple TV, rather than via advertising models. I would hope the media companies would come out and explain their thought process, you would think they owe it to their shareholders. As well as the tech savvy such as myself who look on this as knee jerk reactions from media dinosaurs.

New toy for the gym.

Admin — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 20:13:28 +0000

No related posts.

Faking Facebook Places Location

Admin — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 22:45:54 +0000

People all over have been making a fuss about Facebook’s new “Places” feature. While most whiners have been complaining that “Facebook is not watching them” or its “an invasion of privacy” I have been traveling the world.

According to Facebook I have been to:

Everest Summit
The White House
Rio de Janeiro
Pont d’Iena
Moscow Kremlin
Apple HQ

All in around about a week. Now as you have probably guessed, I have not actually visited these places. I just told Facebook I had.

Facebook won’t just accept that you are somewhere, you have to trick it. So here is how to hack Facebook Places.

You will need Firefox. If you are using IE, stop now and go have random intercourse with strangers, that is probably safer.
Download User Agent Switcher Add-on for Firefox. This allows you to make FF pretend to be an iPhone, thus redirecting you to Facebook’s mobile site.
Open notepad or your favorite text editor and create a document that says this:
{"location":{"latitude":37.33182,"longitude":-122.03118, "accuracy":20.0}}
You should be able to see where the lat and long go. Edit to your heart’s content.
Name your new document whatever you want
Next type “about:config” into the address bar. You will be asked if you know what you are doing. In my case the answer is “no”, but I say I do anyway.
Type: “wifi” into the filter box. You are looking for the Preference Named “geo.wifi.uri”

Double click on the “geo.wifi.uri” preference and point it toward your document. (Tip: because I like to cut and paste, I clicked on my document and opened it in FF, then cut the location from the URL bar and into this preference, thus no typos.)
OK, now its time to have fun. Using user agent switcher set your user agent to iPhone 3.0.

Go to “facebook.com”
Click the places option
FireFox should be asking you if you want to share location, click “share”.
Continue with the check in like normal

Now Facebook does have some logic to prevent people like us from globe hopping. So I have been updating this every day or so. Also Firefox seems to have cashing issues with the Facebook places. If you place is not updating, first go to Google make and click the blue find me button. If it shows you in your faked location, mission accomplished, if not you screwed something up and should review the above directions. If the Google maps thing works and you are still having problems, restart Firefox.

Pretty Cool, Pretty Easy. Have fun messing with your friends.

Moral of the story, Facebook is not invading you privacy you just need to control what you put out there.

iPhone 4 bumper

Admin — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 01:00:40 +0000

Look what just arrived. Strangely I think it makes it easier to type on the phone.

Nook

Admin — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 18:09:23 +0000

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

Admin — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 17:13:09 +0000

Today 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.

Admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:25:00 +0000

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

Admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:49:24 +0000

Warning: 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.