CoolTechnology Archive* dodoskido: Windows into Microsoft *

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the battle of the deodorants
Originally uploaded by m1k3k.

I just realized how much my life has changed in the past few years. Right now, I'm sitting at Cafe Strada on Bancroft, across the street from UC Berkeley, enjoying a morning Americano and working on some text parsing/database stuff for work.

I just remembered that I needed to get some Splenda and deodorant so I fire up Amazon.com, found out that I can "subscribe(?!?)" to Splenda (yes, you heard me, you can subscribe to sugar substitute) and save 15%. I also found that I not only shopped for but discovered new deodorant faster than I could at any store...about 2 minutes. I decided to give Tom's of Maine deodorant a try since we use their toothpaste and all of their materials are sourced in the US. So, not only do I not have to drive to the pharmacy, find parking, search the aisles filled with child-labor-produced-discount-fire-non-retardant-stuffed animals for deodorant, AND wait in line, but I can find what I need cheaper with 2 day shipping AND no tax on Amazon.

Today I read that I should buy Walgreens stock since they've taken a nice dive...actually I think I'll sit that one out thank you very much.

Anyway, the other thing that struck me after I subscribed to my sweetener of choice is that I am sitting here with my phone attached to my PC and actually working. I know, I know, I've been doing this for a couple of years now, but it has just dawned on me that back in the good old days, right after college, I was pretty much shackled to my desk.

Remember that old IBM commercial with a skinny dude screaming at pigeons to buy and sell stock in the middle of St. Mark's Square in Venice? That has been my dream since I found out that cell phones actually existed. I think we're getting really close. I say 5-to-10 years tops until we get to the eye-embedded screen, ear-embedded speakers, brain embedded computer days.

* Switchbuntu *

Since getting my sweet, sweet Dell XPS m1330, I've decided to blog my entry into the world of Ubuntu over at SwitchBuntu. Come on over!

09/15/07 19:11 permalink discuss

filed under CoolTechnology Ubuntu (more tags...)

* I've been Scmap'd *

Cool! One of my photos was chosen to represent the Tapestry Art Festival on the San Jose Schmap.

If you go to the photos tab and scroll through the photos, you should see one of my artistic creations there. Sweet!

08/12/07 07:14 permalink discuss

filed under ArtDesignPhoto CoolTechnology (more tags...)

* 21st Century Travel *

Well, we're about 5 days from our departure date to Europe and making last minute preparations. As you already know (I think), we've decided to go sans laptop for this trip. What? No computer at your every beck and call? Preposterous you must be shouting by now. I think so too, but we decided against it since a laptop would comprise about 20-25% of our total gear weight limit of 40lbs. I still think we're a tiny bit over without the beastly machine, but at least we're not lugging a whole computer and what not around.

This presents a few problems in and of itself. First is that we will need internet access. Sure there will be Internet cafes just about everywhere, but we know those are about as safe as carrying your money around in a clear plastic bag floated by helium balloons behind you. I'm sure most are perfectly fine, but I'm not really in the mood to take a chance with my private info.

So what to do? Well, in this day and age, plenty. We're bringing a USB thumb-drive-ama-key-fob-ama-flash-amajig that contains a bevy of widgets:

Portable Apps - a nice suite of apps ready to go for your USB thing
KL-Detector - a free keylogger detector.
KeyPass - a password keeper app (yes, you should put your passwords into this app BEFORE you leave home)
LockNote - a notepad that uses AES256 encryption to lock up text...we're going to keep backup copies of our info on here...just in case.
TrueCrypt - a drive encryption mechanism that will keep data safe in case it gets lost.
Mouse Only Keyboard - a tool that will allow you to construct passwords by choosing letters and symbols on screen instead of using a keyboard. Sure it's slow, but it is much safer.
Neo's SafeKeys - a variation on the on-screen keyboard theme.

I'm also thinking of bringing my PPC-6700. Eventhough I won't have EVDO access, it still has built-in wifi that should work with public wifi connections. The cool part comes when I login to my home PC via logmein from the phone. Since there are no keyloggers on my personal phone and the logmein traffic with my home computer is encrypted, we should be pretty safe. A little paranoid you say? Yeah, but at least my data will be safer for the most part. A little geeky elbow grease goes a long way.

Big Ups to The Great Geek Manual for point the way for us paranoid geekswho want to roam the earth.

06/26/07 08:55 permalink discuss

filed under 2007EuropeTrip CoolTechnology FireFox Travel (more tags...)

* EPSON P-3000 Quirk list (or a Review in Bullet Points) *

I was excited to receive my Epson P-3000 a couple of weeks ago. This little bit of not-so-miniature tech is a sort of jack-of-all trades in the realm of file transfer and playback.

I won't go into the nitty gritty deets of what it can do since you can peep them elsewheres, but here are the bits of info that I did not find elsewhere before I bought this thing:

1. You cannot (as far as I can tell), run a photo slide show while listening to music. The exception is that if you set up some photos as your screensaver, it'll play while you listen to music.

2. Selecting files for move, copy, delete operations from the device's UI can be a pain. You have to select each one individually. There is no way to select a bunch of files all at the same time for deletion (except by deleting the entire folder). There should be a "select from here...to here" feature that makes selecting a sequence of files easier.

3. Also acts as a card reader for a PC.

4. Does not charge via USB and cannot charge other USB devices. Also USB powered devices don't seem to work with it (as evidenced by my 2.5in portable 60GB drive not working with it).

5. User interface is very quick except when just after dropping new Divx files on there. It can freeze for several seconds while it see what files are there and tries to create a screenshot icon for them.

6. You can choose a still frame from a video clip to be the clip's icon. Neat.

7. It outputs to a TV via RCA cables for easy viewing of anything on the device.

8. The screen is NICE. The speaker is not so nice.

9. It can copy stuff to/from external drives (powered ones only it seems...see #4 above). So if you have another external drive that is powered, the Epson P-3000 can copy to/from that external drive without a PC.

10. Music playback is a little sparse. It works well enough but does not show album art (perhaps my files did not have them properly embedded since iTunes doesn't quite do the trick and I don't have time to fix them all up properly).

The trade off for all of the functionality and the gorgeous 4" screen is a little chunkiness (it definitely is not pocketable). Surprising it's not that heavy so it can't be packed to the gills with electronics. At any rate, it's a solid device and my new fav. If it had wifi, an rss reader, and a bitorrent client, I would have it surgically attached to my body so I would never had to be apart from it.