ARogan

Raspberry Pi (Model B 512MB)

2013-02-25T15:42:00.001-06:00

Raspberry Pi

Quite a few friends and co workers have picked up one in the past year. I figure it was time for me to check this neat little device out. It's basically a 700mhz ARM11 based computer than can run linux and a few other things. The Broadcom BCM2835 is pretty capable at 3D (xbox 1 levels) and hardware video decoding (1080p h.264) though the cpu is dog slow (300mhz pentium II levels). If you go in with proper expectations for basically what is a $35 computer you'll come out pleasantly surprised.

I'm going to basically walk through everything I did to get things up and running, all the gotchas I ran into, and all the fun things I got working.

Hardware
- I picked up mine here in the USA from element14 model B 512MB for $35. They were a pleasure to deal with. I got it in about 3 weeks from ordering. Yes, things are still back ordered even after a year but not as bad. I also picked up this very nice clear enclosure for around $7. Shipping was very reasonable. If you don't want to wait amazon has a few sellers with prime for around $50 so you pay about a $15 premium. My goal was to put this together as cheap as possible and try to use as many parts as I had lying around.
- You will need some SDHC cards (class 10 preferably since you want some fast ones) for persistent storage. Everything boots off of SDHC so it's easy enough to try different images and builds. I picked up two 16gb sony class 10 sdhc cards for around $8 each. 16GB seems to be plenty.
- Things I used that I already had:
- micro usb cable for power.
- USB charger with at least 700ma output. I found some logitech one I had lying around that put out 1A so it worked fine.
- ethernet cable (always have a stack of extras from monoprice)
- hdmi cable (always have a stack of extras from monoprice)
- logitech cordless mediaboard . Luckily this keyboard mouse dongle didn't draw too much power and worked fine with the Raspberry Pi (raspi) otherwise you might need a powered usb hub.
- here is what the lights mean:

PWR = 5V input power present
OK = SD card access indicator
FDX = Ethernet Full Duplex connection
LNK = Ethernet connection present
10M = 100 Mbps Ethernet connection

Total cost: $65 (including shipping)

I highly recommend you buy the additional codecs (about $5) if you plan to use this thing at all as a media player. Do it early since it can take a few days to receive the codes by email. You'll have to get at least raspbian up and running though to grab your serial number.

Raspbian "wheezy"
- This is the official linux (debian) distro for the raspi. Grab it here. Follow the pdf quick start guide. It's pretty straight forward. The link for Win32 Disk Imager is out of date. You might also want to grab SD Formatter first and format the sd card before writing the image. In Rasp-config make sure you set your keyboard to usa. By default it is UK so @ and " are swapped. In fact I would go through all the options. I would change memory split to 128mb for gpu and change the password for user pi. I also disabled overscan. After a reboot or two you should be up and running.
sudo halt (properly shut down before unplugging)
sudo reboot
startx (start up lxde window environment)
- I had some intermittent hdmi issues but this seemed to fix it:
cd /boot
sudo nano config.txt
made the following changes:
hdmi_force_hotplug=1
config_hdmi_boost=4
- Mounting Network shares. Just make sure you properly escape spaces in your share name when editing fstab.
- Here is a nice beginners guide. You will want to do your updates:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo rpi-update (update the firmware).
- I also installed tightvnc and have it auto start from that guide. Tight vnc from windows worked pretty well. I also tried ssh with putty which worked fine too. Handy if something goes horribly wrong and you need to remote in and shutdown the raspi nicely.
- Install libreoffice from the official pi store.
sudo apt-get install hunspell (get spell checking working)
- Install Minecraft. It runs pretty well though draw distances are very short.
- Install chromium. There is no flash support since flash for arm linux was never developed. Browsing is painfully slow for the most part. Don't even try gmail unless you use the basic html version.
- pretty good email client:
sudo apt-get install claws-mail (it will be under internet in lxde)
- Install quake 3 arena:
http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianQuake3
I grabbed the pak files from
http://blog.sheasilverman.com/2012/07/raspbian-on-raspberry-pi-mame-mess-quake3-neogeo-and-cave-story-binaries/
The binary in that zip didn't work for me. I had to compile it myself as documented in the first link. It takes about an hour. It runs incredibly smooth at 1080p. I was quite impressed.
- Tried retroPi. Building from source takes a day. I found it a bit of a confusing mess and haven't quite gotten anything to work with it. I would probably hold off on this.
- installed XBMC on raspbian. It works for the most part. There are some quirks like I can't actually type with the keyboard though keyboard navigation works. I just can't type to enter stuff like share credentials. I had to use the mouse and on screen keyboard. I can't figure out how to shutdown back to the command line. I can basically shutdown the raspi or reboot it. 1080p mkv's are stuttery. Good thing there is a better way to run XBMC (see below).
- Installed vlc but not really worth it since it doesn't support hardware acceleration. OMXplayer is an included command line video player that supports hw acceleration but I didn't mess with it. The idea of a command line video player sounds painful to use.
- You can also backup your sd card to an image file using win32 disk imager especially if you've spent several hours tweaking things.

Mame
- This is an image which you can expand using raspi-config:
http://blog.sheasilverman.com/2013/01/pimame-0-5-beta-release/
It works pretty well. I loaded a few roms but you have to stick to the older games because of the limited cpu.

openELEC (XBMC)
- After researching a bit this is supposed to be the most optimized version of xbmc for raspi. I installed this on a 2GB sd card. You really don't need much space:
http://squirrelhosting.co.uk/hosting-blog/hosting-blog-info.php?id=9
- It works quite well out of the box. I mounted the sd card in windows and modified the config.txt file (use notepad++) with my codec serial codes to enable vc1 and mpeg hw decoding. This is very handy if you play mpg/mpeg2/wmv files. It works great with hdhomerun recorded mpeg2 .ts files. They play back very smoothly.
- Go under settings | appearance and make sure you have the right region set so the clock is right.
- Enable air play. I was able to air play youtube from my iphone 5. Performance was good.
- Other plugins work quite well like youtube and even twitch.tv. Dig a little and you'll find all sorts of umm less official plugins, and you can even get pandora working.
- Everything played great off of network shares with full 5.1 bitstream audio output. For mkv h.264, .ts, mpeg, avi, xvid everything played very smoothly even 1080p mkv. The UI is a bit sluggish but actual playback was great. Codec support is a bit more hit and miss though. One wmv I tried had static sound, same with a flv. DVD ISO did NOT work for me even with the mpeg2 codec enabled. But for the major codecs and containers it seems to do pretty well.
- photos and mp3s worked fine.
- subtitles are handled well
- the official xbmc remote app for iOS works pretty well.
- As a pure media player it's about 90% there.

WD TV Live vs XBMC Android MK808 vs openELEC XBMC Raspi
- WD TV Live still is hands down the best for streaming media but this raspi is close. XBMC on android MK808 has broader codec support but the lack of 5.1 kills it. Also, raspi plays hdhomerun hd mpeg2 files better than the mk808. Raspi is also friendly with plugins since the internal player actually supports hw decoding. The UI is definitely more sluggish. The biggest drawback of wd tv live is it only does media. MK808 and especially the Raspi are mini computers that can do quite a bit more. WDTV integrates nicely with harmony remote so it has the highest WAF. I personally have no regrets owning all 3. They each really have their own strengths and weaknesses.
- There's just something nice about buying the raspi. First, the build quality seems better than these chinese mk808s. The raspi just feels more solid, stable, and behaves more predictably than the mk808 though the mk808 really is a lot faster, fast enough for everyday use.

Killawatt numbers:
- power usage openelec: 2w idle. 3w while playing 1080p mkv.
- power usage raspbian: 2w idle at command line. 3w with cpu at max while running chromium in LXDE.

Highly recommended. I had a blast over the weekend getting my linux on and just digging in to see what this tiny cheap computer could do. For general purpose computing I think it's a bit limited. For light office work it's fine but browsing is really too painfully slow to be practical. I did install lynx (text based browser) and at least that was fast but yeah not that practical. openELEC was a pleasant surprise performance/compatibility wise. Emulation is relegated to very old retro stuff but works more or less. For $35 I can't really ask for much more. It's definitely a fun toy to tinker with. Definitely good if you want to teach somebody computers and maybe a bit of programming. I probably won't use it much as a everyday computer but would work pretty well as a media streamer.

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite

2013-02-24T23:48:00.000-06:00

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite

I never really felt the need to have an e ink based reader. I've been doing long form reading on mobile devices for a long time starting with the pea green soup 160 x 160 screen on the palm III. From there I moved up to an ipaq pocketpc and then finally the iPhone. I've always been quite comfortable reading novels on iPhone sized devices. I just liked how light and small it was; how very easy it was to hold it in one hand. Staring at LCD screens for long periods of time doesn't really bother me.

The biggest issue I've always had with e ink readers was the requirement of a light source. That's because I like to do most of my reading in bed, and I wouldn't want a light on that disturbed my wife. Having some sort of external mini book light sounded ridiculous to me. What was this the 80's? So when the Nook Simple Touch With GlowLight was released I started to take notice of e ink again but still didn't really see the need for one.

So when my younger son mentioned he preferred "primitive" paper books over reading on his iPad I figured something had to be done. It was time to consider an e ink device again because that is supposedly the closest thing you could get to paper without actually having paper (I'm all about reducing clutter these days since we recently moved). Also, it's a new toy I could check out but no this wasn't for me. This was for my son to help encourage him to read more. Yeah that's the reason! Time to go shopping.

My research began with looking at the 3 most notable e ink readers with a built in light.

Nook GlowLight: $120. It was the first one out and so is a bit behind in technology. It has a lower 800x600 resolution screen but supports epub which is my preferred ebook format. I already have quite a collection of epub files in dropbox. The way the lighting is implement also is less even and older tech than the other devices.

Kobo Glo: $130 (best buy). This has the latest tech in screen and resolution 768x1024. It also uses newer methods of lighting the screen that produces better and more even results. It's a tad bit pricier though. It has epub support and incredible flexibility on customizing the look with the ability to adjust justification and even the weight and sharpness of the font. Kobo is definitely a lesser known brand compared to the other two. Battery is NOT replaceable.

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite: $120 with special offers. I don't mind the ads that much since you only see them on the home screen or when the device is off. You will never see them while reading. Besides, you can always pay the $20 extra later if you want to opt out of the ads. It has the same great tech as the Kobo Glo and the same resolution. It has a layer called the light guide which spreads the light more evenly and only lets out light down toward the screen beneath it where the guide lets it. What it lacks are some of the customization options. I really wish it had a way to set justification though there are some work arounds I'll discuss later. It doesn't support epub which was a bit of an issue for me but not insurmountable. Kindle uses the mobi format. One odd thing is you can't actually completely turn off the light while reading. You can adjust the brightness really low though. The only time the light is completely off is when you "turn off" the device (while it displays ads). It has 2Gb of non expandable internal memory which should be plenty (about 1000 books). Battery doesn't seem too difficult to replace.

Why e ink:
- Most paper like reading experience. Works great in sunlight
- With the light models now it works great in the dark too.
- Incredible battery life. Kindle is advertised at 8 weeks with 30 min per day. That comes out to around 28 hrs of battery life. Power is only needed to paint the pixels (and for the light). Image is retained after that without power.
- Light doesn't shine directly toward you so it should cause less eye strain.
- Size and weight is like that of a typical paperback.
- Cheaper than a 7" tablet. No distractions.

Some disadvantages:
- Painting/refreshing the screen is a bit slow which can be distracting to some. It doesn't bother me at all. Forget about ever displaying video on one of these screens.
- No color so I wouldn't want to read comics, manga, magazines, or PDFs on this thing. A 10" tablet is much better for that.
- No distractions. They are designed to do just one thing and one thing really well though they do have some limited web browsing capabilities. The paperwhite even dropped the audio capabilities. There is no headphone jack so that means no text to speech either.

I went with the Kindle for a few reasons. Amazon is probably the biggest name in books so you have a lot of support and a large library of ebooks to choose from. They own audible too so their whisper sync works across your kindle, kindle apps on iOS/android/pc/mac, and also compatible audio books. This allows you to read on any device and stop and pickup where you left off on any other device and even between listening to the audio book and then later reading where you left off. It works well and is really convenient. It's well supported by most libraries though most libraries do epub too. You get some advantages being a Prime member like the ability to borrow books for free.

I also picked up this screen protector for $15 for 3 and the official leather case for a crazy $40 (UPDATE: Try this cheaper $7-9 alternative). The case is really nice though if over priced. The kindle snaps in snug and the magnetic cover turns the Kindle on and off like the smart cover on the iPad. It just feels really good in your hands. You might also want to pick up a usb charger since one is not included. I didn't since I have plenty of usb chargers. The screen protector is probably overkill in my quest to make this thing as child proof as possible. It's also cut pretty close to the edge so it's very difficult to position correctly as there is almost no leeway. Having the screen sunken in a bit and having to work within the edge of the bezel makes things just that much more difficult. Here are some tips I always follow when putting on screen protectors.

I highly recommend calibre which lets you basically convert between many ebook formats. I used this to convert my epub collection into mobi. This usually works quite well preserving all images and formatting. Converting from other formats like word or pdf gets you more mixed results. I personally don't care for the gui or the library aspects of calibre. Luckily calibre supports conversion by command line. I wrote some hand batch files to help simplify the process.

Save this into a .cmd file then drop a shortcut into your send to folder. Now you can just right click on any epub file from file explorer and select the shortcut from send to and it will convert the file to mobi in the same directory. This one is good for converting epub to mobi.

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Calibre2\ebook-convert.exe" %1 "%~dp1%~n1.mobi"

This one does some formatting to help cleanup conversion from PDFs (note: I prefer left justified):

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Calibre2\ebook-convert.exe" %1 "%~dp1%~n1.mobi" --change-justification=left --remove-paragraph-spacing --title="%~n1" --title-sort="%~n1" --pretty-print --remove-paragraph-spacing-indent-size=.5

Run this one from a cmd prompt and it will batch convert all files in the current directory:

for /r %%i in (*) do "C:\Program Files (x86)\Calibre2\ebook-convert.exe" "%%i" "%%~dpi%%~ni.mobi"

Do NOT convert to the newer KF8 format since for some absurd reason the kindle personal document service cloud storage doesn't support it!

There are a few ways to load books onto the Kindle. You can always tether and go through usb. Of course you can easily download any books purchased through Amazon over the cloud. You can also use the buit in browser and hit dropbox.com. Click on any .mobi file and choose download it and it will appear in your device's library. The final and most convenient and feature rich way is to use Amazon's personal document service which gives you 5GB to upload your own content which is a LOT of books. Storing your own books in amazon cloud lets any kindle app/device easily download it from the cloud tab from within the app. Also, this is the only way to get whisper sync to work across apps/devices with your own books. To upload your books you could always use the custom email address which is provided with every kindle device/app. It works but there is a bit of a lag before it gets processed. My preferred way of bulk uploading is using their Send to Kindle windows (or mac) program which integrates nicely with file explorer. Just select multiple files (up to 25 at a time) in file explorer and right click | send to kindle. You can login to the amazon web site to manage your documents. One thing I noticed that is lacking is a bulk delete. It's very tedious if you want to delete many books out of your personal documents. Luckily there is a handy bookmarklet that works great.

Highly recommended. The kindle really is great for long form reading being easier on the eyes and just the right weight and form factor. It's light on your wallet too. Whisper sync really is great letting you read on your tablet, phone, or the paperwhite and just seamlessly pick up right where you left off. Amazon also has a pretty good selection of free books and many public libraries support the Kindle. I recently finished the game Spec Ops The Line which I found really quite good. It was a very underrated game in my opinion. I might have to write a review on it someday. Anyways, the story got me interested in reading Heart of Darkness which I never had. Well, it's free on amazon so it was simple enough to grab it right from their store. It informed me of the free audio book on audible so I grabbed that too. So now I can listen to it in the car with the audible app on my iPhone during my commute and continue reading at home on my iPad, iPhone, or Kindle and pick up right where I left off. It really is hard to beat that kind of convenience.

Easyblue Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse Dongle

2013-02-12T10:42:00.000-06:00

- I picked this up at amazon for about $35 shipped.
- It's a BKM (Bluetooth keyboard mouse switch)
- This is an interesting device that fits a particular situation. It's a small usb dongle. When you attach it to a PC through usb it loads some standard HID drivers that are built into windows and also creates a small 4MB flash drive which has a windows/mac tray app. The device also has bluetooth that connects to your tablet or smartphone (iOS or android). Once you pair the EasyBlue with your mobile device you are set. Now you can use your existing desktop keyboard to control your pc or your mobile device by toggling between the two with a hotkey (ctrl + up is the default but can be changed in the tray app). It works seamlessly and super fast. There is ZERO delay switching between pc and mobile device.
- This does NOT add bluetooth to a pc. The pc side is only an HID device and flash drive. The mobile side is all bluetooth.
- So basically you get all the advantages of a bluetooth keyboard (and mouse for android) without having a separate keyboard taking up valuable desk space.
- First thing I did was update the firmware and software to 2.0 from the manufacturer's site. It's all in korean but it wasn't too hard to figure out (let google translate it).
http://www.easyblue.co.kr/xe/index.php?mid=down&document_srl=9125
- It has a small hole to put on a keyring.
- The tray app has a lot of settings like custom hot key, custom keymap, toggle tray notifications, toggle the LED light, etc.
- You can cut and paste text (ctrl c, ctrl v) between the pc and mobile device. This is great for urls and such.
- Works even when inside citrix receiver with the easyblue attached to your host pc.

Highly recommended. It's a convenient space saving device. Sure, there are times when you need a portable bluetooth keyboard but this sure is handy if you need to iMessage somebody. Now, if only apple would let you map enter to "send" in the iMessage app (or you can try this kludge which actually does work).

WD TV Live (3rd generation)

2013-01-09T01:54:00.001-06:00

After moving to my new house I decided to stop using htpc's and see if I can live with alternative devices like this streaming box. You can typically find these for around $80-100. These 3rd generation devices have a Sigma Designs SMP8670AD 700mhz processor with 512MB of DDR2 memory which makes them quite capable little boxes.

- Small and silent.
- Relatively inexpensive.
- Extensive file format support. You can pretty much throw any video (avi, mkv, vob, iso, ts, wmv, mpg, mp4, and many more), audio (mp3, aac, flac, ogg), or image (jpg, bmp, png, tiff, gif) format at it and it will play it. When I mean everything I mean everything like very high bitrate 1080p x264 MKVs, entire bluray ISO rips (no menus though, plays just the movie), DVD iso (full menus) and more. It does this all natively with NO TRANSCODING. This means almost no cpu utilization on your server. All you have going is disk and network IO. Recordings from hdhomerun (mpeg2 ts, ac3 audio) play just fine.
- Good support for streaming all that media off of network shares. No plex or dlna server needed (though dlna is supported); just raw browsing of network shares - fast and efficient. I like how you can set fetching meta data only on demand. Keeps things lean and fast when browse vast quantities of content.
- Pretty good internet streaming support with youtube, netflix, hulu, pandora, and several others. The only big name it's still missing is amazon VOD which I wish it had. Youtube isn't HD though unfortunately but this is a lame restriction by google and isn't WD's fault.
- Great subtitle support even when streaming. Those SRT files work just fine with your MKVs. Good flexibility on size and positioning.
- Very good hdmi support and will pass through everything to your receiver like bitstream DTS and dolby trueHD. DTS-HD master audio isn't supported and you will only get DTS core due to licensing issues.
- Good and easy to navigate UI. You can browse LARGE collections of media pretty easily in list view and paging. There are basically two ways to browse: add network share folders to your medial library and just a raw folder/file view of your shares. The first gives you some nice features like sorting and resume but it takes a bit to build that library. I only add my most commonly accessed folders to the media library. Folder view is fast but you can't sort. This is fine for the rest of my media collection.
- Resume doesn't work across multiple wd tv live devices.
- Very high WAF. Works great with Logitech harmony remotes.
- Great iOS app that really saves time entering usernames and passwords for shares and internet services.
- Instant on from sleep state
- Firmware update over internet works fine. It has built in 802.11bgn wifi (2.4ghz only) but I didn't test it since my house is fully wired with cat6 and gigabit switches.
- 2 usb ports. Any attached storage shows up as shares too so you can access that attached storage over your LAN.
- If you have multiple wd tv lives on your network you should give each device a unique name otherwise odd things happen.
- Can play music in the background while doing other things.
- Screensaver kicks in while music is playing.
- Accuweather app. Shows current temperature on main menu.
- If there is a power outage it will wake up the wd tv live. Sometimes you have to add the network share back when this happens (though this happens pretty rarely).
- If the network shares go down for a period of time (say you turn off the computer that the shares are on) sometimes the wd tv live won't see the shares again until you do a complete power on/off. Hold down the power button for 3 sec to completely turn off the wd tv live. This one is a tad annoying and I hope they fix this in a future update.
- Power usage: killawatt - 6w under full load (1080p mkv), 4w idle on main menu, 4w sleep.
- You can scan 16X in either direction, skip in 10 min increments in either direction, or go to a specific point in time. I really wish it had a 30 sec forward/ 10 sec back commercial skip. Using 1-9 to jump to 10%-90% would have been nice too. Too bad these navigation features are missing.
- Really cool RSS feature. You can add the rss feeds to all your video podcasts and watch them. The best way to enter the url's is to cut and paste them from an iPhone or iPad using the wd tv live app. You can also access a variety of features by hitting the IP address of the wdtv live with a browser including setting up rss feeds. This is tempting but do NOT DO IT. IT IS BUGGED and will screw up all your rss feeds and you will need to factory reset your settings. Add rss feeds directly through wdtv only.
- Roku 2 XS is an alternative but targets a different kind of user. I think the wd tv live is great for somebody who primarily streams a large collection of local content in a variety of formats and codecs and also uses some online services. Roku is great if you primarily stream everything from online services and have some light usage for local content. Roku codec/file format support is pitifully small: video: mp4 (h.264); audio: aac, mp3; image: jpg, png. For anything else roku requires a plex server (a buggy bloated pos IMO, transcode errors, cpu intensive, disk io intensive when scanning media, etc). So yeah Roku would be pretty much useless to me.

Highly recommended. For streaming local content and most internet content this box really does fully replace an HTPC for me. It's small, quiet, sips power, relatively cheap, and plays pretty much every file format out there. I have 4 of these now.

UPDATE 3/29/2013:
- Firmware update 1.15.10 was released yesterday. I'm happy to report that the wd tv live now works with hdhomerun prime project connect (hdhr prime acts like a DLNA server) to stream live tv in full HD with 5.1 sound. This is fantastic news. I basically gained access to all my channels in 4 rooms for the low low price of $0. WD TV Live just keeps getting better and better!

Android Stick PC (mk808)

2013-01-09T01:37:00.000-06:00

MK808
We recently moved so I decided to change things up a bit. In my old house every hdtv had a pc hooked up to it. This added a lot of flexibility but also quite a bit of bulk, kind of messy, and unwieldy. I'm trying the opposite this time using WD TV Live (3rd gen) and now these cheap android stick PCs to add a bit more general computing. The mk808 is basically a dual core android device without the screen. It has hdmi out that you hook up to your TV.

Here are the critical items I think you need to get started:

$56 MK808 - At the time I ordered it from the seller: Sain Store which had it in stock and was fulfilled by amazon so you got prime shipping. Since then it seems they have sold out. I know geekbuying is a pretty major seller of these devices but it gets shipped from China so it will take several weeks to get it. I have no experience with geekbuying).

$17 USB to RJ45 Ethernet Adapter - Some people report issues with wifi dropping in and out. It worked fine for me for the couple of hours I tested on wifi. Still, if you plan to stream HD content it's best to go wired. This works great with the mk808. Just plug and play. No drivers to deal with.

$35 Logitech K400 Wireless keyboard with multitouch pad - This is a great compact wireless keyboard with a multitouch touchpad (2 finger scrolling, etc) that is still easy to type on. It has some nice dedicated keys that work with android like home and the power button will sleep the android pc. It also duplicates the left mouse button in the upper left corner. This is handy for clicking and holding and dragging.

$3 Mini hdmi to hdmi cable - The one included is a bit crap and way too short. Get a nice one that works with all TV's and resolutions at monoprice.

$1 Mini usb cable - You should grab this too since the one included is also a bit cheap. This will prevent any issues if you plan to flash a custom rom using the OTG usb port.

$19 2 amp USB Power Supply - The apple iPad one is recommended because it's very well built if a bit expensive. Mine came with a cheap 1 amp power supply. Highly recommended if you plan to overclock.

Total: $131

So what starts off as being a cheap $55 ish android stick pc over doubles in price if you want to go for a good quality and highly reliable/usable setup. It also has a microSDHC slot. I dropped in a 32GB class 6 ($22) just for kicks. It's not really needed unless you need more local storage or you want to use something like Titanium Backup between rom flash upgrades to quickly restore your apps. With finless 1.6 you get 2GB internal app storage space and 4GB internal SD.

The first thing I did was install a full rooted custom rom: finless 1.6. The process was pretty easy. Just follow the instructions in the readme carefully. The only thing I got stuck on was getting it into flash mode. I ended up having to do the alternative paperclip method but that was easy enough. After that flashing went smoothly. I did play with it briefly with the factory default rom. Google play store seemed to work fine. I was even able to install onlive from the play store just fine. Still, I wanted to take advantage of some of the neat apps out there that require a rooted system like being able to safely shutdown. I've been reading pulling the power isn't generally a good idea with some risk of corruption. You also get 2GB of app install space which is nice.

- If you want full screen youtube app grab this version (though it doesn't seem to see the ethernet connection). I just use the desktop version of the website which still lets you go full screen. UPDATE: Grab the google.tv APK mentioned in this thread for the best full screen HD youtube experience.
- This thing is pretty tiny. I stuck a killawatt on it. 1w sleep, 2w idle (screen on), 4w under max load (AnTuTu benchmark cpu).
- Performance isn't too bad. 9827 on AnTuTu benchmark. Think Galaxy S2 speeds.
- Heat doesn't seem to be much of an issue.
- Only does 720p native and scales up to 1080p. Native 1080p coming in 1.7. Still, 720p upscaled looks pretty good and text is quite legible on the TV.
- If you completely shutdown the device there is no way to power it back up except unplugging it and plugging it back in. That is why I'm choosing to just sleep it when not in use (1w of power I can live with) and hooking it up to a UPS I had laying around for safety. Of course you could also try one of these IR controlled AC outlets.
- Boot time is around 30 sec. Finless seems to take quite a bit longer than the stock rom. This is another reason I choose to just sleep the device so it's truly instant on.
- Keyboard support is a bit inconsistent out of the box. Depending on the app, sometimes the virtual keyboard still pops up and sometimes it doesn't. When entering URLs into the default browser the enter key launches the site. In chrome enter does nothing and you have to click on the GO button on the virtual keyboard. After buying External Keyboard Helper app things work much better as you can actually select external keyboard as your input device. Before, external keyboard wouldn't even show up as an option.
- No gameloft game support out of the box without some hacking.
- I think ethernet support feels a bit like a hack. I've come across a few apps now (like the older full screen version of youtube, 1 password, and some games) that don't detect a network connection if wifi is turned off. That means they won't work over an ethernet connection.
- When you cold boot the device ethernet usually doesn't work until you toggle it off and back on again.

Things you can do with this thing:
- Competent mobile Chrome browser with flash support. It's still a bit clunky. Scrolling is still pretty jerky and page load times are longer than I like but it is serviceable. Do NOT expect iPad like silky smooth scrolling and responsiveness.
- All the usual streaming services like netflix, hulu, pandora, spotify, etc are there. You have the entire google play store of apps to explore.
- Stream local content either directly using es file explorer and the built in video player or something like plex or xbmc ( which is not hw accelerated yet so hd is choppy. You need to configure it to work with an external player like mx player. I haven't tried this yet). Subsonic is nice for audio. I found the built in video player to handle 1080p mkv just fine natively. Even subtitles worked. Playback was smooth over ethernet but hitched over wifi (even in the same room as the router). Seeking to different points in the MKV while streaming over a network share was quick and responsive.
- Play games that don't require multi-touch like angry birds.
- Use rkremote. RKRemote.APK is in the finless distribution. Just side load it on your android phone or tablet to control your mk808.
- Skype if you hook up a compatible web cam.
- Hook up an xbox 360 controller and load up a bunch of emulators and play a bunch of retro classic games from atari 2600 up through playstation one. (Going to dig into this next. Will update post when I do.).
- Remote into your desktop using splashtop, teamviewer, etc.
- Tried out Airtight which is an airplay receiver so you can stream from your iOS devices to the mk808. It works fine with audio and some video. The built in video player works and so dies air video but goodplayer, netflix, slingplayer do not work. All audio works fine though. It's pretty limited but for 99 cents it isn't too bad.

I have one question for those of you more experienced with the MK808. Is there any way to output AC3 or DTS bitstream so I can get true 5.1 sound out of my receiver? Right now 720p MKVs decode just fine but all audio gets down sampled to 2 channel audio. It kind of defeats the purpose of having a nice home theater setup. I have mine hooked up to a pioneer VSX-1021-k receiver. I've tried a variety of players like mx player, xbmc, and plex. Nothing seems to work. When I set xbmc to output ac3/dts over hdmi all I get is static. So I'm just wondering if it's my pioneer being picky (and I know it's a bit finicky with some sources) or the mk808 just doesn't support what I'm trying to do.

Recommended. It's a fun relatively inexpensive android hacking box dream if you don't mind spending time fiddling with things. It's definitely not for the type of user that just wants to plug something in and just start using it expecting everything to work. Without 5.1 audio support I can't recommend this for streaming video. It's fine for more general purpose use but for media streaming the wd tv live beats the pants off of this thing in overall usability and capability.

UPDATE: 2/25/2013
- XBMC Revisted.
http://www.xbmcandroid.com/
Installed the neon version of mx player and xbmc neon set top box. Make sure you launch mx player once before installing xbmc. This new build is suppose to use mx player as an external player for hw accelerated video right out of the box. This is partially true. It doesn't work with files streamed over shares (internal player still gets used). The work around is pre-mount all your shares outside of xbmc using cifsmanager. So install that first. Use your favorite file explorer app (I use root explorer) and head over to /mnt/cifs and create a directory for each share you plan to mount. Once that is done fire up cifsmanager and create all your mounts. Make sure you click on the share to mount after you create it. Now that is done head back into xbmc and when you add video source pick root file system instead of network share and browse to /mnt/cifs/yourmount. That basically tricks xbmc to think the content is local so mx player gets proper launched. Just remember if you reboot your android you will need to head back into cifsmanager and mount all your shares again. Performance is pretty solid. I tried MKV 720p/1080p, mov, avi, divx, flv, mp3, wmv, mp4, ts and pretty much everything plays (granted with 2 channel sound only UGGGG). DVD iso's don't seem to work. HD Mpeg2 .ts recordings from hdhomerun play but not 100% smooth. It's very close but just slightly off. It's still very watchable. Plugins are hit and miss with this weird external player version. Make sure you go into android settings | display | zoom it so there is NO overscan. Also, hide the bottom menu bar before firing up xbmc and you'll get 16:9 video that nicely fills the entire screen. UI is nice and responsive. This really isn't a bad setup if all you need is 2.0 sound. Unfortunately that doesn't cut it for me.

Max Payne (piano)

2012-12-20T13:55:00.000-06:00

I've finished every single Max Payne game that has been released (including 3) and this piano theme has always stuck with me. I hope you enjoy it. It was fun to learn.

You can find the sheet music to this great arrangement here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BchDZue9LeE

Guild Wars 2 - Fear Not This Night (piano)

2012-10-12T20:37:00.003-06:00

Guild Wars 2 - Fear Not This Night (piano). I love this song. Too bad you don't actually get to hear it much in the game. You will hear it in the last personal story mission (The Source of Orr) right before the last dungeon. I've got a level 80 elementalist: finished the personal story, and all the dungeons in story mode. I'm still working on explorable modes and working on a warrior alt.

You can find the sheet music here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?k882o51vee361t3

Mass Effect 3 - I was Lost Without You (piano)

2012-05-12T21:22:00.000-06:00

Mass Effect 3's love theme. This is another great arrangement by Sebastian Wolff. You can get the sheet music here:
http://sebastianwolff.info/news/2012/03/mass-effect-3-i-was-lost-without-you/

Mass Effect 3 (XBOX 360)

2012-05-06T12:03:00.000-06:00

- Finished ME3 with 74% readiness with about 4 hrs of multiplayer.
- about 5300 effective war assets.

- Mined all resources (less than 1hr of grinding to finish up scanning the rest of the planets near the end)

- final save: 46h 15m
- Level 55 soldier, paragon.

- Normal difficulty level

- Got the ummm "perfect" ending. Went back and played the other 2 endings just to check them out.

- I pretty much played most of ME2 back to back with ME3. I had started ME2 back when it was first released and quit after about 7 hrs. I guess I was a bit burnt out on bioware games having just finished Dragon Age on the pc so I gave it a long break. I then went back and started playing ME2 again about a month ago, finished it, and went straight into ME3.
- Finished reading all the comics and about half way through the second novel so yeah I'm pretty invested in this universe.
- I have both iOS apps. Infiltrator is ok though has some control issues. It's not Dead Space quality. The free data pad app is pretty neat with a galaxy map mini game that contributes to you war assets. I like reading all the emails you get too which are different than the ones in game. Also, you get access to the entire Codex with the voice overs. It's really nice to browse the codex on the iPad.
- I actually went back and played the ME1 DLC: Bring Down the Sky because I had skipped it when it first came out. It was a pretty bland mission with more mako driving (uggg!!!). The graphics were pretty dated looking. Combat has come a LONG way since me1. Don't bother with this dlc. It's really not worth it.
- Hit the import bug where it wouldn't import the face of my me2 character. I went through a lot of trouble getting my xbox save onto my pc and then running it through a variety of programs and online utilities to get my character code and slider values except for makeup. Even after all that my Shepard still doesn't look right. To have that serious of a bug slip through QA and then still exist for months after release is totally inexcusable. You invest 100 hrs into the character, and I better damn well be able to play MY shepard in me3. Again, it's more signs of a rushed product that could have been better.

Mass Effect 2

I still think I inadvertently created Kelli Giddish

- I got the perfect ending and saved everybody.
- 52h.08m, level 30 soldier, paragon

- I completed all the DLC with overlord and shadow broker being my favorite. From a game play perspective arrival was kind of meh but it's good to play as a bridge between me2 and me3.

- I felt me2 did a lot of things right. It had a very large and interesting cast of characters. Most grew on me by the end. All their loyalty missions were quit interesting too. The combat was much improved over me1. I felt character progression though was a bit over simplified as far as gear upgrades.

- Scanning planets for resources was just boring busy work after about 15 min of doing it. Good thing I have younger children which I got them to mine enough resources to get all my upgrades.

- I liked how crew loyalty and ship upgrades impacted the ending.

- Journal was well done always pointing you to where you need to go next and tracking every step of your missions as you completed them. You always knew what state a mission was in.

Mass Effect 3 (WARNING: SPOILERS BEGIN HERE)

- Lets start with the good. The Combat is even better IMO especially if you have played gears of war. The cover system gets a bit sticky though with one button doing too many things. The combat rolls aren't bad. Game looks as great as ever. Load times aren't bad except for the odd 2 people guarding the load screen between the war room and the galaxy map.

- Quick save is awesome!!!!

- I like the class flexibility how any class can use any weapon. The weight vs power recharge speed tradeoff is well implemented.

- The weapon upgrade slots are a nice customization and then having 5 levels of upgrades for all weapons and mods gives you even more progression.

- There are some HUGE incredibly well done emotional beats and payoffs throughout the game: Genophage, Geth/Quarian, and tons of wrap up if you saved everybody from ME2.

- Music has always been fantastic in this series and even better in me3.
- I romanced Liara through all 3 games. Though I did get the shower scene with Traynor before restoring to an earlier save. The Tali / Garrus romance was cute too.
- Multiplayer horde mode is a lot of fun. I like the unlock progression. You either love or hate the random slot machine style of unlocks though. In some ways I think it brings some excitement when you buy a pack with in game credits. At least that is better than some of the crap you have to do to unlock the pro versions of perks in MW3. On the other hand it would be nice to know you will unlock this race or weapon at a specific overall XP threshold. Either way, it's different and works pretty well for the most part. I liked how you got to preview the multiplayer maps if you did the side quests in the single player. It seems like they could have easily added bots but didn't.
- Jessica Chobot: This game was NOT kind to her. Her face seemed extra wide, and her poor voice acting really stands out compared to the rest of the excellent cast.

- What happened with the Journal? It's pretty much crap in me3. I'm not sure why they broke a working system. You basically have no idea what step you are on in the mission, where to go, or anything. It's pretty much useless requiring a lot of looking up in a wiki.
- The new resource mining is improved overall from me2 IMO though it is a bit silly getting chased by those reaper ships. It's easy enough to escape and come back in until you get 100% resources gathered. At least you don't have to worry about buying probes or manually scanning every inch of every planet. It's a lot less busy work.
- Unfortunately, the two trips to the Citadel you have to make to gather up all these lame busy work side quests kind of suck. It's worse due to the Journal system so you have no idea if you even picked up whatever random widget that person on the citadel wanted. At least you are visiting all new sections of the citadel.
- The day 1 DLC: From Ashes is a greedy blatant money grab IMO and reeks with EA douchebaggery. It's quite integral to the story. It gives you so much needed background information not just in the flash backs with the Prothean but in all the crew interaction especially with Liara. Liara's realization and misconceptions of what the Protheans are are really well done.

Endings and resolutions
- In general I feel corners were definitely cut on this game. What should have been their biggest and best mass effect game to wrap up this trilogy instead we get a good game that feels a bit rushed (budget? EA influences?) and not quite reaching it's full potential. This game should have been treated like the half life series: take as long it takes to make the best possible game.
- After finishing the game I went back and watched all the endings and a lot of the different resolutions through the game because I really don't plan to play this game again. I was really surprised by some of the outcomes that can happen like saving Mording, Tali committing suicide, Miranda dying, etc. I was really impressed by some of the different paths you can take which makes the ending look that much worse.
- Tali: The romance path really should have had a cutscene that showed her face as a payoff instead of a short glimpse of a cheesy photoshopped stock photo.
- Saying goodbye to everybody before the last mission was a great touch.
- All the resolutions you get with pretty much everybody you saved from ME2 was well done.

- In this case I feel artistic integrity is just another word for developer arrogance. That sums up what I feel about what happened with the ending. I'm not sure if the rumors are true but it really does feels like Casey Hudson and Mac Walters locked themselves in a room and wrote the ending without any peer review from the rest of the writing team. I think they were too close to the material and couldn't see it from the outside (how the players would perceive it) and so a very poor ending was released. I felt the writing and narrative choices were very consistent and made logical sense up until the ending.
- My biggest issue with the 3 choices are none of them matched in tone, belief system, or moral compass that I've been playing my shepard. There was no way to object to the ultimatum the stupid star child presents. I spent the entire game proving that organics and synthetics CAN coexist peacefully and can even mutually benefit from one another (geth/Quarian, EDI/Joker).
Destruction: This is what I ended up choosing but I completely reject that I have no choice but to destroy all synthetic life including the Geth and EDI.
Synthesis: I've been fighting to preserve life, all kinds of life (synthetic and organic), and not force everybody in the entire galaxy to some mutant hybrid. We fought against this very thing in ME1 against sovereign and saren (indoctrinated).
Control: I've been fighting TIM this entire time against the entire idea of controlling the reapers, how dangerous that path is, and that very notion is from somebody who is clearly indoctrinated.
- The star child's reasoning is that every 50,000 years the reapers have to come and destroy all ADVANCE life else the synthetic vs organic wars will destroy all life as we know it (including primitive organic life). So the reapers exist to reset everything and let things evolve from the surviving primitive life again over the next 50K years. I just proved that this cycle is different. That there is a chance that synthetics and organics can coexist. Yet, I never get a chance to argue that point. Star child even admits I'm the first to ever get this far. That this cycle is indeed different. Instead, I'm presented with 3 choices that I do not agree with.
- The rest of the issues just makes things even worse with weird logic gaps: how does your ground party end up on the Normandy, why is the Normandy fleeing?
- The last FMV only differs by the 3 color choices and maybe 3 secs of actual cut scene that is different (and even then only very minor differences). Dude spend some time and money and render different end cut scenes! This game deserves it!
- There is no explanation why the mass effect relays have to be destroyed.
- fleets might not actually be stranded in sol if you believe this post?
- None of your war assets really mattered that much, and getting over 5000 effective war assets amounts to a confusing single breath from shepard (again spend the time and money here and add some optional cut scenes at least, branch it more, depending on level of war assets to make it feel more meaningful).
- It's these reasons why I'm pissed about the ending. No where do I mention I want a happy ending or shepard even has to live. I reject that all the general public wants is a happy award ceremony type of ending. Take a look at another popular work of fiction: Game of Thrones. Ned Stark gets his head cut off but you don't see the kind of outrage that you see with the me3 ending. It's because that result fit the rest of the narrative; it had an internal logic; the characters had motivation that made sense (a crazy Joffrey world logic but still consistent for his character). No BS star child came down out of nowhere and lopped off poor Ned's head. It was definitely not a happy conclusion to season one (and if you've read the books you know lots of bad things happen to the best, most noble, and likable characters). But I think most people were OK with it.
- I do like the indoctrination theory.

Recommended. ME3 compared to ME2 is like 2 steps forward but 1 step back. There was so much potential to have ME3 be the best in the series but this game felt rushed and unpolished. With 150 hrs invested into mass effect I expected a better ending. The payoff just wasn't there. An extra 3 months or so and this game could have been great. It's too bad they cut corners all over the place. But I have to admit what is there is very good (except the last 15 min) and still very much worth experiencing. Maybe the free extended ending DLC will help some but I doubt it's going to make me completely happy for the reasons I stated above.

Mass Effect 3 - An End, Once and For All (piano)

2012-04-29T22:22:00.001-06:00

The ending might have sucked but the soundtrack to this series has always been excellent. Here is the nice piano piece during the end sequence. This great arrangement was done by Sebastian Wolff. You can get the sheet music here:
http://sebastianwolff.info/news/2012/03/mass-effect-3-an-end-once-and-for-all-sheet-music/

Angry Birds (piano)

2012-04-29T22:01:00.001-06:00

Here is a fun piece to play. Kids really dig it!

Sheet music can be found here:
http://www.simplesheetmusic.com/angry-bird-theme-rovio/

That link seems to be dead now. Try this one:
http://jeliaedu.blogspot.com/2012/04/angry-birds-piano-sheet.html

The New iPad (3rd generation)

2012-03-24T09:56:00.007-06:00

iPad 3rd generation

I picked up a black 64gb 4g lte Verizon model.
The first thing you notice about the new iPad is the brilliant gorgeous jaw dropping display. It really is stunning and was worth the upgrade price alone. Text really looks sharp especially when reading magazines. There is a very detailed review over at displaymate.
The second thing you will notice is the weight. I already thought the iPad 2 was pretty heavy. The new iPad is .1 lbs heavier and I swear I can feel it.
Dictation was added instead of full Siri support. I guess they really want to push that iPhone 4s. I tried it out a little bit but didn't seem to work too well. Originally, I was planning to dictate this entire review. Yeah, I changed my mind pretty quickly. Instead, I'm testing out the blogsy app (it's pretty slick) and my iKeyboard.
The new back facing camera actually takes a decent photo now. The 1080p video is nice too. Still, you aren't going to catch me taking that many photos or videos with the iPad. That's just silly.
The main reason I went with Verizon is they include the hotspot for no additional charge with all their data plans which have no contracts. This means you can buy just during the months you need it. It's a title cumbersome since if you only want one month of service you have to sign up for a plan which will automatically renew month to month unless you cancel it. So basically you sign up and then immediately cancel. You still keep all the remaining time and bandwidth you have left over. I also wish it would save my cellular login data. It's a bit annoying having to login every time you want to check hhow much data you have left. Sd
I love Verizon's data plans though. They match up quite nicely with my walmart virgin mobile mifi including the 1gb for 30 days for $20.
LTE speeds are amazing. I ran the speedtest.net app all over town in different locations to get a good average. Over 14 sample I had an average of 14.6 Mbps down and 9.2 Mbps up. I had a max of 39 Mbps down and 19 Mbps up. Basically, surfing on LTE feels no diffent than my home Internet connection (max turbo uverse 25/3).

Retina display also brought with it some app compatibility problems. Zinio just got an update to fix rendering speed issues. It's faster but still not quite instant. Magazines on the nook app look fine even though I'm not entirely sure it's taking full advantage of retina since there hasn't been an update yet. Some magazines from newsstand that depend on the zinio engine is also having issues like all future publications (maximum pc). Text takes forever to render. You can see it paint in blocks. Hopefully they get updated quickly now that zinio has been updated.
Also, retina won't help if your content isn't high enough resolution to begin with like cbr files where the comic wasn't scanned in at a high enough dpi.
Heat. It's really not that big of a deal. Yes, it's warmer than the iPad 2 but it doesn't get THAT hot. Just basic surfing and reading the new iPad just gets very slight warm to the touch. While playing a more demanding 3D game like modern combat 3 it does get warm but not hot like a laptop.
As far as accessories I went with the same basic setup as the iPad 2. I'm using an icarbons brushed aluminum back only, dark grey smart cover, case logic sleeve pls9, and I'll add a crystal power support screen protector as soon as they release the new ones. Just see my iPad 2 review for details.
The "quad core" GPU will be a nice boost in gaming but the cpu is basically the same which is too bad. A bit more oomph for decoding mkv's would have been nice.
Memory has doubled and is now at 1GB which is nice.
Nice touch that the iPad came fully charged out of the box.

Highly recommended. The screen and LTE 4G (in my book LTE is the only true definition of 4g. Hsdpa+, WiMAX, etc are all posers) are reasons enough to upgrade. Sure, there weren't a lot of other massive changes but those 2 reasons alone really do make a big impact on how you use a tablet on a daily basis.

CloudFTP

2012-03-08T17:24:00.021-06:00

CloudFTP

- One of the biggest issues I have with iOS devices are the lack of expandable storage. 64GB is not enough for a power user that likes to have a ton of apps installed and still have room for media (mostly video). CloudFTP solves the problem and quite elegantly.
- This is the second kickstarter project I backed. It was $69 when I backed it. It's available for order at hypershop for $99 but it still shows a 4-6 week wait.
- Semi official forums: http://cloudftp.freeforums.org/index.php
- The basic idea is this little box will connect to any usb storage device (usb flash drives, card readers, usb 2.5" external hard drives, etc) and create an ad hoc wifi network which your iOS (or really any wifi enabled mobile device) will connect to to access the content on the usb device that is attached to the cloudFTP. You do this over a web page (cloudFTP has a little web server and ftp server running). You also configure and change settings of the cloudFTP on that same web page. The cloudFTP outputs 5v 1A on the usb port which is enough to power external 2.5" hard drives. The 2600mah battery is suppose to be able to power a device for up to 5 hrs. Since cloudFTP is charged from usb you can use any external battery that charges usb to extend that time (it still works while charging).
- I tried it out with a 64GB flash drive (ntfs), 40GB 2.5" hdd (ntfs, old ps3 pull), and a 320GB hitachi pulled from a macbook pro. They all worked fine except the hitachi which I had issues with. It wouldn't work formatted as NTFS but worked fine once I switched to exFAT. I tried 3 different 2.5" enclosures and all worked fine so I would say compatibility seems pretty good with my limited testing. It also supports many other file systems like fat32, HSF+, ext 2/3/4 so you should be covered.
- I picked up a 1TB samsung laptop hard drive for $110 from newegg. I had all sorts of troubles getting this drive initialized, partitioned and formatted. I have no idea if it was the enclosure I was using, the age of my motherboard, the esata docking station or what. What finally worked for me was to format it to exFat using OSX disk utility on my macbook pro. After that it seemed to work fine on my win 7 desktop and cloudFTP. I briefly tried HSF+ and that worked fine too but I'll stick with exFat for the greatest compatibility.
- supports 802.11 b/g/n.
- Can stream up to 3 devices simultaneously. I tried it on my iPad 2 and iPhone 4 at the same time and it worked great.
- I converted my videos to iOS friendly mp4 format using handbrake and the iPad profile.
- The web interface works great on iOS devices but is pretty much mangled and unusable on Android.
- I did find some apps that work well by streaming over FTP: goodplayer ($3 universal) and oplayer ($5 not universal) on iOS and es file explorer on android. Both iOS apps have some compatibility and crash issues with certain video files, yet those same files play fine in quicktime from the web interface. Out of the two though I prefer oplayer but neither is perfect. Hopefully cloudFTP comes out with their dedicated app soon. The advantage of using an app is you get better subtitle support and file formats like MKV without the need to transcoding first. I find you can just barely play 720p files on the iPad 2.
- AcePlayer ($3 universal) is another app that I just started testing. Video seems to freeze after a few minutes. Right now I think I like oplayer the most.
- iFiles works pretty well as an ftp client to manage your files.
- You can also put cloudFTP into infrastructure mode where it will connect to a router as a wifi client. Once cloudFTP is on your network it displays the IP address that was assigned so you can browse to it and access the files. This could come in handy say you have a mifi (or some other personal wifi hotspot like a smart phone). You connect the cloudFTP to the mifi and also your iPad to the mifi. Now the iPad has access to the internet and cloudFTP at the same time. The range is pretty short on the cloudFTP so make sure it's close to the router. Performance seems a bit slower in infrastructure mode but other than that it seems to work just fine.
- If you need to connect to a hidden SSID while in infrastructure mode use this url:
192.168.0.1/svdo/WIFI{set,infra,SSID,PASSWORD}
- Has a host name already setup: cloudftp (192.168.0.1) which you can enter as the url address in your browser or as the ftp server address.
- You can change the SSID and secure it with a password. Both are displayed on the cloudFTP. WPA2 is used. This is the only level of security you have which I think is fine.
- The website claims the battery is removable but I haven't found a way to open the box. UPDATE: Somebody just opened one.
- The site claims to have ways to backup to cloud storage sites like box.net and dropbox in infrastructure mode but I see no way of doing it.
- The site also says there are suppose to be native android and iOS apps which have not showed up yet.
- All iOS supported media works like mp3, jpg, or even pdf.
- It also worked streaming to my macbook pro using safari.
- It has 8MB of space (drive X:) which will be used to install additional apps. A SDK is planned to be released in the future so you can write your own programs to run on the cloudFTP.
- I went the the large 2.5" HDD route. The other way to go is maybe use this with a tiny micro usb flash drive (up to 32GB) to make things as portable as possible. You can see several examples here.
- Always shut down normally before disconnecting your usb device so it can be properly unmounted. You can however connect one at anytime. To force a shutdown hold the power button for at least 5 sec and then release.
- The web interface doesn't seem to sort the files list properly. They seem quite random.

Highly recommended! This product is still very early in its development. It has quite a few rough edges and missing features but the core functionality is there and works well. I'm streaming very high quality video to my iOS devices on my own little battery powered portable wifi network which you can set aside and have nothing attached to your iOS device physically. With a 1TB hard drive you can store well over 500 movies (typical handbrake ipad transcoded movies are around 1.5-2GB each). It is firmware updatable so I'm sure things will only get better and more functionality will get added. There are a ton of solutions to stream from storage you have at home over the internet limited by your upstream bandwidth of your ISP. This solution is great for those times you have either no internet or slow unreliable internet where cellular data is spotty, slow, or expensive with bandwidth caps (think planes, trains, ,and automobiles...or even hotels). It's a bit of a niche product but I think it is an important one.

UPDATE: 3/9/2012

From CloudFTP

- I figured out my NTFS woes. Apparently I had the hard drive initialized as GPT (guid partition table) vs MBR (master boot record). Macs like GPT so if you are using a hdd pulled from a macbook it's going to be GPT and I found out the hard way cloudFTP does NOT support GPT. It only supports MBR. It's easy enough to convert between the two. In disk manager just delete all the partitions off the hard drive and you can right click the drive and click convert to MBR. Then, recreate your ntfs partition and you are good to go! So what I know for sure GPT + NTFS doesn't work on cloudFTP. I'm not sure about other combinations like GPT + HFS+.
- The drawback of exFat is you can't write to it through the cloudFTP. With ntfs you can read and write using a ftp client like FTP Client pro and actually upload files from your iOS device (like photos and movies from you camera roll, albums, or photo stream) to the usb storage device. Filezilla works well too on a computer. So with the cloudFTP it pretty much can replace the usb camera adapter apple sells. Lets say you shoot some photos with your camera. Then you pop the sd card into a reader connected to the cloudFTP. Fire up ftp client pro on your iOS device and download the images and move them into your camera roll or do a "open in" to open the image in your favorite photo editor. Make your edits and save them back to the camera roll, and now you can upload it back to a usb storage device (maybe like a hard drive for archival) using ftp client pro.

UPDATE: 5/23/2012
- Did my first real field test with a 3 hour car trip using V12 beta firmware. It worked great streaming 2 different movies: one to the hp touchpad running android and the other to the iPad 3. The one thing that surprised me though is the battery life. I got barely over an hour of use while streaming off a 1TB hdd. Hooking up my external usb battery worked great (car usb charger would have worked fine too I'm sure), and let it run the entire trip. The quality and performance were perfect. The wife said it was like an in flight movie but with 200 movies to choose from. The only thing missing were the peanuts and cranberry juice.

Logitech Tablet Keyboard for iPad

2012-02-21T23:20:00.006-06:00

Logitech Tablet Keyboard

- I picked this up for around $50 at amazon.
- The size and feel is very similar to the apple bluetooth keyboard. So if you are familiar and happy with that chiclet styled keyboard you should feel right at home on this logitech one.
- It has some nice iOS specific function keys. There is also an android flavor version of this keyboard.
- The case is pretty nice though it's kind of odd it doesn't cover the entire keyboard but at least it covers all the keys. The case folds out into a nice stand. You have multiple angles and you can do landscape or portrait.
- iPhone works fine too. Worked fine with the hp touchpad running android cyanogenmod 7.
- It's heavier than expected but still pretty portable for a full size qwerty keyboard.
- I type around 80-95 wpm which is just about the maximum speed I type on a regular keyboard.
- I like how this keyboard is more or less generic so it should work with future versions of any tablet, smartphone, or computer, basically anything with bluetooth. Nothing is tied to a specific form factor like the case and keyboard combo devices.
- It uses 4XAAA batteries that are suppose to last 10 months. Yeah! no proprietary batteries or chargers to deal with.

Highly recommended. The keyboard feels great. All the keys are where you expect it. If you use a macbook or apple keyboard you will feel right at home. Basically, you save $20 off of the apple branded one and you get a nice free case/stand to boot. The biggest drawback though is having to carry something extra around with you but if you have some serious typing to do then it's hard to beat.

ARogan's Clean Room Technique

2012-02-20T23:05:00.007-06:00

ARogan's Clean Room Technique for applying screen protectors (the dry, static cling type) to various electronics.

I've picked up these tips over the years from various sources and forums and I thought I would put together a little step by step on how I get pretty much perfect lint free, dust free, bubble free application of screen protectors from everything as small as an iPhone to as large as an iPad (nerve-racking).

Materials:
- A couple of wood toothpicks
- Scotch tape (the typical 3m scotch magic tape)
- a lint free cloth
- a credit card or other plastic card to help smooth out air bubbles.
- Optional: distilled water/vinegar solution (maybe around 6 parts water to 1 part vinegar).
- UPDATE: This cleaning kit works GREAT from monoprice for about $4.

Details:
- Pick a bathroom with a good surface you can work on and good lighting.
- Clean the surface you are about to work on.
- Wash your hands.
- Prepare about 4 strips of tape of 2 inches each.
- If you have central heating/AC turn that off. We don't want it blowing while we are in our clean room.
- Do some trial alignments with your screen protector while leaving all the protective packaging layers on for now.
- Turn on the shower on full hot and point it against the back corner of the shower away from the opening. Try and leave the door open/curtain drawn back a bit to let the maximum amount of steam into the room. Close the door and wait 10 min or so for the room to get nice and steamy. This keeps the dust and lint out of the air.
- Take off your shirt. I kid you not. Be naked from the waste upward. A shirt is just another source of lint. The 3 biggest enemies are lint, dust, and finger prints. Without those present any air bubble is super easy to work out.
- Quickly enter the room with your electronic device and supplies and quickly close the door behind you. You can probably turn off the shower now if the room is sufficiently steamy.
- If the product is new out of box then the screen is already pretty clean. At this point I like to take LONG strips of scotch tape and then go over the entire screen. Stick the screen with the tape and then lift to remove every last piece of dust or lint. Be very careful to NEVER touch the screen with your fingers. Use a new strip of tape after every couple of times you stick and lift.
- If the product was already in use and you need a good cleaning I suggest a highly diluted vinegar water solution. Just spray a little of the solution ON THE LINT FREE CLOTH (never on the device, you don't want water damage). Wipe down the screen removing all oils and finger prints then dry with the dry part of the cloth. But always go over the entire screen with scotch tape as the LAST STEP before you begin installation of the screen protector. Don't be stingy. Tape is cheap; screen protectors are not.
- Now, you are ready to install the screen protector as instructed. I usually start on one side and start peeling back the underside protective layer while laying it down. I keep one hand to hold the starting edge in place. I almost NEVER get perfect alignment on the first try. That is why I had you prepare some shorter strips of scotch tape. Just take a piece of tape, lightly stick it to the top of the screen protector in a corner and then lift the screen protector back off while only touching the scotch tape. Under no circumstances should you ever directly touch the screen or edge of the screen protector with your fingers to get it off. Always use a piece of tape to lift off the corner and peel it back. While still anchoring the starting edge with your other hand keep laying down and pulling back off until alignment is perfect. Don't worry too much about air bubbles since our "clean room" should prevent any dust or lint to get under there while we are doing this process. Remove the tape when you get it the way you want it.
- Once alignment is good and you have the screen protector installed try and smooth out as many air bubbles as possible with your hand. Don't be alarmed if there are quite a few. You should be able to work them all out. If there is an outer protective layer leave it on during this process. I find using a combination of fingers, credit card, and toothpicks to work best. Out of all of these I find a toothpick works really well. Break off a pointy end so you have basically a blunt toothpick. Use it to rub out and work out any air bubbles. Just work them out the closest edge. Having the outer protective layer still on prevents the toothpick from damaging the screen protector and lets you do it with a bit more vigor.
- Finally, remove the outer protective layer if there is one. Check all the edges and make sure there are no air bubbles. You can use the toothpick but gently if you need to work out some final air bubbles.

If the surface stayed clean during the process you will have the perfect installation of a screen protector. If you happen to get some dust or lint under the screen here is what you can do:
- Use a piece of tape and try and lift as little of the screen protector as possible, just enough to expose the piece of lint.
- Use a second piece of tape to try and lift off the lint. You will need to figure out if the lint is stuck to the device or the underside of the screen protector. The adhesive of the tape should be strong enough to grab a hold of the lint. Again, never let your fingers touch the device screen or the underside of the screen protector. Let the tape do all the work.
- Once you have extracted the lint carefully lay back down the screen protector, remove the tape, and work out any new air bubbles as described above.

This sounds like a bit of time and work and it is. But think about how long you will be using that piece of electronics (years maybe). It's worth investing the energy to do it right to have a great looking and feeling product.

iKeyboard (iPad/iPad 2)

2012-02-19T10:19:00.008-06:00

iKeyboard

• iKeyboard was the first kickstarter project I ever backed. The idea of being able to touch type without having to lug around a Bluetooth keyboard really appealed to me. I figure it was worth taking a chance on. It is $35 at amazon.

• After several delays (months) the product finally arrived. My initial reaction was how ummm unsubstantial the device looked. It's a very thin light plastic frame with a bunch of clear plastic bubbles that make up the keys. It has a few rubbery adhesive strips around the edges to attach the keyboard to the screen.

• The initial experience was rather awkward. I wasn't sure what to expect but this feels like no keyboard I've used before. I actually took typing in high school. I type all the time at work. I can typically type around 85 wpm without errors. There are some things you have to immediately get use to. You want to make sure you press keys all the way down to the bottom to make sure each key press registers. The travel distance feels ok it just you have to use more pressure than you are use to to which might lead to quicker hand fatigue. The second big thing is the return key is where the apostrophe typically is. You brain wants to switch into normal touch typing mode and you kind of forget you are typing on an iPad so you will get some inadvertent returns. I'm sure that will get better over time with more practice. I also notice as you push for speed you have to make sure your fingers land on the actual bubble and not the frame around the bubble. This is made more difficult due to the size of the iPad keyboard since it is quite a bit more cramped and the keys are smaller than a normal keyboard.

• There is no arguing though. You can definitely type faster with the iKeboard than without. I'm not typing anywhere near 85 wpm but it's a definite improvement. What is nice is you can type with just the iPad in your lap without the bulk of a keyboard or keyboard case.

• I downloaded an app called TapTyping which the testing part is free. I was doing about 35-45 wpm without the iKeyboard and around 50-65 wpm with the iKeyboard after about 20min of practice. Also, without the iKeyboard I still had to glance down at the keys quite often and my hands had to hover over the touch screen where with the iKeyboard I never had to look down and was truly touch typing with my hands/fingers resting on the iKeyboard. So expect a 15-20 wpm improvement. That might get even better with practice.

• I use a powersupport anti-glare screen protector. I was afraid that sticking and removing this thing again and again would cause issues like air bubbles or lift up the screen protector. I just slowly peel the corner closest to the middle of the iPad. So far it doesn't seem to have messed anything up.

• The smart cover still works with the iKeyboard in the default location which is nice. What I'm not sure is what to do with it when I'm not going to be doing a lot of typing. I don't want the adhesive pads to get lint on it. I guess I could just put it back in its original packaging. It says to use scotch tape to delint the pads if they ever get dirty.

Recommended. I think a lot of people's initial reaction is that is all you get for $35? From a straight materials perspective it looks to be more like a $5-$10 product. From all the kickstarter updates I can tell there is probably a substantial R&D cost he is trying to recover. You really can tell a lot of thought went into the design. I can't think of what could have been done differently to make it better off the top of my head except maybe somehow make the frame around the buttons a bit thinner (but maintain structural integrity) and the bubbles a bit easier to push (but still spring back quickly enough). I guess the bottom line is are you getting $35 of actually usefulness out of the product. If you want improved touch typing while keeping the iPad as portable as possible without having to lug another device around that you have to keep charged then there really aren't that many options. Just keep your expectations in line (don't expect apple Bluetooth keyboard like speeds) and I think you will be pleasantly surprised. I for one think this will be great for taking notes in meetings. Oh, and of course I typed this entire review in Pages with the iKeyboard.

Playstation Vita

2012-02-16T22:40:00.035-06:00

PS Vita

Some very early impressions:
- Got the first edition bundle from amazon $350. It came in yesterday. It comes with a 4GB memory card (proprietary, yes FU sony), a pretty nice case, and the Little Deviants game.
- Yes I wanted 3G but I won't ever use the outrageous at&t data plans. I'll be using my walmart virgin mobile mifi if I ever need internet on the go. I figure the 3g will be handy for any gps location based services though it apparently will approximate with just wifi.
- I also picked up Uncharted Golden Abyss. Uggg $50 from amazon:
- I also picked up the official screen protector made by sony for $10 from fry's.
- A class 10 32gb sdhc card cost around $33. A 32 gb vita memory card is $100. FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU SONY!!!!!!!!!!
- I installed the screen protector pretty much perfectly without issue. It has a handy alignment sheet that makes it pretty easy to get it on right. Just do the usual clean room technique (steamy bathroom, scotch tape to lift every last bit of lint/dust off the screen before applying, smooth out air bubbles with a toothpick, use a piece of scotch tape to lift and re-position if you don't nail it on the first try). It's very clear and feels pretty good to glide your finger across it.
- It's big and pretty heavy but it does look nice as far as the actual physical design and feels good in the hands. I can say after a few hours of play it still feels quite comfortable to hold.
- The analog sticks work better than the psp and tons better than a touch screen but don't expect the precision of a full sized controller. There just isn't enough travel distance in those tiny analog sticks so you have to use a gentle touch or turn down sensitivity a bit in games like Uncharted to make aiming easier. I need a real fps to give it a really good try.
- Battery life states between 3-5 hrs while gaming. From drain tests I've read it out performs the 3ds by quite a bit. I played uncharted for about 1.5 hrs last night and the battery only went down maybe 25%. So far I'm quite impressed with the battery life.
- Battery is NOT removable. FU SONY!!!! Having had a battery completely die in one of my recent dual shock 3 controllers this does NOT bode well.
- It comes with a 5v, 1.5A power supply and a usb cable that terminates to the proprietary vita port. You can also charge off of any usb port but that only supplies 500ma standard so you can't do it while in stand by. You must completely power off the vita. I love how nobody follows any standards for > 500ma usb power charging. Apple, hp touchpad, vita, all these devices won't charge at > 500ma without their own proprietary charges. There really needs to be a global standard for high amp usb charging. FYI, my iPhone chargers don't seem to work at all but hooking it up to a pc does work. So it seems pretty picky about what usb chargers will work with this thing. Make sure you enable usb charging in the settings. It's a checkbox you must check. I believe it is off by default.
- The big OLED display is rather stunning.
- This thing has a mass of ports and slots: you have the sim card slot on the left, the memory card slot on the bottom, headphone jack on the bottom, the vita game card slot on the top along with an odd accessory port.
- A2DP stereo bluetooth headphones work great. I can even prioritize using the mic on the headset over the built in vita mic.
- It's awesome that every game released on retail shelves you can buy and download through PSN. These download version seem to be around $5 off the full retail price. Games take a lot of space though. Uncharted is 3.2GB and wipeout is 1.6GB. If you are going to go all download then you'll probably need that 32GB memory card but I think that beats having to keep track of a bunch of tiny game cards.
- It uses a sheets metaphore that you can then rip off and discard to close running apps. It's similar to the cards in webOS. On the sheet there are usually links to the game's website and if there is an update there will be a little download icon. I like it!
- The basic home screen is very similar to iOS except landscape oriented. It works fine.
- What is up with background downloads. It seems to work fine when just messing around on the home screen but as soon as the system goes into standby the download stops. Worse yet you can't turn off auto stand by (only adjust between 1-5 min) EVEN when connected to the power adapter. The only way I can make this thing stay on is to take a few pictures with the camera and then set it to slideshow mode. That seems to be the work around to keep the device on when you are trying to download multi GB games. UPDATE: It seems that backgrounds DO work if you let the auto sleep kick in. If you manually put it in stand by then the download stops. If you let 1 - 5 min elapse without touching it (depending on your setting) then downloads will continue with or without power. Still, it would have been better if it was more consistent (again more silly sony confusion).
- The first thing you need to do when you turn it on? You guessed it....system update. What's worse about it is it won't let you sign in with your existing psn account until you update but the initial setup wizard won't let you finish until you sign in to psn so you have to do this really confusing thing and pick demo psn account or something just to get past the initial setup. After that, you can do a system update and then sign in with your existing PSN account.
- Tried remote play very briefly with the ps3. It works but I don't think I'll use it much. There just isn't much support for it.
- Since the memory card is proprietary it's a good thing it has a built in content management app. This thing lets you backup and transfer data between your Vita and a ps3 or your pc/mac (after you install a little tray application). You can transfer individual pieces of media both directions including your downloaded games and saves or do an entire system backup/restore. It will be handy when moving from the 4GB to the 32GB memory card. FYI, vita shows up in file explorer but doesn't list anything.
- Packaging is almost non existent. Apparently Sony no longer prints any manuals. Games come with just the game card in the box and NOTHING else. There isn't even a printed vita manual. They want you to get all that stuff either on the vita or the web.
- It has the usual mp3, video player etc and some location based social network thing called near. I'll have to dig into that more later.
- UPDATE: I just got my 32GB memory card. I had recently did a complete backup of the 4GB and just restored to my new 32GB and it worked great.
- I did have one case where the vita completely locked up. I was testing the camera and shot a few photos. Then I tried a movie and at 10 sec it just stopped and saved "saving" and there it sat. To force a power off you have to hold the power button down like 15 sec. The movie mode worked fine the second time I tried it.
- OLED still looks pretty bad in direct sunlight even at full brightness.

Uncharted
- I love the series and have finished the first 2 games. I'll pick up #3 when it's a bit cheaper. With about 1.5 hrs into it so far it's almost every bit as good as the ps3 versions. The graphics and framerate are great. The writing isn't quite as sharp but the voice acting is still solid. There is a variety of control methods. I like how there are in many cases 2 -3 ways to do things either with the newfangled touch (front and back) and tilt or traditional controls. This game really does try to accommodate every type of player.
- They really beefed up the collecting aspect and some of it seems a tad less optional.
- I found aiming a bit more difficult with the tiny analog sticks so I turned on auto aim (it's off by default) which helps a lot.

Little Deviants
- I tried it for like 5 min. It seems like your typical collection of mini games that demo every input aspect of the device with augmented reality gyro stuff thrown in. I'll have to spend a bit more time to get any kind of real impression.

Wipeout 2048
- I decided to buy this game over PSN. The graphics are great! It's the wipeout that you know and love. Load times are pretty horrible. PSN purchased games of course work just fine without an internet connect.

Super Stardust
- Picked up the complete package for $15 on PSN. It makes really nice use of all the input features of the vita. Dual sticks work great obviously. Tilt is only used to make some camera angle adjustments which you can reset what neutral is. Back touch pad is used for making black holes. It all works really well.

Recommended with reservations. I think it's a bit pricey right now for what you get. It's proprietary all as heck and they price gouge you at every opportunity. In the age where we are use to 99 cents - $10 games on tablets and phones that look pretty good trying to swallow a $50 game is kind of hard. Yes, you can see how much more meaty, high production values, AAA ish the titles are but that is a LOT more money to ask for. $30 would have felt more appropriate IMO. I don't think 3G is worth it so the $250 base model is probably the better deal. Just realize you pretty much have to buy a memory card and if you plan to go all download just eat the $100 and get the 32GB. The 4GB really is too small. If you have the disposable income and you crave that ps3 like console experience with real controls in a portable package then yeah I don't think you will be disappointed. If you are an uncharted fan then that alone justifies the system purchase at least for me.

UPDATE 2/24/2012:

From ps vita

Thanks to the anonymous comment that posted a link on how to modify a usb extension cable so you can charge the Vita with pretty much any usb charger. I decided to give it a try. The modification took maybe 10 min to do and wasn't hard at all. Just make sure you cut carefully and you won't even cut the red and black wires. I tested it out with a variety of usb chargers, iphone charger, and external batteries and they all worked great while the Vita was completely off and even in stand by. I added more photos to the album.

- I tried a bunch more demos. Unit 13 is a pretty good 3rd person shooter. The aiming with the right analog stick seems to work better than uncharted. I might get the full version when it comes out.
- I was never a Rayman fan or really that much into platformers but I completed Rayman Origins demo, and it was a lot more fun than I expected. The graphics and art really are great, and the controls are spot on.
- Lumines is well a really pretty lumines. I remember playing it quite a bit with my launch psp but I think I'm pretty much done with lumines.
- Asphalt is your typical iOS gameloft game. It's not a bad burnout ripoff but it isn't particularly great or inspired. Same with Dungeon Hunter. I have pretty much all the gameloft games (I always grab them when they is a 99 cent sale), and at that price point I think they are much more worth it.
- A bunch of apps came out. Netflix looks nice on the oled and works well. There are also flickr, facebook, twitter, etc apps out now.
- Have you noticed almost nobody includes a wrist strap anymore? Anyways, I found some on ebay. You get 20 for $3 shipped (seller: supersaving360).

Skyrim (XBOX 360 and PC)

2012-02-10T14:33:00.022-06:00

Yes, I like the game so much I bought it twice. I picked up the 360 version on launch day but didn't get around to playing it until much later (I was trying to finish Rage first....yeah don't ask). I just picked up the PC version this week since it went on sale for $40 on steam and to check out some of the cool mods.

WARNING: There might be what some people consider to be very minor spoilers but nothing plot related.

XBOX 360 / General Info
- Looks great to me. Having three 360's and cloud saves lets me easily switch rooms depending on what the family is currently occupying.
- Finished the main quest line at level 50, 83 hrs with companions and all but the last thieves guild quest (I wanted to keep the skeleton key). I'm currently working getting the remaining words of power and then I'll begin the Civil war quest line. I'll probably go stomrcloaks with this character. The Imperials almost took my head off and yeah I don't forget or forgive!!!
- I stuck to first person POV for 99% of the time.
- I really like two wiki's. The first one is great for general information and quest info. The second is good for looking up locations:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Skyrim
http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_V:_Skyrim
I'm not going to link a whole lot in this article since you can just search for it in the uesp wiki.
- My build was a very traditional one: one hand sword, heavy armor, block, with archery for some ranged firepower, and during the mid game I dabbled a bit in conjuration.
- Smithing and enchanting are both super powerful and worth leveling. Though once you hit level 50 or so you pretty much 1-2 shot everything including dragons.
- If you decide to power level some professions I suggest you sink your talent points into your main build areas. So for me that would be the ones I listed above. That way you don't end up getting out leveled by the enemies around you. It doesn't happen that much anyways in Skyrim as compared to Oblivion with the way scaling works now.
- I did choose to power level smithing (create about 450 - 500 iron daggers will get you to 100 smithing, faster if you have the appropriate stone buff). During this entire time, every time I leveled I would go train with one of the companions for free (make them a follower first, train your 5 levels, trade with them and get your gold back, dismiss them and pick back up the follower you prefer to use).
- Enchanting was a bit tougher which I didn't max out until I was in my mid 40's level wise. I would buy up every single lesser and petty soul gem I could find (filled or empty). There are at least 3 people who carry soul gems in whiterun (your wife,Belethor,Farengar) . Try and find a weapon (sometimes merchants will have one for sale) with a soul trap enchant on it and learn it so you can enchant your own weapon with soul trap (1 sec duration, max charges). Then go crazy trying to fill as many soul gems as possible while questing. Come back and enchant all those iron daggers you made from smithing with the priciest enchants you have (banish is by far the most profitable with absorb health being second, do both once you max enchanting). Now you can sell these enchanted daggers for big profits. Soon, money won't be an issue at all. I'm sitting on over 80K gold right now.
- I did the black star quest pretty early on, and I went with the black star choice which can absorb any soul. If I'm on a quest with humanoid enemies I would recharge my soul trap sword with the black star before I killed another humanoid which would just refill the black star. You keep doing these frequent recharges, and it also helps level up your enchanting.
- Once you max out enchanting make sure you spend perks to get dual enchants (I picked all perks except the far right branch). Read this on optimizing. I didn't go quite that crazy since I hate alchemy. Even with alchemy in the 20's I was able to create a one hand daedric sword with base damage of 361. The key thing is using 4 fortify one hand enchants that ALL STACK that increases your weapon damage to crazy levels. Add to that a fiery soul trap (3 sec duration) plus absorb health (max absorption) enchant and you become pretty unstoppable. For the bow I tried to make a mage killer: paralysis and shock. I'm thinking now though I should have probably went with fiery soul trap + paralysis. For the rest of the pieces I went with a mix of increasing max health, stamina, block, and heavy armor and a bit of magicka on the helm.
- Remember, once you enchant an item there is no undo. This also means once you get dual enchant you can't add a 2nd enchant to an item already enchanted. I you have to start with a clean item and then put both enchants on at once. It's nice that the process only takes 1 grand soul gem though.
- On the other hand you can continually improve weapons and armor through blacksmithing. So as you improve your blacksmithing (or have a better fortify restoration pot) you can go back to the grinding stone or workbench and further improve your gear.
- For armor I'm basically in dragon bone. For weapons I'm using daedric. If you are short on materials on either of those try ebony. The ebony ingots are pretty easy to get from the 3 blacksmiths + general merchants in whiterun. Basically, if you are selling enchanted daggers usually the merchants don't have near enough gold. So I would always buy up all the ebony ingots they had and then sell them my daggers and drain them of all their gold. I now have 100's of ingots which to cheaply craft ebony weapons and armor which I can experiment with different enchantments or give to my follower. The main things I always buy from merchants are lockpicks, ebony ingots, and high end arrows.
- Go get married early to pick up a nice food buff, sleeping xp buff, and a cozy little profit. I married Camilla Valerius in Riverwood since you should have already met her quest requirement (golden claw). She also becomes a merchant which is just another source for you to sell your stuff.
- Fast travel is very convenient and you can pay a small amount of gold to ride the carriages (there is one right at whiterun stables) to get to any of the major cities to unlock them.
- I started with Lydia as my follower for about the first half of my play time. I recommend switching to Mjoll if you want a good melee 2 hand/archer follower. She's a bit chatty (some people like that) but it seems like she can't be perma killed (unlike Lydia which I had to reload many times b/c I found her dead after some of the harder fights).
- For follower enchants I used fiery soul trap + paralysis on all their weapons. Give them a few soul gems and some empty ones and they will be self sufficient as far as keeping their weapons charged up and filling a few soul gems to boot. On armor I stuck on fortify health and carry weight wherever I could making them the best pack mule they can be!
- My horses keep dying or getting lost. I'm thinking about doing dark brotherhood just to get Shadowmere. I had Frost but he somehow died or disappeared. Yeah, I have bad luck with horses.
- Steed stone is by far my favorite especially for heavy armor.
- Keep visiting the greybeards for more words of power locations if you are trying to collect them all.
- When looting always look at the weight to value ratio and not just the value. You want to pick up the stuff that is worth the most for the least amount of carrying weight.
- There were some odd performance issues that happens maybe once every 15 hrs. The framerate would just tank to single digits and become pretty much unplayable. It only seems to happen in certain dungeons. A reload of a save usually fixes it. It doesn't happen that often but when it does it is quite annoying.
- Lately, I crafted a new set of ebony and enchanted it all out for archery. I'm experimenting with an archery build and then dual wield as backup. On this bow I decided to use fiery soul trap and paralysis. It takes longer to kill things but it's definitely a lot of fun especially after you sink a few points into the archery tree. I'm basically getting all the skills up the left side of the tree. Dual wield does pretty crazy damage even without any points in it.

PC
- Trying out a pure mage High Elf destruction build. I'll probably hit the mage's college early on to check that quest line out.
- Graphics look even better at 1080p + the new free hd texture pack dlc.
- I love the quicker save/load times. This is by far the biggest difference I notice. Even with the disc installed on the 360 load times take way too long. Quick save/load is also a very nice pc only feature.
- Mods Mods Mods which is the main reason I bought the PC version too. My 360 game is my pure experience while I plan to mod out the PC version quite a bit.
- First of all I'm not really using steam workshop as of yet since without a search feature it's pretty much dead to me. Instead go here for all your modding needs:
(UPDATE: As I was writing this steam workshop finally got a search bar and most of the mods I listed are there too).
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com
- Make sure you install this first:
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/content/modmanager/
which makes managing your mods a lot easier.
Current mods I'm using:
SkyUI - The best UI replacement. You must install SKSE first though (read the readme. It's easy).

I also wanted to make skyrim with a bit more ummm eye candy but still making it safe to play around family.
CBBE (with the nevernude option, Make sure you follow the .ini modification needed if you have the texture pack installed)
Better females by Bella (for that glam look. I still hate bethesda faces. They were a bit better in skyrim though).
Killer Keos Skimpy CBBE V2 Armor Set -Work In Progress (for ummm more interesting looking armor)
- I've only had the PC version for a few days so I'm still exploring the mod scene.
- Regardless of what the title says I think these console commands would make you feel like a cheater but still these could come in handy:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Skyrim-Console-Commands-That-Will-Not-Make-You-Feel-Like-a-Cheater-236613.shtml
- Runs pretty well on my macbook pro 15" mid 2010. I actually got the cider wrapper to work but it was still a pretty big fps hit even at low settings (felt at least 10fps slower than bootcamp). In bootcamp I'm getting a very acceptable 30-45 fps with a mix of low - medium settings. I'm using the dropbox symbolic link trick to keep my save files in sync between this and my gaming desktop.
- Runs at a nice clip of 30-50 fps at ultra settings with the hd texture pack.
- UPDATE: So I deactivated all my mods in nexus and subscribed to them all in steam workshop. When you launch the regular launcher it downloads all your mods and will check for updates too. This is tied to your steam account so it carries across multiple installations/pc's too which is very nice. Just make sure before you play you at least fire up the regular launcher to get any mod updates, close the launcher down, and then launch skse like usual. Here are the equivalent steam workshop links for the mods I'm using:
CBBE
Better females by Bella
Killerkeo's Simpy Armor Pack WIP
SkyUI

Highly recommended. Any game that has me coming back for more even after 83 hrs and "finishing" the game and then getting me to buy it twice says something. It's vast in content and yet all of it feels high quality and dense. It's open ended open world yet it has so many really good solid plot quests.

Macross Frontier - Aimo Tori no Hito (piano)

2011-11-12T00:26:00.000-06:00

Macross Frontier - Aimo Tori no Hito (piano).
I played it pretty clean except for one tiny bobble.

HP Touchpad and Android

2011-10-28T19:00:00.012-06:00

Thanks to a buddy who works at HP I recently snagged one of those HP Touchpad 16GB for $99 (or about $121 after tax and shipping). The hardware is pretty nice to hold and feels pretty solid. It's a tad thicker and heavier than my iPad 2. I like the rounded corners.

Specs:

16GB (about 12.3GB free out of the box)

9.7" 1024X768 IPS screen

1.2ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 APQ8060, dual-core ARM

Qualcomm Adreno 220 core GPU

1 GB ram

micro usb

Here are some benchmarks. As you can see the hardware is rather top notch. Apparently you can overclock to 1.5ghz but I didn't try. There is no dedicated GPS so turn by turn is out. Map applications though work ok with using wifi for location.

Accessories

I picked up the HP Touchpad Custom Fit Case (about $20) and the Splash Masque Clear Screen Protectors ($10 for 3). The screen protector isn't bad. It's the usual static cling type application and is pretty clear. Installation went pretty well with my usual "clean room" procedures (steam up the bathroom, make sure screen is completely clean, use long strips of scotch tape to go over entire screen to lift off any dust/lint, use smaller pieces of tape to help lift and re-position as you dial in the alignment). The case is HEAVY and adds some noticeable bulk but it does feel good in the hands. The cover looks like a smart cover but it is actually pretty dumb since it just flops around with nothing to keep the cover closed. Keep that in mind if you plan to toss this thing into a bag. Also, it uses a bit of velcro to put it in the 2 different stand modes. The cover does flip all the way around to the back for when you want to hold it. Compared to my iPad 2 with powersupport screen protector and the iCarbons on the back this thing feels like it's from the stone age with all the weight and bulk. At least it looks nice. It feels odd that I'm spending almost 30% of the cost of the tablet on accessories.

WebOS

- First thing you want to do after charging and setting up your hp account is go update your webos to the latest version. It is 3.04 as of this writing. Also, make sure you update your apps especially the hp app catalog.

- After that it is time to start side loading some stuff if you really want to play with webos. Here are some great instructions on how to get preware installed which is basically a catalog of homebrew apps.

http://forums.precentral.net/hp-touchpad/292472-ereader-questions.html#post3079211

This also takes care of installing the novacom driver which is required later when we get to the android stuff. Make sure you reboot after you get preware installed and before you launch it for the first time otherwise it will continue to hang. After a reboot preware seems to run just fine. The only things I was really interested in were the file manager Internalz Pro and pReader native alpha (epub reader) both which you can install using preware. Fyi, pReader native was quite buggy and performance wasn't that great though a lot better than the pReader in the official app store. There is a lot of things to try in preware if you want to really dig into webos but I didn't really explore that much.

- I found the browser to be adequate but sluggish. It's nowhere near as nice as safari on iPad 2. It does do flash...Yeah!!!! But flash video playback is poor at best hitching every few seconds.....Boooo!!!! (issue was consistent on multiple sites I tried). I could actually stream music using the subsonic web interface. Even video worked but the hitching was really annoying.

- I installed the Amazon Kindle app and messed with it a bit. It's ok.

- I found the actual OS and UI nice and smooth but the apps all around pale in comparison to iOS apps. If you stick with just webos I guess you would still get your $100 worth out of it....barely.

Android (2.3.7)

- CyanogenMod for TouchPad Alpha 2.1

- So I had enough of webos and I figure it was time to install Android which is the main reason to own a touchpad. There is a really good guide here:

http://liliputing.com/2011/10/how-to-install-google-android-on-the-hp-touchpad-with-cyanogenmod7.html

- You can ignore step 1 and all the stuff about installing novacom since you already did that.

- I went ahead and installed gApps to get the android marketplace on there all in one shot. The file you want from here:

http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Gapps#Google_Apps

is CyanogenMod 7 20110828 md5: 1647897d8ac3efb04723d2ad2c361a3f

So the files you want in \cminstall on your touchpad are:

update-cm-7.1.0-tenderloin-a2.1-fullofbugs.zip

update-cwm_tenderloin-1012.zip

moboot_0.3.3.zip

gapps-mdpi-20110501-signed.zip

Don't rename them or do anything but copy them as is to \cminstall.

And with the latest alpha all apps show up in the marketplace just fine.

- Step 10 make sure you wait a while until the usb connection is good and solid. Mine did the connect disconnect dance for a bit before it settled down.

- In the future if you ever need to update cyanogenmod follow these instructions:

http://liliputing.com/2011/10/how-to-install-cyanogenmod-7-1-alpha-2-on-an-hp-touchpad.html

I've tested that out and it works fine.

- Now you can dual boot between webos and android anytime you want. Cyanogenmod also mounts the hp media shared part of the storage as a fake sd card. This is great because any media you put on there (it looks just like a usb drive when connected to a pc) is accessible from either OS.

- Post install I had 10.3GB free so the install only used up around 2GB.

- At this point I started going app install crazy and moving installed apps to the fake sd card. You have 1.5GB of internal storage so it wasn't entirely necessary.

WARNING: DO NOT move more than 50 apps to the fake sd card. I wouldn't go past 45.

I did this and android crashed HARD and rebooted but got stuck on the blue circle screen. Then, I had to force a shut down (hold down power then hold down home key for 10 sec). After that my fake sd card would no longer mount. So yeah, move only your largest apps to the sd card if you plan to install a ton of apps. To fix it I had to boot back to webos, fire up Internalz, delete some files out of .android_secure folder before I could get android to mount the sd card again.

- The good news is most apps seem to work quite well. Almost every single google app works just fine including gmail, google+, google voice, google maps, google books, google translate, google reader, google earth, google music, etc. Everything syncs nicely with my google account. What didn't work for me was google docs. Youtube works in full screen mode (landscape) but has issues in portrait.

- The big things that still don't work properly is the camera and microphone. The microphone records what sounds like a very slow talking version of what you say.

- Other apps that worked just fine:

Aldiko (nice epub reader)

Dolphin Browser

Flash

Facebook

Twitter

Meebo

Fluent News

CNN

Evernote

PocketCloud VNC

1password

dropbox

speedtest.net

flixster

yelp

Netflix (runs great!)

subsonic (even video which uses flash works pretty well)

pandora

Vevo

Nook

Kindle

Wow Armory

Advanced Task Killer

Battery Widget (Geekyouup)

Amazon app store

adobe reader

amazon mp3 music player

plex (still no air video but not bad)

rockplayer

uPnPlay

playon

Some games I tried:

All versions of Angry Birds

CK Zombie (3d)

Dungeon Defenders: Second wave (3d)

Tetris

Seven Stars (3d)

Death Worm

Raging Thunder Lite (3d)

Stair Dismount (3d)

HexDefense

Robon Defender

Asteroid Defense

Galaxy Wars tower defense

Grave Defense

Medieval Castle defense

NExus Defense

AI Factory games (reversi, checkers, chess, four in a line, sudoku)

help out (rush hour type game that actually scales properly)

Tanagram Moment
Robotek

Some apps that don't work:

Anything that uses the camera or mic

Zinio

bing (won't let me install from app store - item is not available on your carrier)

asphalt 5

Asteroid Defense 2 (graphical glitches)

- 3D performance was pretty acceptable already on this alpha build. The games are definitely playable.

- Overall app compatibility seems very good so far. The android market app likes to crash now and then but it's not that big of a deal.

- Battery life still isn't the greatest.

- You might also want to disable mobile data (settings, wireless & networks, mobile networks, uncheck data enabled). This helps wifi to stay connected after coming out of sleep.

- The touchpad is very picky about chargers. I have mono price USB chargers rated for 2A (works great with iPad 2) and my iPad 2 charger also rated at 2A and none of them will charge the touchpad. In android it says it is charging but it still drains over time even while sleeping. Webos gives a warning. It might be worth picking up a couple of extra ones at amazon for $12.22 each. Here is a very informative discussion on why this is the case and some modding info.

Overall I'm very impressed with the touchpad especially with android on it. For a $100 it is a fantastic value no matter how you look at it. The components are top notch and performance (especially video and 3d) are already good enough in the current cyanogenmod alpha build. It is already stable enough for everyday use. The browser in android is better and faster than webos. The flash support is definitely better in android. You get 2 OS's to play with for one low price. Hopefully when ICS source gets released we'll see a port of that too. I guess I'll be cancelling that Kindle Fire preorder. Even at current ebay prices of around $200 this might be more worth it than a Fire. If you ignore price though I still think the iPad 2 is a MUCH better tablet.

Highly recommended.

UPDATE: 12/2/2011
Alpha 3 is released:
http://rootzwiki.com/topic/10121-releasealpha3cyanogenmod-touchpad/
I went ahead and did the old acmeinstaller method to update because I noticed there was a new boot loader and a new clockworkmod recovery out. I didn't think it would be wise to try and update clockworkmod recovery using the clockworkmod method. Everything installed smoothly. Hopefully this fixes the sleep of death which seems to happen quite often (won't come out of sleep and must do a hard reset).

iOS 5

2011-10-17T09:55:00.010-06:00

I decided to skip the iPhone 4S. You can read about my reasons here.

The upgrades went fairly smooth for the 2 iPhone 4 32GB and one iPad 2 64GB. One of the iPhones was updated on a Mac and the other two on a pc. Upgrades took forever (think hours) since all our devices are nearly full. It does a full backup, a factory reset, flashes the new os, a restore, and then syncs back all you apps, music, videos, photos, etc. plus the update itself is over 700MB download. I'm still running into some syncing issues especially with the calendar and contacts with outlook. I've tried some of the things listed here:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2669782?start=15&tstart=0
It would work for a while but then the conflicts and errors would come back. It's annoying but not a show stopper. I'm still looking for a solid fix.
There are now a ton and slightly confusing sync/iCloud/backup solutions. If you enable iCloud backup it will no longer backup to your pc through itunes. I wish there was an option to backup to both. If you turn on wireless itunes sync (you must do it on the device summary in itunes while you the device is connected) it seems to always sync over wifi even when you have it connected to usb. It's convenient but a bit slower. What's also nice is the sync happens in the background so you can continue to use your device while it syncs. Contacts and calendars get a bit more complex. I currently sync through itunes with outlook for contacts, notes, and calendars. You can also sync these through iCloud. Once you install the windows iCloud control panel:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1455
You can also sync outlook to iCloud . It seems like you would get some redundant syncing with all these methods having devices sync both through itunes wifi sync and iCloud all against outlook. I wonder if it would be better to disable calendar and contacts syncing through itunes and do it only through iCloud. You can force a wifi sync through settings|general.
Notes syncing is also less than ideal. Once I turned on icloud notes sync I had to create a @me.com email address. This creates a new account in the notes app which is separate than the account where I was syncing with gmail which was also separate what was only on my iphone, which is also separate than what was synced with outlook. I couldn't find a way to just say sync all the notes I have across all accounts to iCloud. I know, I should probably just stick to using evernote instead but sometimes I just want to fire up notes quickly and jot something down. Even more confusing is if I'm in the all notes view and I create a new note it ended up in the gmail account vs the iCoud account. I can't even seem to specify I want my iCloud account to be the default for newly created notes when in the all note view.
UPDATE: So here's what I did to get everything to sync using iCloud as much as possible to share data between my macbook pro, a windows 7 x64 desktop with outlook, iphone 4, and ipad 2.
- win 7: setup outlook with the @me.com account that was created when I turned on notes syncing on the iphone icloud. You'll need to setup the servers manually and click on the advance settings. I also set incoming to ssl (and use the right port!) and outgoing to auto (ssl didn't work for me). Here are the icloud mail settings:
  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4864
  I don't really plan to use my @me.com email for anything really except to enable syncing.
  I disable calendar and contact syncing in itunes (I still left notes outlook syncing on).
  Enable wifi sync in itunes.
  In the icloud control panel I enabled contacts and calendar syncing with outlook. This creates a new icloud section in outlook for contacts and calendar.
- On the iphone and ipad I enabled all iclould syncing options.
- Mac: Update iPhoto and enable all icloud syncing options. Fire up the mail app and setup your new @me.com email. This way you can get to notes. Contacts and calendar should should sync with address book and iCal.
- This in theory should let you make changes anywhere in any of those devices and then sync across all devices using icloud.
icloud.com is quite nice and lets you not only view but edit most of your icloud data (contacts, calendars). Find my iphone is also here but notes is missing. You have to fire up the email app with the @me.com email you created when you turned on icloud notes. Yeah, overall notes is a complete mess and is anything but simple or "just works."
Photo stream actually works quite nicely especially on windows. The windows iCloud control panel lets you choose a download and upload directory. It's clean and simple just the way I like it. On the mac it syncs with iPhoto which is ok if you like iPhoto (which I don't).
Apple ID strategy: I have one main apple ID that I share among all my apple devices so you can share itunes purchases like apps. The problem is when you also use it for iCloud. You can in fact use a different apple id for iCloud vs the store on the same device. Also, it makes since to use different apple id's in certain cases. So every device uses the main apple ID that is used for all purchases for the store. I use the same apple ID for iCloud on my iPhone 4, the iPad 2 (since I use it the most), and my macbook pro. This way I can share photos, documents, contacts, calendars, etc among all my devices. It would make no sense for my wife to share my apple ID for her iCloud which would mix up contacts, calendars, documents, photo streams, etc. She uses her own apple ID for iCloud on her iPhone 4 and macbook pro yet continues to use the main apple ID that the purchases are on on both of her devices. This also helps get by the 5gb free space limit used for backups. I could NOT backup both my iphone and ipad (both nearly full) within the 5gb. Once I toggled off backing up certain apps that contain a lot of user data like good reader (pdf's, videos, etc) I was able to get it to all fit.
http://www.macworld.com/article/163006/2011/10/how_to_configure_icloud_if_you_share_an_apple_id.html
The one drawback is this splits up find my iphone because it's tied to the iCloud apple id. The new find my friends app though works well enough.
The reader feature is nice in safari. Just realize it doesn't work on every web page, only the ones it thinks are articles. When it is on a compatible page a reader button will appear in the address bar.
You can 4 finger swipe on the iPad to swap between running apps. You can also 4 finger swipe up to bring up the task bar. I love the tab browsing.
Wife's visual voice mail got wiped out again but after entering the password it was re-enabled.
1password required re-entering the master password to get dropbox syncing working again.
iSub cache was wiped out after the upgrade.
You can't put newsstand into a folder because it acts more like a special folder than an actual app. I found a few magazines that were actually a bit cheaper than zinio and nook. Just keep in mind these are actual individual apps that meet certain specifications to appear in newsstand. That means you are tied to iOS devices only. With zinio and nook you have broader device support. Right now I still really like the nook for the pricing and selection. I just wish it had push notifications for when new issues arrive (or at least an email). The lack of free trial issues in newsstand is rather annoying. It should be a requirement for every magazine in newsstand to offer at least a free preview of 10 pages or so.
I like the new usage view in settings especially the apps sorted in the amount of space each is using.

iOS 5 brings a lot of new features but IMO quite a bit of complexity too if you have a lot of devices and platforms. Notes is a mess but the rest I like. It's definitely a lot of functionality for free so I can't complain too much.

Game of Thrones Theme (Piano)

2011-07-30T18:07:00.001-06:00

Game of Thrones Theme on Piano. This theme song (of the BEST TV SHOW EVER!) really got stuck in my head. I play it a bit slower and as usual there are a couple of mistakes.

Google+

2011-07-19T10:00:00.002-06:00

So I'm really digging google+ so far which seems like it could be a nice replacement for facebook, twitter, and maybe even some blogging. I'm going to try to post smaller reviews and thoughts now in google+ and probably only write a blog post for bigger reviews/articles.

You can find me here:

https://plus.google.com/118400819998643943588

I've also added it to the Links section on the right.

Zalman Microphone Zm-Mic1

2011-05-17T09:15:00.013-06:00

My mic settings:

- $13 at amazon.

- So I've been using the xbox 360 wireless headset with the PC wireless adapter for teamspeak and ventrilo during World of Warcraft raids. It works ok but sometimes I don't want something on my ear during a long play session. Also, the 360 wireless headset is a bit glitchy sometimes and requires frequent power cycles to clear up static that occurs once in awhile. The nice part about this being just a mic and not a full headset is I still have all the game sounds + voice coming from my pc speakers (adjust your master volume in Wow to balance game sounds against voice. Titan panel is a good mod that lets you get to volume adjustments quickly). This way I have nothing on my ears.

- You can clip this mic to your shirt or do what I do. I just swing it around my neck and let it hang near the top of my chest/near my neck. I use a little tape to tape the mic to it's own cord so the mic end points up toward my mouth when it's hanging.

- It's pretty sensitive and I actually had to turn off my mic gain boost to zero otherwise it would distort.

- Everybody says I sound quite a bit better on vent now with this mic vs what I was using before.

- The cable is really long.

Highly recommended. At $13 it really is amazing and performs great. If you have an environment where you can use your PC speakers this is a great setup.

iPad 2 (black 64GB WIFI only)

2011-04-17T19:09:00.049-06:00

So this is the first tablet I've owned (I don't even own a netbook). My kids have been begging for one since last Christmas after playing with one their cousin brought over while visiting. I told them I would consider getting one when the iPad 2 came out and besides they had quite a bit of Christmas and birthday money saved up. I figure I would buy one for the family to see how they (ok mostly me) would use it.

On release day I swung by the apple store after work around 5:45 and they had already cut the line off saying they were sold out. It was the same story at best buy. I'm not much of a line waiter so I just ordered one online. Estimated ship date was April 1st. I got it on march 31st around a week earlier than the original estimate. I decided to go with the the black 64gb wifi only model. I already have a virgin mobile mifi so I figure I would use that if I need 3G. Sure, I lose gps but I think I can live with that while saving $130.

- iPad is heavier than expected. If you hold it with one hand pinching one edge your hand will get tired. It works better if you wrap your hand around the back or just use two hands. I'm sure it's pretty light compared to other tablets and the iPad 1 but for a first time tablet user it still feels heavier than it should be.
- Coming from the retina display on the iPhone 4 the 1024x768 does feel pretty low res in comparison. This isn't such a big deal for games and movies but it is pretty noticeable while trying to view tiny text without zooming in first. Other than that the IPS screen is still very nice.
- I can typically touch type at around 80 wpm without errors. My first mistake was trying to touch type in landscape mode. It's just not realistically possible. The keys are way too cramped and without any feedback it's just not possible to type without looking at the keys. I've now modified the way I type to using 2-3 fingers on each hand for a speedier hunt and peck method. It seems to work pretty well and is much faster than only using your thumbs on an iPhone. Still, I wouldn't want to use the touch keyboard for writing really long articles. Good thing any standard bluetooth keyboard works just fine like the logitech pro media board I have. My original plan was to write this entire review on the iPad. I ended up only writing about half of it using Pages. It wasn't an overly horrible experience but I much rather use a keyboard for typing articles of this length.
- The battery life seems very good in the few days I've used it. We aren't just talking surfing or video watching here. Even with heavy gaming the battery holds up incredibly well

- Yeah the iPad has two cameras now but man are they BAD and I mean really bad. The front one for facetime is about what you would expect but the back one takes mostly horrible photos. Almost any interior shot (excluding except maybe a professional lit studio) comes out incredibly noisy. The size of the CCD used must be incredibly small. Talk about cutting corners. I've read that the camera was really more designed for shooting video, and the 720p video it produces isn't half bad. Just don't ever take any still shots of anything you remotely care about. The iPhone 4 back camera is about 1000X times better.

- The apple dock connector is a little harder to plug into. The area around it is rather tapered. I guess that's the price you pay for thin.

- Movies encoded using Handbrake and the iPad preset look fantastic. File size for a typical movie is around 1.2GB.

- The mute/orientation lock switch is a bit interesting. If all of a sudden none of your apps have any sound it's probably because at some point you had the switch set to control mute in your settings. You mute the ipad and then later switched it to orientation lock. Now the ipad is muted even though there is no indication it is actually muted (like when you adjust volume). Just change the setting so the switch goes back to controlling mute to unmute the device and everything should be back to normal. Also, I noticed holding the down volume button accelerates really quickly and will quickly go to 0 volume in like .25 seconds. Not sure if I like that (I guess it's another quick way to "mute") but that's just the way it is.

- Facetime: It works quite well on the iPad. In the settings|facetime you can associate one or more emails which you would use to call the iPad. This is very similar to the mac osx app. If you want to call an iPhone just use the phone #. If you want to call an ipad, ipod touch, or mac you use the email associated with that device. If you have more than one device associated to the same email then all devices ring. Example: I have my iPad and macbook pro on the same facetime email. When I call it from my iPhone both the iPad and the mbp (if I have the facetime app running that is) rings. It all just works how you would expect it. Both cameras on the iPad work just fine for facetime and don't look nearly as bad as when taking still photos. The iPad even rings when the smart cover is closed and the iPad is sleeping. It's suggested though that each non iPhone iOS device has at least one unique email associated with it. Otherwise, I wasn't able to call my mbp from the iPad when they both shared the same email address. By adding another unique email to each iOS device gets around that issue.

Apps

- Here is a small sampling of apps that I found interesting. I'm mostly omitting any apps I've previously mentioned in my iPhone reviews since you can read about them there.

- What's great about app purchases is you can install and reinstall them on as many iOS devices as you want after only buying the app a single time. As long as you use the same apple id/itunes account you should be fine. Granted, only up to 5 pc's can be authorized for content but as far as iOS apps is concerned it's pretty much unlimited. I can buy an app once and run it on my two iphone 4's and my iPad 2.

- The kids love this thing. Besides the games there are some nice children books like Alice and How to train your dragon.

- iSub and Air Video have very nice iPad interfaces. Air Video over local wifi looks fantastic.

- Tried the Daily (first 2 weeks are free). It's pretty much fluff. I will NOT be subscribing.

- I love all the news/social network aggregators that format it into a nice magazine layout like Zite, hitpad, taptu, and flipboard. Zite has to be hands down my favorite though flipboard is nice too. It's pretty amazing how well it can create a customized magazine based on your twitter, google reader, and delicious accounts. On top of that it has thumbs up/down to continue to train it.

- I love reading magazines on this thing. Zinio is pretty good though I wish it had more magazines (and better prices on some of them). I couldn't quite pin down why I hated reading a magazine on a pc but I finally figured it out. It's a combination of the form factor, how you hold it similar to a real magazine, portrait vs landscape, touch interface, and flipping pages instead of just scrolling down with your mouse. It's a combination of all these things that makes magazine reading amazing on the iPad. No more dead tree magazine subscriptions for me. Get it on the iPad or I'm not renewing (I'm looking at you MaximumPC!). What kind of sucks is the nook color has all the magazines I like and at very reasonable prices. The problem is those only work on the actual nook color hardware and not on the iPad nook app. What is up with that?

- For reading novels I still prefer my iPhone (stanza ftw). I usually read right before going to sleep so e-ink is right out. I just find the iPhone much more comfortable to read on especially when lying in bed. I don't mind flipping pages more often. It really doesn't bother me.

- Goodreader does an amazing jobs with PDF's plus dropbox integration.

- Vevo is a nice app for watching music videos.

- I've only briefly messed with Garage Band but it seems pretty darn impressive for $5.

- Pages is a nice word processor. It needs native dropbox support but I guess dropdav works. iworks.com isn't bad though for sharing your documents.

- There are a ton of remote desktop apps. Logmein is still my default for general use but there are some interesting new high performance ones that are actually fast enough for gaming. Everyair seems to show the most potential so far.

- I love games that are universal apps like Rage HD and Infinity Blade. For 3D games it makes perfect since. For the most part it's just rendering out at a higher resolution and moving some controls around. For 2D games I can kind of understand why there are usually 2 separate versions since it usually requires a different set of art assets (where is tiny wings HD!!??!!). It's games like modern combat 2 HD from gameloft that cheese me off. It's like paying extra just for unlocking a higher resolution setting in a PC game. It's just WRONG!

- UPDATE (4/21/2011): Comics - Stanza (my favorite ebook reader) now supports CBR files. It's fast and works pretty well but no double tap to zoom. Comicflow isn't bad but I prefer Bookman. Both are free. I find bookman's thumbnail view, bookshelf, and organization better. The overall UI is just a lot more polished. Comixology engine powers their own Comics app, DC comics, and Marvel. They each have slightly different comics available and marvel requires a separate account from the others but the app works pretty much exactly the same on all 3. It has a neat panel flow mode that works well for the iPhone. I didn't bother trying comic zeal since it was $8.

- Atomix Magazine - $.99 in app purchase per issue. Produced by Area 5 (co-op guys). It has a pretty slick interface and well written content.

Accessories

- Power: My existing cheap eBay USB chargers seem to work fine. Unfortunately, my computer USB ports don't seem to want to properly charge the iPad. I get the dreaded "not charging." This was with the usb ports on the back coming directly off the motherboard. I did some reading and testing and apparently it is getting power but with the screen on there isn't enough juice to actually get a charge going. Instead, you break even holding battery levels at about even. If you put the iPad to sleep it actually does charge albeit more slowly (I did confirm this is the case). Apparently motherboard manufacturers have released drivers to up the power to the USB ports so it charges iPads properly (I have not tested this). I also have this issue with the cheap no name car charger that I use for my iPhone. Mobile usb battery packs like my Just Mobile Gum Pro work fine though.

UPDATE: Asus AI Charger works great even on my gigabyte motherboard. Now it charges the iPad just fine even while in use.

- Camera Connection Kit:

The camera adapter is interesting. I first tried my 64gb USB key drive. It complained about not having enough power. Next, I tried a 2gb sd card which works fine. I had this idea about how maybe you can use sd cards to store additional movies which you can load onto the iPad while in the field without the need of a computer or iTunes. Putting some m4v files converted with handbrake into the root of the sd card didn't work. Next, I tried to fake it by recreating the same directory structure my canon camera uses (DCIM directory) and renamed the extension to mov and added a thm thumbnail file (apparently you don't need to do this step. The key is the DCIM directory). This actually worked letting me import the entire movie file into the photo app. All of this seems rather convoluted and clunky and probably not worth the trouble. The camera adapter is really rather limited. It only works with the camera app and it only let's you import photos or movies into that app. There was no way to get them into the video app. So theoretically you can swap movies from an sd card as long you have some working space but it seems more trouble than it is worth. It's too bad you can't view media directly off the sd card. Also, the photo app doesn't resume video where you left off. I found out the best use of these adapters isn't so much importing photos from your own camera but others. I was recently at the in laws and my wife wanted a copy of all the photos her dad took. Normally this would require powering up a laptop. Now, I just pop in their sd card into the iPad and import the photos she was interested in.

HDMI Adapter

- Works with iPhone 4 and iPad 2. The low level mirroring only works on the iPad though (not the iPhone).

- It doesn't scale the image. So unless the app natively supports 1080p (like the video app and some games) you are going to get some black borders (this includes most games). There are exceptions like Chopper 2. I was able to use my iPhone 4 as the controls, playing it on my iPad 2 which is hooked up to my HDTV using the HDMI adapter. It's all pretty amazing actually.

- Real Racing 2 HD is suppose to get 1080p output support soon too though that patch hasn't hit yet. For now, mirroring works ok. Update (4/21/2011): The update is out now that supports 1080p output. I'm going to have to try this soon.

- Infinity Blade doesn't look half bad on a 52" HDTV:

Protecting your iPad 2 (making it slightly more child resistant)

- I decided to go without a case this time to keep the iPad as light and thin as possible. Instead I went with a screen protector ($30), carbon fiber back ($20), smart cover ($40 <- obscene apple tax), and a sleeve ($12) for travel. That's over $100 spent on just protecting the iPad! My kids are actually very good with electronics. They were taught to "respect the electronics" before they could walk! But a little protection sure can't hurt when your kids are handling a $700 "toy."

- Smart Cover: For the most part I really like the smart cover. The auto aligning magnets really work well. As a stand it's ok. There is only one angle in landscape, you really can't prop it up in portrait, and the keyboard stand mode flops around a bit too much to use on your lap. The magnetic on/off switch is nice though blackberry has had this for ages. Now, if only apple would add a dedicated indicator led. The switch kind of reminds me of a refrigerator door light.

Power Support HD Anti-Glare Film

Notice how difusse the light reflections are:

- $30 and you only get 1. I decided to go with the anti-glare this time instead of the crystal since the iPad lower resolution screen is minimally impacted by the slight loss in clarity with an anti-glare film (Don't get me wrong. You can barely tell it's there. It's still very clear just not as completely transparent as the crystal). Also, I just love the feel of the anti-glare and it does an amazing job of hiding finger prints.
- $30 for 1 shot is pretty darn pricey. You want to make sure you do a good job installing it. Here is how I got a pretty much perfect install.

1) Start by trying to create your own "clean room." I used the master bathroom and closed all the doors. Run the shower on hot and steam up the room. As the steam cools it pulls all the dust out of the air. Make sure you turn off any central AC/Heating too. Clean the surface you are going to work on and wash your hands.

2) I cleaned the iPad surface with a slightly damp paper towel using highly diluted vinegar and water solution. This helps make sure you remove all finger prints and oils. I next went over it with just a very slightly damp paper towel using only water this time. Wipe it dry with a fresh paper towel. Then, wipe it down with a lint free cloth. You might also want to clean the outside of the film a bit after taking it out of the packaging since the outside of the film might have lint/dust that could drop on top of the ipad during installation.

3) This step is key. Take long strips of scotch tape and stick it over the surface of the iPad and peel it off. Repeat this until you've covered the entire surface of the iPad. This acts like a lint remover and does an excellent job of removing every last spec of dust or lint. Tape is cheap. Your screen protector isn't. Use several strips of tape and be thorough!

4) Now you've got a completely clean iPad in your "clean room." Just follow the instructions from the site on how to apply it (go watch their video). It took me about 3 tries to get the alignment just right. Then it was just a matter of working out the air bubbles. Since none of the air bubbles were the dust/lint kind they were pretty easy to work out. If you did get a piece of dust or lint stuck underneath the screen protector, just use a piece of scotch tape to lift it off either from the iPad or from the film depending on where the dust is stuck.

iCarbons

Botched this corner with a tiny fold:

- $20 for back only. I wanted to keep the size and weight of the iPad 2 but also wanted to protect the back from scratches. Carbon Fiber seemed like the way to go. It's thin and light and gives it a nice texture too. I also like the look.

- The instruction video is excellent. I pretty much nailed the alignment but the corners are a bit tricky. You only need about 2 seconds of low heat from a hair dryer to soften up the film (DO NOT overheat!). I suggest you use your entire palm to press down on the corner and then smooth it out with your finger. If you use only your finger it's harder to get a nice smooth looking corner.

- The adhesive seems very strong. I'm not too worried about it peeling. You can also remove it without leaving a residue. Once removed though it cannot be reapplied.

- It works great with the smart cover. The magnets feel just as strong as it did without the iCarbons.

Case Logic PLS-9 Ultraportable Netbook Sleeve

- $12 on amazon.

- Finally, I wanted a sleeve to use when I travel with the iPad. I love the case logic sleeves that I use with the 13" MBP so I figure I'd just go with a similar one. It's not specifically designed for iPad but it fits pretty well if a tad on the roomy side.

- I like the small zipper pouch which is perfect for holding the hdmi, camera adapters, and the charger.

Just three years ago I was pretty much anti-apple with zero apple products. I was a die hard pc user. Now I have two iPhone 4's, two mac book pro's, and now an iPad 2. There are still a ton of things about Apple that I hate like: app approval process, walled garden - can't side load apps without jail breaking, no storage expansion, apple tax (though a tad less so with the iPad), battery replacement (btw it's $100 for the iPad), stupid flat out greedy subscription policy, etc. But man do they make some nice hardware. The apps are second to none not just in quantity but in quality. I think you would be hard pressed to find as many polished and just plain useful apps on any other platform. Add to that the incredible performance iPad 2 has even compared to the mighty Tegra 2. iOS is going to lead in gaming for the foreseeable future IMO.

I came into this not sure exactly how much use I would find in a tablet. In the end I've been pleasantly surprised. Most of the family is using it quite a bit on a daily basis (the wife still doesn't get it. I'm working on it....). I love using it for web browsing, catching up on news, reading a magazine, or maybe even a comic book (though I really don't read comics but it sure is nice on the iPad). For consuming content it's great and this new form factor really does change things up. Have I drank too much of the kool aid? Am I caught in a reality distortion field? Maybe just a tad. I like to think I still look at tech objectively with an open mind and give credit where credit is due without preconceived biases or prejudice. I think it comes down to do the merits of the products outweigh all the evil (and lets face it all big corporations are evil! :P). The iPad is just one really impressive experience. It's the total package. I haven't been this excited about a new toy in a LONG time (stares over at the Nintendo 3DS which I haven't touched much since the the first night I had it with two new unopened games).

Highly recommended.