Musings From My Brain

Windows 7 – 64 bit Experience begins

2010-01-18T21:52:00.001-08:00

I’ve moved my main home machine to Windows 7, 64 bit edition. So far, things seem to be progressing reasonably well.

My printer is supported out of the box. ITunes has a 64 bit edition (which seems to run as a 32-bit application, weird).

My main photo applications, Downloader Pro and BreezeBrowser Pro work well with Windows 7.

I’m not running into nearly as many issues as I’ve run into with Vista at my office in my test environments.

My VPN works from home to my office, which is pretty essential as well.

All in all, so far the experience has been a good one so far.

Technorati Tags: Windows 7,Vista,ITunes,BreezeBrowser,DownloaderPro

Skipping the Vista Train

2009-09-30T22:07:00.001-07:00

I have a desktop, about 1.5 years old, that is currently running Windows XP.

When I purchased it, I had the opportunity to go with Vista or XP. I chose XP, because I knew about the Vista issues that had been plaguing many folks out in ‘the real world’, and wanted no part of the Vista ‘phenomenon’.

Fast forward two years or so. Windows 7 is about to be released on the 22nd of October. I’m seriously considering upgrading my main desktop to Windows 7 64bit Professional.

My main needs are photography (BreezeBrowser), Itunes, email, and blogging and Twitter.

I can twitter and blog from my phone. I have to be able to download and catalog photos, so that’s a must. ITunes is fairly necessary for my phone.

Other than that, I’m pretty well good to go. I VPN into my office, but can do that via VPN software available already for Windows 7.

Bring on Windows 7 and let the games begin.

Technorati Tags: Windows 7,Vista,XP,BreezeBrowser

IPhone versus Blackberry again (for the final time)

2009-07-07T21:26:00.001-07:00

About a month ago, I switched from my Blackberry Pearl to an IPhone 3G.

“Just to see how the other half lives” I told myself.

Well, after a month, I switched back to the Pearl. For about three hours. I got so frustrated with the speed of the Blackberry, that I’ve switched back the IPhone 3G full time (even called AT&T and switched my Blackberry plan over to an IPhone plan, Visual Voicemail here I come) and I bought an application from the ITunes store.

I guess I’m a fanboy now. :-)

Some things I love about the IPhone:

The browser is fantastic for my needs
Their is a free app called Shazam that will listen to music and tell you what the song is, without any guidance from the user other than turning on the listen mode. Pretty wicked. I have discovered new music with this app, and it was free.
Email – It supports IMap which is great for my office email, and IMap for GMail. There (hopefully) will very soon be an application called GPush which will enable push notification for GMail. This will make email work almost as well as on the Blackberry.
Google Sync – I can modify all my contacts online on my computer and they automatically sync to the phone. Awesome.

The things I don’t like:

No voice dialing. Supposedly will be implemented in 3.1 of the IPhone OS, but only on the 3Gs.
Battery life. Battery life is pretty abysmal. But I have a charger at home and I have a charger at work. I also have access to a car charger for trips.

After my contract expires, I’m going to look into a 3Gs, but for now, the 3G will work for me.

Technorati Tags: IPhone,Blackberry,Shazam

What is so different about Linux+Apache?

2009-05-04T21:53:00.001-07:00

I’ve got an application that serves up projects via the web. It uses a pointer file and that pointer file tells my client application where to look for the images that exist in it’s project.

For example, I have a file called pointer.maxFR which has one line of text in it:

maxpt http://www.myhomeoffice.org/ellsworth/ellsworth.maxfr

My application reads that pointer.maxFR file and KNOWS that it will find the images in ellsworth.maxFR at http://www.myhomeoffice.org/ellsworth/

Here’s the rub:

- This works great if the server is IIS.
- This works great if the server is using Apache and the client is using IE.
- If the server is Apache and the client is Firefox, all the user gets is

maxpt http://www.myhomeoffice.org/ellsworth/ellsworth.maxfr

displayed as a line in their browser.

WHY? How do I fix it? I don’t know Linux well enough, as I don’t use it enough to know where to look.

Email me if you would, or DM me on twitter as mike_strock

Thanks!

Technorati Tags: Linux,Apache,File Types

Home office Desk Layouts – Where to start?

2009-03-19T22:36:00.001-07:00

I’m putting together a new setup for my home office soon, I hope, and have been looking throughout the web for ideas to implement.

Here’s what I have:

Desktop machine with a 22” flat screen display (Tower)
IP Phone connected to my day job office
Printer
Scanner
About 80 USB connected devices, be they cameras, IPods, etc
Want for a second monitor.

I’m looking for some solution that will allow me to put it all within reasonable reach, but not cramp the space that I have.

Currently, I don’t work from home,except during the evenings and on rare days where I am able to work from home. I’m hoping that changes, or my situation changes, where I can work like a nomad from home. In order to facilitate that situation, I need to have an optimal solution.

The printer I use has to be connected to the network so others can print, so I may end up getting a network laser printer inexpensively.

The scanner I use rarely, but I think that’s mainly because I don’t have enough space for it right now.

The USB devices are always a pain, because I have to find the right cord, find an open USB space (or make one) and then remember to put the cord away.

I’m hoping to get a USB hub that would allow me to plug all my devices in and label them so the cables would not be lost.

The printer is so rarely used by me, but my kids use it and will use it more as their schoolwork requires.

My main need is for desktop space for my 22” flat screen. I had a laptop before, which died, and got this desktop to replace it. It came with a sweet 22” flat screen monitor which I love, but I really want to get a second monitor. I find it much more productive to work with two monitors. So I need the desk space for that.

I’ve been searching Flickr for ideas on how to set the space up. I haven’t really found anything in particular.

I did find one OVER THE TOP setup though, but it is Mac centric:

Home office Setup

While I love this setup, I don’t need all the machines/monitors. Just two.

Anyway, if you have a setup you’d like to suggest, shoot me a message, it would be much appreciated.

Technorati Tags: Home Office Layout,Nomadic,Desks,Ikea

IPhone verus Blackberry Pearl

2009-03-19T06:49:00.001-07:00

Recently, I was given the opportunity to use an IPhone for a week to see if I liked it. As an avowed Blackberry addict, I was thinking initially that the IPhone was not going to work well for me due to the fact that it had no physical keyboard. I was wrong.

I received the IPhone on Tuesday morning, charged it and put my SIM card in. It recognized all my contacts, and I was able to browse the web using 3G speeds. Excellent start, don’t you think?

My previous Blackberry was a Pearl, which uses EDGE for data. Not necessarily slow, but compared to 3G, not fast. I was pleased with the speed of the web browsing, and I was pleased with the rendering of web pages that I would normally go do during a regular day.

I was able to get my email set up for both work and home. I was able to send and receive email from both, so I was pretty happy.

The on screen keyboard, which I really felt was going to be a huge deterrent to the usage of the phone was a big detraction. It slowed me down quite a bit. But I was able to work around it successfully, but I was not as productive with it as I was on my regular hard keyboard based BlackBerry Pearl.

The ITunes store is really useful for both applications and music. I liked the fact that I was able to get a Facebook client, a Twitter client and a couple other clients easily downloaded and installed on the IPhone. They worked really really well.

I was hoping that I could replace my IPod, my phone and use the Kindle application to read books. The Kindle application is top notch and well worth the price of admission.

Now the cons, at least in my experience:

The on screen keyboard. While it was OK once you got used to it, a heavy email/text message user is going to have difficulty being as productive as they would be with a physical keyboard.
Email notification. With the Blackberry, one of the beautiful things is that I get notified of emails without having to go into the physical MAIL application portion of the phone. In my line of work, this is essential. With the IPhone, I was never able to get it to work so that if I was in another application, I would get alerts for new email and new text messages and without actually being in the Mail portion of the phone.
THE BATTERY LIFE IS ABYSMAL. AT BEST. I could only get about five hours of usage out of the battery before I would get a 10% warning and have to charge it. It is possible that I got a bad battery, but wow, after normal usage, the battery life is really really bad. I couldn’t even get through a normal day with one charge.
I couldn’t add music to it from more than one machine. With my IPod, I can add music from more than one machine. But with the IPhone, I am told that I have to blow everything away and start from scratch. Not a good thing.

So I’m back to the Pearl. I’ll revist the situation in August, possibly going with the Bold at that point.

Technorati Tags: Blackberry,IPhone,Mobile Phones,Digital Nomad

VOIP Growing pains

2009-02-19T17:59:00.001-08:00

As I mentioned previously, we recently installed a VOIP phone system at work, based on Asterisk.

Actually love it quite a bit. I think that for our needs, once we straighten out the few glitches that we have with it, it will work so much better than our previous phone system.

Many of the “glitches” that we are finding we didn’t find with our old phone system. But you know why? Because the old phone system was created about the time that President Abraham Lincoln was born. Meaning, it was old. It did not have any of the features of the new phone system, except for voicemail.

So some of the growing pains we are feeling are caused by getting some of these new “neat features” to work correctly.

Such as:

Remote phones. Theoretically, a user will be able to pick their phone up from their office, take it anywhere in the world that has a high speed connection that can be accessed via an Ethernet connection and plug the phone in and they should have the same phone number that they had in their office. They should also be able to call back into the office at no charge.
Virtual fax machine that delivers faxes via PDF. Works fantastically.
Built in conference calling. The phone system allows you to create “conferences” that people can call into, like the conferencing feature available from Gotomeeting and various telco providers. This feature works really well too.

The current problems we have are some echo on certain calls and the fact that remote phones don’t currently work for incoming calls. They work for OUTGOING calls, but for incoming, they go straight to voicemail.

Little glitches, but annoying nonetheless.

Our vendor is working to resolve the issues, and I have complete faith that the issues will be resolved soon.

Even with the issues we have now, it is a so much better phone system than we had previously, it doesn’t even really compare.

Technorati Tags: VOIP,Asterisk,SOHO

February 9th – Kindle 2.0?

2009-02-04T19:44:00.001-08:00

Amazon has scheduled a news conference/press event for February 9th, 2009 at the New York City Public Library. Speculation is that they will do one of two things:

Announce that Jeff Bezos is funding a theme park somewhere in Mongolia
Introduction of the Amazon Kindle 2.0

I make no bones about the fact that I am very impressed with the Amazon Kindle. It looks like a great device for reading books.

It’s an electronic reader that can hold a large number of books on it, and it also has built in wireless for ordering books from Amazon (if they are in Kindle format).

It also (for a monthly fee) will allow you to download blogs, various newspapers, etc, directly to the Kindle.

It’s not a cheap device, coming in at about $359. But the biggest problem with the device is that it has been sold out since early November. Oprah featured it on her show as one of her “Favorite Things” and ever since, they have been sold out with an average delivery time if you ordered today of six to eight weeks.

Speculation is that on the ninth of February the new Kindle will be announced. Nothing has been mentioned about new features, at least by Amazon.

I look forward to the new Kindle. I look forward to the possibility that I could have a device with 15-20 books on it that I could take anywhere and read. Packing 15-20 books into a paperbook sized device holds great appeal to me.

So Mr. Bezos, bring on Kindle 2!

Technorati Tags: Kindle,Bezos,Amazon,Electronic Readers

Michael Arrington unveils internet Tablet Proto B

2009-01-19T20:36:00.001-08:00

Michael Arrington, of TechCrunch fame, has unveiled prototype B of his proposed internet Tablet. Called the CrunchPad internally, this looks to be a very useful tablet.

Runs Linux (UBuntu). Has a touchscreen. Has GMail support built in. Has YouTube and Hulu support built in.

Comes with a USB port to plug in a keyboard (which is almost a necessity, in my opinion).

Proposed to cost $299 when (if) it comes out.

Michael, I’d be interested in such a beast should it ever become available. I’d like a Remote Desktop client, if possible, to included (or to be available to be installed).

Great second steps though. Check it out

Technorati Tags: CrunchPad,TechCrunch,TabletPC,Arrington

Ford unveils a plug in Escape hybrid

2009-01-19T20:30:00.001-08:00

This looks highly promising for plug in vehicles. TechCrunch had the opportunity to drive a plug in version of Ford’s Escape hybrid which is due out in 2012. 140miles to the charge.

This is the right direction. The question I have is whether or not Ford will still be in business in 2012 to produce the vehicle. If they are still in business, will this be an “affordable” hybrid, or a hybrid like the Tesla Roadster, only available to the rich?

Time will tell on all accounts, I guess.

Video at TechCrunch is included in the link

Technorati Tags: Hybrids,Ford,Escape,TechCrunch,Tesla

2009 Goals

2009-01-01T23:02:00.001-08:00

Pay off everything except the big car
Build an actual office space in my home, where I can have my printer, scanner, etc, set up and all my cords connected etc.
Build two ATOM based Mini PCs for my kids to do homework on using Uber geek and friend Josh Bancroft’s videos (http://software.intel.com/en-us/videos)
Promote the use of Asterisk for small and medium sized businesses. If you have a company with multiple locations, and you aren’t utilizing VOIP for communications, I believe you are crazy. With an Asterisk system and a couple phones, you can communicate between the two offices for no LD charges. That means you can be working from ANYWHERE. Can you say Telecommute and no one will know the difference? I knew you could.
Install a Windows Home Server to back up all the home PCs in the case of the inevitable failures.
Simplify.

Technorati Tags: 2009,Asterisk,Atom,Goals

Building a new phone system the open source way

2008-12-18T19:26:00.001-08:00

My day job company has a phone system that was purchased and built right before Abraham Lincoln was born.

From talking to some people, he might actually have been one of the people who actually WROTE the software for the phone system.

After much debate, and much research, the company decided to purchase a new phone system. We had a few requirements for this phone system:

Ability to have multiple inbound queues
Ability to have the phone not ring if you are on a call, but still leave you in the queue once your current call is done
Ability to have your voicemail sent to your email
Ability to forward your phone to an outside number if you are unavailable or out of the office.
Ability to pick your desk phone up, take it anywhere in the world and plug it into a network port and plug it in and have the same phone experience wherever you are that you have sitting at your desk, including getting your phone calls at your regular desk direct dial number.

I looked at many possible phone systems, from Avaya, and from Mitel, and from Shoretel, and a couple open source Voice Over IP solutions, one called Asterisk, and another, built on Asterisk called Elastix.

In the end, after much discussion, we decided to go with the Elastix phone system and Polycom IP 430 phones.

I’m still waiting for my new T1 to be installed in my office, but I have the phone system currently set up in my office and working for station to station internal calls.

I also have it set up so that you can go somewhere (for example) my home office and plug the phone in and get phone calls.

One neat feature is that all incoming faxes come into your email as a PDF file. It’s a really nice feature.

If you are looking at a new phone system, I strongly recommend you look into Asterisk or Elastix. They are both ultra configurable and flexible.

Compared to the other alternatives, it cost us at least 50% less than the other alternatives, and I think in the end it will provide us with a much better phone experience.

Technorati Tags: Asterisk,Elastix,Mitel,Shoretel,Avaya,VOIP,Open Source Telephony

Blackberry Bold versus IPhone

2008-11-17T22:31:00.001-08:00

I’ve written previously about my love for my Blackberry. It’s a great device.

I’ve almost completely stopped using my home computer, except for photo use, and some blogging.

I’ve moved 95% of my email reading/responding to my Blackberry. I’ve started updating Facebook from my Blackberry. I even Twitter from my Blackberry.

Things I’d like to see:

I really need an app that will read my email for me. If I’m in the car, and get an email, my phone will beep. A certain beep for home email, and a certain beep for work email. If I’m in the car, and have my Bluetooth headset on, why can’t the phone read the email to me so I can at least know who it is from, the subject, and maybe the first few lines of the email?
A replacement for Jott.com . I loved the Jott.com service. But after they went to a paid model, it become much less attractive to me. I just don’t use it enough to justify the outlay that it would cost me. How about an application that can be activated by calling a number and leaving a message. Then, that message is transcribed and sent to me via email. Great for note taking, etc, while driving.
A decent GMail client. The GMail client that is available for the Blackberry is pretty good. It has a major (to me) bug in it that when you first open it up, it doesn’t do a refresh. So the newest messages, if you have received any, don’t automatically show up until you do a refresh. This refresh happened in previous version of the client, but with 2.0.6, which is the latest version available for the Blackberry, this does NOT happen.
A better browser. This is my #1 request. The Blackberry browser really is horrible, in my opinion. Especially if you try to view website that use Javascript. Fix it, Fix it, fix it!

I’ve seen recent commercials about the cool apps available for the IPhone. I’ve read about the nice new features of the Blackberry Bold. But I still think there is a market for Blackberry apps, both for the Bold and for (somewhat) older Blackberries.

Technorati Tags: Blackberry,IPhone,GMail,Jott.com

Crappy Customer service at MilesKimball.com

2008-10-20T19:04:00.001-07:00

I purchased an early Christmas present at the end of September for my wife (yes, I know, I started shopping early). I ordered it from MilesKimball.com on the 26th of September.

It’s now the 20th of October.

I never received the product. I figured that it was slow shipping, as it was an inexpensive product (a Santa+Mrs Claus Salt and Pepper Shaker set), and I didn’t pay extra for fast shipping.

But I figured a month was long enough, so I called MilesKimball.com today and the nice lady on the end of the phone said:

“What is your name and Zip Code”

I gave them to her

She verified some information, and then said

“We cancelled that order, we stopped shipping that product. We won’t charge you for it.”

Wow. They won’t charge me for a product they didn’t ship to me. How nice.

Nor did they have the decency to contact me via email or phone to let me know it would NEVER SHIP.

That’s crappy customer service, in my opinion.

MilesKimball.com customers, beware.

Technorati Tags: MilesKimball.com,Customer Service

Fiber to the home versus cable

2008-10-18T20:07:00.001-07:00

I recently had FIOS installed at home. I got the 10 meg down/ 2 meg up package, along with a phone line (haven’t had a home phone for about eight years), and TV service.

The installation was painful. I was told that the installer would be there between 8am-10am the day it was to be installed. So I worked from home that day, since I still had my Comcast cable installed.

At 10:30am, the installer finally showed up.

At 5pm, she finally finished.

Six hours. She installed a ONT box outside my house, then pulled the cable inside my garage and plugged it into the electrical outlet in my garage. It has a UPS built in, but it only allows phone calls, and only for eight hours. No internet if the power goes out.

She then pulled coax to where my main computer is, and then coax to where my two TVs are installed.

After that, she came in the house, hooked the TVs up with the DVR that was provided, and configured the TVs so that they worked.

She said “You can plug your computer in, just don’t changed anything yet.”

The router is both a wireless router, and a wired router for four devices. It works fine, so far.

My wife’s laptop was able to connect to it without incident.

I did have one minor issue, which was that the default IP address scheme is 10.1.1.x, which is the same as my work network. I had to log into the router and change the scheme to something else, like 192.168.3.x, so that the VPN I use to connect to my office would work OK.

After I did that, everything works well.

I uploaded 200 or so picture this afternoon, much faster than it would have uploaded previously via my Comcast connection. With Comcast, I would have started the upload before I went to bed and it would have most likely finished before I got up the next morning.

With the FIOS, it took about 2 hours to upload all the pictures.

Other packages are available, such as 20/5 and 50/20. For more money, of course.

I would recommend it, if you can get FIOS in your neighborhood, you should look into it.

Technorati Tags: FIOS,Comcast,FTTH

The Netbook question – what could be done (IMO)

2008-10-01T18:30:00.001-07:00

Many folks recently have been talking about netbooks. A small, portable, internet capable notebook with a 5”-7” screen, running Linux or Vista, or XP.

I’ve got a better idea. Possibly easier to implement.

Build a small Netbook, say with a 5”- 7” screen. Don’t make it a touch device, as that just adds to the complexity. Make it a 3G capable device, with Edge as a fallback for connectivity.

For an OS, use the Blackberry operating system. Have a memory slot for use by the Netbook, say 8-16gig.

Enable bluetooth. Enable the Netbook to be used as a phone.

The GMail client for the Blackberry rocks. The Gmaps client for the Blackberry is stellar as well.

The only piece of this puzzle that needs GREAT improvement is the browser.

The web browser with my Blackberry Pearl, to put it nicely, sucks eggs. It’s horrible. Especially because the Javascript support is non existant or will just plain take the browser/phone down and not work at all.

So, if someone could write a decent browser that was able to utilize Javascript efficiently, in a small 5”-7” screened device, you could use it both as a Netbook and as a phone.

Most of my phone usage (95%-98% actually) is via my bluetooth headset. So the Netbook wouldn’t even have to leave the desktop. When I’m not using the phone portion (or even if I was, in the case of 3G connectivity), I could be reading/responding to email via GMail. Or browsing the web. I could be use NewgatorGo to read RSS feeds.

Sound plausible?

The phone company would be happy, as they would still have a revenue stream from the bandwidth plans and the cellular plans.

RIM, are you listening? What say you, advocate of the Netbook Kevin Tofel?

Technorati Tags: Netbooks,notebooks,cell phones,Blackberry,IPhone,Kevin Tofel,JKOnTheRun

Smart Whiteboards in schools

2008-09-21T21:03:00.001-07:00

At my daughters elementary school, a couple of the classrooms we went to during the curriculum night had what they were calling a Smart Whiteboard.

Doing some research when I got home, it seems to be a product from a company here and what the whiteboard does is allow you to write on the whiteboard interactively. You can also be running Windows (it appeared) and by tapping on the whiteboard, you could simulate a double click with a mouse and active menus and such.

The teachers I saw used it to control (ugh) PowerPoint presentations, but it was VERY cool looking technology.

Even my wife said “We need one of those!”

It actually reminded me a little bit of the Windows Wall software, or even a wall version of the Surface technology from Microsoft.

Neat stuff. Not sure I see a use for it outside the classroom, but definitely in the classroom it could be useful.

There was another company, called Mimio that has/had a product like it, but with the Mimio product, you could have it send the notes written on the board directly to a PC. Now that’s useful, especially for brain storming sessions, or code reviews, or whatever.

Technorati Tags: Smart Board,Mimio,Whiteboard

Saving you after doing something stupid

2008-09-13T21:17:00.001-07:00

Sometimes, I delete files I shouldn’t. Usually, I have backups, and so it isn’t a big deal.

I shoot softball and baseball mostly. Today, I shot a soccer game for some friends. Took about 400 action shots. Came home, as as part of my normal workflow, downloaded them from the card onto the computer, and the automatic process is that the files are then deleted from the card (it’s automatic).

Normally that’s fine. I usually then pull the files onto an external drive that I have and start working on the ones on the hard drive.

Sadly, I had left my external at work. So I went past my normal workflow and import the files into my normal working software BreezeBrowser.

I had hilighted all the photos in BreezeBrowser because I was going to quickly go through them and delete the cruft. I noticed that the first shot was out of focus and wanted to delete it.

That’s where things went terribly wrong.

I had forgotten to notice that all the shots were hilighted. When I hit the delete key, they all got deleted from the disk.

Since I have the trash turned off, they went into never never land.

After having a mild coronary, I remembered that about a year ago had purchased a piece of software called PhotoRescue .

It saved me. It undeleted all the shots and I was able to get on with my workflow.

Check it out. It’s really useful for undeleting from a card in an external card reader.

Technorati Tags: PhotoRescue,Nikondigital.org,Workflow

ITunes 8 – Genius Lists – Bizarre

2008-09-11T21:06:00.001-07:00

I downloaded ITunes8 yesterday and installed it on my home machine.

ITunes8 has a new feature called ‘Genius Lists’, which if you select a song, and then select ‘Genius List’, it will search through your music library and set up a playlist that is supposedly like the song you pick.

I picked a song called Outside the Wall from Pink Floyd, The Wall Album.

Here’s what it chose for my Genius List:

Outside the Wall – Pink Floyd
Freewill              - Rush (ok, seems reasonable)
Saturday Nights All Right – Elton John (huh?)
Levon                  - Elton John (huh?)
El Condor Pasa     - Simon and Garfunkel (huh?)
Love in Vain         - Stones (seems reasonable)
<and a bunch of others songs that were just well, weird choices>

I’ll have to try it a bit more to see if it works any better.

Technorati Tags: ITunes8,Genius Lists

Players who holdout (with current contracts)

2008-09-05T17:45:00.001-07:00

NFL players, NBA players, MLB players, whatever, who have current contracts and holdout for “contract renegotiation” should immediately be cut.

There are enough people who want to play that should be able to play, and not be in cut in place of someone who has the audacity to hold out for more money when they have a current contract.

Unbelievable. Witness this guy

Technorati Tags: NFL,NBA,MLB,Holdouts,Contracts

Fedora or UBuntu under VirtualPC?

2008-09-02T19:50:00.001-07:00

I’d like to learn a bit about Linux. I thought I’d install UBuntu or Fedora 9 under Virtual PC, but when I do, I get the following error message:

I can’t seem to find anything about it on Microsoft’s site. Anybody have any suggestions? I’ve got a Core 2 Duo E8200 @ 2.66ghz. 2 gig of RAM. Virtual PC is running under Windows XP SP3.

I’d really like to get this working. But when attempting to run either flavor of Linux, I get the above error. If you have a thought, please leave me a comment. Thanks!

Technorati Tags: VirtualPC,Linux,Fedora,UBuntu

Comcast to impose bandwidth limits

2008-09-01T12:06:00.001-07:00

Comcast apparently will be imposing a bandwidth limit on cable subscribers starting October 1st.

I’m a Comcast subscriber. I’ve been pretty happy with the service, although I really wish that uploading was faster than 128k. My download speed is fast, but uploading is not.

Does anyone know of a way I can monitor what my usage is for bandwidth per month?

My connection goes through a router, but that router does not have logging with regards to traffic. So I’m in need of something that will track my usage with regards to traffic amounts.

Thoughts?

Technorati Tags: Comcast,Bandwidth,Usage

Storm Tracking on the internet

2008-08-31T19:52:00.001-07:00

Looking today for updates on Gustav, which is bearing down on the Gulf Coast, I found a great site for storm tracking. I am very interested in tracking storms like this, although I am very interested in tornadoes as well, ever since the movie Twister came out.

Called StormPulse it shows the projected path of Gustav and other hurricanes as they progress along their path.

As I have friends and colleagues in the Baton Rouge area, I pray that this hurricane does not cause the projected amounts of damage that it is projected to do, and that the loss of life is kept to a minimum.

Keep safe folks. Get out now while you can.

Technorati Tags: Gustav,Hurricane,Gulf Coast,Storm Tracking

TechCrunch Tablet – Prototype A has been unveiled

2008-08-31T19:47:00.001-07:00

Michael Arrington has unveiled the TechCrunch Tablet, prototype A which they just yesterday got to boot and be able to connect to a Wifi network and connect to a web page using the touch screen.

This is VERY COOL.

A ~$200 tablet that could be used to access the web wirelessly. Absolutely phenomenal and could definitely be a game changer.

I look forward to seeing future revisions of this tablet, and hopefully later this year or early next year, hope to see a released version of this tablet.

As it will be running Linux, it won’t be very useful for my work, but, as a tablet that could be used wirelessly via a touch screen, it could be very useful for Google searching, and GMail usage.

Technorati Tags: TechCrunch,Arrington,TabletPC,Linux

Blackberry Bold versus Blackberry Pearl

2008-08-25T18:13:00.001-07:00

I have a Blackberry Pearl phone, which is a fantastic phone and fantastic smartphone.

It has Edge connectivity, which for what I use the phone for, which is phone calls, limited web browsing, RSS feeds, Twitter'ing and most importantly, email, works just fine.

Blackberry is in the process of releasing a new phone, called the Bold. The Bold will have 3G connectivity. High speed. Very high speed, according to the reviews I've read. Read a very extensive review of the Bold here

But although I am still in the trial period for my Pearl, and could trade it in for a Bold, I've decided that other than the full QWERTY keyboard, the 3G connectivity doesn't really serve a useful purpose for my needs.

But it looks like a REALLY nice phone. If you have the need to purchase a new phone, and are considering an IPhone, and one of your main needs of use is email, I would strongly advise you look at the Blackberry Bold or Pearl instead. It's a much better email experience, in my opinion.

Technorati Tags: Blackberry Bold,IPhone,3G,QWERTY