August 13th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
(GPS, Mac)
Over this coming weekend I plan on reviewing some GPS loggers. For those of you who don’t know what these are, basically they can log various GPS data to their built-in memory so that you can retroactively extract where you’ve been and maybe even geotag any pictures that you’ve taken.
Unfortunately most loggers are not compatible with the Mac; however, there are three which have been recommended on various forums, blogs, reviews, etc:
1. AMOD AGL3080
2. GiSTEQ CD110BT
3. Qstarz BT-Q1000P
I should be receiving these units by the end of the week. After some extensive testing I hope to write some in-depth reviews on each, describing what they do well and what they don’t; obviously, including how easy or difficult they are to use on a Mac.
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August 13th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
(iPhone)
It actually went quite smoothly on my iPhone last week. I really have no complaints, except for one thing, my colocation option doesn’t seem to be working only within Google Maps. It’s really weird, but when I press the little “radar” button on the lower-left side of the screen, all it does is spin there. It never shows that it’s grabbing data (either via edge or wifi) on the top status bar. Thus, it never updates my current position.
I didn’t have this issue with my v2.0 Pwnage’d iPhone, so I’m not sure what to do. I have repeatedly done a restore to no avail. Does anyone have the same experience? Or any ideas on how to resolve this issue?
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July 20th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
(Movies)
Yes, I made my donation last night to the Dark Knight Fund of $155.34 million in their record-breaking box office weekend. Firstly, I would like to say that I’m in the majority… this movie was unique, very well done, and the acting was superb. The new Joker portrayed by Heath Ledger really gave me chills as he vividly portrayed the psychotic and insane psyche of quite possibly the best villain ever! It is easy to put his latest rendition of the evil and sadistic clown along with an elite group of villains like Hannibal Lector from Silence of the Lambs and Darth Vader from the Star Wars series.
There was just two real questions I had (*WARNING spoilers below*):
1. What’s up with Batman’s voice? It’s so deep, raspy, and somewhat fake sounding.
2. Why did they kill off Two-Face? With about 45 minutes left in the movie I really thought it ended, but then they continued with the plot and ended will killing off Two-Face. I figured his character could’ve at least made it to the next movie.
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July 10th, 2008 at 9:45 am
(Apple, iPhone, iTunes)
So the App Store for all your iPhone and Touch needs is finally online and working on iTunes. Keep in mind that you will need to update to iTunes 7.7 before you can download any of these applications, but for those of us who are waiting for jailbreaks and unlocks, we can at least peruse the library of applications using the older iTunes version.
Without further adieu: iTunes App Store
Note: The above link should open your iTunes application and navigate to the currently hidden iTunes App Store.
Disclaimer: Please DO NOT update to iTunes 7.7 or the latest v2.0 of the iPhone software if you are currently using a jailbroken or unlocked iPhone. The software will relock your iPhone!
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June 17th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
(Mac)
So after downloading the brand new Firefox 3.0, I decided to compare its performance to the latest Safari. Apparently Mozilla has made significant changes with this version for Leopard and it utilizes many of its core technologies. There are numerous added features and a much-needed facelift. After playing around with it for a couple of hours this evening, I would have to say I’m very impressed at how snappy it is compared to the older 2.x version, and how well they have redesigned its user-interface. But, how does it compare to the highly touted Safari by Apple?
Note: The above tests were run on a 2.16ghz MacBook Pro with 2GB of memory.
Of course these are not extensive tests in regards to the robustness and overall performance of each web browser, but it does give us a sense of how they compare. According to Apple’s estimates, on average Safari pushes the envelope and runs ~3x faster than Firefox 2.
I would have to agree with Apple’s assessment when comparing the old version, but I believe Firefox 3 has raised the bar and should give Safari a run for the money in many areas. It is also important to note that Firefox has numerous spectacular plugins, skins, etc! The one aspect where Safari consistently beat Firefox 3 was in loading the application itself after a cold startup of the computer.
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April 12th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
(Computers)
As most of you linux users probably know, implementing wifi capabilities on your desktop (and even laptop) seems to be a thing of the “future”. I had recently purchased a Dell Vostro 400, and the first thing I did was wipe my hard-drive from the bloated, poorly-written, slow, and annoying Windows Vista Home and installed Fedora 8. Is it just me, or does it take a lot of patience and cursing to get anything actually working correctly in linux?
I would like to start out by saying that this desktop was a steal when it was on sale about two months ago for under $1000, including a 24″ LCD monitor. After eBaying the monitor (since I already had a nice one) and selling off my old desktop, it came out to only about $300! I recently added 8GB of RAM (after installing a crucial BIOS update), so my total became a paltry $450 to turn this machine into a beast.
Installing Fedora 8 on any system has been relatively straight-forward, and their base install has been quite good by including many of the important libraries necessary to build other software from source. However, on the Vostro it was non-trivial. After a lot of googling and yelling at the computer, I was able to get Fedora 8 installed using a kernel option irqpoll during bootup, since the SATA drivers I needed didn’t come with the install DVD.
After getting most everything up and running, I had to deal with the 50 foot ethernet cable running from my bedroom to my study/office. I decided to use my old wireless card and figure out if it’ll work with linux. To make a much longer story short, the answer was an emphatic NO (after working on it for about 2.5 days). During my research, I came across madwifi which is a group devoting their time and efforts to build drivers for wifi cards that include an Atheros chipset.
Unfortunately, their compatibility list leaves much to be desired, since it hasn’t been updated often and many of the cards are discontinued or impossible to find. After wasting even more of my time, I settled on a handful of cards that are available online, but are not carried in any local store. Finally, I happened to come across the D-Link WDA-2320 PCI wireless adapter, shown below.
I read that this card apparently works very easily with most newer and older linux distributions and kernels. I also happened to have found it in stock at my local Officemax (the only local retailer that actually had them). After $50 and a simple one-click install, I was on my way to wireless freedom!
Needless to say, I am very happy with the price, performance, and installation ease that this desktop wifi card has provided, and I recommend it to anyone who uses linux and hates running CAT 5 around their home or office.
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April 9th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
(Miscellaneous)
The question is simple… according to the White House website: “Vice President Dick Cheney spends an afternoon fly-fishing on the Snake River in Idaho.” You be the judge…
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April 9th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
(Personal)
Ok, perhaps I’ve distorted the truth a tad bit… being über lazy would be a better title. I apologize for not updating my blog for the past… oh… two and half weeks, but I have my reasons. To give you the low-down on my exciting life, let me get you up to date in the following lengthy run-on sentences.
I have been very busy at work trying to juggle three different projects at the same time, while trying to avoid the fuzz on the way to work since I recently was handed a $174 jaywalking ticket for not crossing at the crosswalk, even though there were dozens who crossed the street “illegally” while the ticket was being written to me. If I wasn’t in the lab doing my work, I was trying to relax at home trying to fight this recurring cold that I’ve been having for the past two weeks, and have since been drained of some energy because of it, and have not been able to enjoy the beautiful spring weather outside. I have submitted two abstracts for two different conferences and am planning to submit a third later this month, with the hopes of actually being able to go to two of them later this year, perhaps to do a presentation as opposed to just a poster viewing session, but since we’re on the topic of potentially traveling to different places I cannot wait for a much-needed vacation, a vacation anywhere but here, and here as in Ohio. Finally, other than doing some coding for work related stuff, I have tried to do some coding for the iPhone, and unfortunately since I had very little free time, coding for my little toy has been unfortunately slow, but I do hope that before the iTunes applications store comes around in the next couple months I’ll have a sweet little application that many of you will find use.
Well, I should get back to writing some more useless… err useful posts to my blog with the hopes that someone out there reading this may not waste their time entirely.
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April 9th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
(Photography)
Since photography is one of my passions, I am truly amazed at how beastly the new Hasselblad H3DII is. At 39 megapixels one would expect this camera to outperform pretty much everything else out in the market. After looking at some reviews and sample photos, I can say that without a doubt it indeed does! But is it really worth the $34,000 pricetag? Even at $500 a day rental it still isn’t exactly affordable to those who don’t take pictures for a living (and are exceptional at their craft).
Needless to say, it’s not about the body (although for $34,000 it kind of is in this special case), rather it’s all about the glass. It seems like they have quite a nice selection of various prime and zoom lenses available for it. Unfortunately, they are pricey as well at around $3000 a pop. When compared to the L-lenses from Canon, I can’t really say if they are worth it, since Canon makes some very nice products, a larger variety, and cheaper. However, if money is no object (as it probably isn’t if you own this camera) then $3000/lens is a drop in the bucket.
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March 21st, 2008 at 8:23 am
(Apple, iPhone)
Thanks to a person who visited my blog and commented on my previous post, I rechecked my order status for the Apple iPhone Standard Developer’s Kit and noticed that I will not be receiving anything more from Apple later this week through snail mail.
Basically, it appears my $99+tax membership fee only gave me an activation code to access the “secret” developer’s portal and nothing else. Although the initial checkout what misleading, I guess nowadays since we can transfer most things electronically what could Apple possibly have mailed me?
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