Archive for the 'Gadgets' Category
Well, I have recently reentered the 200+ club… Today I weighed in at 202.3 pounds… I have been feeling a little trashy… Not so much about my physical appearance, which is rough in itself, but just physically blah… I knew it was time for a change.
I had heard about the whole collaboration between Nike and Apple where you can put this nifty little device in your shoe, have it wirelessly transmit to an Apple iPod Nano, and then report your results from your walks/runs to the Nike+ Web site…
The Nike+ Web site allows you to keep track of your runs: the distance, time, calories burned, etc. It also lets you set goals for yourself and also provides training through pre-configured workout plans. Well, being the techie that I am, and the bigness that I sport, I decided to give this stuff a try.
Today was my first WALK and my first bit of exercise in quite sometime… I broke a sweat, my legs burned at first, but overall I really enjoyed it… My stats will constantly be updated in the block below. You can laugh and it won’t even hurt my feelings… But, and I do mean but, keep in mind that I still currently smoke a pack a day… which I hope to quit soon… I’ve already started eating grilled chicken wraps or grilled chicken salads pretty regularly… Anyway, that’s me…
Until next time…
I woke up yesterday to my Apple TV not working quite right with content that wasn’t stored on the Apple TV’s local hard drive. I had a bridal shoot to do for my Fruitful Studios gig so I didn’t really have much time to do any troubleshooting.
The shoot started at my house using my portable studio/backdrop. Before we headed downtown I decided to take a look at my MacBook to see what was going on. The laptop’s screen was gray… Hmmm… I held down the power button and the system shut down. I pressed the power button again and on the laptop came, taking forever to bring the Apple logo up and the process gear.
When the logo and gear did show up, it was on the screen forever. I repeated the nifty little power off, power on routine several times and had the same results. By this time, it was time for me to head out with the bride to be and do some more shooting. I left the laptop on while I was gone with the Apple logo and gear displayed and the gear was just a spinning…
When I got back from the shoot, my laptop screen had the lovely logon dialog box on it with my blue background! Praise God!!! w00t! And all that… But, when I tried to logon, the “beach ball” just spun and never did anything. At this point, I noticed the wonderful sound of metal on metal grinding… Any techie probably can guess what that meant…
I tried the whole power off and power on thing a few more times until I finally got a different image on the grey background instead of the Apple logo: it was a nifty folder icon with a question mark on it… Any Mac fans care to guess what this means? That’s right, kids. The system can’t find a bootable system partition… Great fun! My hard drive is trash!!!
That’s right. The Hitachi Travelstar™ (Model: HTS541616J9SA00) 160GB, 5400RPM hard drive I had in my MacBook bit it… hard! Thankfully, I backup all of my critical data, but one thing I don’t backup is my Applications folder… Crap!
I purchased a 320GB Western Digital (Part number goes here when I can find the box) drive from Best Buy, slapped it in, and started the rebuilding process… This could take a while… From now on, I will be using the Time Machine feature built-in to Leopard… Time Machine supposedly backups all data on your Mac, making it extremely simple to restore a machine easily and quickly…
Hopefully, I won’t have any more hard drive failures, but if I do, maybe Time Machine can save the day…
Until next time…
Well, well, well… I woke up bright and early this morning at 7:15AM and went to the good ole’ MacBook and had a message from a buddy of mine from Spain. He sent me a message about the iPhone being $399.00 USD. Well, I looked it up and here is the proof. How disgusting! I mean, like, 40-45 days ago I paid $200.00 USD more than that for the 8GB iPhone… Oh, well… I guess you have to pay to play…
While I was digging around on Apple’s Web site I noticed that they did unveil another iPod called the iPod Touch.. This is an iPhone without the iPhone. Nice! Great design though… I mean, if the iPhone is beautiful then this little device is beautiful… It just looks really bare without the additional icons that the iPhone has… Again… Oh, well….
$399.00?!?!?!?!?!???!!!?!??!!!!?!?!!!oneone
Until next time…
I have been doing a lot more design and development lately. It’s awesome working on my 13-inch MacBook along side my 24-inch Gateway LCD Display (model FPD2485W). This is an extremely nice setup and very comfortable, mostly due to the Apple Bluetooth® Mighty Mouse, Apple Wireless Keyboard, and my Griffin Elevator.
But, since I am doing more design these days, and I want all of my images and photos to have somewhat consistent color across multiple monitors, I decided that display calibration was in order. I looked around at some devices for performing display calibration and they all seemed a little more expensive than what I was willing to pay.
So, as I was walking through Office Depot a month or so ago, I spotted a little gadget over in the software section of the store. The device is called huey™ by Pantone® and retails for $89.99.
When I got my huey™ device home and started calibrating my laptop’s display, I was pumped. Then I wanted to calibrate my gateway display. Well, out of the box the huey™ will only calibrate one display. I did some research on the Pantone® web site and found out that they have a software upgrade that will allow you to calibrate multiple displays with the same huey™ device. The software, huey™ PRO is available as a download on the Pantone® web site for $39.99.
The device is cool in that it constantly monitors the room’s light and automatically adjusts the color settings of your displays to the appropriate levels to keep the colors where they need to be. It also prompts you to calibrate your displays periodically when it believes the previous calibration has expired. The calibration process is quick and easy and well worth the few minutes it takes to keep your colors looking fresh and your details popping!
With the upgraded software and the huey™ device I bought from Office Depot, I can now calibrate both of my displays and keep my colors consistent across both of my monitors. If you’re looking for an entry level calibration device for your monitors or displays, give huey/huey™ PRO a try and see what your colors are actually supposed to look like.
Until next time…
Ok, so I blogged a while back in November of 2006 about being back in the wardriving game. Well, it turns out, that wasn’t entirely true. See, after I posted that entry on averageadmins.com, I never really did any wardriving. When I finally got ready to get back in the game and make some maps and what not using KisMAC and Google Earth, my MacBook’s built-in wireless NIC wasn’t 100% compatible with KisMAC. It seems that the 2nd generation of MacBooks changed their wireless chipsets and the new chipset isn’t 100% compatible with KisMAC. So, according to this document on the KisMAC developer WiKi, my best bet was to get a USB wireless NIC with a Prism2 chipset. So I did…
The bad thing about having to get this type of hardware is a) most of the devices with these chipsets are older wireless cards and kind of hard to locate, or b) the newer cards that are still manufactured with this chipset are pretty pricey. Well, I did a little eBaying and found a D-Link DWL-122 for around $60 with shipping and insurance. This was a great find as this device was still new in the box and the price wasn’t that bad considering I had to locate an affordable wireless card with a specific chipset. I placed my order on the 20th of this month and got it in yesterday… Guess what?! That’s right kids! I’ve already put it to use.
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