Computers on Dave Nelson

2021 iPad Pro

Sun, 27 Feb 2022 13:52:24 +0000

I found myself using my 1st generation iPod Pro 12.9” from 2015 and 5th generation iPad from 2017 a lot and decided it was about time to upgrade.

I am using the iPad for:

Read books from Amazon using the Kindle app and technical books with the O’Reilly app
Write notes and manage tasks with Obsidian
Read comic books with ComiXology, the Marvel app, YAC Reader, and Smart Comics
Web Surfing with Chrome
Email with Fastmail
Reading Reddit
Watching videos using various streaming services
A game here and there, primarily Pinball, Chess, Solitaire, and Soduku
And other Internet “stuff”

None of these require a “Pro” iPad, but I have learned from my experience with the 1st generation iPad Pro that in an Apple product, a Pro device will be useful longer than the non-Pro version. We go through an iPad about every 2 years with our son, he doesn’t abuse them, but they get used 18 hours or so a day which really stresses out the battery causing it to begin to fail after about 2 years.

Synology DiskStation DS1621+

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 13:00:29 +0000

My Drobo died…

<sigh>

I tried everything, replaced drives, cleaned it out, banged on it, everything I could think of and every idea I could find online. But it’s dead. It did last 7 years, but it sure feels like it should have lasted longer.

Drobo has not had any devices for sale for a long time now, and in fact they don’t even have anyone answering the phones anymore. So time to look for an alternative.

Mechanical Keyboard Meetup

Tue, 01 May 2018 14:00:46 +0000

I attended the Mechanical Keyboard Meetup at the Vintage Computer Festival Southeast (VCFSE) in Roswell Georgia. I have attended the VCF a couple of times in the past and it has always been interesting.

Getting to see and touch computer from my childhood and before is a lot of fun, and even better, many of them are in working order and available to play with. Typing on a Commodore 64 brought back a lot of good memories. Typing on the Atari 400 chiclet keyboard, not so much.

Tex Yoda II Mechanical Keyboard with Trackpoint

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 19:30:00 +0000

My office desk with the Tex Yoda 2

I cannot say enough good things about the Tex Yoda 2. I am totally in love with it.

Price

Let’s start with how ridiculously expensive it is, actually let’s not and just say that it is more expensive than most would pay for a really nice keyboard and mouse. You can get an RGB Pok3r and a Logitech G502 for a lot less than the Yoda 2, and you probably should. But once I touched the Yoda 2 and did some typing on it I fell in love, and you can’t put a price on true love.

A Visit to Mechanical Keyboards dot com

Tue, 17 Apr 2018 13:00:58 +0000

The storefront for Mechanical Keyboards in Fairview Tennessee

After ordering the Pok3r from Mechanical Keyboards I realized that they were located just outside of Nashville Tennessee, like a 4-hour drive from me, so when I got the chance to take a day off I headed out.

Arriving at their storefront at 9:30 am on Monday morning I was greeted by Lee who spent a lot of time with me showing me a lot of different keyboards and answering my questions, and boy did I have a lot of questions.

Vortex POK3R Black Limited Edition RGB LED

Tue, 10 Apr 2018 19:00:17 +0000

After using the Cooler Master Ten-Key-Less (TKL) keyboards for a while, I decided to take it to the next level, and the POK3R really is something completely different. The Limited Edition RGB LED Black Pok3r keyboard is a great 60% keyboard with almost of all the features a mechanical keyboard enthusiast would want.

I didn’t really like the Cherry MX Blue or Brown switches very much. The clicky noise of the blues overwhelms my senses and makes me nervous, the clicky-ness does help hide the mushiness of the tactile bump. The tactile-ness of the browns feels very mushy to me, I would prefer the tactile bump to be really short and sharp. With all that in mind I wanted to go with a linear switch and see how that felt.

Mechanical Keyboard Switch Choices

Tue, 27 Mar 2018 19:30:31 +0000

There are an overwhelming number of different switches for mechanical keyboards available. Linear, tactile, clicky, buckling spring, vintage, and each in a wide range of spring weights and crispness.

From Novel Keys I ordered a 25 slot switch tester with a selection of Cherry MX, MOD, Gateron, and Zealio switches along with a Kailh Sample Pack of another 27 switches. Then from Thingiverse I printed out a PLANCK keyboard frame with room for 48 switches. Now I have a switch tester that I can take around and really get a feel for a wide range of the current switches available.

Mechanical Keyboards

Tue, 27 Feb 2018 13:33:38 +0000

If you read my review of the 2016 MacBook Pro you know how much I dislike the keyboard on it. Along with that I have been reading Norman Chan on Tested.com, co-workers, gaming sites, and “computer experts” talking mechanical keyboards and how wonderful they are, my interest was piqued.

My goal for a keyboard is for it to be comfortable and to give a reliable amount of feedback for my not-so-fast touch typing. I don’t need it for “gaming” or a crazy amount of n-key rollover. Just something solid, reliable, and comfortable. I would have loved to build a keyboard kit with all the soldering and programming that entails, but I have other things I would rather be doing. So I spent months shopping and comparing every mechanical keyboard I could lay my hands on.

The Phoenix Project by George Spafford, Kevin Behr, and Gene Kim

Tue, 20 Feb 2018 21:00:20 +0000

It’s been awhile since I used Safari Books Online, O’Reilly’s online subscription service, to read something, so I picked The Phoenix Project which was recommended to me on my login page.

The Phoenix Project is a “novel” about DevOps and all that entails being implemented in manufacturing and retail environment where IT had always been seen as a necessary evil. I think a lot of people, both inside and outside of IT can relate to that. The back of the book is full of resources and information about where to learn more about DevOps, continuous deployment, and automation tools.

Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch Late 2016 Review

Tue, 13 Feb 2018 22:00:16 +0000

After 7 years it was finally time to update my trusty old 2011 MacBook Pro. Due to my dislike of the choices Apple has made with their laptops in the last few years, my first stop was an HP Omen Windows 10 machine with lots of upgrades. After a couple of months of trying to get Windows 10 and Windows software to do what I want in a way that I felt efficient doing it, I gave up and decided to give up on Windows, yet again, and get another MacBook Pro.

OctoPrint and the Prusa i3 MK2S

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 11:30:17 +0000

I ran the Prusa i3 Mk2S for a couple of weeks by copying files to the SD card and then printing from there.I could have also printed directly from a computer plugged into the printer, but that computer would need to stay connected and powered on while printing. Either one of those solutions work well enough, but I really wanted to be able to print from multiple computers while not dedicating a laptop or desktop to printing, and most of all I wanted to be able to monitor the printer remotely with video.

Prusa i3 MK2S 3D Printer

Mon, 03 Jul 2017 11:00:41 +0000

![Assembled Prusa i3 MK2S](https://shop.prusa3d.com/312-large_default/original-prusa-i3-mk2-kit.jpg" style=")

I spent a lot of time and energy researching 3D printers before finally buying one, and even then I am not real happy with the first one I bought, but that will be another post. This one is about the second printer I bought and love, the Prusa i3 MK2S Kit.

The Prusa i3 MK2 is a very popular and highly rated printer, Make Magazine gave it their Outstanding Open Source, Best Value, and Best Overall awards in 2017. Thomas Sanladerer says “The Original Josef Prusa i3 MK2: It doesn’t get any better than this!”

Great Planes RealFlight 7.5 Review

Tue, 13 Oct 2015 20:00:22 +0000

RealFlight is an RC flight simulator that you can use to practice flying RC planes, helicopters, and multirotors (drones). It is a lot cheaper to crash in the simulator than in real life.

RealFlight is a good flight-sim, I feel like there are other sims out there that have better physics and are more realistic, but RealFlight feels like the most polished and has many more options than any of the others. But to get the most out of it you will have to turn to the community around it.

Udemy Course: All about Node.js

Tue, 07 Apr 2015 11:30:33 +0000

I am working on a personal side-project for some friends and decided to build it using Node, Express, Mongo, and Passport.

About the time I was working on the database architecture I received a coupon via email for the Udemy course “All about Node.js” taught by Sachin Bhatnagar. The full price for the course is currently $150 but it comes up on-sale from time-to-time and coupons are often available.

Learn Raspberry Pi with Linux by Peter Membrey and David Hows

Tue, 10 Feb 2015 14:00:22 +0000

This is the Raspberry Pi book I have been looking for. Instead of trying to push some advanced scripting language or Linux distribution, this book shows you how to use the most widely used distribution, Raspbian, and good old Bash scripts to do useful things with a Raspberry Pi.

Now 3 years old the lessons in Learn Raspberry Pi still hold up. Raspbian has been through some major updates and the new Model A+ and B+ computers have added to the Pi’s capabilities, but the Linux/Unix commands, SSH and VNC techniques, network information, Web Server installation (LAMP), and a decent chapter covering compiling XMBC on your Pi.

Make an Icon for Mac Yosemite

Tue, 13 Jan 2015 13:00:14 +0000

How to make a new folder icon for your MAME games is pretty easy with a handful of steps. This is the process I followed; there are other ways to do it using other tools. I used Preview, Adobe Photoshop, and Xcode’s Icon Utility.

Step 1: Get the Icons

I like JohanChalibert’s OS X Yosemite Icon set that he has posted on Deviant Art, but you could search around a bit and find many different icon sets that would be a great place to start.

Easy Launching of MAME Games in Mac OSX Yosemite

Tue, 06 Jan 2015 14:00:15 +0000

Sometimes you want to be able to launch a game by double-clicking an icon rather than going through MAME’s interface or using the Terminal. This method has the added benefit of letting you easily launch MAME with various options.

We are going to write a small shell script, save it as a command file, and make it executable.

If you have followed the directions in my previous post “MAME on Mac OSX Yosemite” you can follow these instructions exactly, if you have made changes or modified any steps, keep that in mind while working through these steps.

MAME on Mac OSX Yosemite

Tue, 30 Dec 2014 14:00:01 +0000

Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) is a free and open source application used as a reference of the inner workings of arcade gaming systems. A side effect of this is that MAME can be used to play old arcade games if you can find the games. MAME uses data dumps from the Read Only Memory chips (ROMs) that were used in the original arcade games.

You can download the ROMs of some games from the mamedev.org website. I am going to use Robot Bowl as an example.

Hitman Absolution by Eidos

Tue, 11 Nov 2014 14:00:55 +0000

I was looking for a good shot’em-up and realized I had bought Hitman Absolution from Steam on sale a long time ago and hadn’t played it yet, and even better I could play it on my iMac in MacOS instead of booting into Windows Bootcamp.

I have played most of the other Hitman games and liked some more than others. A couple of them have been really awesome. I clearly remember a scene in an opera house where I was forced to harm a police officer for the first time in any of the games, that was really hard for me, I almost stopped playing the game because of it. But after dying and restarting the level for what felt like 100 times I was able to complete the mission without killing any cops. Knocking them around a bit is ok.

DragonCon Photography Team Computer Setup

Fri, 12 Sep 2014 19:00:09 +0000

As a volunteer at DragonCon one of my current responsibilities is getting the computers setup for use by the photographers and the librarians. This year I had to re-learn a lot of what worked so well last year as my notes were not complete, so I decided to write them up more thoroughly this year and post them hear so that I will not loose them.

At the 2014 DragonCon we used a total of 5 computers, 3 for the photographers to drop off photographs at and 2 for the librarians to use for key wording. The computers were running Windows 7 and required a lot of Windows updates and video driver updates before they were ready to use, luckily the internet connection at the show was fairly fast on Thursday afternoon when I was setting them up.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Tue, 19 Aug 2014 13:00:45 +0000

I burnt myself out trying to learn to many JavaScript frameworks, build tools, unit testing, Debian eccentricities and BeagleBone Black programming so I decided to take a break and play a video game. Steam was having their summer sale and Skyrim happened to be a great deal. I bought “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Legendary Edition” and have been playing it for a couple weeks now.

Back in 2011 when The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released I remember reading and hearing from a lot of friends, acquaintances, and internet personalities who played it and talked about it for weeks on end. So my interest was peeked, but I didn’t have time or the desire to play it then.

Updating the Drobo

Fri, 25 Jul 2014 13:00:11 +0000

It is finally time to upgrade from a second generation Drobo to a Drobo 5N.

I bought my first Drobo in January of 2009 and it has been in constant use for the intervening 5 and a half years. I have only had 2 issues with it, the fan died about a year ago, and it now feels really slow.

When the fan died I went to my local Microcenter computer store and bought a whisper quiet 120mm fan. With a bit of Googling and some wire snipping followed by a bit of solder the Drobo has been much quieter and cooler ever since. In fact I can’t hear it over my home office noise at all.

Learning Adobe Edge Animate CC by Tony Ross

Tue, 01 Jul 2014 12:00:49 +0000

Learning Adobe Edge Animate CC training video from Infinite Skills Inc. featuring Tony Ross is a great place to start learning Adobe Edge Animate.

I found Tony’s voice easy to listen to, his explanations easy to understand, and the video of the computer screen easy to read and follow.

Half way through the video I built my first animation, it’s good stuff.

Edge Animate has a lot of problems as an application, it is definitely going to improve as new versions are released, and this video does nothing to highlight those problems and steer you clear of them. But the video is definitely worth watching closely. You can learn about the bugs and limitations somewhere else.

BeagleBone Black WiFi Adapter (WNA1100)

Fri, 02 May 2014 12:30:24 +0000

Boris, the BeagleBoard Logo MascotI initially bought an Edimax EW-7811Un Dongle for use with my BeagleBone Black (BBB), but after a lof of fiddling and frustration I gave up on it. Turns out that I may have been using the wrong setting in the interfaces file, but after some research I found many instances of people complaining about the Edimax dongles in general, so I started looking for solutions that others were having good luck with.

Unable to Connect to BeagleBone Black via Ethernet

Fri, 25 Apr 2014 11:00:09 +0000

Unable to Connect to BeagleBone Black via Ethernet

Everything works fine when the BeagleBone Black is connected to a computer via USB but when connected to the network via Ethernet it does not work. I ran into this issue when I first started using my BeagleBone Black out-of-the-box and again when I updated the OS to Debian.

Here is the solution:

Connect the BBB to your computer via USB and give it time to boot
In a web browser open the Cloud9 IDE by going to https://192.168.7.2:3000/. You may be prompted to choose some settings, I like the defaults.
Create a new file, paste in the script below, and run it

var fs = require("fs");
var destroyed_key_file = "/etc/dropbear/dropbear_rsa_host_key";

fs.readFile(destroyed_key_file, function (err, data) {

  if (err) throw err;
  
  if( data===null || data.length===0 )
  {
    console.log("we have a corrupted host key file... try do delete it");
    fs.unlink(destroyed_key_file, function (err) {
    if (err) throw err;
        console.log("successfully deleted " + destroyed_key_file);
        console.log("you should now reboot your beaglebone.");
        console.log("the /etc/init.d/dropbear script will create a new rsa host key file for you.");
        console.log("after the reboot you should be able to login over ssh");
    });
  } else {
      console.log("it seems that you have another problem, sorry");
  }
});

Now shutdown, I like to sudo shutdown -hP now, the USR lights will all go out when it is shut down
Now you can unplug the BBB from USB and plug in an Ethernet cable and power adapter. You should now be able to access the BBB from anywhere on your network using https://beaglebone.local or ssh beaglebone.log.

Thanks to httpss://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/beagleboard/Ya2qE4repSY/u4lvOjF66JEJ

Remote Host Identification Has Changed!

Fri, 18 Apr 2014 11:00:27 +0000

After updating the operating system to Debian and plugging in your BeagleBone Black via USB you may receive the error message:
WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED!

This is normal as the RSA key has changed when you updated the OS.

The easiest way to fix it is to run ssh-keygen -R then try connecting again.

When connected via USB
ssh-keygen -R 192.168.7.2
ssh debian@192.168.7.2

When connected via Ethernet
ssh-keygen -R beaglebone.local
ssh debian@beaglebone.local

Setting up Debian on a BeagleBone Black

Fri, 11 Apr 2014 11:00:30 +0000

This post is about installing Debian (BeagleBone Black – 2GB eMMC) 2014-03-27 and Flashing the eMMC using a Mac running OSX 10.9 Mavericks.

I decided to get a head start on using Debian with the BBB which is soon to tbe the default OS installed on them.

These are the steps I used today to get up and running:

Download image from http://beagleboard.org/latest-images
– BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.4-2014-03-27-2gb.img.xz
Use Unarchiver to extract disk image
– BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.4-2014-03-27-2gb.img
Download PiFiller to copy the disk image to the SD card
– https://ivanx.com/raspberrypi/
style=“padding:4px;background:#000;display:inline-block;margin: 4px 0;”
Run PiFiller and follow the directions
- Choose the disk image
- Insert the SD card
- Verify that PiFiller has found the correct device
- Some more verifying, click OK a couple of times
- Now wait awhile, it took about 20 minutes on my MacBook Pro Holy Cow! The dialog box opening and closing gets really annoying to watch!
- All set when you get the “Your SD card is ready” message
Eject the SD from the Mac OS then remove it from the computer
With the BBB unplugged, no network, USB, video, power cables, insert the SD card into the BBB
style=“padding:4px;background:#000;display:inline-block;margin: 4px 0;”
Get ready: When plugging in the BBB you will need to hold down the Boot button until all 4 USR lights turn on
– While holding down the Boot button insert a 5V 2A power supply, release the Boot button when all 4 USR lights turn on
Now the USR buttons should start blinking in a seemingly random pattern, this should go on for 20 to 60 minutes depending on the OS and SD card
When the USR lights all light-up again the eMMC has been flashed with Debian
Remove the power adapter
Remove the SD card

BeagleBone Black Microcontroller

Fri, 04 Apr 2014 11:00:34 +0000

I recently bought a BeagleBone Black (BBB) and am having a great time with it.

From the website beaglebord.org:

BeagleBone Black is a $45 MSRP community-supported development platform for developers and hobbyists. Boot Linux in under 10 seconds and get started on development in less than 5 minutes with just a single USB cable.

What I Bought

I bought my BBB from Makershed as a part of a kit which included the book Getting Started with BeagleBone by Matt Richardson and a handful of electronic components. The kit is not bad, but I feel like it is overpriced, especially for someone who has a lot of components already.

Getting Started with BeagleBone by Matt Richardson

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 11:00:11 +0000

After seeing a really cool telepresence robot using a BeagleBone at an Atlanta JavaScript Meetup I just had to get one.

I ended up buying a Beagle Bone Black (BBB) from MakerShed in a kit that included some components and a paperback of Getting Started with BeagleBone.

While waiting for the BBB to arrive I started reading the book on Safari Books Online and ended up never reading more than a couple of pages from the printed book. I was more comfortable reading the book on an iPad using the Safari Books Online app.

Metro: Last Light by 4A Games

Fri, 14 Feb 2014 05:00:51 +0000

I played the first Metro game, Metro 2033, and thought it was pretty good so when I saw Metro: Last light on sale at Steam I decided to give it a try.

The Metro games are based on books written by Dmitry Glukhovsky; which I have not read. After playing both of these video games I will probably not read them… It is not my kind of story. I am not really a big fan of the Horror-Survival genre but somehow I have found myself playing a few of them.

Delicious Library 3

Fri, 28 Jun 2013 04:00:20 +0000

My wife and I read a lot of books. Now that our son has gotten a little older and needs less attention, I go through more than a book a week on average, Bobbie doesn’t go through as many books in number, but she is reading much larger non-fiction books and taking copious amounts of notes.

Many years ago I bought Delicious Library 2 (DL2) as a part of a bundle deal. Bobbie and I used it to catalog all of our fiction and collectable books. It worked well enough and with some simple PHP and YUI coding I built a simple web page we could use on our phones to check our library while out and about.

Maintainable JavaScript by Nicholas C. Zakas

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 04:00:06 +0000

Maintainable JavaScript by Nicholas C. ZakasI read this book using Safari Books Online using various laptops and an iPad.

This is an amazing book.

Following a style guide while programming is common in many languages, but for me it is a new idea in JavaScript. Reading Douglas Crockford’s Style Guide http://javascript.crockford.com/code.html can teach you a lot, but Maintainable JavaScript teaches you not only the how, but also the why.

Codecademy JavaScript Courses

Fri, 24 May 2013 04:00:20 +0000

CodecademyI first learned about Codecademy last year and I immediately jumped into it and completed a few of the JavaScript courses and promptly forgot about it.

Lately I have been writing more and more JavaScript and jQuery to make interactive prototypes for work. I rate my JavaScript skills somewhere around intermediate and I am challenging myself to work my way up to expert by the end of the year. As a part of that personal challenge I have been reading a lot of JavaScript, jQuery, and Git books and websites, this is how I ended up back on the Codecademy website.

Adobe Fireworks CS6 Classroom in a Book: The official training workbook from Adobe Systems

Tue, 21 May 2013 05:00:52 +0000

I read this book on O’Reilley’s Safari Books Online using personal and work laptops along with the Safari Books app on an iPad.

I really like the Adobe Classroom in a Book series and have read many of them. They are great because they are based on real-world use and come with all of the files needed to build the projects used in them.

Pro jQuery by Adam Freeman

Tue, 14 May 2013 04:00:14 +0000

I read this book on [Safari Books Online](http://www.safaribooksonline.com" title=“http://www.safaribooksonline.com) using Firefox.

I am doing more and more with jQuery and went looking for a book that could show me the ins-and-outs of it and “Pro jQuery” is definitely that book.

I do not agree that this is a “Pro” book as it does not cover professional techniques for programming in JavaScript using the current best practices that you would find in a production environment, but this book is a great reference for jQuery and I could find none that were better.

Apple Pop-Up Museum and Vintage Computer Festival

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 20:52:28 +0000

Last weekend I attended the Vintage Computer Festival and Apple Pop-Up Museum at the empty CompUSA store off of Holcomb Bridge Road. It was nice to see someone doing something with one of these abandoned storefronts.

It was great fun seeing all of the old Apple, Commodore, Atari, and other computers and gaming consoles. It all made me very nostalgic, but not so much as I would trade in any of my current computers for any of them. It was really amazing what we were able to produce using those old machines.

Portal 2 Video Game

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 05:00:03 +0000

I really enjoyed the first Portal video game, it was a much needed break from the first person shooters I had been playing that were focused on violence.

Portal did not disappoint, the levels grew progressively harder as the game went on and the payoff at the end was spectacular. The GLaDOS song at the end of the game is fantastic.

Now we have Portal 2, I played it using Steam from Valve on a MacBook Pro. There were no slowdowns, frame-drops, or stutters during the game, and the audio was great.

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 04:00:47 +0000

I read this book as a PDF bought from O’Reily Media’s Safari Books Online mostly using an iPad and iBooks but also using the Preview app on a MacBook Pro.

I really dislike showing any photographs without the minimum of rotate, crop, exposure correct, color correct, and export at the needed sizes and Lightroom allows me to do that very quickly.

Metro 2033 Video Game

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 05:00:04 +0000

I played this game on a MacBook Pro using OnLive and had no technical difficulties.

This first person shooter has a lot of problems, it starts out slow, takes a long time to get going, and then at the very end throws some odd control issues at you. It is definitely “on a rail” and appears to only offer one pretty flat story to tell.

Maybe its biggest problem is that it is trying to tell a story. It may have been a better game if there was more than one way to get to the end and something in all the dialog that let me know that the end was coming.

Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:00:51 +0000

I bought this game on Steam and played it in Windows 7 in Bootcamp on a MacBook Pro.

There were a lot of crashing with the game initially; apparently the default install is a horrible experience full of crashes and blue screens for many, many players. It took a lot of searching and a lot of fiddling around to get the game to play for more than 10 minutes without crashing but eventually I found the right combination of settings and the game played great.

Digital Comic Books on an iPad

Tue, 08 May 2012 20:15:07 +0000

With the “new iPad”, aka iPad 3 I decided to give digital comic books a try. As a rule, comics and in fact any graphics that have enough resolution look amazing on the iPad 3, type is super crisp, colors are ultra-vibrant, and the detail is incredible.

After some research I decided to buy a subscription to the “Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited” which offers over 10,000 comics for an annual fee. Wow, that sounds great. But sadly it does not work on the iPad, in fact it requires Adobe Flash to work on any machine.

In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 05:00:39 +0000

I listened to this audiobook from Audible while commuting and working out.

I love me some Google. I use Gmail as my only email, I use Google Voice as my main phone number, I use Google search exclusively, I love Google Maps and use it almost daily, I use Google Earth to geotag my photographs, and I watch videos on YouTube almost every day.

I think this book does a great job teaching us about how Google thinks as a company and how its founders see the purpose and direction of the company. I also think the book is a very honest look into Google, it exposes many of the rough spots the company has experienced in more detail than many of us know.

Head First PHP & MySQL by Lynn Beighley and Michael Morrison

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 05:00:04 +0000

I read this book on Safari Books Online using Firefox on a MacBook.

I am updating the Football Pool app that I built last year and want to make the database side of it more sophisticated and optimized so I searched Safari Books for some insight. After reading the overview of a handful of books I decided on Head First PHP & MySQL because it appeared to cover everything I was looking for.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution – The Game

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 05:00:47 +0000

I played this game using a MacBook Pro and OnLive. It took me 33 hours to play it through on the medium setting; I earned 2,050 of 5,000 points and 28 of 49 achievements.

I really enjoyed the original Deus Ex back in the day, at the time the idea of “augments” that allowed you to update your player as you went along was pretty unique feature of the game. In Human Revolution the augments are brought to a new level.

Red Faction: Armageddon

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 05:00:15 +0000

Recently Onlive had a special offer to play Red Faction: Armageddon and Homefront for the 4 day Thanksgiving weekend. I didn’t like Homefront very much, the violence was a to much for me, but Red Faction: Armageddon was more to my liking.

Unlike Red Faction: Guerrilla, this version of the game is pretty much on rails with very little chances for the player to choose his own path. This is partly explained by the change in location, Armageddon takes place mostly underground instead of on the surface.

Trine, The Game by Frozenbyte, Inc.

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 05:00:45 +0000

I bought Trine as part of the Humble Bundle 3 and played it on a Mac using Steam.

I really enjoyed Trine, it is my favorite game from the Humble Bundle 3 package, it is the only one I have had enough interest in to play all the way through.

The game is a side scrolling fantasy game with 3 characters, a fighter, a thief, and a wizard. You use only one of the characters at a time to complete the puzzles, fight the bad guys, and make your way through the maze of world. And what a beautiful world it is.

Games I’ve Been Playing

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 05:00:17 +0000

I was thinking about it this week and even though I am a casual gamer I have been playing a lot of different games. Between playing Steam games on both Mac and Windows, OnLive games on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad games I realized I have been playing a lot of different games. Here are my thoughts on some of them.

Trine

I bought Trine as a part of the latest Humble Bundle and play it on the Mac through Steam.

iPad: The Missing Manual by J.D. Biersdorfer

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 05:00:37 +0000

I read this book using a trial subscription with Safari Books Online. I recently decided that I want to use Safari Books Online to expand my knowledge of JavaScript and other web technologies that will help me build great web sites. I bought an Apple iPad with the idea that it will be a great reading device for Safari Books, eBooks, web sites, and even audio books. I will review both Safari Books Online and the iPad in future posts.

Typinator Mac Software

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:23:50 +0000

Price: EUR 19.99

Web Site: https://www.macility.com/products/typinator/

This is a great application that watches as you type and can fix your spelling mistakes in any application. It is a real life saver for me and my terrible typing/spelling. You can also set up shortcuts so that you can type a short bit of text and it gets replaced with much more text. I like to use “dt “, that is a “d” and a “t” followed by a space to insert the date, fantastic. And it will do this in any application, even the finder.

Software for Mac OS X

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:08:41 +0000

Over the next couple of weeks I am going to write about the software I have found for the Mac OS to make my transition from the world of Windows complete.

I am finally comfortable spending all of my computer time inside of the Mac OS. I still have WindowsXP in Bootcamp for playing games on Steam, and a couple virtual machines using VMWare and Parallels for the occasional Microsoft Outlook need or using Garmin Mapsource to upload maps and waypoints to my GPS, but I rarely miss Windows or proprietary applications that only run on Windows.

Drobo First Impressions

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:00:50 +0000

I purchased a Drobo from Newegg.com and three days later the UPS man dropped it off at my door. My previous post to the blog outlines the reasons why I chose the Drobo as a storage solution.

Setup was very easy, the top of the box full of cables shows the three steps to getting started and it really is that easy.

I took the Drobo out of the box
Removed the packaging material
Inserted 4 Samsung 1TB hard drives
Put the Drobo on my desk
Plugged in the Firewire 800 cable
Inserted the Drobo disc and installed the Drobo Dashboard
Plugged in the power cable to the Drobo
Here began my only snag, the Drobo appeared to go into a loop of restarting which it did not recover from. So unplugged the Firewire cable and then the power cable and restarted the computer. Once the computer cam back up I plugged in the Firewire cable and then the power cable and the Drobo jumped to life.
The computer warned about the drive being unreadable and the Drobo began the process of walking me through partitioning and formatting the drive.
I used a 16TB partition and HFS+ formatting. It was done in about 5 minutes and popped up on my desktop just like any external hard drive would.
I immediately began copying my music library to the Drobo from an external USB drive

This really is an amazing device; I was able to start using it within 15 minutes of opening the box. It is almost invincible on my desk; its sleek black case and solid construction give me confidence. Not having to install rails on the individual drives is also a plus.

Why not an iPhone

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:34:33 +0000

After a lot of consideration we have decided to buy a second Palm Centro instead of an iPhone.

There many reasons I would really like a 3G iPhone, iTunes support, a beautiful screen, a decent camera, great web browser, and now with the App store about to open I am sure there will be a lot of great applications available. But I have been a PalmOS user for many years, right from the begining actually with the Palm Personal.