Read a book sometimes (Free audiobooks)
Jan 17Every morning I have this little routine. After breakfast I go up to my home server, and disconnect my Ipod that has been charging all night. I mostly do it JUST before I leave the house ? Why ? So I can let my Itunes scan for content until the last minute. Why's that I hear you mumble once more . Well , THAT is because i'm subscribed to some 30 podcasts that I like to listen to every week. Most of them are about news and technology of course. But there is the occasional off-topic podcast (about Ghosts, about Buddhism ..) that slides in.
But the last few days i've become addicted to this great audio book by J.C. Hutchins called : Seventh Son. I think this is about the fourth complete book i've listened to on my Ipod. It started out last year with Scott Sigler's EARTHCORE and after that his other 2 books Infection and Ancestor. Two fantastic works of fiction, read by Scott himself. The cool part is : not only are these great stories to listen to, you can listen to them for free. And because they are read by the author, the really knows how to "tell" the story.
Since there is a new episode out of their story every week, it of course keeps me craving for more as yet another podcast ends on a cliffhanger. So dive into Itunes or look for these gentlemen on their respective websites and become entangled in the Pod-iobook web.
J.C. Hutchins : Seventh son Audiobook.
Deep below a desolate Utah mountain lies the largest platinum deposit ever discovered. A billion-dollar find, it waits for any company that can drill a world's record, three-mile-deep mine shaft.
EarthCore is the company with the technology, the resources and the guts to go after the mother lode. Young executive Connell Kirkland is the company's driving force, pushing himself and those around him to uncover the massive treasure.
But at three miles below the surface, where the rocks are so hot they burn bare skin, something has been waiting for centuries. Waiting … and guarding. Kirkland and EarthCore are about to find out firsthand why this treasure has never been unearthed.
Scott Sigler : Ancestor.
On a remote island in Lake Superior, scientists struggle to solve the problem of xenotransplantation — using animal tissue to replace failing human organs. Funded by the biotech firm Genada, Dr. Claus Rhumkorrf seeks to recreate the ancestor of all mammals.
By getting back to the root of our creation, Rhumkorrf hopes to create an animal with human internal organs. Rhumkorrf discovers the ancestor, but it is not the small, harmless creature he envisions. His genius gives birth to a fast-growing evil that nature eradicated 250 million years ago — an evil now on the loose, and very, very hungry.
Enjoy !
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How I use my Treo.
Jan 16
One of the gadgets i've been lugging around for the longest time now is my Treo 650. Its quite remarkable if you look at it. I used to have the reputation to switch phones faster then Dame Edna would switch wigs, but still .. It has been by my side for over a year now. Now why do I think so high of my Treo ? Well , cause its the merger between my Cellphone and my PDA for one. But also because it has become more then just a fancy gadget. A cool toy to play with when I have five minutes to throw away. Instead It has become my digital lifeline away from home. The things I do from this baby are sometimes a little amazing :).
I'll take you through some applications I use.
– Versamail : Obviously not the BEST mail client for your Treo , but good enough for me. It is my main line of communication in this little phone. 90% of my com. traffic goes via Email. Thanks to the not-so-bad keyboard on the Treo, I can get quite some text done. By forwarding all my Emails to a separate Gmail account, I can let my Treo retrieve all my mails, and still be able to pop3 my original mailbox using my client on the laptop.
– Camera : The Treo comes with an online camera. People use it to snap silly pictures , I do more. Whenever I need a visual memory-boost to remember something by (setup of a patchpanel, the way dials are arranged on my mixer and so on) I use the camera. I just snap a pic , store it , or just keep in on the screen. I don"t use it for extensive picture-taking. Just a visual – flash drive. When in need I can pop the pic in the Email application and fire it away. (" Honey , do you want THIS coffeemaker for Christmas .. PIC INCLUDED IN EMAIL …)
-Browser : The Treo comes with a built in Browser, and we all now that ALL browsers on PDA's suck. The one on the Treo is no extension .. if you visit normal webpages. But with a service called MOBIFEEDS you can access special webpages made from the rss feeds of any site you want. Mobifeeds takes DIGG for example and sizes the content down to exactly something that is readable on your Treo. Very nice to quickly glance up at content while on the road.
–Gcalsync : Perhaps the most important application It does a two way sync between the calendar on the Treo and my Gmail calendar. Using my gprs connection this means I can update my calendar ANYWHERE.
and finally : PSSH : or should I call it Palm-Putty ! This recent addition to my mobile pack enables me to setup a terminal session on my linux server. Text only of course , but thus a great way to interact with the commandline of my Ubuntu server over a small pipe 🙂 Its ultra cool to sit somewhere during lunch and while others are yapping away, you just "sudo apt-get upgrade" all the software on your linux machine .. From your phone ! I love it !
In hindsight ? Sometimes I come home after being on the road all day and am amazed at just how much stuff I can get done using just my Treo. No way is it a media storage device, or somewhere where I have 500 installed applications on the palm of my hand . Its a TOOL , with a few simple but powerful applications that allow me do get stuff done when i'm away from a broadband internet connection. GPRS used to be a gimmick for me. Something to "play with" but thanks to my Treo, it has become my connection to the net from just about anywhere.
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Another week .. Another Geek.
Jan 15
With the weekend rolling around it was time to can another episode of the Global Geek Podcast. This time me and my technological urges had made the pre-production of the show a little more stressful then usual due to the fact that I wanted to get my entire Routing setup overhauled before we got started. So it was bye bye to my Linksys BSFRX41 router and hello and how-are-you to a new US Robotics 8200 router with built in VPN endpoint capabilities and FTP Server. What is funny is the atmosphere in which this all takes place. Its not that I just yank everything off the wall and calmly an quietly put everything together again. No ! A migration of any peace of hardware that is required for our internet connection is done with extreme care. Looking at contingencies in case that our new peace of gear would not work right away, a deadline at what point the new hardware should be working before we fall back to the old situation, And a schedule that includes only the times that our internet connection is not really needed. Believe me 🙂 Those times are few and far apart.
The final peace of the puzzle to our home network setup proved to be a router or modem that could natively handle a DYNDNS client without making too much of a fuss. Thanx to codemonkey Rob I had an Alcatel Speedtouch 510 lying around but it was virtualy wothless as a modem or a router due to the fact that the software on it was crap. As it is with the cheapest things, the can do the greatest things. A little searching on the net brought be to the realisation that these baby's are popular as hell and that there are all kinds of nice firmware upgrades to be obtained from the net. So with the new firmware version the little modem got a LOT of extra functionality and is ready to be tested on the next window-of-oppurtunity that presents itsself.
Meanwhile : You can surf over to : THE GLOBAL GEEK PODCAST and enjoy this weeks show. (btw : You hear me fall on my ass in this one.. 3 times in a row.)
The Global Geek Podcast #034 :: Looks are Everything
Welcome to The Global Geek Podcast for this week. It has been a full week of news so we have a great show. But we have tried to cover the stuff that got forgotten in favour of Apple (but we do have something to say about Apple). So enjoy!
This week we cover some items from the Consumer Electronics Show, Adult Films, Firefox 3 and one good reason not to live in Qatar.
Some cool tools that enable you to sync online video with your iPod, hacking Skype, software for your TREO and create killer screenshots.
Our whistle stop tour of the web this weeks brings you a great new blogging platform, a service that makes you money by hosting video and we find out what blends.
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Sleep tight cyber citizens …
Jan 12
At CES halls are filled with thousands of expensive computersystems, High definition TV's and ultra portable cellphones. At Macworld Steve Jobs talked about how "inconvenient" it is to use a modern day smartphone. Bush just asked for a whole lot of money to wage war against an unseen enemy and the RIAA sued allofmp3.com for the sum of a small Island. Meanwhile the modern day geek complains about his broadband speed. Heckles the fact that he cant transfer his funny movies from his Imac to his HDTV without having to downscale the resolution. How they are not seen as the true "blogger" they are or get frustrated about some comment somebody posted on Digg.
Meantime .. in the real world … a child crawls towards a foodcamp, fighting for its own survival .. while already being stalked by a hungry vulture. The irony ? If this where a scene from some playstation or Xbox game .. complaints would be flying around everywhere. But the kicker is : This is reality. And no one stands up against reality. I feel like I'm in the Matrix sometimes. Surrounded by technology and progress. Engulfed in a total immersing sensation of wellbeing, with only trivial artificial problems to keep my busy. Why won't my Ipod Sync, Who has the rights to enforce this DRM on this song.. How many downloads does my podcast have. All of this and more keep my focus away from the harsh reality that sits on the other end of the digital divide.
And as children like these die from hunger every single day … We congratulate ourselves on the back for giving them the 100 dollar laptop.
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I know : Lets make something horrible : A story about the WRT54g v7
Jan 11Wireless networking is sometimes a tricky business. I'm not referring to the countless open access points I count on every day to provide me with a much needed IP when I’m away from home. These are all the situations where everything is fine and dandy and nice. I am however referring to the times it does not work. The houses that suck up wifi coverage like Sponguebob Squarepants in the Sahara. That eat away at transmission ranges of access points like Oprah Winfrey munches lard-tarts. Those kind of things. Cause face it. When you have to do an installation of a wireless product somewhere … its seldom without risk. First off you have to go out to the shop and buy a wireless access point (or router of course ) next up you need to install it , and pray that it will give you adequate range so you can at least get 5 feat away from your wifi spot and still enjoy wireless surfing. If it works you're in luck, if it does not .. you are proverbially fucked. Cause there is no way to guarantee that any access point will cover the range you need. It depends on your house, the position of your laptop, the wifi card in your laptop and so on. Its a small nightmare.Or at least it WAS until Linksys released the infamous WRT54g Router, running on a Linux derivative. This 80 Euro peace of hardware was not very pretty to look at but it had one big advantage. Since Linksys used an open source firmware, they had to make this firmware public and allow the open source community … to improve it.
Thus came the hungry mobs of developers who turned this 80 Euro machine into one of the most versitile and powerfull wireless routers you could buy for the price of a cheap Nigerian prostitutes hourly fee. Thanks to these 'improved firmware " the WRT54g turned into something far beyond the expectations of the original manufacturer. Using the minute memory space on the router, open source developers turned managed to extend the range, add extra security, opened up the console so you could access the darn thing with putty and so on. But of course the key element was that they pumped up the transmit power over 90%. In many situations this little router saved my life. Having set up one of these cheap ass routers in a local student dorm, i was (thanks to the improved firmware) able to service 15 students AT ONCE with a wireless internet connection, in a BIG ASS old building with LOTS of walls. All of this thanks to the firmware called HYPERWART.
So whenever I had to advise a wireless router to people, the answer was always the same : A wrt54g running Hyperwart. Users where happy, Hyperwart got a lot of attention, Linksys sold a lot of WRT54g's… Until recently.SOMEBODY at Linksys must have gone criminally insane because when version 7 of the WRT54gs came out .. they decided to rip out the motherboard of their successful router , put something broadcom chipset in there and ship it in the same casing, the same box, under the same name .. Only that their most successful router (thanks to the open source community) does NOT support all the great "function improving' firmware like HYPERWART. And to ad shame to misery (or the other way around) the range on the device is absolutely horrible ! It sucks beyond belief !!! Now at what point do you kill off a successful product ? What board meeting must be swamped with nerve gas to make one decide such a crappy course of action to yank out the gut of a great machine ! Needless to say i'm pissed, (i'm happy i've got a model from an earlier version) but it does leave me without a shit-free router to advise to friends and relatives. Sometimes it just boggles the mind.
