kw705 : Reviewing the Samsung Galaxy Gear

Nov 23


Its Go-go-gadget review time again as we get our greedy little geek hands on the latest gadgets from Samsung. We do an in depth review of their new Phablet the “Note 3” and turn ourselves into Michael Knight (from Knightrider .. remember ?) as we slap on the worlds most advanced smart watch : The Galaxy Gear.

Shownotes

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Knightwise.com now available on Podnutz

Nov 22

We mentioned it in KW701, but now its official : Knightwise.com is now a proud member of the Podnutz podcast network. What IS a podcast network ? Easy : It’s a collection of different podcasts around a variety of topics who get together in a network to pool both recourses and audiences to get more listeners and exposure. There are plenty of podcast networks out there, but some of them are of a higher quality and standard then others. That is why we are very proud to announce our affiliation with the Podnutz network. Under the wise hands of Uber-Geek “Doortodoorgeek” this podcast network brings you a collection of a variety of  shows like “Linux for the Rest of Us”, “Android App Addicts”, “My hard drive died” and of course “Podnutz daily”. 

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Omg.. Is anything changing ? 

Nope, for the loyal Knightwise.com listeners: Nothing changes. We are staying right where we are. The website isn’t going anywhere and neither are the feeds, the only thing that IS changing is that the Podnutz audience now has a chance to get to now the Knightwise.com podcast through their network : So hello new listeners !

Meet the community.

If you want to meet the Podnutz community , head on over to Podnutz.com, subscribe to the shows you are interested in and take a look at their forums : There is plenty of geekery afoot.

Links.

www.podnutz.com

 

 

 

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Docuwiki : Take notes everywhere … seriously … every-where !

Nov 21

Greetings blog readers!  It is I, Matt, the stay-at-home g33kdad in Northern California.  I am writing today to discuss a topic that has been much on my mind lately and that is “note taking”.  I know, Y A W N, right?  Who cares?  You open a google doc, you jot some stuff down… or maybe I used a MS word doc for that… where did I save that again… is it in Evernote… oh, here’s some paper, i’ll just write it down… but, then I’ll just have to type it up later… and what if I want to work on it at my mom’s house…and if it’s stored on some company’s server somewhere, what kind of privacy is there… nevermind, I’ll just play xbox.

So, in the spirit of T. S. Eliot who wrote that immature poets copy while mature poets steal, I steal this from Allison Sheridan of the Nosillacast Podcast, “What is the problem to be solved?”

The problem, as I see it, is keeping track of information digitally (whether or not the information started out digital).  Now, unless you have been living under a rock for the recent past, you probably have an opinion on “cloud” services and computing. There are many different services available.  The ubiquitous choice seems to be Evernote. Evernote is a service that allows you to store your notes on an internet accessible server.  This gives you access to them from anywhere you have an internet connection.  There are apps for all the major mobile platforms and for most desktop operating systems. This is a very full-featured service and very powerful, as well.

Another option is to use Google Docs or another hosted word processor. This is a great option because the interface is similar to MS Word or other word processing programs and most of the formatting options you would have on the desktop are available in your web browser.

While these are good options, they have some flaws. They require a third-party to host your notes.  Having someone else handle the server maintenance and software is great, but you have to deal with privacy concerns.  You also have to deal with connectivity to that service. What if you have an internet outage or you find yourself somewhere without wifi. (Do you go places without wifi?) How do you add, edit, or read notes? Also, some services may not be designed for robust note-taking.

When it comes to third-party, cloud services, my personal feelings are these: 1. Any technology can be used to make my life better. 2. Any technology I don’t own or control can be used to make my life worse.  So I have to make a choice. Do I want the convenience of a service designed to meet the need? Do I want to keep all my notes in plain text on my personal computer? Is there another choice?

I have decided that a wiki is a very flexible platform for what I want to do.  In case you don’t know, a wiki (see: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/wiki) is a web-based platform for colabrative documents. Anybody who has a user account on a wiki can edit the content, their edits are tracked, and they are available to the public or to other users of the wiki, depending on the configuration.  Wikis have a simple formatting syntax that is easy to learn and use.  Wikis are also designed to store digital information. Links and rich-text and even multimedia can be stored and accessed through a wiki.

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There are some caveats to this.  Wiki software is a web app that runs (in most cases) on a webserver. So you need to have access to a webserver to utilize a wiki. This can be a shared hosting account, a vps, or a small server in your home. The requirements are minimal. In some cases, wikis can be complicated to set up.

So, what do I do? I use a package called DokuWiki. DokuWiki is related to MediaWiki which is the software that powers one of the most famous wikis in the world, wikipedia.org.  It is a powerful package and works great for note-taking. There are many plugins available to change the syntax, provide for different content types and many other extensions. I have installed it on my home server and use it most every day for my needs. But there was a slight hiccup.  I still needed internet access to make notes.  Not a big deal when I’m on my home network, but even with dynamic DNS, I won’t have access if I can’t get to the internet.  Then, I discovered the “killer app”. There is a plugin called sync (http://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:sync). This plugin uses XMLRPC to sync content between two dokuwiki installs. It can sync individual pages, whole namespaces (like folders or sub-directories), or even entire wiki instances.  Now, I run linux on my laptop and it was a 5 minute process to start a full LAMP stack on my daily driver. (a full LAMP stack is not necessary, lighttpd with php and SQLight is sufficient) I simply installed a local instance of DokuWiki and set up the sync profile to sync with my home server instance.  Now, if I’m out somewhere with no internet access, I can still access my wiki via “localhost”.  Then, when I get home or to a location with wifi, I run the sync and I have a backup of my notes! Excellent.

I have just scratched the surface of the possibilities of using DokuWiki for online note-taking. There are so many other uses for a wiki and I know that DokuWiki is so easy to deploy, I will be using it again.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article.  More to come! 

You can find more of Matt online at  @sahgeekdad on twitter or via  g33kdad.thestrangeland.net

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CMD.FM : The geekiest way to stream high quality music for free.

Nov 20
I very frequently leave the house without having enough music in my pocket. As an avid podcast consumer who loves to listen to a broad range of podcasts about an even broader range of topics, tunes are quite rare on whatever mobile device i’m packing. But thanks to the wonders of streaming, a nice set of notes is never far away. This week listener Sharky suggested a very very geeky way to do just that. With streaming services like Pandora and Spotify abundant on the desktop of the average mouse jockey, its time to “set yourself apart” from the crowds. The ultimate way to do this is to use cmd.fm. Its a streaming music interface combined with something that resembles a chat room .. in a command line interface. All you need is a computer (duh) a browser and a sound card and you are good to go. In a command line interface you can choose from a variety of genres and listen to whatever tickles your fancy (from Punk Rock to Choir music). If you sign up for an account you can leave comments and “chat” with the other users while listening to the streams. Play, Pause, Genres, … All the commands are entered via the keyboard; We love the service because it has a high sound and content quality, because there are no (or almost no) adds and because its the geekiest way to stream music ever. 
 
 
 

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kw704 : Elementary OS and Thor Squared.

Nov 17

Its time to dive back into the audio podcasting after your Double Topping of F.A.C.T.S. video coverage last week. This week we grill wiseguy Thor about his experiences with Elementary Linux, a Distro spin on good old Ubuntu 12.04 with stunning looks and a soft spot for the hardware impaired. Afterwards we give you a last echo of the F.A.C.T.S. event with an interview we did with the people of Brainfreeze about one of Belgium’s most popular Manga & Anime websites and talk a little about Thor and why it is I am unable to lift Thor’s hammer.  We did have a little issue with the audio quality in the intro and outro of the show, so we hope you forgive us for this little blunder, it will all be fine next time .. We promise.

Shownotes.

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