kw805 : Whats in my bag ?
Jun 25We return to the podcasting routine with a show that is packed with Gadgets and clever life hacks. Its time to turn our geek bag upside down and tell you not only what is inside of it, but also HOW we use it. Tune in and learn the secret of how to become the optimal, creative, productive and entertained digital packrat without shlepping around a portable datacenter on your bag. Hone your vulcan hearing as we tell you “Whats in my Bag” (and how do we use it).
Shownotes.
- Intro
- My routine
- Whats in my bag
- Less is more.
BONUS : The behind the scene “hangout” of this shows recording.
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Cool Kickstarter Kicks (By Matthew Deboysere.
May 12Biweekly I go through Kickstarter and try to find some interesting projects that you just must back. I have backed 22 projects since February 2011. My strategy is simple: I just cruise through the pages until I find something I like. Sometimes I search for keywords. Earlier this week for example I tried “laptop” and some awesome stuff popped up.
Take for example the Dart. It’s a universal laptop charger, the size of a lip stick. It costs you 90 USD and you’ll get a charger by 2015. It’s a great idea, but this Kickstarter project resembles the main issue I have with Kickstarter: it’s most of the times just an idea. The charger delivers 65W and puts out 18 to 21V. So it won’t charge certain tablets or stronger laptops. The word “universal” is also something that needs some in-depth research, as you need licensing for the Macbook plugs for example (and even Macbooks have two different types of plugs right now). Buying the standard version will cost you 90 USD, but 199 USD for a European Macbook charger? I don’t think my charger is that big anyway…
It’s a great example of an awesome idea that’s not ready yet to be sold, but it’s worth investing in these type of projects. It’s because of the funding they receive of their backers, that they can actually go further and finalize their projects. Kickstarter isn’t always about asking financial aid to finish something, but to actually help create something.
The story of the Airbar is something completely different. Those guys have tested and finished their prototypes and are ready to launch. I have to agree: when you are looking for a cooling device for your overheated notebook, they always tend to be oversized, heavy and they don’t seem to cool at all. Jordan Meyers created the Airbar, which he hopes to sell through Kickstarter. For 75 USD, you’ll receive a slick bar which lifts the back of your laptop by an inch for some comfortable typing, while sucking in air. Meyers choose some smaller but more expensive fans than the lower end fans that most cooling pads include. And to be honest, it even looks great too. I’m afraid it won’t meet its goal, but it’s worth a shot. Because really, how cool is a cooling gadget? No hipster is going to get this.
Last but not least is something more general about crowdfunding and why I like Kickstarter more than Indiegogo or other funding platforms. The campaign advisors of Kickstarter are very strict. If you don’t meet their requirements, you won’t get in. It’s that simple. Indiegogo allows everyone to enter and get started. They call themselves the World’s Funding Engine. I call them the crap sellers. Not to say that Kickstarter has the best projects, but I do want to say that Indiegogo has the worst. While searching for “laptop”, I found nine projects of the first twelve called “I need a new laptop, help me buy it.”
What I did find on Indiegogo that I wanted to mention, is the Rufus Cuff. It’s not a laptop project, but it’s a oversized smartwatch. It costs you 269, but it looks really awesome! I don’t think it will become more Star Trek than this, except if in the future we will get beamed up by Scotty. The Rufus Cuff allows you to text, call, Skype and take pictures on your wrist. It will even notify you when you left your phone behind. You can surf the web, do fitness exercises with the GPS, gyrometer and other built in analysis tools. It runs on a full Android version so you can install all apps on it. You only can’t call directly with it, as it needs a Bluetooth connection with your phone. It’s water resistant so you can text and call while in the rain or in the shower. Be quick though, as the campaign ends in less than a week.
Matthew Deboysere is a video game journalist for several Belgian media. Is the co-founder of G.Mag, a free digital gaming magazine, but left for a new adventure. Previously wrote for GUNK and 9lives. Loves video games with a great story that reduces him to tears. And cat videos.
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kw803 : Girls Gone Geek
May 10Its time to be Mr Journalist and cover Acer’s launch event for their Liquid E3 smartphone in Brussels and take some interesting interviews. We talk to two different sides from the girl-geek spectrum and interview Sunny, a ‘beauty blogger’ who just got her first smartphone and Mee Hyang, one of the members of the ‘Brussels Girl Geek Dinner’ who has been around the tech block a couple of years. Both ladies give us their vision on technology and the “Girl vs Gadget” ratio in their lives. As an added bonus we talk to Lars Christensen, the Acer Product manager about some of the cool new functionalities Acer will be supporting in their smartphone and ask him the pesky question : ‘What is a PC going to look like in 3 years’. Enjoy KW803.
Shownotes.
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Geek-OCD. The urge to solve it all.
Jan 24It was going to be a nice weekend. With the soft winter weather making room for clear skies and long walks in rolling fields, the last thing I had expected was to be stuck at home behind a computer. Some kind of work emergency ? A horribly addictive game ? A burst of inspiration that triggered me to finish my book ? No .. none of the above. The one and only reason that kept me from enjoying some time away from my screen was : Geek-OCD.
The culprit in this case consisted of an issue with the wireless connection on my Linux Laptop. After installation of my new home router, the wireless connection problems on my favorite linux laptop escalated to a point that it was no longer usable. There is, for a geek like me, nothing more frustrating then buying a superfast router on a superfast internet connection .. Only to realize your superfast laptop is crawling along the intertubes slower then a snail with a morphine overdose. Quickly checking other machines on the network turned up that the issue was located solely on this one machine. And since this thing worked properly when I connected it via the cable .. It had to be a wireless issue. An odd problem indeed. It had never done this with my previous router and there were no other devices on my network that showed the same problem.
I started sliding down the slippery slope of Geek-OCD. The compulsory need to get to the root of any technological problem that comes across our path. The mental inability to say “Frack this, I don’t know what is going on here” and move on. I had to know the root cause .. I just HAD to. Deep diving into the technicalities I started analyzing the wireless network traffic in my house using specialized tools. “Sniffing” my way through every single data packet that passed at light speed from my router to my Laptop I quickly found that something was wrong. Strange errors like TCP-retransmissions, Ack packages and connections that were “out of sync” turned out to be the culprit of why it took forever to open up the www.ilovecarebears.com site. Each unknown error code led to a google search that led to tons of answers who in turn pointed to pages and pages of text on forums. The issue was slowly turning into one of these endless google rabbit holes that consume hours of your time, only to increase the sense that you have absolutely no clue what you are on about.
Reading through the 11th page on the forum of the 4th link in my 5th search attempt , I stopped myself. STOP ! I had followed several sets of instructions that might lead to salvation. I had pasted in commands in the terminal , flipped switches and checkboxes. I had rebooted, patched and botched things up .. I had reached the end of both my patience and my tether. And I still had not gotten any closer to a solution.
I decided to break one of my cardinal rules : I’ll just reinstall the system. The trigger of this drastic decision came from a second but equally powerful kind of Geek-Ocd. “You cannot keep on working with a botched up system”. Unclear of the damage caused by my tinkering, I decided that that machine just “didn’t feel right” anymore. I could no longer vouch for its integrity and it somehow didn’t ‘feel’ right anymore (+ my problem wasn’t fixed) so I decided to reinstall the system, a clear system of my second geek-OCD : every system has to work perfectly.
4 hours (and 4 versions of linux) later .. I watched the winter sun set on the western skyline and found that I had blown away an entire afternoon without getting anything done. The cause of my problem not found, my working system in shambles and still a long way to go before my fresh installation would be tweaked to my specifications. Because that is yet another Geek-OCD quirk I have, Every system needs to have all the right software and settings before I start using it…. In short : Geek-OCD ate my weekend.
Epiloge.
The next Monday after this tech intensive weekend a friendly geek in a Linux Irc chatroom pointed out that “oh, you have a common problem. It has to do with a driver issue , just disable setting X and you’ll be fine”. I resisted the urge to scream and just rested my head between my hands. I had once again become the victim of my own Geek-Ocd. The urge to find the root of every problem, to never work with a “compromised” system and to only be satisfied with a perfectly personalized install of your own computer. Back in my windows days this meant that I spent more time maintaining my systems then I did using them. These days, thanx to the macs in my house, that is no longer the case. Yet linux, stable and reliable as it is, still has the power to push me into Geek-OCD relapse from time to time.
In the end we should take the time to realize that technology needs to work for us, instead of the other way around. And that solutions that require more effort then the results they produce … are probably not the smartest way to spend your Sunday afternoon. However : The one thing you do get out of all this is knowledge. The knowledge and experience on how to tackle a technical issue like this, Expertise on the deeper darker side of technology behind the issue that you have … But maybe most importantly : The knowledge not to throw away a sunny afternoon on a problem that you could have fixed with 2 clicks, the next Monday morning.
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kw607 : Reviewing the Thule Gauntlet 13 inch Macbook pro and iPad attache Case.
Jul 17We got a nice and juicy hardware review for you on one of our favourite topics : Laptop bags. We take a closer look at the 13 inch Macbook pro and iPad attache Case (what a mouthful) from Thule. We take a good and decent look at the appearance, style and finish of Thule’s carry-case for the Macbook pro .. but most importantly we answer the question no-one dares to ask : Is it waterproof ? All of that and more in this weeks Knightwise.com podcast.
Shownotes.
