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Incredible AT&T Wireless Snafu
a little ludwig goes a long way: ATT phone obsoleting. For those of you who have been wondering why AT&T GSM coverage is so horrible. Ludwig explains it. Basically, AT&T launched their GSM in the 1900 MHz range, but then built out their older 850 MHz TDMA spectrum, so now they really need phones that…
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Video Cards: March 2004 Recommendations
Last review of these I did in early January, so time for the 2Q04 recommendations. As usual, “Digit-Life”:http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/digest3d/index.html has the very best comprehensive review. Here’s a quick summary. These figures were done with an Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz Not much change here since January, no major new releases. These prices are as of March 9…
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Guide to Cell phones in general: March 2004
Well, Jenn asked me about cell phones. She needs one or maybe two. Given the pricing right now and wireless local number portability, here’s what I told her (this applies mainly to Seattle) and is tuned for “just married” set for once vs. geeks galore: * “Wireless Local Number Portability”:http://wireless.fcc.gov/wlnp/. Given that it costs $30…
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More Mac Blogging Applications
:: w.bloggar FAQ ::. Som e good tips on Mac blogging applications. The one I’ve been using crashes like crazy. Called Ecto. I’m not sure why. Mysterious, “Application Unexpected Quit” which is about as useful as the BSOD on Windows. * Netnewswire:http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/. Is a Mac RSS reader and editing off line as well
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Disk Drive recommendations
Can it be that another quarter has passed. Here again are the recommendations for the best hard drives to buy. It basically is that you should get the WD740GD for system drive, the Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 ATA-100 for your data drive. If you are on a budget, then get the WD2000JB or the WD1200JB if…
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Best CD-Rs, DVD+Rs and other consumables
OK, now that I’ve run out of consumables, here’s a good place to get them. Its actually hard to find an inexpensive place to buy this stuff, but you can try Yesmicro.com as well as thenerds.net. Verbatim has done consistently well in benchmarks for media, but it is a mess trying to decipher the various…
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Guide Books
Well, its the start of the new year and it seems like we are planning travel like crazy. Here are some of the things we sue for planning: * “Seattle”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/17405/ref=br_bx_c_2_2/103-9763570-0061442. Amazon has a nice list of the best selling travel books. Travel is one area where having the book ranking is certainly really useful. BTW,…
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Been listening to…
With all the great new artists out there and the Internet, it sure is easier to find some great new folks to listen to. Lately, I’ve been gravitating towards alternative artists like: * NPR : Vienna Teng, Live at NPR. One of the few folks I learned about reading the “Seattle Times”:http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/artsentertainment/2001871281_nite05.html. A cross between…
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iTunes and Pepsi Promotion
About.com : http://www.macmerc.com/news/archives/1270. Pepsi is doing a big giveaway where if you find the right bottle top, you can get a free iTunes song. Here’s a good post in about.com that explains how to tell if the bottle is the right one: # You find a bottle that has a yellow top. Diet Pepsi, Pepsi…
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Predicting Your Own Weather
NWS Seattle . It is kind of amazing how the Internet lets you do so many things đ Connie pointed out to me that if you wanted to see if it was raining when we go biking, just jump on the National Weather Service Forecast office rain radar and voila. Give it a try!
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Browser reviews…
Well I know most folks use Internet Explorer, but I’ve spent a little bit of time using some alternative (non-traditional browsers). Here’s a quick review, in order of preference: * “Opera”:http://opera.com. Definitely the geeks choice. Features that I love are: a) it has panes, so you can multiple web pages open at the same time…
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How to Change the World
“How to change the World”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195138058/qid=1078375029//ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-4363506-2466406?v=glance&n=507846. I’ve been pretty fatigued on charitable giving. Done the board thing, seen how hard it is to change things and also how hard it is when non-profits become an end unto themselves (that is, where maintaining employment is more important than the cause). Anyway, “SVP”:http://www.svpseattle.org/ sent us this book. Inspiring…
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Athlon 64 Optimizations
Its been hard to find code optimized for the Athlon 64. Here were some threads I found on the topic as folks struggle to do this: * mersenneforum.org – Creative ways to achieve Athlon 64 / Opteron optimization * “AMD64 Optimized”:http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_9485_9488^9563^9598,00.html. The small list of folks doing 64-bit optimizations. Biggest names are probably America’s Army…
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DVDInfo
dvdinfopro.com – Home Page. Great utility for figuring out what DVD you really have and also to figure out what the media code is so you know if the media you have is reliable.
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Cool DVR from Scientific-Atlanta
a little ludwig goes a long way: Super DVRs. Wow, Ludwig finds an article about DVRs that will let you preview three streams and record a bunch of others in the background.
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Offshoring
a little ludwig goes a long way: Tom Peters on Offshoring _Hat tip to John Ludwig on this_ Some great thoughts on offshoring that makde tons of sense. All kinds of ideas, but the biggest one is the service jobs that are going away. The Americans’ unearned wage advantage is going away is probably the…
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Best Linux live boot from a CD review
“Linux boot from CD”:http://desktops.linux.com/desktops/04/02/09/1840218.shtml. Great review of different distributions that boot from a CD and then use either the hard disk or a USB key fob for storage. Interesting that Slackware has done a version that boots in less than a minute. It’s called “Slax”:http://slax.linux-live.org. Interesting BTW, that Knoppix is 600MB loaded with junk, but…
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Magic, Magic, Magic everywhere
“Magic”:http://www.wizards.com/magic/ has become Alex’s favorite game. I have to say, I can see why, it certainly is addicting. The fact there are so many different decks means that the games are really totally different. Pretty different from other games where they get to be more or less the same. Right now he’s a magician with…
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KABOOM goes Dad's ACL
Calvin’s latest stumper while playing hangman. I was totally stumped by the Kaboom word. Grace does a nice imitation of Dad’s groans as he tries to get 120 degrees of flexion.
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Disk Benchmarking
StorageReview.com – Tiki. Now that I’ve got my hard drives lined up, I’m curious how to measure performance. For instance if I go to RAID-0, is it really worth the trouble. The StorageReview.com FAQ at least tells you some benchmarks to avoid. Most are not great, surprising given the impact of disk on performance. Best…
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Blown Power Supplies in Home Networking Hardware
Well, in the last six months, I’ve lost the power supply of all three pieces of network equipment. Not their fault, but a good reminder of where the vulnerabilities are in today’s equipment. Someone at Google told me that their top two failure spots were power supplies and hard drives. The other sad thing is…
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Speaker Interconnects
Well, I finally got my Onkyo TX-DS989 back from the shop. I shorted out the speaker cables and blew the amplifier sky high. Had to go back to the authorized service center. Anyway, to prevent this in the future, I’m using banana plugs for all my speaker cables. They won’t then just short randomly as…
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Computer Spending Analytics
Well, we were looking at the macro figures on computer investment and so forth. The Bureau of Economic Analysis has a completely open website for reviewing this, here are some amazing things we found: * “Computer Expenditures”:www.bea.gov/bea/dn/comp-gdp.XLS . They actually pull on in Excel format, the Excel format no less all kinds of measures of…
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More Sun Tzu quotes
OK, my favorite quote from Sun Tzu and the right summary for a marketing playbook in his “conclusion”:http://www.sonshi.com/sun3.html Generally in warfare: If ten times the enemy’s strength, surround them; if five times, attack them; if double, divide them; if equal, be able to fight them; if fewer, be able to evade them; if weaker, be…
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Resizing NTFS partitions
OK, in two of my installations, I have the system disk on E and the data on C. Kind of inconvenient since the other three are the other way. The disk partitions are also the wrong size, so I need to reinstall on C drive and then shrink the C and enlarge the E. While…
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Mac Spam filters
Well back to work. The ACL tear sure hurt for three weeks and I have to admit I was completely zonked out. Amazing what I spewed on this blog, so I take it all back. Now that I’m back with 1,000 email messages, this whole spam thing has taken on a new urgency. I’ve been…
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Seattle HDTV
The Furrygoat Experience: HDTV Goodness. _Hat tip to John Ludwig_ Here’s the latest listing of HDTV channels in Seattle. I watched the NBA All-star pre-game on ESPN. Wow, was that clear. Also, InHD is not bad as demo stuff. Main issue is that KOMO-4 in particular seems to have an audio sync problem. Funny lags.…
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Home Theater Update
Well, now that the Onkyo is back, time to get the downstairs system working and also to get the outside speakers on line. Here is what I need. Thanks also to Steve for some other choices: * “Outlaw 7100”:http://www.outlawaudio.com/products/7100.html. A very reasonable $800 for a 7 channel 100-watt per channel amplifier. I need six channels…
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New System for the Rec Room
Outlaw 7100. Good review of the 7100. Inexpensive and they liked it.
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Textile 2.0
Brad Choate: MT-Textile does that???. Wow, Brad does it again with very cool with additional commands like automatic link creators to connect to amazon, imdb and google. Nice work!