Techbadger Claw Marks

Upgrading the apple.

Ya; I know, been away too long.

Been down with alergies (I know at 110F what crazy plant in it’s right mind would be pollinating…dunno but something is screwing(literally) with my sinuses)! First year too. Never had allergies before. Ah the joy of getting older.

Guess it beats the alternative.

Was over upgrading a friend’s iMAC G5, poor thing only had a 150gb hard drive and 128mb of memory. Now it has a 500gb hard drive and 2gb of memory. He had over run his hard drive with too much itune music. Now he has plenty of room.

Dunno if any apple users are following me but if you have to do something like this a great cloner on the apple side is SuperDuper, Dave (shirtpocket) makes a terrific program and answers in real time. The software works exactly as advertized and it is very reasonable for $27USD for something that will save you re-installing and configuring apps for days, weeks or months. A terrific bonus is; it add features to TimeMachine including a bootable hard drive backup, SWEET!

Highly Recommended!

Moving into new digs

No, still the same house…but have you ever noticed how some devices are like apartments?

This came to mind when I received my new phone, the decision I have been agnonizing about was made when a good friend gave me is “old” E-71 because he picked up a new iPhone (S), I tried to talk him out of it but he like being part of the “Evil” apple empire.

The E-71 is everything I wanted in a phone, tethering (I know the new S allows it but the iPhone data plan sucks because the “unlimited” isn’t unlimited, go above about 6 gigs and AT&T will own your house next billing). Amazing battery life, great data sync with Outlook and fantastic voice quality. Only thing I miss from my old Motorola V9 is the voice calling was better (Nokia only allows one voice call number per contact entry, they really need to improve this!)

Anyway, I gave my old phone away (goodwill as a ripple in a pond) to someone how had an old Motorola V600 and needed an upgrade.

But this did bring to mind how much a phone or a computer is like moving into a new home. You have to move over your contact, set up your apps (with me email and calendaring). I installed GPS systems, Google apps, maps and make all my Bluetooth devices bond and tether with the new phone.

I told my friend that if he wanted to have his phone back, no problem (no matter how great a device, it shouldn’t ruin a friendship) but he’d have to give me a few days to move out. A bit like moving in an apartment, you need a few days to move out.

Computers are the same way, you rebuild or get a new one…it takes days, heck, weeks to get everything “just right”. They are just like apartments.

Sometimes a lot of knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I am in need of a new phone…

My old (old? 2 years, gees technology is a hard treadmill) Motorola V9 has served me well, it had 3g networking that I use a lot (when you are stuck with a downed network and need a firmware patch, it’s a blessing!), receives text messaging and has decent PC connections.

Problems: A couple of hours of 3g and that phone is dead! It receives messaging fine but try and send one with that dial pad and you will be ready to be committed in a few messages and the total battery life is under a day. Also it can only handle one Blue-tooth connection so I have the choice of my headset, car link or my Nokia internet tablet/GPS (it downloads traffic status from the network). I can choose one and I have to pull over and disconnect my Nokia if I want my hand’s free active.

Nokia has some intriguing phones out…the E71 (fantastic battery life, a bit pricey though), the new N97, could replace my internet tablet and phone and still give me a bluetooth link, VERY PRICEY. Both are claiming weeks of battery life on the Nokia website.

E-71 has great battery life, GPS, small screen though (2.5″) I mean it’s large enough to get the job done but not replace my Nokia N810 internet tablet. The just released N-97 has a big screen, GPS, maybe good batterylife (seeing conflicting reviews) and might mean I don’t have to carry both a Internet tablet and a phone…just will have one, very tempting. My belt is starting to look like a Batman starter kit and it would be nice just to have to grab one device on the way out. To add more to the mix, Nokia is releasing the descendant of my N810, the N900, slightly smaller screen but a processor powerhouse with tons of memory, should be officially announced this month and out in August or so are the rumours. But then again that would mean I would need a phone (Probably the E71) and a tablet so I’ve gained functionality but am still stuck with new devices.

Don’t even mention the new iPhone, can’t be used as a Bluetooth tether, I don’t want to join the great Apple empire and to be honest, I’ve never liked the voice quality of an iPhone (it is a phone right?!) plus their lack of battery life is legendary.

Lots of money involved (when I don’t have much extra) but might be worth the price if I get a great GPS, email and phone companion out of it.

More research and time well tell…

Ah my laptop is back!

Sorry to be gone so long, my laptop was in another state getting maintenanced.

Dust tends to get into everything and though I have the technical skills to tear mine apart and clean it out it would have voided the warranty. Also they were nice enough to replace the CPU fan in the system (started sounding like a jet!).

The two times I recommend warranties are large flat-screen TVs and laptops.

So much is integrated on the motherboard that if anything fails the whole laptop(Or TV) is down.

Gotta say CPU Repair in California did a wonderful job on my laptop, highly recommended!

Speaking of free apps…

Compressed archive files are the groceries of the net.

But like having a pantry full of canned food, you’ll still stave if you don’t have a can opener.

Here are a couple of free openers for archive files:

7-Zip decompresses RARs, CABs. JARs, DEBs and pretty much else under the sun. Comes in multi-OS versions (# 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
# Unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z.)

izarc: Another open source winzip competitor. Handles, RAR, ZIP, and the usual suspects.

Did I mention they were free?

So many sites, so few passwords

If you are finding having too many passwords and problems and too few bucks in your pocket to get ewallet (see earlier post), try KeePass.

It seems to have pretty heavy encryption and the price is free!

I am a music lover…

The reason I didn’t say I was an audiophile is because I have always found those that call themselves audiophiles mostly run around a room with a signal meter asking if I can hear the 6db gain or seem more into the black-magic of what cable is colouring their sound. I have good hearing (At least according to my audio check-ups) and I have never heard an expensive audio cable do anything except colour the sound. I think Monster cable is a huge ripoff and AudioQuest is too expensive for what they do…(though in AQ’s defense I have heard them improve some miss-matched dark sounding gear).

I am more into the music; in times of stress I lose myself in audio reproduction…

Now I am not a format warrior, I am not going to debate whether records beat digital (Flac/WAVs/CDs/SACDs/DVD-As). I just know that digital is easier and consistent. Replacing needles and deteriorating records that worsen every time you play them just doesn’t sound like fun to me. I am a listener, not a tweaker.

Digital is just easier and with the higher bit-rate formats the sound quality is amazing.

My gear is by a Scottish company called Linn, great sound…not cheap but amazing sound. Speaking of which, before anyone asks I use Linn’s how stock audio cables, reasonably priced, and sound great. I spent over 6 hours auditioning cables and I found all others to colour or accent certain frequencies, but none improved the sound and all others were more expensive. On the other hand Linn tuned their speakers with Linn cables, so I guess that isn’t any huge surprise.

This is not to say I do not like MP3, my truck’s radio has a port to take thumbdrives and iPOD which are like my CD changers (a good 8GB stick can give me 1000s of songs). In the truck with road noise and the like, MP3 is just fine. The before mentioned NAS unit is about 50% music library.

But when I play even 192k MP3s on my main audio system, the music is rough to say the least.

That’s where my DAC comes it, DAC stands for Digital/Audio converter. Mine is by a company called Benchmark, it’s their DAC1-HDR

This DAC will take any analog or digital source and convert it to 24bit/192k upsampling. What that means is any digital source is sampled, for example a CD is 16bit 44k sampling, that mean it is recorded with 16bit (That’s the size of the bucket that the data can fill up) and 44k is the number of times it is samples (How many slices of data). Though CD is fine, it still does come out as a bit harsh, with “T” and “S” full of sibilance. A good DAC in your CD player can help with that harshness but still there is some data missing in the music between those sampling rates. That’s really what you’re paying for with more and more expensive CD players. SACD and DAD/DVD-A offer more bits and sampling as part of the format (Either is more that 8X the rate on a CD!). Thus the music is more smooth and lifelike.

This is not to say that CD is dead, it is still the most bought format, can be easily (and legally) ripped, converted and sampled. The real sad thing about CDs is they were mastered terribly for the first half their existance. I don’t buy any CDs with a copywrite before ’92, they sound terrible. That’s why you see so many CDs with “Remastered” on them, it is worth the replacement fee for the better sound.

Also finally after 30 years the CD is being mastered well, if you want to hear how far a CD can be mastered to perfection, check out anything by First Impression Music, Winston Ma, their sound engineer should also be considered the 5th member of any band. If the sound engineer doesn’t do a good job the best band is being held back! Winston has brought CD mastering to its highest art! Another is MA (Dunno why MA keeps coming up as amazing audio) Recordings>

Back to DACs, The Benchmark DAC then takes the sampling of whatever format (let’s say that CD mentioned earlier) and upsamples it, using algorithms it adds more slices and data to make a more complete audio wave, smoothing out the sound. A bit like digital camera do the same to complete a colour gambit on photos.

The DAC1 can even make an iPOD sound world class!

BTW, Computer Audio is a growing area in the audio world, with music servers, high end audio cards and DACs. Computer music files are finally hitting the “high-end” of audio.

A great site to check out is Computer Audiophile(that word again!)…

Installed a new router in an art gallery…

I was thinking about installing a Linksys business class router but ended getting them a WRT54GL.

Why?

It ties into my current Linux pattern.

The WRT54G series of routers use a Linux open-source firmware to run them so even when Linksys drops them in a year (They always do that to their routers), there is still a healthy user community that I can install from to fix security holes and add features.

DD-WRT is my current firmware favourite though I have heard great things about Tomato (Especially speedwise.).

Either is a great way to turn your router into a SPI firewall!

Linux is all around you…

Speaking of Linux in my NAS comment, the new Ubuntu 9.04 is out.

If you’ve ever wanted to try the Lunix waters this is definitely a nice way to take a nice swim. You can either running from a burned ROM or load it on your least powerful machine and it will move like your fastest.

Sure I wouldn’t want to remotely support my parents on the OS but for most who call themselves geeks, run at least one machine on it…just for the experience.

But then Linux is moving into your house whether you like it or not, it is the OS of choice on small devices.

In my case:
My Motorola Razr2 uses it.
My Pioneer Plasma TV uses it.
My Nokia N810 internet tablet uses it.
My Router has long been re-flashed with DD-WRT for years (I will be posting about DD-WRT soon).

The world is joining the rebellion, try it out!

Every home should have a NAS like a fridge

My first hard drive was a 10megabyte full height in my IBM XT…made by Computer Business Machines, full height with a stepper motor, you could have used this thing to pound nails into walls and it would still have pulled a doc!

Ah back when sneakernet was using 360k floppies, 10 megs way unlimited horizons.

Well I built my first NAS back about 2 years ago, all my cubical neighbors where yelling, 5 500gb drives??! What the heck do you need that much room for.

I already knew that there was no such thing as unlimited horizons any more…20 years had taught me that…build as big as possible!

Well I build on a Unit called a Thecus 5200, I built it with a RAID 5 and it gave me about 2TB. Sure it had a web interface that only an EE or CSE could love but wow, it works for me!

..and oh yes I found use for the space, in the interim 2 years, I have converted lots of much (Flac of course!). My trucks radio has a USB port so instead of a CD changer I bought a 12gb thumbdrive.

It also has a Apple iPOD port but I have always had a bad feeling with Apple…

If the computer topology were in the Star Wars universe, I’d say it maps out like so:

Apple is the Empire, everything is set down for you, you will only buy Apple with Apple, everything works pretty much but there is not real choice or freedom.

MS is the alliance, everything works with each other (kinda), anyone and everything is welcome to make a driver and there are a lot of conflicts and in general everytihng is so built up on what went before the whole thing is falling into decadence and decay.

Linux is the rebellion, rag-tag, not trusted by the bureaucracies , mostly supported youngsters and fast, small and light on its feet.

Apple is great, don’t get me wrong, I just find it constricting.

Linux is awesome, especially on applicances (Such as NAS units), systems that aren’t bleeding edge anymore and a lot of TV, and like I said…appliances…because it can be coded small. Still doesn’t mean I would want to technically support my parents on Linux (The horror..the horror).

Where is the winding road going when I was talking about NASs? well the unit I decided to work with is again a Thecus 5200, great unit with a Flash ROM of Devian Linux. It is stable, un-infectable and has been an awesome storage area for 2 years. With Seagate drives I haven’t lost a one!

It is my backup for my laptop (Check out EMC Retrospect, great backup software!)

Now when I have a new CD/DVD, I just load it on my NAS, can access it anywhere on my home network and now have to find that flippin’ disk. To be honest, in this day and age, I don’t buy that many CDs anymore…I buy online, I download an store on my NAS. With STEAM I haven’t been to a game store in years, with my home theater I don’t go to the theater any more, heck with Hulu, Boxee, podcasts and torrents, I have no urge to! NAS changes your home network the same way that broadband changed the internet from a newspaper to a TV you don’t have to just read a paper one flipped to, you can flip through sites like changing channels.

A NAS is the freedom to store, and no having to do a panic data clear.

NAS should be sold with Gigabit networks in homes, apartments and condos, with the same expectation has having electricity, internal plumbing and a fridge!