Don’t worry, it sounds redundant even when I read it.  My point though is this: asking someone what you can do with something almost always ends up as a list of what you can and can NOT do, while asking yourself what you want to do with something is just that or at least it is with me.  The “can” is a list of capabilities or lack of.  The “lack of” capabilities part really only exists due to the merging of someone’s “wants” with the list of capabilities.  The “want” can be just your desires, it need not be merged with any other list of requirements unless you want a pet lion but don’t want the possibility of it ever eating you.

Let’s say you’re looking to buy a car, you ask yourself or a salesman: “What can this car do/What can I do with this car?”  After skimming through a list of it’s capabilities you start to have questions that begin with “Can I/it…” or “Does it…” to which some answers will probably be “no”.  On the other hand, knowing that you want some thing that can transport you and your extended family on land and water while offering sleeping areas and a bathroom would lead you toward buying a RV or a “Duck” and modifying it OR taking the Star Trek route and just building a transporter while negating all the traveling related amenities you wanted in the first place.  I guess the more I explain it the more frivolous the point seems but it boils down to the importance of knowing what you want instead of knowing what you can’t have, can’t do, or can’t accomplish.

With that in-mind, a couple months ago I began to look into complimenting my mobile arsenal with a tablet device. Read more

I remember the days when I steered very clear from Apple products.  Everything I needed in a computing devices came with PCs and Windows, and still do.  After winning a iPhone 2G from a White Elephant gift exchange my work organized a couple years ago, I’ve slowly discovered the allure of iDevices.  Having just recently finally upgraded to an iPhone 3GS I find it’s versatility outweighs it’s drawbacks almost every day.  From all my music in the car with my Jabra Cruiser to games to extremely useful Apple-approved and jailbreak apps plus a quick and responsive phone for SMS, MMS, e-mail, and phone calls, this pocket-sized device connects me to almost everything and everyone.  Now it gets better with VideoStream

Read more

Being an avid believer in “where there is a will, there is a way”, I’ve finally discovered a solution to a moderate annoyance I’ve had with an otherwise fantastic device – the Jabra Cruiser.  I picked up one from Amazon for about $40 a couple weeks ago and it’s a vast improvement over any FM transmitter (roadtrip/itrip) I’ve used so far.  It turns out the issue isn’t actually with the Cruiser itself but with the iPhone’s half-assed support for the AVRCP bluetooth protocol.
Read more

Although the more I use Ubuntu, I still like my windows setups despite the occasional annoyances.  One that I battled most recently, enough to actually search for a cure, is the “Are you sure you want to move [insert system or read only file name here]“.  For a quick copy this isn’t such a hassle.  Trying to move a terabyte of stuff is a whole other story completely.  Moving large files to multiple drives at different times, becomes frustrating after setting up the move, then walking away for a few hours only to find it hasn’t gotten past more than a few files before asking this question about a system or read only file.  Windows has it’s perks and it’s faults, just as every operating system does, but after more than 10 years of multi-gigabyte drives accessible to consumers who use your operating system you’d think they’d have an option of sorts somewhere that allowed us to ignore this message for good. Read more

Good thing I’ve been under the impression that encouraging patience in my own personality will eventually prevent me from going completely ape-shit.  I’ve been having a hell of a time with iOS4 and my iPhone 3G.  The folders feature was really the only thing that got me hot and bothered about iOS4 especially since a lot of the more helpful features weren’t even supported on the 3G.  Unfortunately that came at the cost of overall speed.  It took at least 10 seconds, every single time, to open up just the SMS app and I experienced that same blazing fast performance for every app.  Some apps wouldn’t even open at times or they would just hang all together and just trying to answer most phone calls made me want to skip the phone across pavement instead of having a phone at all. Read more

Well I’ve tried yet another platform merging solution just today and it’s got some great advantages but only if you’ve got a decent internet connection between you and a Windows machine running somewhere.

I love using Ubuntu and being able to add whatever software I want to it on a whim without illegally downloading software or worrying about viruses BUT… every once in a while I either need to test or use a Windows only program where one of my other virtualization modes won’t cut it. Read more

I found this while searching around for seamless remote desktop solutions for Ubuntu to Windows XP.  I’ve just lived with the Windows XP one concurrent user limit for years, it never occurred to me to search for a solution to free myself from such a limitation.  It’s not likely that most users or even power users would find a need for this but when you want to run more than one windows application on a native windows environment while using Linux and you only have a Windows XP/Vista/7 box at your disposal then this patch comes in handy!

Terminal Server Patch at sala source.

The iPhone keyboard hasn’t been the most difficult keyboard I’ve tried to use but any mobile keyboard generally isn’t built for speed. In a jam, I could find using a full sized keyboard useful if the battery in the netbook is dead and I need to get an important email out or even if I just want to write out extensive SMS messages. At a mere $5 I had to check out how well this jailbreak bluetooth keyboard app worked and now I’m writing this blog post from my phone on my bluetooth keyboard. It works well and I can use it in all the apps I’ve tested so far. No lag and best of all, I have more screen real-estate because the onscreen keyboard doesn’t need to be up while I’m using a physical one! The author of this app also created the mono headset bluetooth app I briefly wrote about recently.

I’ve never liked those silly bluetooth headsets people leave in their ears all the time.  To be honest, it just looks a little lame, even when you are using it but especially when you aren’t.  Despite that opinion, I actually have one but haven’t used it in over 2 years which is right around when I got my first iPhone.  Well apparently, a few months ago, a jailbreak app was released that lets you route all audio through the bluetooth connection.  Now I can listen to a horrible quality version of all my music should I misplace my headphones!

Well… The past few months have been moderately frustrating as far as my device world goes. Despite that frustration I’m mildly fascinated by what seems like random occurrences all occurring at about the same time. From my main machine to my iPhone, within the past couple months I’ve had to either reinstall or rebuild them from the ground up.

Read more