Gadgets

Punctuation isn’t part of the word, Kindle

I do most of my eBook reading using the Kindle app on my iPad. It’s very simple and works well except for one obnoxious bug. When you highlight a word or passage, the app automatically looks it up. Unfortunately, the highlighting assumes that any string of characters without a space is a word. You can see above that it has selected ‘Time?”‘ as the final word. The most frustrating bit is that it won’t let you adjust the selection to trim off those extra characters, you can only remove whole ‘words’. If you could trim off the last two characters, it would have easily found In Search of Lost Time. I assume this feature is intended mostly for dictionary lookups; imagine how frustrating it is to be unable to look up a word because it comes at the end of a sentence. Unconscionable!

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Gadgets

iPad 3 back up doesn’t work: solved

Since getting my iPad 3 at launch, it has never backed itself up. It always displayed “Unknown” and the “Back Up” option was missing from the right-click menu. Today I finally found a forum post with the solution. I’m reposting it here in hopes that more people find it:

o At first, close iTunes.
o Then, open Terminal and type the following commands in:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool false

defaults write com.apple.iTunes AutomaticDeviceBackupsDisabled -bool false

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Gadgets

Android VNC Server

UPDATE: Check out Android Notifier which sends phone events to Growl

Yesterday I was firmly entrenched in my couch when I heard my phone chime. It was on the table and I wondered what was available to view my phone’s display remotely so I could read and send text messages.

I found a few references to the RFBserver in Android 1.0. You could attach to the VNC server remotely by forwarding the tcp port over the Android Debug Bridge. This would work but I was hoping for something less involved. I’d need to setup ADB over wireless to make it useful too. Continue reading

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Gadgets

Panasonic FZ1

pano5

I bought my first digital camera in 2003. It’s a Panasonic DMC-FZ1 and you can find a picture and review of it here. I bought it for a couple reasons: it’s 2.1 megapixels which looks acceptable if you’re printing 4x6s. It had options to shoot either 2 or 4fps at full resolution. 12x stabilized optical zoom and f1.8 meant it was very flexible. I went to the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb shortly after purchasing the camera. The zoom was very useful as we could see ~11 turns and 700 feet of elevation change. I used the multiple frame mode to shoot cars going through turns and then assembled them with panorama software.

Continue reading

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Gadgets

The continuing saga…

…of “Trying to get my smoke alarms to stop chirping”. (I’m not in a hurry since they seem to wake me up bright and early)

Eliot Phillips: did I tell you the grocery store had no 9V batteries?
Ryan Budke: what? you didn’t go to like a 7-11 and consider that the grocery store did you
Eliot Phillips: no
Eliot Phillips: Albertson’s
Ryan Budke: that’s crazy
Eliot Phillips: it was like a contest to see how many different ways you could package AA
Eliot Phillips: that was on Sat. I think
Eliot Phillips: and last night I had a dream…
Eliot Phillips: that I needed a whole shitload of AAs

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Gadgets, Games, Hacks

Playstation Portable Launch

Playstation PortableWell, the Sony PSP launched last Thursday. It seems that sales are not as high as expected. There are also rumors of large numbers of dead pixels. The PSP does look like a great device though. It can play games and videos, has wifi support, and a widescreen lcd. It also allows Sony to upgrade the device remotely to add functionality (or break someone’s hack). Hacks have already been developed: Wipeout Pure has a web browser that will access a Sony site in the future. By setting up a proxy on a local computer you can serve any page you want to the PSP. This means you can’t go surfing from wifi hotspots yet, but Sony will probably add an official browser in the future. They pushed the PSP out the door hoping to sell as many as they can before they announce at E3 that the Playstation 3 will be released this fall. Another hack lets you download video files to your PSP almost automatically. Someone has also managed to use old memory sticks in the smaller Duo memory stick slot. Which leads me to why I won’t be buying one. Sony insisted on using not one, but two nearly-proprietary storage formfactors in their device. Using UMD for games doesn’t bother me too much since I would be playing PSP games in the PSP only, although the standard CD format of Playstation games probably made backwards compatibility a no-brainer when making the Playstation 2. There is a nice touch in the fact that PSP games don’t have a region code so you will be able to play Japan only games on your US PSP. Sony’s use of memory stick duo for storage is idiotic. I don’t know why Sony attempts to force brand loyalty by using flash memory that very few others support. They had an excuse; when the memory stick format was first introduced the digital camera market was still developing, but now they’ve introduced the duo instead of going with the obvious choice, SD. There is one reason I might pick up a PSP… Ape Escape!

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Fashion, Gadgets, Innovation

RobotSkirts inspiration

siggraph 2004 fashion

So, here’s the reason I created this blog. The SIGGRAPH 2004 fashion show… what a pile of crap. This, my friends, is not going to get future technology here any faster, let alone get it adopted. I want to promote the good trends in the world of fashion and technology. You know, not “strapping gadgets to people wearing fetish gear” and calling it a revolution. (Oh yeah, check out her watch, that’s where the technology angle comes into the picture) I’m sure the goth/poseur industry will be fine without our help, they are apparently laser cutting vinyl so they can’t be doing too poorly.

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