October 2012

Last Man Standing: Mainstream TV and Radio Connected for Special Event Today

I hope you are enjoying my continuing series of posts on Amateur Radio. Occasionally, we get to have fun and come close to touching those who we watch on TV. Well, not exactly but today there was a special event that almost never happens. What on earth am I talking about? Well, today there was a very special Amateur Radio event. From 9am to 1pm Pacific Daylight Time there was a special event station operating under the call sign K6H from the set of Last Man Standing, and I was able to work this station via D-star on their backup reflector 30C….

News

CW Returns to Cablevision Subscribers

I complained bitterly a few weeks ago about my cable company’s fight with Tribune, and how the result was that we, the viewers, were being punished by losing access to the CW network (and, apparently, Fox if you live in Connecticut). However, I was overjoyed to get the following email from Cablevision this morning, even if it was a bit stiff: Thanks for bearing with us while we negotiated with Tribune, the owner of the stations in your area that were recently removed from Optimum. The process took longer than it should have but simply conceding to Tribune’s demands could…

Editorials

Apple’s Announcements Are Amazon’s Gain

Immediately after the iPad Mini was announced, one of my coworkers asked me what I thought. I told her it seemed like a neat device, but the price came in higher than I had expected. She was a bit surprised at the price as well, and she basically said at that level she was more inclined to look at the Kindle Fire. Apparently she wasn’t the only one. According to The Verge, the Kindle Fire had its best sales day ever after the iPad Mini was announced. This doesn’t surprise me too much, as I think the iPad Mini was…

Events, Travel

A Week in Cuba and the Gear I Carried

I spent last week in Havana Cuba touring the city, listening to lectures, and doing some good as we visited with Havana’s Jewish community and shared the medical supplies we’d brought. While there, certain key pieces of tech came in rather handy; I thought I would run down just a few of them. First and foremost, my Canon T3i DSLR and iPad were great for taking and manipulating pictures on the fly. Using the two devices in tandem let me take pictures like this one from Hemingway’s house. And this one from his garden. And this one of his typewriter….

Music Diary, Reviews

Asgeir and Mo – ‘Danza de Andalucia’ CD Review

Asgeir & Mo – Danza de Andalucia I have been fortunate to see many great artists perform live, several of whom have sadly left us since that time. Thirty years ago I attended a concert of the trio John McLaughlin, Al DiMeola and Paco de Lucia performing ‘flamenco fusion’ on acoustic guitars from their ‘Passion, Grace and Fire’ recording. A few years later I was lucky to see a performance featuring jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli, who was part of the legendary ‘Hot Club of France’ recordings with Django Reinhardt. Their music was a sort of ‘gypsy swing fusion’ blending jazz…

Editorials, Game Diary

Two Longest Running TV Shows Dedicated to Video Games to End

Enjoy watching “X-Play” and “Attack of the Show” while you can because the cable channel G4 will cancel them by the end of 2012. “X-Play, which began airing on April 28, 2003, and now airs on Weeknights at 6:30 p.m. EST with new episodes from Monday through Wednesday, and “Attack of the Show,” which began on March 28, 2005, and is now airing live on weeknights at 7 p.m. EST, will only have original episodes until the end of this year.

Gear Bits, Health and Fitness

Beware the ‘HumbleBrag’!

Despite the fact that in February of next year I will mark 24 years since I first ‘went out for a jog’ at almost 23 years old in order to help lose weight, it has been less than 6 months that I can say that I have really been ‘in love’ with running – and even less that I have considered myself ‘a runner’. I recently wrote about achieving a major milestone by completing my first marathon … and it is something I am proud of and want to share. As I have progressed through my training and various road…

Music Diary, News

iRig Keys Now Shipping, Review Coming Soon!

Today IK Multimedia announced that they were shipping the iRig Keys, their first entry into the hardware controller world. Building on their growing base of experience with iOS-based music accessories, IK is positioning as a mobile controller for your tablet or laptop that provides a solid range of functionality while also easily fitting in your backpack – and with the durability to stand up to life in a backpack! Even better, today my iRig Keys arrived for review, and will be working to get my review of the new hardware and iGrand Piano for iPad out as soon as possible. Because…

Reviews

Icom ID-31A D-star Radio Review

I hope you have been enjoying my series on Ham Radio and its various aspects; today’s post is the first review of a ham radio on Gear Diary! Specifically, I will be reviewing the Icom ID-31A, which is the most advanced handheld radio I have yet owned and the most advanced currently available. What this won’t be is a review heavy on technical testing with scopes and measurements across the board; I just don’t have the lab that the ARRL has, and I can’t do the kind of testing of radios that they do. What it will be is an everyday ham radio enthusiast thoughts…

News

NaNoWriMo Is Almost Here … Are You Ready?

Last year I wrote about NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month – and declared that I had joined up and gotten started. By ‘getting started’ I meant having a nugget of an idea and creating empty files on my iPad to work with. And … that was about as far as I got. I fiddled a bit, but never uploaded anything or made any significant progress. Sadly that was how many of my plans went last year. But this year has been very different – I have lost 90 pounds, fallen in love with running, I’ve completed a half- and…

How to Do It Yourself!

Got an Old PowerPC Mac? Resuscitate It with Linux.

Apple has long left the PowerPC based Macs of old behind; however, any G4 or G5 based Mac is still a very capable machine. Most of the G5 Power Macs I have come across are dual-core G5 machines and some of the iMacs are as well. Apple isn’t releasing updates for the last supported version of Mac OS X that will run on PowerPC based Macs. Firefox and Chrome are also both unsupported on PowerPC based Macs, so even if that old Mac still works, continuing to use it as it is means you are vulnerable to all sorts of…

Game Diary, Reviews

Pilot Brothers HD for iPad Review

Type of app: Puzzle Adventure game Platform/where to buy: iPad (iPhone version here); available in the App Store Developer: 1C Wireless / G5 Entertainment Description: A provincial Russian town has been shaken in disbelief: their prized, rare, striped elephant, Baldakhin, disappeared from the zoo in the dead of night. The main suspect is its notorious former owner, Karbofoss. Two well-known detectives, the Pilot Brothers, set up a new investigation, pursuing the rogue through 15 comic-style locations to find the missing elephant. Sensible Brother Chief and his not-so-bright assistant, Brother Colleague, solve tricky puzzles and play their parts with precise timing…

Gear Bits, Music Diary, News

FL Studio for Android Coming in 2013 (Maybe), Developer Posts Update Video

I have been very vocal about what I see as the shortcomings of Android tablets, with one in particular getting my ire: audio latency issues and the lack of a ‘core audio’ solution that makes the entire Android platform totally useless for people trying to make music of any reasonable quality. Sure there are a few apps out there – but they are all base-level crap. Sorry, but at best they are work-arounds that are inelegant, or perhaps work on one or two hardware platforms, but in general I don’t report on specific Android music apps for a very simple…

Gear Bits

According to New Study, Pay Gap Starts As Women Enter the Workplace

How depressing. For years, women have had to deal with getting paid less than men. And quite often the justification was that women were more likely to leave the workplace to have families and potentially not return – so the training and management grooming money would be wasted, and better spent on a man. And while much of that blatantly sexist thinking has been removed from the workplace, the reality of the pay gap remains. This doesn’t make sense, since more and more women are choosing careers first, delaying building families for years, and entering the workplace just as qualified…

News

Epson’s Expression® Photo XP-850 Small-in-One™ Printer Introduced Today

It’s great to have today’s digital cameras, isn’t it? It used to be that we’d take pictures using film, and we’d have to hope that through a magical combination of our equipment’s quality and our picture-taking ability, the results would be worthwhile, because we were going to pay the same price for the good shots as we would for the bad. If you wanted copies of your photos, you had to pay a photo processing company to do them; the price for this could add up quickly! Now we can take all the pictures we want with our phones, digital cameras…

Reviews

Lowepro Passport Sling Camera Bag, a Video Review

Another of Lowepro’s more unusual camera bags is the Passport Sling. The Passport Sling doesn’t look like a camera bag… but it is. Here’s a video look followed by some additional details. From Lowepro: We designed the modern Passport Sling to be a bit unconventional and REALLY useful. It offers freedom for your every move, protection for your camera, plus lots of personal space. Unzip the front to reveal an expansion compartment that gives you about 30% more storage room. Remove the camera box and turn the sling into a full day bag. Both the sling and camera box fold…

News, Vehicles & Gear

Here’s Your Justification for Buying the 2014 Corvette

Have you been trying to justify the purchase of a new Corvette, but just couldn’t make it far past the “because I want one” stage? Here’s an argument that might hold a little bit more weight with your spouse: It will get 26+ miles to the gallon! While you might think that in order to get nearly 30 mpg, sacrifices would have to be made to engine size and performance, that doesn’t appear to be an issue. When the 2014 Chevrolet Corvette arrives late next year, it will be powered by a technologically advanced, race-proven, 6.2L V-8 that will deliver…

Gear Bits

First iPad Mini Commercial Evokes Nostalgia, Keeps It All in the Family

Yesterday Apple announced the iPad Mini, and highlighted the design in a feature video from Jon Ive and showed a short video of the new smartcover design for the Mini. Those are already on Apple’s YouTube channel already. Today via Cult of Mac, we get another commercial that played during the event but hasn’t been released on Apple’s channel yet. The video is very effective for a couple of reasons – first off it evokes an iconic scene from the movie ‘Big’, which itself centers around collaboration, exploration and fun. But it also ties together the ‘iPad family’ as a common…

Editorials, Health and Fitness

Should Doping in Sports Be Considered Cheating?

I like to skim my news RSS feed every morning just to catch up on headlines, world events, etc. Most of the time I blow off CNN’s Opinion columnists, because frankly they tend to be either fluffy rehashes of public opinion or purposeful bear-poking statements. Today’s, though, has me outraged, as the author had the gall and ignorance to argue that performance-enhancing drugs, or PEDs, should be legalized in the wake of the Lance Armstrong doping scandal. Rather than just rant on my feelings regarding doping (spoiler alert: I think it’s cheating), let me go piece by piece through Prof…

Game Diary, Gear Bits

Wreck-It Ralph Promo Videos Cover Video Game History

Got game? Take a walk through video game history with the latest promotional videos for Disney’s upcoming animated feature film Wreck-It Ralph. 1982 Litwak’s Arcade Commercial featuring the Original Fix-It Felix, Jr. Game 1997 Litwak’s Arcade Commercial featuring Sugar Rush Speedway 2012 Litwak’s Arcade Commercial featuring Hero’s Duty You can also check out fully playable browser-based versions of the Hero’s Duty and Sugar Rush games on the new official film site. The Wreck-It Ralph video game will release on October 30, 2012 on Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo 3DS. Ralph will also be a playable character in the upcoming…

News

AhnLab Introduces the V3 Click, the First-to-Market Personal Security Device for PCs

Viruses, trojans and spyware. These are the perennial pests of modern computing and the bane of system administrators and IT personnel everywhere, not to mention the end users themselves! When I first heard about USB flash drives being used to infect PCs a few years back, I wondered: if a USB device can infect a system, can a USB device protect a system? Apparently some engineers at AhnLab wondered the same thing too, because AhnLab has released the industry’s first Personal Security Device for PCs, the V3 Click Home Desktop Edition unit than runs from a PC’s USB port. This…

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