When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut in the worst way. I had astronaut ice cream, an astronaut Barbie, and to this day I still say Epcot is the coolest amusement park in the world because of “Spaceship Earth”. I eventually outgrew my desire to fly far away from this planet, but I still love all things space-y.
The color pink, technically called Magenta, is in theory a blend of Red and Violet. That is wonderful for mixing paints … but in terms of the electromagnetic spectrum it makes no sense. Why is that? Because colors are based on a continuum, that means that in order for a color to exist it needs to follow some progression of wavelength shortening from red to violet. Color is visible to us based on the wavelength of light, and aside from the so-called ‘primary colors’ ROYGBIV’ (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet), all other colors are merely combinations of…
You don’t tug on Superman’s cape You don’t spit into the wind You don’t pull off the mask of the old Lone Ranger … And you don’t do an announcement on the day Apple holds a major press event. Any person who is interested in technology in any way – even if they HATE Apple and would never buy their products – was glued to find out details. My family all knew it was happening, it was on our local news and in the local paper as well as being a major hallway conversation topic. There is a saying that…
It is amazing what a skilled DJ can do in terms of remixing two songs and coming out with something that is truly transformative. That is what happens when DJ Carlos Serrano mixed Daft Punk’s “Something About Us” with Adele’s “Set Fire to the Rain.” Check it out below, and hit up his web page for more great tracks!
The Android Market has been around for a while now, but Google has begun using it for more than just Android apps; they have added Music, Movies and Books over the last year. So, in an effort to unify things a bit and get a less ambiguous name that describes the service, Google is re-branding the Android Market as Google Play. The website is active now, and the Android Market app on your devices will be replaced with the Google Play Store app. You can also expect to see updates today for the Books, Music and Movies applications. For more, check out…
A couple of weeks ago during the long and arduous Daytona 500, Brad Keselowski who races in the Sprint Cup racing series for Penske racing caused quite a stir while the cars were parked on the track during a red flag. He tweeted from the track. What did he tweet? Pictures from his vantage point on the track of the aftermath of fellow driver Juan Pablo Montoya’s collision with the jet fuel powered track dryer.
I was a teenager during the Clinton administration, so I didn’t pay a great deal of attention to the news, but I do remember hearing about the President’s habit of running a few times a week. From what I understood, it wasn’t uncommon for Presidents to run to stay in shape and deal with stress, but it never occurred to me what a Secret Service issue it was! According to former Agent Dan Emmett, they had a hard time finding agents who could protect the President while he was out running: Clinton jogged about three days a week, for no…
We have covered several Kickstarter projects here at Gear Diary ranging from the Kammock Roo to ASL Tunes for the deaf to new 3D Glasses. Kickstarter is a website that is used as “a new way to find and follow creativity.” Basically, an artist, writer, inventor etc… can fund new projects through the help of anyone who feels inclined to donate to the cause. Most projects do offer packages donors will receive according to the amount they pledge. The capital must be promised before time runs out or the project will not be funded. This is actually a project for…
Kev was splitting wood today, when he stopped to bring me something he’d found. To back up for a moment, if you have a wood-burning stove then you may have noticed how certain woods — in this case, mesquite — can have these weird “tunnels” bored through them. I had never given what caused them a second thought … until today.
Last Friday as I was working at my desk I got a message over Microsoft Lync asking me to join in a conference call. That happens on occasion, but when I opened Lync to reply, I realized I didn’t know a single person mentioned. My name isn’t exactly unique particularly with the way our company assigns email addresses, so I replied simply with my name, organization and the project I am on … and within a few seconds he said ‘oops wrong person’. This morning I loved seeing Dan’s PSA on how to avoid being an online idiot, so I…
Open Source software and operating systems have positive and negative attributes, but one major positive is the ability to completely customize the solution to meet your needs. And according to an article at SC Magazine, that is EXACTLY what the NSA is doing. Before this solution, NSA employees: would previously need to “speak in code” if using a commercial mobile device to discuss classified information. The initial plan was to cobble together a string of off-the-shelf solutions to come up with a total secure package … and not surprisingly that was a disaster. But switching to using Android as an…
The 64GB 3G iPad runs $830 new. That’s certainly not inexpensive but, at least in my humble opinion, it is worth every penny. But what if you didn’t want your iPad to look like every other iPad and you had money to burn? Judie found the answer in the airport yesterday as she arrived in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress.
Like many techies, I have been using my iPad for almost 2 years, and if you ask me ‘what do you use it for?’ … I would reply ‘just about everything’. And as of today that is getting enhanced as Adobe is bringing Photoshop Touch to the iPad 2! From their press release: Adobe Photoshop Touch offers core Photoshop features, as well as new capabilities for creating and sharing in an app custom-built for tablets. The app is a central component of Adobe Touch Apps, a family of six intuitive touch screen applications, inspired by Adobe Creative Suite software. iPad…
In his post-Oscar show, Jimmy Kimmel bemoans how at the Oscars most of the movies only represent one genre at a time, so if you want more you need to watch a bunch of movies. He then goes on to say how he has realized his dreams of creating the most epic motion picture ever … and introduces us to ‘Movie: The Movie’. Take a look!
Had you heard that George Harrison had an iPad app launching this week? I have been anticipating it for a while, knowing that aside from music there would be loads of context and history about his guitars and what he used for which song and so on. Cool info for a music geek, in other words. But today when it launched, the $10 price made me pause for a bit before buying. Recently we have seen apps from Jimi Hendrix and Sting, both of which were free, as well as Rock and Jazz histories which are ~$5 each. The Sting…
… or, at least that is how it seems. Paris Hilton had a amazingly dreadful album a few years ago that made people realize that no amount of money can buy you talent, and apparently it also can’t buy good enough taste in producers or songwriters to put together something reasonable. Welcome to 2012 and the new release from Paris Hilton just a couple weeks after the one year anniversary of Rebecca Black’s Friday. And while many call that song the worst ever … this one makes Friday look like genius. The song is bad enough, but the video is…
Across the last two companies I have worked for the past 20 years, I have taken about 10 email etiquette courses and refreshers. There are loads of rules about whether or not to send, who to include, what to say and how to say it, and when to just step away from the computer and make human contact. Now we have a flow chart that will help any home or business user make that decision. And not surprisingly for anyone who has taken one of these corporate email classes … in most cases the answer is ‘NO’! Here is the…
This week on Facebook there are loads of those ‘what I do, what friends think I do, what my parents think I do …’ picture collages going around. Some are funny, some simply try too hard. There are always a bunch of comments which I can summarize to save you time: “haha … so true”. (you’re welcome) I caught this one on a guitar-centric site this week, and what was amazing was not so much the image, which is just another mildly amusing stereotype at play, but the discussion. If you look at the core of the image, there are…
I was checking out these JayBird Bluetooth stereo headphones on the company website and figured I would watch the promotional videos. The headphones look good too!
My father-in-law Mark is a contractor (yup, he is a Jewish carpenter) and he lives by the maxim “Measure Twice, Cut Once”. After all, once you cut a board there is no going back so it makes sense to double-check the before you saw. It is good advice when cutting wood, but it also applies if you have a subscription to Hulu+ or Netflix. Here’s why …
Digital textbooks are a bit like alchemy. Everyone wants to find the magic formula, but the experiments just come out as useless lumps, rather than shiny bits of gold. Even iBooks 2 has many skeptics, despite Apple’s deep pockets and impressive publishing contacts. But the best illustration of how tangled and inefficient the eTextbook market is can be seen in the fight between Cengage (a publisher) and Kno (one of the 49,000 services trying to cash in on digital learning).