Category: Geekdom

March 23, 2011

Why not just use the box your motherboard came in?

In the quest to cut down on shipping waste Taiwan’s Asus has a novel idea: What if the shipping container became the PC case?
That’s the idea behind a box the company will begin using from June to ship one of its Mini ATX motherboards. It holds the motherboard snug for shipping and is constructed so additional components required to make a PC can be added.
(…)
Asus said the box is intended to allow PC enthusiasts to get their new computers up and running quickly while they search for the perfect case.

If you dig through the Ghetto Mod thread on [H}ardForum, using boxes as a permanent case isn’t that uncommon.

March 10, 2011

Guitarist interprets Pi to 31 decimal places. Because he can.

March 10, 2011

Try using Naked Password, a jQuery plugin to encourage use of stronger passwords with 8-bit nudity.

March 10, 2011

Tinted Sheen is a Firefox/Chrome extension to block Charlie Sheen references if you happen to accidentally come across them. Install it after watching this video as it’s quite hilarious.

Related: Shaved Bieber.

February 22, 2011

Do you really need to ask? The answer is “no.”

February 19, 2011

My phone, the Samsung Epic, will finally have an official Froyo update in a couple days. The source is already available so hopefully ROMs out there will start using this as their base. I’ve been rocking Froyo for a while, but it’ll be nice to have an official version out there.

February 1, 2011

I’m looking more into virtualizing a bit more to consolidate some old but still (unfortunately) necessary servers here at the office (still need the hardware to do it, but that’s another issue). They’re older Windows 2000 servers that won’t run well on Windows 2003 (I’ve tried). I’m leaning towards a Xen platform, possibly running on top of CentOS with Virtual Machine Manager installed. I’m more familiar with RedHat/RPM-based distros, but I’m just at the preliminary research stages so all that may change. Many of the solutions out there require XP/2003 or higher (like the stupid-simple Disk2vhd), but I’m going to have to look into some manual methods to get things moved as I really don’t want to rebuild the OS inside Xen. Thoughts/input is always welcome, since I know there are guys here that know far more about this type of thing than I.
You thought BendBroadband’s 100GB data cap was bad? Try living in Canada and getting only 25GB. Because of the much lower cap, folks are much more inclined to block ads. Here are some ideas on how to block the ads on DD-WRT routers (another option — I’m sure something similar is possible on Tomato or TomatoUSB firmware as well). You can do it on a per-computer basis by using the MVP Hosts file.
Is it me, or have people spent far too much time adding content to this Wikipedia entry? I wish that much effort was put into other articles on that site.
Egypt is having a real democratic revolution, while the one in Iraq was fake.
Is Netflix trying to embarrass certain ISPs? My streaming works great on my WDTV Live Plus so BBB must not be on that list. Wish Hulu would get onto my WDTV box and I’d rarely have to ever turn on my HTPC.
Best okcupid profile ever.
Some jobs I could do no problem. This isn’t one of them.
Google is accusing Bing of copying their search results.
The hilarious Axe Cop comic (written by a five-year-old, illustrated by his 29-year-old brother) really needs to be turned into a movie.
Some stuff people are printing in my room over the internet. While live printing has been shutdown, there is some interesting stuff in the gallery.
Another good list of Android apps and games.

January 31, 2011

This might help. And holy cow, I didn’t know they had that many APIs and dev resources. I’d completely forgotten they had bought some of those companies.

January 26, 2011

Why 3D movies don’t work and never will. Period.
Poor Bullet Bill (if you’re a classic Nintendo geek, you’ll love Brawl in the Family).
Speaking of Nintendo, here’s something I might have to try with our Wii: Install a Wii Game Loader for Easy Backups and Fast Load Times.
If you need to do a basic layout for any type of room, this online tool is pretty nifty.
Man, I feel old: Oregon Trail is turning 40 this year.
Oldie, but interesting: Nine ways to obfuscate e-mail addresses compared.
Behind the scenes on the Back To The Future set.
Truly Decentralized BitTorrent Downloading has Finally Arrived.
The man who started Big Picture is moving on to a new gig that will allow him to focus on it full time (he was also a web developer at Boston.com).
Need some symbols or icons? The Noun Project has a great collection of free, public domain, icons, available in vector format.
BoingBoing has updated their stats dump. Hopefully Andy Baio will update his fun stats page.
How to Print Gmail on your Android or iPhone using Cloud Print.
Handy little guide to make your own 5-in-1 Network Admin cable.
Cryptic JavaScript at its finest.
Some more Android links, for my reference:
- wp clock is a pretty slick looking live wallpaper.
- Speaking of Live Wallpaper, this Super Mario wallpaper is pretty sweet.
- How to factory reset your Epic (I used this when I was trying — unsucessfully — to get Nebula ROM installed).
- Here’s an interesting read on how changing the Epic file system from RFS to EXT4 will speed things up (I tried this and it didn’t work right for me, but I didn’t really have time to dig into it).
- Now that I have Froyo installed on my phone, I was able to free up a bunch of phone memory by moving apps onto the SD card.
- Now that I have Froyo, I can now have a TI-83 in my pocket.
- If you’re looking for directions on installing your own custom ROM for your Epic, this might help.
- If you need to do a clean install and restore, Titanium Backup will help a bunch.
- If you need a way to track down a lost or stolen phone before it happens and the Prey Project isn’t enough for you, Theft Aware looks pretty dang powerful.
- Things you can’t do with your iPhone: Customize it a zillion different ways.

January 25, 2011

It’s a USB plug that will plug in and work whether it’s upside down or not. I can’t even count how many times I’ve had to blindly plug a USB device in and get the orientation of the plug wrong. I’d say at least 75% of the time I have it upside down because I can’t usually see the plug I’m plugging into very well. This needs to become a reality sooner rather than later.

Category: Geekdom

Need A Case For Computer?

A Musical Interpretation of Pi

Developers: Need Your Users To Use Stronger Passwords?

Sick of Charlie Sheen?

Is MSIE 9 A Modern Browser?

About Dang Time — Epic 4G Finally Gets Froyo

Reading Material

Losing Track of Google’s APIs and Developer Products?

Reading Material

Brilliant Idea That Needs To Become A Reality