Category: Geek Stuff

Categories
Geek Stuff

My Last PC

I was hoping that this post would be about how much I love my new laptop. Both my old tower and laptop were both over 5 years old and I decided that portable hard drives now come in sizes large enough that I could consolidate to one machine.

The problem is that after dealing with so many viruses, spyware, malware, adware, corrupted registries, I’ve moved everyone else in the family to Macs. There were two things that made me think staying with a PC was the right thing to do:

  1. I use one for work and this way I could use one docking station in the office
  2. I’m already loaded on PC software so that factored into the price of everything

There are two things that have made me realize that this was a mistake:

  1. Migration – Moving from one Mac to another entails connecting them with a cable and coming back an hour later. Migrating from one PC to another has taken all of my personal time this week and will still take another 5 hours or so.
  2. Backups – The state of PC backups are a disgrace to the technology industry as a whole. Time Machine is the Mona Lisa, PC backups are a stick dipped in crap.

The migration thing doesn’t bother me too much, I know people who don’t go the transfer route because they want to reinstall apps for better performance so the only real pain point here for me was iTunes. I had to do a lot of hocus pocus to keep my playlists – transferring my library to an external drive then reimporting it on the new machine.

Backup is what kills me. I had used Ghost for years until I had a couple of machines where I would take an image, upgrade to a larger hard drive and the image wouldn’t run on the new drive. I tried Western Digital, they have some thing where they change the file system making it slow to browse for files. One day I plugged in a drive and something was wrong with the index for the file system. The 200 GB of data was on the drive, it just couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it and said the backup set was empty. From there I went to Acronis which worked very well but I tried to install it on a WinXP machine this week and the installer wouldn’t run. I’m not too interested in trusting my data to a company that can’t get the installer to work. It could well be a Windows issue, Firewall, Anti-Virus, the guy Tony down the street, hell if I know, it’s not like I get an error message or anything.

For the XP machine I had a previous version of Acronis on CD so I could at least take an image. The question was what to do with my new Win 7 machine. There’s both the Win 7 backup utility and the Lenovo Rescue and Recovery utility. I went with R&R because it prompted me and I had forgotten that there was backup in Win 7.

It spent about 10 minutes writing help files to a hidden partition. I already have one image on a extra partition, why do I need a second one? Why would one partition be hidden and the other one not? Why bother giving an estimated time left for the help files and then have it say 0 minutes remaining for 2 hours as it writes files to my USB drive? Seeing as Adobe CS5 help files load in less than 10 minutes why does a restore program need 10 minutes? Why didn’t it ask me which drive I wanted? How am I going to know which directories are the backup and which are the folders I already on the drive? Can I have more than one backup drive? Why do I feel like this backup plan is about as safe as a parachute covered in gravy thrown in a basement full of rats for 3 months? Why do I bother asking these questions when I know that the answers don’t matter, if I had a Mac I’d click on Time Machine and be done?

The worst part is that it’s all about time. I could have spent time writing, talking to my family, doing some productive work. My fear of the pain of switching platforms boomeranged right back at me, I should have been more worried about the pain of staying on the same one.

Categories
Fanboy

Flight vs. Invisibility

Recently This American Life replaced an episode from the archives where John Hodgman (flickr Photo from kodamakitty) did a segment asking “What superpower would you choose?” (available here via Amazon affiliate link).

The rules are simple, you have the choice between invisibility or flight. He uses the question to great success as an icebreaker, and talks about the process that most people go through while answering the question. If you do not listen to This American Life I heartily recommend it, it’s very high quality and family friendly.

And most importantly, which would you choose?

Categories
Geek Stuff Podcasting

Audiophile Update

Longtime readers know of my love for music and audio, and regardless of the quality of my marketing thoughts here the linkbait of my headphone review trumps everything else at this site.

The original review was in 2007 and is posted here covering Shure, Sony and Bose. I also get a lot of traffic on how to get better sound out of your iPod if you are willing to cough up another $50.

So what’s new? I also mentioned the Nike earphones that I use for running, they died a couple of weeks ago at the Falmouth Road Race. After at least 3 years of sweating and pouring water over my head in hot weather I can say they are a superior product and served me well at the price.

I have replaced them with the Sennheiser PMX80 running earphones, which I had considered when I bought the Nike set. They are also great but it comes down to sound quality vs. comfort and isolation. The Sennheisers sound much better but they are a tiny bit heavier and they fight much tighter in my ear, this results in a much better sound, but I’m not able to hear what is going on around me as well. It comes down to much better music, or hearing what’s going on around you with out as much in your ear. For now, I’m liking the music, we’ll see how the hold up.

Shure Update – I got an email notice that Shure is refreshing the line of products. The big thing I noticed is that the cables are now removable. After a couple of years of heavy use the cord on mine broke because of the way they twist over my ear (and it should be mentioned that they repaired them for free). These are still getting heavy use and sounding great, although I haven’t tried anything new lately.

In other gear updates I got a Sony NEX-5 and will be posting some pics on Flickr soon.

Categories
Geek Stuff

A Sad Day

There is some good news first, this is the first time I have posted to the blog from iPad. I’m using the keyboard with the stand and it works very well (yes, the hardware keyboard supports the dvorak layout for any fellow typing geeks).

My only thought is that it might be better to use the bluetooth keyboard and a stand so that I can see the monitor in landscape view, the portrait view is not the best for the Gmail interface, or wordpress for that matter. Scrolling up and down works well, side to side causes problems with readability.

So… back to the sad day thing… A little more than a year ago I mentioned that I was using a PSP to watch movies while traveling, and that I had checked out a comic book application that wasn’t too bad. I could see the writing on the wall that eventually this would become a problem for the local comic shop, much the way the small local bookstore has been taking a beating for the past 5 years or more.

Fanboys like me know that Wednesday is Comic day, that’s when the new publications hit the stores. I’ve followed the stories of adventure for more than 25 years, but last Wednesday was the first time that a comic I was going to buy in the store was also available via the Comixology Application for iPad. Instead of driving to the local shop to buy it, I just clicked and had it instantly. Comic shops are like antique stores, fishing stores and hardware stores, just fun to walk around and see what’s interesting. I wish I could say that comic shops will stick around, but I think they have a lot more in common with newspapers than boutiques. Hopefully I’m wrong…

Addendum: Seth Godin wrote today in a similar vein about the quest to save the paper.

Categories
Podcasting

The Last M Show

Back in January of 2005, I started podcasting. Since I was playing with a new technology, I didn’t give much thought to what the show should be about, so I just copied Don Imus and did my own talk radio show.

It had a pretty good run, at it’s peak around 2007 it was getting around 16,000 downloads a month. Over the 5 years I just hit a half million downloads. Just over 3 years ago I started doing Marketing Over Coffee with Christopher Penn, and that show has a real niche, instead of me playing Morning Zoo guy. MOC is getting over 20,000 a month now, and it will hit a half million in the next two to three months.

For The Last M Show, I invited a bunch of folks who were in town for the MarketingProfs event out to dinner at Morton’s at the Seaport. It was a great night, and it was fun to do one final show. It’s always been kind of a show for insiders, if you’ve never listened before but want to check it out, listen to Show 100, that explains everything.

If that doesn’t dissuade you, take a listen:

[audio:http://media.libsyn.com/media/themshow/TheMShow206.mp3]
Categories
Gaming Geek Stuff

All About the Gear

I’ve decided to get an iPad, a few people in the office have them and I’m impressed with both the screen and the Kindle App. I bought a Sony PSP so I could watch movies while traveling without booting up my laptop, it had a bigger screen than the iPod touch and could also run Skype.

The iPad screen is even better, and the fact that I can leave behind my Kindle, PSP and iPod when I travel makes it a good upgrade. To fund my gear addiction I’ve got the PSP lot up on eBay and I’ve also decided to unload my spare Logitech Presenter. I was looking into getting a new Microsoft Trackball, I’ve found it Logitech Presenterto be much better than a mouse, and learned that they have stopped making them. As a result, new ones are going for up to $400 on Amazon.

I remembered hearing that Logitech stopped making the presenter I use (a wireless controller to advance slides while you are presenting), so I checked the pricing on that. Same deal, it’s up over $200 (I bought my spare at a Circuit City that was going under for $35).

This presenter is considered the gold standard by many, it has a timer that vibrates when you get to 5 minutes and 1 minute remaining, it has a laser pointer, and it’s smaller than the new model. Apparently the new one also has the “blackout screen” button too close to the advance slide buttons.

Those are the latest tales from the gear bag, anything interesting on your side?

Categories
Daily Life Podcasting

Headphone Update – Getting Better Sound Out of the iPod

Long-time readers of this blog are well aware of my addiction to audio equipment (and in fact, my post talking about Bose vs. Shure vs. Sony still gets a ton of traffic).

For some reason it’s always the product marketing guys that get me into new audio equipment. This time Bruce was showing me his iPod set up. For less than $30 you can get a converter that plugs into your iPod port that will give you something closer to a true Line Out. Hardcore audio people that use big expensive headphones are often disappointed at their portable player’s ability to really drive the headphones. By using a line out there are two benefits – being able to use a better quality amplifier than the one in the iPod (a “cleaner” sound, usually more bass that is tight, clearer highs and you can go louder overall), and some believe that bypassing the internal amplifier reduces some noise and gives you better battery life. I cannot attest to those, but I can say that while testing Bruce’s rig the sound is better.

So, for less than $50 you get the line out dock (or LOD as they call it on the audiophile boards), and a portable amp that  is only slightly larger than the iPod Nano that had the round control on the front. It should be noted that headphone.com makes a killer portable amp which can be a huge upgrade if you are running a PC laptop, but it is a lot larger than the FiiO and takes 4 batteries. I went for the cheaper, more portable amp.

I’ll post some pictures when the full geek gear shows up.

I also picked up some bluetooth headphones and a BT adapter so I can use it on any audio device, but the weather has been great so I probably won’t get around to those until the bad weather comes back and I’m in the gym.

Categories
Podcasting

5 Podcasts that I never miss – 2010 Edition

In spite of the fact that Podcasting is dead, there are some interesting things to listen to out there. When the craze began I was stuck in my car at least 3 hours a day so I listened to all kinds of stuff. Now that I have been forced to pare down my list, these are the top 5 that make the cut.

I could have used iTunes links for these, but nobody every goes to podcast websites (trust me, I know this for a fact) so I thought they could use some link love.

This American Life – Amazing production, and stories covering all kinds of stuff. Your politics may conflict with NPR but it can’t be argued that NPR does quality audio, second only to the BBC that produces…

The Big Show with Steve Wright – These guys have fun on the radio and land the interviews with the biggest names. The closest thing you’ll find to Johnny Carson. I love Ask Elvis, but I always skip Barry from Watford.

This Week in Tech (TWiT)– It’s continued to grow in size, it seems like it’s always 90 minutes, but it’s still a great place to get your tech news. Maybe not as hardcore tech as it used to be, but the place to stop for a once a week fix.

Spark – Greg tipped me off to this programme from the CBC. If This American Life and TWiT had a baby, it would be Spark.

Groove Radio – R&B is a personal preference of mine, and pirate radio always seems to take more pride in the mix. Another indicator of the problem in the music industry – I buy more tracks from listening to the Groove than any other channel.

Of course it wouldn’t be linkbait if I didn’t make a plug for Marketing Over Coffee.

Feel free to add your own favorites – choose wisely, just as in Sparta, you will be judged by your words.

Categories
Geek Stuff

Ghetto Steadicam

On a late friday night I look to this blog’s draft bin for inspiration.

My Marketing Over Coffee host Christopher Penn recently plugged this article on making a $7 camera stabilizer. It reminded me of an article I had read in MAKE Magazine, one of the coolest mags out there if you are a DIY Nerd.

If you’d like to go deluxe for $14, check out this MAKE Magazine article on how to make your own camera stabilizer. This gets you closer to a Steadicam and a price you can not be afraid to tell your spouse about.

Categories
Daily Life Geek Stuff

Genius is Genius

I had resisted installing the Genius function in iTunes since it had first come out. The idea of sending all my metadata over to Cupertino seemed to be a lot more for their benefit than mine (a mountain of business intelligence – like the fact that I buy most of my mp3s from Amazon now).

Last week a co-worker had it installed and I saw the 9 lists it generates from within iTunes and thought I should test it out. In short – it’s a killer app. More powerful than the lists generated in the client, is the added functionality on the iPod. You pick any song while it’s in the list, hold down the center button and fire up the genius. It then generates a playlist based on that track.

Unlike anything that I’ve seen like this before, it does an excellent job of digging deep in the archives and matching similar stuff. It creates a groove as good as the average DJ can, plus it has the added bonus of total recall – it remembers the details from every track on every album. Many times the Genius pulled tracks from albums that I hadn’t heard – usually ones that had one huge hit, but Genius will find other great tracks you may have overlooked.

Now that you have your mix, go upgrade your headphones.