Tethering Your Android Phone

I love my Evo 4G. One of the most useful features of the phone in my opinion is the ability to tether other device’s to the Evo’s data connection through it’s Wi-Fi card. But Sprint wants to charge you $30.00 a month for this feature. Being a cheapskate I’m going to show you how to save money by getting Wi-Fi tethering working on your phone for free.

Enter androind-wifi-tether a free application that allows you to tether your laptop to the Evo’s data connection. This means anywhere you have data connectivity on your Evo you have Internet access on your laptop. The newest version of android-wifi-tether now supports WPA-PSK2 encryption which fixes my main criticism with the previous versions I’ve seen. Now I feel that android-wifi-tether is ready for the big leagues.

In order to use android-wifi-tether you must root your phone. Enter Unrevoked 3. Unrevked 3 is an application that runs on your computer (be it Windows, Linux, or Mac) and roots you phone. It also flashes a custom recovery partition to it. What’s a custom recovery partition? If you don’t know don’t worry about it, you don’t need to know what it is.

Before you start here is a big warning. Using Unrevoked 3 will almost certainly void the warranty on your phone.

Anyways Unrevoked 3 is going to be pretty straight forward and will tell you exactly what steps you need to take to root your phone. Once that’s done I advise using nandroid (you’ll see it when the phone boots) to backup everything on your phone (another advantage to rooting) to your SD card.

Once you’ve done that navigate your Evo’s browser to the android-wifi-tether download page and grab the latest version that will work with your phone (the phones each version works with is listed next to the download link). Once the file is downloaded install the .apk file and you now have an application called wireless tether. Run that application to turn on Wi-Fi tethering. The options to set the SSID and WPA key are in the menu under the settings section.

Congratulations you now have free Wi-Fi tethering!

Thank God for Air Conditioning

You know I’ve always been a fan of air conditioning. This most likely derives from the fact that I don’t do well in heat and thrive in the -20 degree weather of Minnesota’s winters. I now have another reason to love air conditioning courtesy of the Red Star:

Q What is your theory on how air conditioning has influenced politics?

A In 1960, only about 12 percent of homes were air-conditioned. Then it really took off and made it possible for larger populations to move to hotter regions, the South and the West. The Northeast and the Midwest have increased in population just 27 percent over that time, while the South and West have grown more than four times that much. The economic and political centers of gravity moved along with the population from the North to the Sun Belt, which traditionally is more conservative, bringing more red-state seats to the Electoral College. If we would have had the population distribution in 2000 that we had in 1960, Al Gore would have won the presidency.

That’s right air conditioning may have cost Al Gore the presidency. God I love air conditioning and irony, especially when they’re combined. Speaking of Gore how much do you think he spends to air condition his multi-million dollar mansion?

But I Thought if You Cooperated with a Criminal You’d be Safe

Remember the anti-gunner rhetoric that you’re safer cooperating with a criminal, giving them what they want, and not resisting them? Those of us in the pro-self-defense community bring up the fact that cooperating with a person who has already openly stated they are willing to harm you is a bad idea because you have no guarantee that the criminal will tell the truth.

Here is a story about a man who cooperated with a mugger and it cost him his life:

Dropped off at Penn Station after a weekend trip to New York to visit his sister, 23-year-old Stephen Pitcairn was talking to his mother on his iPhone at about 11 p.m. and walking north in the 2600 block of St. Paul St. when a man and woman demanded money.

Police say he turned over his wallet, then took a knife to the chest.

A resident was in his home ironing when he saw three people who appeared to be fighting, then heard a scream. He ran outside, saw Pitcairn lying on his stomach in the gutter and called 911.

Sadly the knife wound proved to be fatal for Pitcairn. This should show that criminals are not always going to just take what they want and leave. If you’re ever in a self-defense situation you need to have a plan to fight back. That’s why those of us who carry guns, well, carry guns. It’s our plan to fight back and save the lives our our loved ones and our selves. Whether it be pepper spray, a gun, a collapsible baton, or a Tazer, you should have some means of fighting back should a criminal decide to threaten your well-being.

Defcon 18

OK this is going to serve as a heads up to everybody reading this site. I’m heading out to Defcom 18 in Las Vegas. Due to the fact I’m not really willing to touch any network within 50 miles for a hacker conference updates are going to be extremely sporadic if they show up at all. Defcon prides itself on have the most hostile network in the world and I’m staying in the same hotel as the conference is being held in meaning the entire network will be flooded with script kiddies as well as people who know what they’re doing. The bottom line is even cell phone calls aren’t safe (granted my phone is CDMA and therefore not threatened by that event but still I bet somebody has a means of spying on CDMA calls there as well). It should be a ton of fun though and yes this is what I consider a vacation.

Also it’s in Las Vegas meaning I’ll have 4G coverage. I’ll make sure to test the speeds on my Evo 4G and report on my findings. Then I can finally write up a conclusive review of the phone.

Either way I’ll try to get some stuff up on here during my vacation but I’m not promising anything.

Wikileaks Post Afghan War Records

Well it looks like Wikileaks is in the news again. This time they have released 91,000 reports from Afghanistan which they claim to be about lethal actions taking in that region. I’m sure it’s an interesting read and they have posted a downloadable version of the reports. I’d say get them while they’re hot in case they end up going away.

A Trackpad for Your Desktop

Do you have a laptop with a trackpad? Do you wish you could take that trackpad and hook it up to your desktop instead of having a real mouse available? If you answered yes to the second question Apple has you covered now. Oh and I question your sanity.

But I also think this could be kind of useful. On one hand I’m not a huge fan of trackpads but on the other hand I’m a huge fan of the multi-touch features of my MacBook Pro’s trackpad.

Here I’ll Save You Evo 4G Owners Some Money

Let’s say you purchased an Evo 4G and decided you wanted a spare battery because the phone drinks fuel like a Ford F350. If you go to the Sprint store they want roughly $40.00 for it and that’s only if they have it in stock. Yes just finding a spare Evo 4G battery in stock is like pulling teeth. So what do you do? You buy a spare battery for the HTC Touch Pro 2.

The battery in the Evo 4G has the model number RHOD160. It’s the same 1500 mAh battery that HTC used in a few other phones including the Touch Pro 2, CDMA Hero, and the Snap S511. The only difference is the OEM battery included with the Evo 4G has a red case on it instead of a black one. Since the battery cover hides the battery I’m more than willing to live with the fact that my battery is the “wrong” color when I’m saving $29.00. Yes the exact same battery can be had, brand new, for $11.00 plus shipping.

I ordered one and have it running in my Evo 4G right now. And it’s a good thing I did because when I pulled out the OEM battery I noticed it’s swelling which means it’s probably getting ready to go boom. That’s the other lesson today, check the batteries on your electronic devices for bulges and swelling periodically. For lithium-ion batteries that’s an indicator that somebody really bad is likely to happen in the near future.

Leave it to the Geeks

What happens when those fuckwits at the Westboro Baptist “Church” protest a comic convention populated entirely by nerds? Some pretty funny shit! My favorites? The sign that says “Odin is God” and the guy cosplaying as Jesus holding a sign that says “God loves everybody.” This is why I’m proud to be a geek.

A hat tip to Random Nuclear Strikes for this hilarity.

It’s a Good Idea, It’ll Never Pass

Here’s an interesting bill presented to the Senate. I posted previously about how many states are making it illegal to video tape police officers while they’re on duty. Well H. Con. Res. 298 seems to be a desire to establish a law barring federal and state governments from making it illegal for a citizen to record an on-duty police officer:

(3) members of the public have a right to observe, and if they choose, to make video or sound recordings of the police during the discharge of their public duties, as long as they do not physically or otherwise interfere with the officers’ discharge of their duties, or violate any other State or Federal law, intended to protect the safety of police officers, in the process of the recording.

It makes sense and therefore probably doesn’t have a chance in Hell of passing. After all it will go against national security… according to the abusive police.