So last week I encountered an error message that pretty much stated my printer was on fire. I figured it was just another one of those Unix jokes until I did some digging. Apparently back in the day there was a real risk of having your printer ignite into a flaming mess.
Tag: Geek Stuff
I Bet He Didn’t Pre-Order
For those of you waiting for the iPhone 4 (because you don’t know what Android is) but forgot to pre-order this should make you cry. Russian president Medvedev was given an iPhone 4 during his visit to Apple’s campus. It would be hilarious if Medvedev decided to stop by the Apple campus but not the White House.
Happy Birthday Alan Turing
You know who’s birthday it is? Obviously if you read the title. A big happy birthday goes out to the Father of Computer Science.
New Barnes and Nobel Nook
It appears Barnes and Nobel has released a new model of their e-reader. Now joining the current model there is a Wi-Fi only model which comes in at roughly $50.00 less than the current model. Likewise they’ve lowered the price of the original Nook as well which can no be nabbed fro $200.00.
HTTPS Everywhere
I like this idea a lot. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has released a new plug-in for Firefox that attempts to encrypt every web page you visit via HTTPS. This prevents people from being able to sniff your web traffic when you’re browsing sites. Obviously I’m going to install it and give it a spin then let you know how well it works.
Future-Cool Guns
Every Day, No Days Off had a link to a guy who knows how to design awesome future-cool guns. The designer, Pascal Eggert, not only designs awesome looking guns but they look fairly plausible to boot.
They certainly would fit in with half of the stuff I read.
MakerBot at CES 2010
I like to talk about 3D printers and the MakerBot. To that end here is a video of the MakerBot at CES 2010 doing it’s thing:
Man I wish that thing was cheaper.
Evo 4G Fully Rooted
Good news for anybody who owns an Evo 4G phone, it’s been fully rooted. Previously we’ve had rooting abilities but you either couldn’t write to the /system directory or could but had to reboot the phone in recovery mode to do so.
This should lead the way to custom ROMs being produced (a working copy of Froyo on my Evo would be awesome).
Cellular Data Abuse
Most cellular phone companies have an “unlimited” data plan which really consists of “unlimited” data up to 5GB. Well when I purchased the Evo 4G Sprint required I pay another $10.00 a month for their premium data plan. Along with allowing me to use their 4G service which isn’t available in my area it supposedly also lifts the 5GB cap. The put the cap in place to ensure you don’t use what you paid for regulate those users who use “too much” data. I’m one of those people.
Today on my way to work I used a Motorola T505 to connect my phone to my radio. The T505 is a Bluetooth A2DP device that can broadcast the audio playing on your phone to an FM radio channel. I used it today to stream music from Last.fm over my 3G connection on my drive to work.
It worked pretty well I must say and certainly would qualify as a good way to abuse that data plan.
Evo 4G Screen Scratch Test
So I got my new Evo 4G and one question that I’ve been curious about is how durable the screen is. Thankfully somebody was willing to sacrifice for science and performed a scratch test on the screen of his Evo 4g.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeoAl-94bks]
Yes it passes with flying colors. If a razor blade won’t scratch the screen nothing I do to it should cause any trouble either.