efoxley.com | dope

Ran across this earlier in the week last week – thought it was brilliant.

Be sure to add their email address to your contacts, then simply forward every scam email to said box. Delete. Done.

Okay … as soon as my computer was up a few weeks ago … it was down. Fatal System Error.

• Tried Window Repair
• Tried System Restore
• Tried booting from USB
• Tried booting from another hard drive (I have 6 connected to this monster, yo)
• Tried unplugging everything (USB, drives, external, monitors [but one, obviously])

NOTHING.

Freakin’ got fed-up and purchased another SSD (1 tb) and reinstalled. Had a couple of days off, rewired everything on the desk, ensured cord management was tight, everything connected (now have a ‘server closet’ in the new house – where all of the automation hardware/hubs/external storage/printers — CONNECTED!). Also connected a Hue Strip to the back of the monitors – and with the help of DynamicHue, the lights will change colors based on what is on the screen. Sweet!

So – now I just have to transfer all of my old files from back-up and the old SSD and life will be somewhat back to normal.

Well – it’s been a little over a month now for my desktop computer to be alive. With the move, it’s been sitting in a box for some time now – along with a lot of other things. Slowly we are unpacking – tonight the beast was fired up in my new office area of the house.

Looking back at the calendar, I realized tonight that this whole process has been in one state or another since February! Wow. It’s been a long 6 months, folks. Will have more time to reflect as we get closer to the annual holiday update – but for now, we have more boxes to unpack this weekend.

ah … my first email address was toelius@aol.com. The memories …

As a former Mac user (13 years sober) who sees a lot of glowing fruit logos on silver laptops at airports and Starbucks while traveling, I was pretty surprised to see this news regarding Operating System share. It seems OSX is still stuck in the single digits.

I realize that many Mac users boot into and use Windows (which seems really silly to me, but I digress); however, I would expect Apple’s OS share to be greater than shown below:

As a matter of fact, Apple’s OS has actually DECREASED from 1992-94 levels of >10% …

So by using Microsoft’s new face-recognition software site, it tries to determine your age and gender using pictures you upload …

First was music, then Movies. Now it’s Books.

This article illustrates how students are ‘taking advantage’ of the technology to circumvent textbook publisher greed. Technology finds a way, right?

Once 3D printing becomes more prominent, things will really change.

Gavin and I spent the morning building Elyce her new computer … He doesn’t look very thrilled here, because he is beginning to understand that this computer may actually be as fast as his own. He is EXTREMELY competitive (not sure where he gets that from), and wants to have the fastest computer in the house.

Been wanting to do this for a couple of years now – build a computer with Gavin. After the day was through, he seems to understand the different parts that we worked with today: motherboard, RAM, Power Supplies, and Video Cards. Next time we build, I will work with him on selecting parts and watch him put together. Can’t wait for that.

Elyce’s computer specs:
– Intel Core i5-4670 3.4GHz
– ASROCK Z87-EXTREME4 ATX LGA 11 Mboard
– 8 gigs of RAM (Meh …)
– ASUS GTX760 Video Card

One of my favorite sites for the morning coffee … I try to explain to some what it is – this video does the job well.

So Ballmer is leaving Microsoft.

And the stock goes up 7.29% – the crowd goes wild.

Can’t say it is too surprising, really. He’s always seemed to lack that “tech charisma” that a company like Microsoft needs today.

This news is fairly dated (about 4 weeks), but the new Jailbreak is out for iOS devices (iPhones, iPads, etc).

Most family and friends are familiar with the fact that I despise Apple (ironically, I was an Apple ‘fanboy’ for almost 10 years and was in pretty deep prior to my ‘digital awakening’ in 2003); however, there is no doubt that the iPad rules the tablet market and will for some time. I speak as a user of both Android and iOS and can tell you that it will be some time before the Andriod environment is suitable for tablets. But mark my words, Android will overcome iOS with tablets. It is just a matter of time. It is a lot like the PC market in the late 80s/early 90s … Apple opened the door to the industry for every-day users, but Windows eventually overtook the market. Apple’s walled-garden mentality just isn’t sustainable – and, like PCs and most recently phones, won’t be for tablets.

I have 2 Android tablets (which I have since given to the kids) and still hold on tightly to my iPad 2. The only reason, though, that I considered owning an iPad and still maintain ownership is the possibility of Jailbreaking. I have introduced a few peers to this world, and it’s interesting to see them discover it. How easy it is (it takes just minutes), how much it opens your experience, and how much more productive you can be with your device now that it is free from Apple’s confines.

Jailbreaking sounds a lot more ‘dangerous’ than it is. It is simply an opening of the Operating System – which allows you to customize and tweak your tablet to do things that Apple doesn’t want you to do. Why does Apple not want me to be able to use a flash drive or have USB connectivity with my iPad? Why doesn’t Apple want for me to be able to network with my home PCs? Why doesn’t Apple want me to be able to see various system folders and files? It all comes down to them wanting to control the user experience. I understand this for most users – it’s what made Apple appealing to me as a first time computer user; however, I changed and want to do more and explore under the hood with my technology. Jailbreaking allows you immense freedoms.

Try it out here.

Click here to download Adobe Photoshop (CS2 – but pretty recent) for free – straight from Adobe!

You’re welcome.

Interesting article on the NY Times site (a few weeks old – sorry. Been sitting in my inbox for a little bit whilst I tried to find time for this post) about pirating online.

I find it humorous that the video mentioned (below) uses the ‘cat tv’ format to throw off copyright-police-engines. Now you know why, in case you’ve maybe run across one of these silly videos.

My whole analogy of pirating (instead of whack-a-mole, as mentioned in the article) is a water balloon: you squeeze one end, and the water will move to another part of the balloon. Changing the elasticity of the balloon (laws) or the hand (enforcement) won’t work. It’s content distribution (the water) that some genius, somewhere, is going to figure out.

I remember a couple of years ago when Digg did their huge redesign … long-time users (myself definitely included) where pissed. The change made the site from the solid aggregator into a social-media wanna-be. Soon, those who disliked the direction Kevin Rose took changed horses to Reddit.

Today we learned their slow death has been finalized with the payment of peanuts vs the $200 million they were offered by Google (and turned down) in 2008.

Good Riddance, Digg.

So Gavin is pretty head-long into Steam, which is a gaming app/community. He can download games, I can gift him games (when he does chores, he gets points from me. Points translate to new games), I can track his usage, etc. Oh … and there is a messaging feature built in, too. Even cooler, I even have the Steam App on my tablet – which I used yesterday while he was playing …

I was pretty excited that my kindergarten son is now messaging with me … pretty cool.

˙ǝɹǝɥ ʇı op uɐɔ noʎ puɐ ‘ʎןǝʇɐן sǝʇıs snoıɹɐʌ uo sıɥʇ buıǝǝs uǝǝq ǝʌɐɥ ı

So now Google is boldly proclaiming that they are supporting Flash in this move, which directly sticks it to the HTML5 standard Jobs is trying to push on iOS products.

Ouch!