Category: Technology
Posted by John Witt in Etcetera, Technology Monday, 26 July 2010 21:13 No Comments
I just recently purchased the Padster for my iPad, it is replacing a bag I just bought from Booq. The Padster is bag specifically designed for an iPad. Let me start by saying I utterly love my Booq bags, I own three of them for my 17″ Macbook Pro. The problem I had with my Booq Taipan Shadow XS is that it is way too small in every aspect. The compartment that holds the iPad is too restrictive, you can only really use it with a naked iPad (no case). We all know how slippery a naked iPad is, your just asking to drop it. With the iPad in, there is little space for anything else. It is a really tight bag with a shoulder strap that is way to short. It is so short you can only put the strap on your shoulder, you can forget about slinging it over your neck. I already have my RMA and it is going back to Booq.
Now back to the Padster bag. It is a very beautiful and spacious bag. The detail to the construction is top notch. It has a beautiful soft leather flap that covers the main opening to the bag which can be left open or zippered shut. There is a neoprene pocket that holds the ipad and there is ample room to put in an iPad with it’s case as I am currently doing.
There is ample room for me to put in my headphones, point & shoot camera, magazines, etc… You won’t go wrong with this bag, it is very stylish and the shoulder strap is really long and adjustable. I am 6′ 10″ and I have no issue with slinging this over my neck. I will only wear bags in this fashion as I usually carry around expensive gadgets and would hate to have it slip off my shoulder and fall to the ground or someone snatch it as they are running past me.
To get more information about this bag or to purchase one, go visit the fine folks at Padster: http://www.padster.net
Posted by John Witt in Featured, Technology, Tutorials Wednesday, 2 September 2009 20:34 3 Comments
I decided to add a second hard drive to my 17” Unibody MacBook Pro. To do this I purchased an OptiBay adapter from MCE Technologies. This adapter replaces the built DVD drive in the MacBook Pro. I rarely use it so it is no big loss to remove it. In doing so I gain another 500GB of storage bringing my total storage to 1TB. MCE Technologies also sells an enclosure which allows the DVD drive you removed to be used as external USB drive. I happened to purchase the OptiBay while they were giving away this enclosure for free with purchase. The installation was pretty straight forward and simple. I mistakenly removed a connector from the system-board which I didn’t have too. It made my heart race a little since it was a delicate connector and I was having difficulty reconnecting it. That particular connector is what connects to the display so I was worried i just hosed the laptop, luckily I didn’t. My only gripe was that it uses two less screws to connect to the chassis then the original DVD drive did. They user the cover to help hold everything together and keep things from moving. Also one less screw could be used to affix the Bluetooth antenna to the OptiBay adapter instead of the two that was originally used to attach to the DVD drive. The attached video is of me installing the OptiBay.
Posted by John Witt in Technology, Tutorials Wednesday, 15 July 2009 00:01 No Comments
I am in the process of creating an updated video tutorial on installing Monowall (m0n0wall) firewall on an ALIX embedded system. While I am at it, I will also doing the same for the pfSense firewall installed on the same platform. There will also be written guides to go along with these video tutorials. These forthcoming guides will come in segments ranging from copying the firewall to a CF card that will be inserted into the system board to more advanced topics such as configuring IPSEC tunnels. You should see the first of these tutorials released on July 15th.
Enjoy the tutorials and should you have any recommendations or things you would like to see included in these tutorials just leave a comment.
UPDATE: I ran into a personal matter which had delayed the production of the first segment. I should have it completed and posted within the next couple of days. Sorry about the unexpected delay.
Posted by John Witt in Technology, Tutorials Friday, 10 April 2009 01:40 No Comments
I just finished putting together a quick video tutorial on how to create ringtones using GarageBand on a Mac. This is my second tutorial I have done so far. The first tutorial was on building an embedded firewall. I hope to put together various tutorials over the coming months at the pace of once a week if I can find the spare time. Well below is a link to the video, enjoy. I would welcome any input on the video as it will help me going forward. Thanks
Posted by John Witt in Technology Saturday, 21 June 2008 23:56 No Comments
When I switched over to Macs I made mention of purchasing a Drobo as a NAS for my home office. Fast forward 2.5 months and my purchase of a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+. I did a lot of research on the Drobo and found it very lacking for my needs. The Drobo was primarily deigned as an redundant external storage device connected via USB. They later designed an attachment that sat underneath the device to allow it to be shared on the network, they called that device the DroboShare. The DroboShare is very simplistic it allows various protocols across the network to talk to the Drobo. The major draw back to this device is it’s lack of security.You can password protect your DroboShare with one password and that is it. There are no different levels of security or users, just one password and thats it. This makes this device useless for several users on a network. For personal use I guess it gets the job done.
I also snooped around their forums and found a lot of people where having issues with data throughput of large files to the device. People were also discussing major wait times for the device to wake up from sleep to write or read files from it. I decided to read through some of the more recent threads before I wrote this post for reference and found that they have locked their forums to owners only. Which I find kind of odd for a manufacturer to do. I could only see this being done to protect them from would be buyers being frightened from purchasing due to reading negative posts on their forums. I am sure that someone at Drobo will rebuff that statement saying it is for the benefit of their end users. How it benefits their users I don’t know, but that’s what the spin doctors are for.