BrainWyrms

I ran across a posting from the Steam Punk Home about Holly Black’s Hidden Library yesterday. I definitely recommend checking out the photos of Ms. Black’s wonderful secret library. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday:

iRiver H10… on malformed RockBox… might have been wonderful if I hadn’t deleted the vital files from the H10… in an aborted attempt to remove a botched install. Of course, I wasn’t wise enough to have backed up the original files on the H10, so now the whole thing is just a funny looking protable hard drive.

What really bothers me is that no one else seems to have backed them up either. And iRiver doesn’t seem to have the repair thing available anymore.

le sigh.

Today: Read the rest of this entry »

First things first, the Zune is actually screwed together, unlike the iPod (or at least the older generation iPods I’ve ripped apart.)  Do not attempt to simply pry the case apart unless you really don’t intend to put it back together again.

The little piece of black plastic surrounding the docking port pops out to reveal two very tiny philips type screw heads.  Remove them and then pry the case apart, lifting it apart from the butt first. Watch out for the head phone plug - it extends through the shell and will catch on the case if you just pull it apart.

Be aware that the battery is not mounted to anything and will simply fall out. The battery rests at the top of the Zune, just under the hold switch. The flat ribbon cable runs down the body, over the hard drive casing, to a small plug at the bottom of the mainboard. The weight of the battery will crease the ribbon cable and pull the plug out if you are not working on a flat surface and allow the battery to tumble out.

On my Zune, the hold switch is malfunctioning and the audio jack fluxes between mono and out.  If I can find someplace to buy a replacement audio jack, I am going to attempt to replace it. At this point, I have wasted 90 minutes trying to find any 3.5mm stereo 6-pin jack. So far, nothing that looks remotely the same or would fit in the space provided.  I think I am still going to try removing the hold switch… hopefully that won’t do anything worse than the permenant hold that I already have going on.

to be continued…

Yesterday, ctumaven tweet’d me that I had made the WOOT! blog.  It turns out that they had caught my tweet about WOOT! addiction from Tuesday and linked it as a (small) part of their daily blog.  They said, “Aw, come on, one purchase isn’t going to hurt you. And you can quit anytime you want.”

Oh, if only that were the case!  I’ve been looking at the current sale and thinking about it… but then there will be something else cool tomorrow and I will want that one too.  And the shirt.woot is a really cool green on black design and sellout.woot is a good deal for a name brand 22″ LCD Monitor.

Crap.  Back to my dungeun.  WOOT! is too dangerous for the weak.  Like me.

• Subscribed: Totally Rad Show

I’ve been listening, slowly, to each episode of Subscribed, starting from the very first one and I’m really impressed with how far they have come from simply being ballsy to actually having some nice polish. This time, Simon and Luke opened up with an intro that was nearly spot on in mimicking the Totally Rad show. I thought that it was great.

• Dragon Page Cover to Cover 315B: Reading Everything in Sight
• Dragon Page Cover to Cover 316A: Rob Kutner
• Dragon page Cover to Cover 317A: Peter David
• TGTMB 6: Twelve Steps to Mick-n-Rich

My first time listening to Mick on his own podcast and unfortunately, I chose it as my “falling to sleep” podcast. I certainly gave it a fair chance though because I only went to sleep about 4 times today. I did think the child interruptions were cute.

• East Meets West 125

As is typical, most of the conversation was a bit over my head and was simply amazing. These guys are (sub)brilliant and not only retain an awesome amount of information, but they combine and use that knowledge… I’m jealous, quite frankly. One of my favorites, I look forward to EMW every week and wish that it was just a wee bit longer. Like… twice as long.

• Buzz Out Loud 760: 100 Penny Challenge

Ts… erm. I forgot her name. She’s not a ditz! She has my official blessing to visit again sometime.

• Geologic Podcast 72

This is my first time listening to the Geologic Podcast and I don’t quite know what to say. I think I am going to snip the talkie bits out and burn the element songs to a CD for my kid. Very nice.

• This Week in Geek Reviews 04

Fast and painless at only 9 minutes long, I find myself bored with TWiG and may soon de-subscribe. To be fair, I think that I came onto it just after it fell apart.

Today I started doing my comic catch-up reading. I kicked off my pile with Serenity Better Days 1 of 3. I can’t quite comment on the story yet, except that it is shaping up to have the potential for a good tale. What I can say is that the artist, the one with the pencil, is seriously good. I can see Mal and Jayne and well… everyone looks just like they should. I’ve got 2 of 3 lined up to read in the morning, and I’m looking forward to how this is going.

I finally got around to doing my WordPress upgrade AND I got the Akismet plugin going. I was getting really, no really really really really (ad nausem), annoyed with the 60+ drug-bases SPAM comments and trackbacks I’ve been getting on a daily basis.

Why does ‘basis’ look so wrong? Strange looking word, like it’s all mangled up after starting life ‘basic’… maybe merged with ’statis’?

And now, to wrap things up before I head into work, I am watching the new episode of Smallville. Which is nifty keen, but better still is that track that played during the dance scene with Jimmy and Chloe.  I don’t know who or what that was, but I quite enjoyed it and would like to at least hear it again.

I’m looking into the cost of buying a replacement screen for my Creative Zen V.  CASizemore had suggested a link to me a few weeks ago, but I’ve (shockingly) forgotten where that went to.  Right now I am checking out an eBayer with 3 for ~$30.  Maybe next week, especially if I can find a decent walk-through on cracking this case open.  My biggest concern is shattering the case itself.  That’s not something that I know how to go about fixing at all, whereas I am pretty certain I can plug and chug a new screen in.

Molly Wood, co-host of the Buzz Out Load daily tech news podcast (amongst a host of other things), posted on her blog the other day about why her Zune is dead to her now.  She lists five reasons that have caused her feel this way, and I have to say, yeah… she’s dead on.

I think the worst part of this is that the hardware itself is rather nice.  Not quite as nice as a click-y wheel, like the iPods and some of the Sansas, but still a good thing.  And ruining everything is the software, and to a lesser extent, the firmware/UI.

Maybe they’ll release a less than craptastic bit of programming with the 3rd gen Zune hardware.

HaHaHa Ha Ha!  Sorry, I crack myself up sometimes.

Hey, look! It is me… but fancy. [ nodnodnod ]

This is the “original” picture. Notice the spooky eyes? I had just returned from an eye exam and thought that the dilated pupils were too much to pass up on. And I almost always have an ear bud dangling from my head, ‘cuz I’m a wannabe cyberpunk.

1> I’m a jealous bastard?

No really, the problem with the iPhone is very simple.  On the one hand it is an extremely versatile and capable device.  Just listening to the gaming journalists pant over the potential of the iPhone was more than enough.  On the other hand, it is a touch screen device.  No, worse, a touch screen ONLY device.

I work with touch screens.  Screens that are designed for years of constant abuse in a manufacturing environment filled with grease and chemicals… and they are a pain in the behind.  Even the brand new ones are a constant struggle to use.  It gets worse over the course of time, to the point where I am repeatedly jamming my thumb into the depths of the screen in a vain attempt to get some sort of response.  I’m sorry, but there is no bloody way that the iPhone screen is going to stand up to constant use, the kind of nonstop use such a nifty device begs for, and continue to be responsive.

In four years, all of the rich kids and early adopters will be off playing with their PSPhone/ZunePhone/HTC Dreams and the rest of you suckers will have a half way defective Apple product that you love and hate.  It’ll probably even look good still, but forget trying to two finger type.  A good thumb mash followed by another followed by another and before you finish typing in that email address or scrolling through your podcasts, your thumb will start to ache.  Doctors will start talking about how i-tendonitis is the new nintendonitis.

Which really is just too bad.  All that the iPhone/iPod Touch needs to win is a slide out keyboard/keypad.  Not quite as minimalistic as what the PSP has, but a good dozen or two buttons and I could get behind this product.  Instead of getting sick of hearing about the wasted coolness that is.

So, fi on your features.  I want my $400 to last at least 4 years.  It seems a fair standard, especially when compared to my current phone.  The Motorola v551 that cost me $89 four years ago died a few months back, but I’m still using its twin that I got three years ago for $150.  Since I expect the touch screen on the iPhone to start crapping out on everyone else after two years of use, then it becomes an expensive but not ridiculous device at $200.  Except for me.  I played with a brand new one, a floor model only days old, and found it slow, unresponsive, and plagued by parallax.  For that kind of aggravation, I’d pay $50 just for the geeky toyness of it - and never expect real usability.

I had to share this one.  Kotaku is reporting that Emotiv is going to be releasing Epoc for $300 around Christmas time this year.  Who cares?  Anyone who wants to pretend to be an Ilithid.  All cyberpunk junkies.  Iron Man wannabes.  This is totally cool… and really creapy.

It is basically a scary helmet that detects, ”

[T]he electrical current conducted by the brain and transmits the data to an in-board chip that deciphers the information and translates it into data that can be used by the program to control games. “

I remember hearing about this device last year, when it sorta worked some of the time for some of the various people reporting on it.  Now, it has apparently grown up some,

evolv[ing] to be able to detect a range of brain activity [...] using the data to detect facial expression, mood and, to some degree, simple thought.

Hit the link for more information:

Gdc08: PC Psychic Controller Hits This Year