Geekery

Large number craziness

by mace on March 15, 2012 · 0 comments

I love math and numbers. I am also intrigued by how little humans understand large numbers. Most people probably don’t know what comes after Trillion, and really, that’s so large that nobody really needs a number much larger than that. I knew my number system up to decillion. I had to turn to Wikipedia to see what was next. Growing up as a kid without Wikipedia I thought a googolplex was the largest number. I knew a googol was a 1 followed by 100 zeros. I didn’t really know what a googolplex was. Now that I got Wikipedia I know we have numbers way bigger than googol and even bigger than a googolplex. There is such a thing as a googolplexplex. And actually, the googol named numbers are just special named numbers. A googol is really 10 duotrigintillion. A duotrigintillion is 10⁹⁹, so 10 of them would be 10¹⁰⁰, or a googol.

A googol is so large that there are less atoms in the observable universe. The estimated number of atoms in the observable universe is 10⁸² (or 10 sesvigintillion if you care), much less that a googol. Now onto a googolplex. A googolplex is 10^googol. It has more zeros than there are atoms in the universe making it impossible to even write out long hand, and yeah, a googolplexplex is even larger.

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Backing up with rsync and Automator

by mace on January 17, 2012 · 0 comments

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The beginning of this year I re-thought my backup strategy. I’m crazy about my backups, maybe a little too much. This year I’ve actually cut back on some of my backups. Last year I got a CrashPlan family plan to back up my two main computers. It works great. I love CrashPlan. Now thanks to iTunes Match, I was able to downgrade my CrashPlan to a single computer plan.

I’ve been slowly upgrading all my music to 256 kbps, from the crappy 128 kbps that I originally ripped all my music to back when hard drive space was more limiting. It’s been great to get them upgraded without having to re-rip the 1400 cds I own. That’s another reason why I make sure to have good backups. I dread having to re-rip my cds. iTunes Match serves as a great backup too. The $25 for iTunes Match is actually saving me money. Downgrading my CrashPlan account saves me $84 a year, adding the iTunes Match fee and I save $59 a year. Plus I don’t have to upload most of the new music I buy. It is just matched, and I have a backup.

So what about my other files on my iMac that need backed up? Well, I wrote an Automator script that uses rsync to backup my documents folder over to my Windows machine, which is then backed up to CrashPlan. Everything is also backed up to my NAS. Yeah, I’m anal, but I have a great system and will never lose a file. Here is the simple shell script that I used:

rsync -aE –delete ~/ Documents/ /Volumes/Users/mace/Documents/iMacBackup/ Documents/

I made an app with Automator that runs that script and just just put it on my desktop. I could have gotten more fancy and scheduled it to run with iCal, but I’m happy enough just clicking on the app once a day. Automator is so powerful, yet underused.

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iPad 2 dropped in lava in the name of marketing

by mace on December 12, 2011 · 0 comments

in Cool,Geekery

via news.cnet.com

I usually hate when people destroy products for marketing. I guess what I liked most about this video is the up close shots at the lava. I was there in Hawaii two years ago running around in the harden lava. It was amazing to see. I wasn’t lucky enough to find any lava flowing over land though. Probably because I obeyed the hazard signs.

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What music service is for me?

by mace on November 19, 2011 · 0 comments

in Geekery,Personal

It’s an exciting time for music online. They’re more ways to buy and consume music than ever. I’ve tried many of them, but I’m still on the fence with which one I’m going to use. For some people subscription services are perfect, but they’re not really for me. I paid for Spotify for a month, and it’s really cool, but sometimes I don’t know what I want to listen to, and I like to just browse my collection. It’s not as easy to do with Spotify, and many times when I knew what I wanted to listen to, it wasn’t on Spotify. If you’re more of a casual music fan, and listened to mostly popular stuff, Spotify might be for you. It’s not really for me.

The two services I’m really excited about are iTunes Match, and Google Music. I’ve been on Google Music since the first day the beta launched. It took me four months to get all my music up there with my slow ass Internet, but now that it’s up there it’s pretty cool. Like most Google products when they launch, It’s ugly looking and could use some improvement. I love the new music section in the Android Market. It will make it so easy for bands to put out their music themselves. Screw the record labels. On the Android Market they will make 70% profit. The one downside about Google Music is it’s not as good on iOS. There is a third party app that I have been using for a while to listen to my music, but it’s buggy and not perfect.

Monday when iTunes Match launched I started getting my music up into the iCloud. It’s still grinding away. I’m not sure what it’s really doing. After the first match it only matched 3000 songs, leaving me 13,000 to upload. Since then it’s timed out, and reset a bunch of time. Maybe it matched more, I don’t really know. It’s just grinding away, and will be done someday. I don’t blame iTunes though, I only get 500 Kbps up from my cable company. So far with what’s been uploaded, I really like the Apple solution. It’s nice to be able to delete all my music from my phone, yet I still have access to all of it. Their “streaming” isn’t really streaming; songs download as they play. That can be good and bad. It’s nice because you have instant, and offline access to the songs you listen to the most. The bad part is that it could start to fill your phone up, but you can easily delete songs on the iPhone now too.

For the different music services it will probably come down to whatever phone you have. Google Music will probably work best on Androids, and iCloud on iPhones. That’s not too surprising, but I’m going to keep my music in both camps. Once Google products become more mature, they are usually my products of choice. I use Google for my calendar, mail, and contact syncing. I don’t really care for any of the other iCloud products. It’s really exciting times. I’m glad I can finally have access to all my music in my pocket. It’s like we are living in the future. Where’s my flying car?

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iOS 5 upgrade

by mace on October 12, 2011 · 0 comments

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I love software upgrades. No matter what it is, I always have to have the latest and greatest. It’s like a free present. Many upgrades I have had regrets doing, but I still always get them as soon as possible.

Today was a big day for upgrades. iOS 5 came out. I upgraded my phone already, and am working on getting my iPad upgraded. I like the new features so far. Lifehacker has a great article about all of the new features.

Now it’s time to play!

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So long, and thanks for all the Gadgets Steve 

by mace on October 6, 2011 · 0 comments

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Yesterday is a day I will remember forever. Like many people, I heard of Steve Jobs death on an Apple device. I was shocked, but not surprised when the news alert popped up on my iPhone. I went straight to Twitter. The Tweets were non-stop all night, and everybody had great things to say about Jobs. We knew he was in bad shape to have to step down from CEO of Apple, but I don’t think anybody expected him to go so soon.

I always have mixed feelings when everybody praises celebrities when they die. On one had, thousands of other great people that nobody knows about died yesterday too, but Steve Jobs was more than just a celebrity. He was our generations Thomas Edison. He may have just created gadgets, but his gadgets changed the world.

I don’t really consider my self an Apple fanboy, but I am surround by Apple products. I am typing this up on my iMac, with my MacBook and iPad next to me, my iPhone in my pocket, and several iPods in my drawer. I don’t buy Apple products to be part of some cult, but because they are great products. Even if you have never owned an Apple products though, your products are still influenced by Apple. Who knows what Windows would be like today without being influenced by Apple. What would smart phones be like without the iPhone? Are there any other MP3 players than the iPod? Chances are we wouldn’t have tablets. Microsoft tried to make tablets, but failed. I’ve had an iPad since day 3, and couldn’t imagine not having one.

One thing that isn’t being mentioned much, and is something we all should learn from Steve Jobs is his use of “alternative medicine” early on in his diagnosis. Steve had a rare form of pancreatic cancer that is actually quite treatable if caught soon enough, which he had. He chose to treat it with a special diet, and other alternative therapies prescribed by a naturopath. Once it was learned that that wasn’t working, he started using conventional medicines, but by then his chanced of beating it were slim to none. Would he have beat it if he used conventional medicine right away? We will never know, but his chances would have been better. Alternative medicine kills folks. If alternative medicine worked, it would be called medicine. Steve Jobs taught us all to “think different”, but when it comes to medicine, you don’t want different, you want the stuff that works.

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Organic food myths

RIP

by mace on October 5, 2011 · 0 comments

in Geekery

Sent from my iPhone

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My online backups

by mace on September 29, 2011 · 2 comments

in Geekery,Personal

In January I made a New Year’s resolution to get my computers backed up online. I’ve always been good about backups, but they were always kept local except for my pictures, which I burn to DVD and take a copy to work. There are many different online backup options these days, from Carbonite, Mozy, DropBox, and CrashPlan.

I chose CrashPlan for four reasons. They have unlimited storage, I can backup multiple computers, they are affordable, and I can use their software to backup to multiple locations. That last reason is probably my favorite. All I need is the CrashPlan software running, and it will keep my systems backed up to both my NAS, and the CrashPlan servers. No need to run other backup software for my multiple backups.

I started my backups in January and they were finally finished this week. It took nine months of continuously backing up to get everything up there, but now they are there, so it’s only incremental backups from here on. They also just recently released an iPhone app too. So now I have access to all my files from my phone too. It’s pretty sweet. I’m sure I will find many uses for it.

I’m pretty anal about my backups, and for that reason I have never lost a file. I’ve had a few hard drives die, and it’s never been much of a problem because of my backups. I hate it when I hear my family and friends losing stuff because they don’t have proper backups. Storage is so cheap these days. There is no reason you shouldn’t have multiple backups of all your important files.

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Do cable companies always suck?

by mace on September 2, 2011 · 0 comments

in Geekery,Personal

Does anybody ever like their cable company? You can tell how many people around hear love our cable company by the number of dishes that popped up once local channels became available. I was one of those that dropped cable as soon at I could get my local channels on DirecTV. I just got sick of them dropping channels and raising prices, plus there were a handful of channels I wanted that our cable company didn’t have.

I still had to keep them for my internet though. I think the $55 for 5Mb down and 500Kb up is a pretty ridiculous price. In other parts of the country those speeds would probably be a $30 package.

Our cable company is now advertising a 50Mb plan, which would be sweet, but it has too many restrictions. It’s pretty much unusable for me. In fact I don’t know who it’s aimed for. It has a ridiculously low 50GB cap. Any power user would blow through that cap, and any non-power user would probably be fine with their slower 5Mb plan. Here is what my router says my bandwidth usage has been the past few months:

So I would reach the cap in about six days. That reminds me of the olden days back when I was on AOL and had a 20 hour a month limit that I went over easily in the first week and then paid an arm and a leg for internet the rest of the month.

But that’s not the only thing. Not only would I have to cut back on my podcast downloads, and Netflix watching, I would also have to get, or at least pay for cable TV, or phone service in order to get the faster speed internet. And of course they hide what the actual price even is. All they show is the introductory price, which looks good, but would still cost me $75 because I would have to pay for a service I wouldn’t use.

So it looks like I will be stuck with slowish internet for some time. It’s not like it’s terribly slow, it’s more of the slow upload speeds that are killing me. I would be happy to pay $75 for uncapped, or maybe even capped if it was reasonable, 50Mb speeds if they would ever offer such a thing. Maybe I’m just dreaming though.

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My take on Google Plus usernames

by mace on July 26, 2011 · 1 comment

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So there is a big houpla going on over Google Plus user names. Google seems to be suspending accounts of people that don’t use their real name. Well, I don’t use my real name. I’m a nobody, so I doubt I will be suspended. I feel more comfortable online using a pseudonym, and have been using it for years. I want to be able to say whatever I want online, and not have to worry about employees, friends, or family finding it online. I want to be able to say I am going on vacation without worrying about somebody finding where I live and robbing me. I just feel better using a pseudonym online.

What is Google going to do if celebrities start joining Google Plus? Are they going to expect Lady Gaga fans to look for Stefani Germanotta? Charlie Sheen fans will have to look for Carlos Estévez? And the countless others that go by different names. How does anybody at Google even know a person didn’t use their real name if their aren’t popular? And what about Kevin Rose? He is forwarding his blog to his Google Plus account, but his real name is Robert Rose.

All this nonsense of making people use their real names is just stupid, and unenforceable. It’s still the early days of Google Plus though. Google is full of smart people, so I’m sure there will get this figured out soon.

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I won a Roku 2!!!1!

by mace on July 26, 2011 · 0 comments

in Geekery,Personal

Like most people, I feel like I never win anything. Well, this morning I was surprised when I checked my email to discover that I won a Roku 2 from Todd over at GeekNewsCentral.com. I’ve been listening to his podcast almost since day one. I have entered many of his contests, and many I didn’t enter because I never seem to win anything anyways. On a whim I enter this one. I thought what the hell, I would give it a shot. I could use a Roku for our upstairs TV.

I have the original Roku and love it. I have been thinking about getting one for the upstairs TV for quite some time now. I now will have one for each TV just in time for me to cancel my DVDs from Netflix since I never seem to watch them anyway.

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My take on Lion

by mace on July 21, 2011 · 0 comments

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I always have to have the latest and greatest in software. Some people hate change, but I love it. So of course I upgraded to OS X Lion yesterday. It was a pretty simple and easy upgrade. It took about 45 minutes, and Lion was up and running with all my settings intact. For the most part it works great. Nothing too revolutionary though. I’m not even sure how much I am going to be using any of the new features.

The Launchpad it interesting. It’s like an iPad look of your apps. I think it would be great on a touch screen, but don’t see the point of it on a desktop. It’s much quicker to use Spotlight, or my favorite Google Search Box to launch an app.

Mission Control is pretty looking and makes it easier to set up your multiple desktops. I like it, but I’m not a fan of the new layout of the multiple desktops. I preferred them in a grid rather than a in a line, but I can get use to it.

I don’t really understand the Full Screen Mode that most apps have now. I guess I see if you want to work distraction free, but it just blanks out my second monitor when I go to full screen. It kind of defeats the point in having two monitors.

Then there is the backward scrolling. I don’t know anybody that didn’t turn that off. Again that makes sense on a tablet or touchscreen, but not a desktop. It should have been off by default.

I also wasn’t a big fan of the new layout in Mail, but that can be quickly changed in the preferences. No big deal.

As for the new mouse gestures? I hate the Magic Mouse, so I won’t be using any of them. My Logitech mouse just feels so much nicer in my hand. Apple makes some great hardware, but for some reason they can’t make a mouse that fits comfortably in your hand.

I did have one problem with Lion. It would not connect to my NAS. A quick Google search and I found a workaround, and got it working. A few terminal commanded, a couple reboots, and I connected to my NAS.

Overall I like the look. It’s not drastically different from Snow Leopard, and they have added some cheesy animations, but overall, probably worth the $30 upgrade despite all my complaints.

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My take on Spotify

by mace on July 16, 2011 · 0 comments

in Geekery,Music

I’ve been playing around with Spotify for the last couple days, and it seems pretty good for what it is. For some people I see how it can be totally cool. You can listen to almost any song you want whenever you want. It’s great for the casual music fan that doesn’t care whether they own their music or not. With the free version you are stuck to listening on a computer, which for people that work it an office, might be all they need. Currently you need an invitation to get the free version, so I’m not sure if it’s temporary, but it is ad supported. For $5 a month you can get rid of the ads, but really, if you are going to pay for it you should pay $10 a month and get the mobile features.

I don’t think Spotify is really for me though. I like to own and collect my music. I have well over 1300 cds, and I want to be able to listen to them in the future. I have my entire music library on a 160 GB iPod Classic, so I can already listen to almost anything I want whenever I want. That being said, just because I pay for Spotify doesn’t mean I have to stop buying music. It might be tougher to buy music when I know I can listen to it for free, but I will to keep my music library growing.

I think I am going to pay for it for at least a few months to get the full experience, and see how well the streaming works. Often times what I want to listen to isn’t on my iPhone because of limited space. With Spotify I will have a much greater selection of music on my iPhone. I was surprised with Spotify’s selection. For most people they will probably find everything they want, except for The Beatles. There were quite a few bands I couldn’t find, but then I tend to listen to more obscure stuff. I was mostly shocked that they only had one Punchline album. WTF? I will just have to make sure the bands they don’t have are on my iPhone. I’m sure over time their selection will be better. I remember when I couldn’t find any of my bands on iTunes, and now everybody is there.

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Social network overload

by mace on July 11, 2011 · 0 comments

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I feel like I’m getting a little social networked out. I love the new Google Plus. I have been on it since day one, and it seems to be getting better day by day. I just don’t know exactly what to use it for. I use Facebook for my family, and people I know in person. It’s mostly non-technical people and I only check it once or twice a day. Twitter is more my throw away comments. My Twitter stream goes by pretty fast. I dip in every so often and catch what I can catch, but I probably miss 80% of the tweets that go by. Google plus on the other hand, people seem to be posting longer posts, and it’s easier for more conversation to occur there. It may threaten Twitter, and Facebook, but I think it could kill blogging. Kevin Rose has already forwarded his kevinrose.com blog over to his G+ account. I think that’s crazy, but I totally get it. People are hanging out on G+ and not kevinrose.com. Nobody really comments on blogs much anymore, but there on tons of comments on G+. People aren’t using RSS as much anymore either, so you they aren’t seeing blog updates, whereas they are seeing G+ updates.

I was thinking about putting this post on G+, but I still want control of my content. I still want my thoughts, and however lame my writing is, to be on my site. I want to be able to look back at it 20 years from now and know it’s still here. In the past I wasn’t good at preserving my archives, but now I want to more.

So what should I use G+ for? I’m not a fan of cross-posting, so I’m not interested in sending my tweets to G+. That’s one great thing about G+ now is nobody is cross posting things yet. I think it would wreck G+ if Twitter streams started showing up. If anything, I might start cross posting my blog posts to G+. Nobody really reads my blog, so it wouldn’t be that spammy.

So Facebook=real friends and family, Twitter=short throw away comments, Blog=longer thoughts I want to get off my chest, G+=somewhere between Twitter and my blog? Will I be able to keep up with three social networks and my blog? Only time will tell.

BTW this was written in the cool new “Full-Screen” feature in WordPress. Great job WordPress dudes, I love it.

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Link blog down

by mace on June 24, 2011 · 0 comments

in Geekery

My link blog that’s usually over there —> is currently down, and has been for a few days. I use Pinboard.in to run the link blog, and some of their servers are down because they just happen to be on some racks that were pulled by a FBI raid. They say it should be back up this weekend. The only reason I am mentioning this is that when it comes back online I’m expecting all my links from the past few days to spam Twitter, and I’m just apologizing a head of time.

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