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By leo.flor, October 19, 2012 11:40

Since I typically write about some product about a month or two after I acquire it, I don’t often comment about durability or ownership over an extended period of time; that is what I’d like to do with this post.  Here are a couple of products I’ve written about in the past and some quick comments about how I feel about them now.

Recently I explored upgrading to an iPhone 5 or the Samsung Galaxy S3 but didn’t feel either offered enough value to jump to without a full phone upgrade credit from my provider (Telus).  The maps issue I find disconcerting on iOS while the Android phone just didn’t inspire me to part with my money.  Anyway the longer you wait for technology the more you get.  It’s rather amazing to me how the smartphone market has evolved into such a state where people treat these expensive, sophisticated devices as so disposable.

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By leo.flor, July 29, 2012 15:20

When my old laptop suffered the inglorious death of being dropped, I had data on it that I hadn’t yet backed up.  Rather than pay some company (a potentially high-cost) to recover the content, I decided it was worth trying myself first.  So I bought this USB/SATA Hard Drive Adapter (@ PC Village, downtown Toronto).

Couldn’t be any simpler, you just remove the hard drive from the old computer, plug it into the adapter and the entire unit to the USB of another computer.  It works on different hard drive types (desktop/laptop).  I’ve decided it’s useful not only as a tool for recovery but also as a thriftier alternative to buying enclosed external hard drives.  I’m now taking drives from otherwise useless old computers and using them as extra backup storage, you can never have enough backups.  (To protect the circuitry I keep hard drives in antistatic bags after taking them out of the computers.)

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By leo.flor, February 13, 2012 01:49

After resisting the urges of several friends to read the series, A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, the HBO Series: Game of Thrones (which in my opinion is masterfully done) finally convinced me to get into them.  I am now firmly entrenched in the camp of readers anxiously waiting for book 6 (and 7).

Since I’m a math and computer geek, I have a naturally propensity to this type of nerdery.  After finishing Dance With Dragons, and while waiting for Season Two of Game of Thrones, I still craved some form of medieval battle.  I even rewatched the battle scenes in Braveheart.

I used to play a LOT of Warcraft III but I can’t be bothered to re-install it (and I can’t find my disks).  So I went to my iPad to see what I could find.  I was looking for something that would be like the old Sierra game, Lords of the Realm (which I also played more than my share of) and decided to try Lords of War.

To be frank, this hasn’t satisfied my craving for real-time battle action, but nonetheless, I can’t stop myself from playing it.  It’s like being constantly in the building phase of Warcraft or Starcraft but like a real lord, I don’t actually battle.  I just send the troops and get results.  I think most people would easily get bored playing it.  I guess I’m enjoying the social aspects.  You have to ally yourself with others else you will be picked on.

One part of the game that is a little tedious is asking for prayers which turn themselves into vouchers which buy useful things in the game.  The alternative is paying real money in exchange for gold in the game, which I’m even more adverse to.

The game is buggy as hell and there are typos and grammatical errors in all kinds of places in a manner that reminds me of Engrish.com.  Some of the bugs I’ve exploited such as being able to sell an item twice, hehe.

It’s pretty low maintenance, you don’t have to pay too much attention to it and can devote as little or as much time as you like.  Although the leaders of my alliance will sometimes convene a war council which is fun as we scheme and attack our way to the top!

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By leo.flor, June 27, 2011 16:56

Often I’ll consult my cousin John on matters related to technology and I credit him with getting me to use the Dragon-Dictation/Evernote-Apps-Super-Ultra-Combo-Special (for iPad). That is: the practice of using the Dragon Dictation App, dictating my ideas and lists into it and uploading them into my Evernote.

I was already a big fan of using voice recording and making lists (before these Apps) because essentially you’re taking a snapshot of your brain at that moment.  In this day and age of information bombardment it is increasingly difficult remembering every important little detail of our chaotic lives.   Taking a recording of your thoughts, saving them and making them searchable (equally as important) seems like a good idea to me.  You will forget things; computers will not (unless they crash hard of course).

I had heard of Dragon Dictation before (I’ve used it for PC) but it wasn’t as good at voice recognition as it is now.   I find for best results to talk into it slower than your normal conversation speed.  My other cousin Issa commented when we were testing it: “it could as side effect teach you to be more articulate in conversation.”

It’s really a very good app if you don’t want to use your hands for typing.   I already use a computer likely much more than the average person but I also make microscopic art and play sports.  My hands need every break they can get.

I imagine it would be a very useful app for people who have vision or motor skill handicaps.

Anyway give it a try and share your feedback.  I wrote this post using Dragon Dictation.  John responds to emails without typing.

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By leo.flor, June 22, 2011 10:31

After my laptop committed suicide (a contributing factor to why I haven’t blogged in a while!), I had decisions to make as to what I was going to replace that decrepit, obsolete piece of junk with.  I started my process in the same logical way I evaluate most devices: examining my interface with said equipment, namely the keyboard and screen.

A disturbing trend that I’ve noticed with laptops in Canada is the need to want to support French on the keyboard.  Frankly I don’t utilize enough French to make it worth it for one of my primary interfaces to be compromised.  (My problem with the multilingual keyboard is the placement of the enter and shift keys (as Peter so eloquently points out on his blog), among the MOST USED keys on a keyboard!)

It is crucial to your laptop experience to have a worthy screen and video card.  Your eyes will gaze upon this thing for countless hours, you want it to be pretty.

Lastly, your machine has to be fast and stable.  Nothing worse than your computer crashing constantly or it taking forever to open Windows Explorer (*cough* Vista *cough*).

After weighing all of these factors, I bought myself a refurbished Macbook Pro 15″ with anti-glare screen (support for 1680×1050 resolution, perfect for my eagle eyes). Refurbished on the advice of a friend who always buys refurbished Mac machines for his business, also Apple has a great warranty and they test the heck out of the refurbs, I’m told.  Most of these are just open-box returns anyway, good way to save a couple of hundred bucks.

At first I wanted to stick with PC but none of the laptops I looked at really did it for me.  Perhaps I was soured by my recent experiences with Microsoft OSs but something told me it was time to look at Apple. After all, my iPad has proven to be a useful, elegant tool, why not give their laptops a look.  I figure if I wanted to get nostalgic, I could always install Windows with Boot Camp or run Parallels.

Likes:
I splurged on the screen upgrade because I want to see a lot of screen real estate.  And call me spoiled but since I’ve been working from home much more frequently, I wanted to be able to sit in the sun and stay connected (it’s summer, get outside!).  Also, Spaces (virtual desktop) is beautiful, reminds me of the Unix machines I worked and played with for Computer Science courses at the University of Waterloo and my first programming job (I had an SGI on my desk).

Speaking of nerding out, I love that Terminal allows me to truly relive those Unix glory days.  I may have to break out a shell programming textbook!

LOVING Apple shortcut keys and gestures on the Multi-Touch Trackpad.  As I anticipated, I easily adapted to new shortcuts.

Dislikes:
Price – Time will tell whether I got what I paid for.  So far, so good.

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By leo.flor, April 13, 2011 14:53

After my recent purchase of an iPad, I found myself now looking for files on four different devices (the others being a desktop PC, a laptop PC and a Blackberry Torch smartphone). That was until I installed two apps on all of the devices, Evernote and Dropbox. (Both are FREE!)

Evernote is good for saving just about any media. If I see a picture of something, if I want to save a weblink bookmark accessible from anywhere, if I start thinking of a new blog post or new ideas, I put it in my Evernote. It has tremendously simplified my ability to maintain multiple lists.

Dropbox is essentially a universally accessible file folder.  You can copy any file you want to share (including publicly).  Hook me up with a referral if you decide to sign up and they will give both of us extra space.  :)

Like any kind of cloud-based technology, Evernote and Dropbox have their own limitations.  Your ability to upload and synchronize is dependent on your connectivity.  Though an Evernote Premium Account allows you to access your notebooks offline which is handy.

In terms of bugs, the only thing I’ve encountered with these two applications thus far are errors accessing and editing files from Evernote for Blackberry.