The iPod Addict

I have been asked this question a lot, “Which Linux distribution is right for me? I mean, there are so many to choose from, I just don’t know which one to pick!” Well, your answer is here. I will compile a simple list of the most famous Linux distributions for different kinds of people, this must be your lucky day!

The Average Joe - Ubuntu

Yes, it’s kind of obvious, but Ubuntu is the best for people who have just switched from Windows to Linux. It provides support for 3G, wireless networking, GPS, and more. It comes with Flash prebuilt, touchpad support, easy and pleasing graphical interface, word processing, etc. If you’re looking for a distribution that’s both easy to use and functional, your search is over.

The Networking Guru - OpenSuSe

It’s true, OpenSuSe is the best for networking. It’s mature bare-bones command line feature is perfect for managing networks. It provides plenty of optional built in packages made for networking. It’s easy to manage and straightforward-no hassle interface and handling is superb for any network, whether for your humble home or multi-billion dollar corporation.

The Hardcore Linux Fan - Fedora

Fedora is the most stripped down, pure, and true-to-the-cause Linux distribution, hey, Linus Torvalds, the inventor of the Linux kernel, uses it. It is simply Linux, no addons, no crap. If you know what you’re doing, you can really make this thing tick. But beware, in Fedora, you have the freedom to mess up anything, so be careful, but not too careful, we’d like to see what you do with it.

Well, long awaited Fedora 10 finally came out a few days ago, so it’s time to check it out! Well, right from the fire up you notice a difference, new splash screen (It’s moving bars, I actually like it), and a new startup chime, I like this too. So, enough of the fluff, time to get down and dirty with this thing. First off, there is still lack of built in touchpad support (Boo!), so you have to go through the same process to get the Synaptics driver, modify the xorg.conf file, and configure it by downloading the Synaptics driver GUI package, this is something that really annoys me. But, moving past that, it does have new support for webcams, a nice touch, as well for SmartCards, good for people who have higher-end laptops. It is also noticeably more stable and easier to use. New packages have been added to the repo, it’s actually more advanced than Windows Vista now. It also (Finally) has proper RPM support. In Fedora 9, RPMs were extremely hard to use, and you didn’t know whether they would install or not. This means better Flash integration, so now it can finally take (Somewhat) normal users, although Fedora is still too hardcore Linux to be used by regular PC users. Overall, I like the new Fedora, but it still needs out-of-the-box touchpad support and a few more bug fixes, but the networking, both wireless and wired, work great, as well as many other features.

You can find a PDF on what’s new for Fedora desktop users here.

Justin Briggs, a Florida 19 year old college student, committed suicide in front of a live webcam November 22, 2008. He reportedly announced his suicide on a body-building forum. Many of the users made fun of and egged him, others tried to talk him out of it, and some prescribed dosage of certain drugs to ensure death. Justin.tv hosted the “event”, but was not involved. Many users on Justin.tv also made lewd comments on the video, thinking it was a joke, until 11 hours later when one exclaimed “OMFG!” or shorthand for “Oh My F***ing God!” when the teen stopped breathing. A user notified a moderator, which traced Briggs’ IP address, and contacted authorities. Still on live webcam, a police officer is seen storming the room with a weapon in hand, he and another officer examine the body while turning off the webcam. They claim that Briggs passed away there, only to be confirmed by a local hospital. This incident is sick and deranged, it only shows how disconnected with the world we have become through the internet. According to United States laws, the commenters who influenced Briggs’ suicide can be charged with manslaughter, but no charges have been pressed by the family. Sadly, this type of incident is not the first of its kind, nor is it rare, in 2006, a man hung himself on live webcam. It is said that Briggs suffered from bipolar disorder and constant depression. The Briggs family has not released any official statements regarding Justin Briggs’ death, and have not appeared in court yet.

Source: AP

I know this is a bit random, but I believe that this is a long overdue list, so here it is.

Best:

1. Coldplay
2. Rise Against
3. Pre-Minutes to Midnight Linkin Park
4. Kanye West
5. Lupe Fiasco

Worst:

1. Soulja Boy
2. T-Pain
3. Katy Perry
4. The Jonas Brothers
5. Akon

Well, the new iPod Shuffles came in, and since my birthday was last week (Yay!), I decided to put all those Best Buy cards to good use, by getting an iPod Shuffle! Now, you may be wondering, “But you already have a freaking iPod Touch! Whats the point?!”, well, the answer is simple, it’s smaller, and not only that, the battery lasts forever. When I go somewhere by walking or workout or anything, I don’t need my huge iPod Touch, I can just take my new best friend! Well, enough with the chit-chat, time for the review!

Sound Quality:
Well, with all iPods, the sound quality is amazing. There’s no ring in the background or extra noise, it’s music the way it was meant to be played! Gets a 10/10 here.

Capacity:
At 2GB, it doesn’t hold all my music, which is at about 7GB, but it does hold my favorites. It will take up to around 1,000 songs, not bad considering how tiny it is. 9/10.

Build Quality:
Apple doesn’t skimp here. It’s made out of solid aluminum and ABS plastic, the buttons are also aluminum. No complaints, 10/10.

Price:
At just $50 for a 1GB and $70 for a 2GB, it’s the perfect stocking stuffer for your tech-crazed teenager. 9/10 here.

Packaging:
Yes, we must examine the packaging, it is the tradition of geeks. Apple’s packaging is simply amazing here. It’s all in one tiny, convenient package with attractive form factor and typography. The manual and quick start guide are also nice. 10/10.

Color:
The new chrome colors are very pleasing to the eye. I got a blue one, and I love it. The color is extremely vibrant and vivid. 10/10.

Portability:
This thing is smaller than my keys and wallet, it includes a (extremely) handy clip that you can attach to just about anything, cloths, pocket, lanyard, hair(?). 10/10.

Connectivity:
Using the USB 2.0 dock, it’s sync speed is unrivaled. I synced 50 songs in about a minute, something that would’ve taken my iPod Touch about three minutes. You can also use the Shuffle to store data, just enable disk use from the iTunes panel, so it’s a music player and portable disk in one! The only complaint I have is that due to the dock only type syncing, you will not be able to use it in a USB enabled car. 9/10 here.

Usability:
Although the Shuffle does not have a screen, it does an excellent job of switching through songs. You can hold down the skip song button to go to the first one in the playlist. It’s functionality is usable and intuitive, perfect for anyone really. The lack of screen does stunt it a bit though. 9/10 here.

Overall:
The iPod Shuffle is great for anyone who works out, casually listens to music, is on a budget, or just likes surprises! Although the lack of a screen is kind of quirky, it’s small size, build quality, usability, and functionality make up for it. Overall it is a fantastic product and I would recommend it to anyone in the market for a new MP3 player! 9.5/10 overall.

I will be updating the projections and votes as they become available.

Well, I’ve had my G1 for about a week now, and I have to say, I downright love it. It’s the best mobile OS out there, and the device is pretty cool too. Android is all out open sourced and powerful. I was SSHing to my Mac today, executing commands and opening apps like I would in a traditional terminal, and wow, I was impressed. using ConnectBot, an SSH application for the G1, I was able to take full control of my Mac’s command line. It a full fledged, traditional SSH client. Everything worked as expected and flawlessly. It was as if I was on a laptop and executing my commands from there, it’s just awesome. So, here begins my journey with my Android, promised to be long and entertaining, and so far, I have no complaints. Now, I have had one problem, though. The browser sometimes doesn’t load pages via 3G or EDGE. This issue was addressed in an Android update (It’s first one!) today. I haven’t had a problem with it since the update, so Google really knows what it’s doing!

Well, as usual, I must have my semi-annual trashing of a notebook, desktop, cell phone, PDA, handheld device, or all of the above. This time it was my precious MacBook Pro (Thankfully not my brand new G1!), but I have fixed it, and everything has been returned to normal, nothing was lost. It all started out when I tried to put Ubuntu 8.10 on an external disk, well, that didn’t work, and my Mac wouldn’t start up. It would just give me the start up sound and a blinking folder with a question mark. That didn’t tell me much, so I turned to my good friend Google. It turns out that this blinking symbol means that no boot drive has been found, not good. I try all of Apple’s troubleshooting steps, nothing. I reinstall the OS using the archive to keep all my files intact, nothing. Finally, after hours of trial and error, I live boot with Ubuntu with the intent to put all my files on the external hard disk, and totally reinstall the OS. This is when I notice something. I was formatting my external disk to put everything on it, and I realize that the EFI (Apple’s boot loader) partition wasn’t flagged to boot. So, I use my handy-dandy GParted, flag it for boot, unflag any other partitions that were marked to boot, and voila! What I think happened is when Ubuntu was writing the boot loader, it thought it was going to write it to the Mac’s HDD, so it unflagged all others marked to boot, and then put the loader on the external drive, very funny Ubuntu. But, I got all my data back, my Mac runs like it used to, and I can move on from this frightful night on Halloween.

Well, that time of year has come again. No, not Halloween, but the new release of Ubuntu is coming out, this time it’s Ubuntu 8.10. What this version has to offer is better stability and a new version of Persistent mode, so, I’m going to put it on my 4GB USB drive and see how it goes! If all is well, I will have a new toy for computer class (He, he, he).

Okay, I got this idea from Household Hacker on YouTube, I know, not very trusted, but they gave me the idea, I will revamp their method to where it will not blow up your iPod/cell phone.

What you’ll need:

Old USB cable (”Female” end)
Four AA battery holster (I got mine for $1.00)
Power cable for holster (Has a 9V battery end, I got mine for $0.25)
Three 1.5V AA batteries
Soldering iron
Solder
Wire stripper
Roll of wire
A voltage meter
Electrical tape

Instructions:

Alright, now that you have all of your stuff together, let’s get down to the fun part.

1. Take your old USB cable and cut it from wherever you want, it doesn’t really matter, just remember that it will be the “female” end that you will need.

2. Strip the cable from a length that you wish.

3. Cut the data wires and the shielding. The data wires are usually white and green, if there are none, just cut all cords except for the black and red ones. The shielding (If there is one) looks like aluminum foil. This step is extremely important because if you do not cut these wires they WILL destroy your device.

4. Strip the black and red (Positive and negative) wires from the old USB cable, get your power cable (The thing that looks like a 9V battery connector), and solder the black wire to the black wire of the USB cable, once you’ve done soldering and have a good connection, take the electrical tape and wrap the black wires at the point that they meet, DO NOT WRAP THE RED WIRE WITH IT.

5. Take the red wire from the USB cable and solder it to the red wire of the power cable, take the electrical tape, and tape the part of the wire where the two different red wires meet, DO NOT WRAP THE BLACK WIRES WITH IT.

6. Wrap the black and red wires together, but make sure none of the metal ends are touching, this will cause a shortage, destroying the device.

7. Take your roll of wire and cut enough of it to where one end of the wire can touch a spring on the battery holster to the spring directly right or left of it (Or beneath). Strip the wire and solder it to one spring of the battery holster (Doesn’t matter which one) to the one directly following it in the electrical current.

8. Place batteries in the holster in all the slots except for the one where the wire is coming from (They should take 3 of the 4 slots).

9. Attach the power cable to the battery holster.

10. Take your voltage meter and measure the voltage coming from the holster, make sure it is about 4.5V, most devices take 5V to charge, iPods take to up to 30V until they are destroyed, if you are not sure, check your device’s voltage rating, IN DC POWER, NOT AC.

11. If you’re meter read about 4.5V, then you’re ready to go! Plug in your iPod or cell phone for continued enjoyment!

Note: The iPod Touch will not work with this battery pack, it does not provide enough current, I have not tried it on the iPhone, but it works with my iPod Nano and G1.