schwuk.com

Inspired by a IM conversation I was having with a fellow LUG member who showed me a list of his home network hardware on his wiki I decided to do something similar.

Except of course I don’t have a (public) wiki¹…

So Backpack to the rescue once again:

My Hardware List

¹ Because I haven’t finished writing the engine for it yet.

(Yet Another Bad Idea)

From Engadget: Brits to get RFID-chipped license plates

OK as a card-carrying geek, I like technical solutions but I’m not sure what problem they’re trying to solve.

Fair enough VIN numbers, but what’s the “other data”? What else is needed? And what’s with the “active RFID” and transmitting “over 300 feet away”?

I’m sure the appropriate enforcing legislation will be pushed through under the guise of preventing terrorism, and I can see how they think it can be used for tracking vehicles, tackling speeding and replacing/supplement road tax but unless it’s married to some sort of enforcement/verification system it will be useless as people will either disable them, or clone someone elses. Then there’s the part that RFID is essentially open if you have the right tools – if the government can track you, so can others.

So, technically a sound idea (but obviously not well thought through), guaranteed to be badly implemented (as all initiatives like this are), and we’ll most likely have to foot the bill.

A. None.

It seems the guys at Sysinternals have been doing some experimenting, and not only can you run Windows (XP) without any services, but you can run it without certain “essential” processes as well.

Pretty interesting stuff. Not wholly practical, but interesting nonetheless.

I’m never been a big one for hardware hacking (although I’m slowly talking myself into a Make subscription), but reading about the RC lawn mower on Engadget really inspires me to have a go at something like this.

If it wasn’t for the fact that I know nothing about mechanics, motors or remote control. Still, a Linux powered robotic lawn mower controlled by WiFi would be cool, wouldn’t it…

Last week I wandered into my local Game outlet to fill some time. I noticed they had some PSP hardware behind the counter, so I got talking to a member of staff and a few minutes later I had one of the demo units in my grubby mitts.

Wow.

This is one slick device, and I will be seriously tempted to get one when released. Apart from the general high quality of the unit (the screen is gorgeous) and the games (not far off the the PS2 quality that everyone has been saying) and the stunning price – £179 – theres currently quite an active hacking (in the traditional sense) scene developing around them and it is this that interests me more. They’ve even got VNC running on it!

Sony have promised to block some of the exploits being used to achieve these hacks with the european release, so I’m waiting to see how successful they are before handing over my money. Especially with the presumably hacker friendly (given it’s origins) Nokia 770 hopefully available soon at a similar price point.

…seems a far apter name than Minimo to me, but the choice isn’t mine to make…

I was already aware of the original Minimo project, but thought it had stalled. Somehow I missed the announcement that it was going to be developed for Windows CE. Now it seems I’ve also missed (preview) release of said port.

I’d be more enthusiastic about this if I had a CE device to use it on, but I haven’t so I’ll just file it under cool, forward it to my Pocket PC owning friends and move on.

I’ve not been paying too much attention to Longhorn (now Vista) because as with Visual Studio 2005, there simply too much stuff available now without wasting energy on the stuff that’s coming soon. Luckily not all people have my attitude¹, and the O’Reilly Network (again) have put together an (in their ords) in-depth look at the current beta:

From reading the article, I’ll say that it looks interesting, but that’s all. They didn’t cover anythng you can’t do in XP or Linux with a little effort. Virtual folders sound cool, but I’m sure someone in the GNOME camp are already thinking about how to integrate Beagle searches into Nautilus.

Update

They’ve posted a second article:

The Aero effects look nice, but there’s still not a lot there. In other news though I’ve got a new work computer (hopefully) arriving today which will be powerful enough to run it, so I may post my own opinions soon.

¹ which has nothing at all to do with the fact my current (aging) computer struggles to run the latter and would probably run away whimpering if I asked it to run the former, honest.

This is something I briefly struggled with. I did find a guide that explained it well, but forgot to bookmark it. Now there’s a very straightforward guide on the O’Reilly Network that does a similarly good job of explaining it:

I’ve actually given up on this setup for the moment, reverting back to a traditional wired headset – although I love the concept of Bluetooth, there are still too many random quirks in most of the implementations. My main reason for ditching it though was the sound quality when used with VoIP – pretty much everyone I called with it complained of echo. I’m not sure if this was down to the quality of headset (Plantronics M3000, so should have been pretty good), my adaptor (generic Class 1 USB from a computer fair) or the combination of bluetooth + VoIP. All I know is that this echo was not present with the wired headset. When I gather the different components together again (the headset was borrowed, and I’ve since lent out the adapter) I’ll give it another try.

For personal reasons (which I’m not going into as I don’t put purely personal stuff on here) I have been away from computers and the internet (for any length of time at least) for the last two and a bit weeks. You really don’t want to see how much unread stuff I’ve got on Bloglines!

Today I am officially back at work (hence I have time to post ), and officially “connected” again.

As for whether it’s good to be back…I’ll let you know later…