Tag Archives: computer

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Let’s Open: Intel Mini PC G2 (from AliExpress)

Video

  By Scott • 2016-04-24 , ,

This video features a review and teardown of the Intel Mini PC G2 manufactured by — uhhh — Random Chinese Company 5000.

Did it ship with tons of bloatware and malware? Is it too good to be true that it comes with a full copy of Windows 10? Are the specs worth a damn in the real world? Watch me ramble on about it to find out!

If you want to buy this cylindrical masterpiece mediocrity, a link to the original AliExpress listing is below (which may be way out of date by the time you read this). Note that this is not an endorsement and I don’t receive one penny if you do end up buying it.

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/In-stock-High-Quality-Windows-10-MINI-PC-Host-32G-Memory-Bay-Trail-CR-2-4G/32596403800.html

Not every product from China is crap, but in the “Let’s Open” series I’m buying stuff that seems really good on paper, but has a whiff of the toilet about it.

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JetBlue: Password Encryption is for Suckers

  By Scott • 2016-02-20
JetBlue: Encryption is for Suckers

The Background The Missus and I flew to Florida a couple of days ago, and as usual we took JetBlue. The only eventful part of the flight was a pleasant arrival 30 minutes ahead of schedule. The flight crew had mentioned that the satellite TV was out of commission, and that all in-flight movies would be free for the duration. I thought that was a good way of handling the issue, and figured that was the end of that. However, the next day we both received emails from JetBlue stating that we’d been signed up for their Travel Bank, and that a $15 credit had been applied to both of our Banks in exchange for the inconvenience of the malfunctioning … Continue reading

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How to Choose the Right “4K” (UHD) Monitor – Featuring the Crossover 404K

Video

  By Scott • 2015-09-14 , , ,

If you want to see a man in a basement ramble on about monitors for over an hour, this is the video for you!

I cover a wide variety of monitor specification-related topics, and how they all come together with the Crossover 404K. But don’t worry, even if the 404K is obsolete by the time you find this, it should still be helpful! (Maybe.)

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Digital Juice Sound Effects Library File Renamer

  By Scott • 2015-07-08
digital_juice_by_tappy

What’s this for?? I have some Digital Juice SFX library DVD files from circa 2006 or some such. The DVDs contained tons of small WAV and MP3 files of sound effects, foley and music. They’re meant to be accessed with Digital Juice’s Juicer app, which contains all the metadata. I lost the DVDs a while ago, but had already copied them to my file server. The problem is that I don’t want to use the Juicer app. I have a bunch of other sound libraries, and want to be able to search them all at once. Unfortunately the sound files on the DVDs are all named generically, such as 00293_SFX.wav, which is pretty useless. My savior I did a quick … Continue reading

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DIY Motion Control Camera Slider

  By Scott • 2015-04-24 , ,
Motion Control Slider - YouTube Featured Image 01

Introductory Video This video is and introduction of my motion control slider project, showing the basics of what it can do and how it’s used. Time Lapse Assembly Video I figured that I’d record the entire assembly process of the MC slider from start to finish. This video shows about 24 hours of real time in 15 minutes, and in it I discuss some of the problems I faced and design choices I made. Feedback If you’ve got any comments or random abuse to hurl, please post it here on the ol’ blog. Seriously, I’d appreciate any and all suggestions and I’m happy to answer any questions you might have. As promised in the videos, various downloads and a parts … Continue reading

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Microsoft Web Deploy – Bad Application, or the Worst Application?

  By Scott • 2015-02-24 ,
Down load Microsoft Web Deploy to your toilet today!

Background I’m migrating a bunch of corporate websites hosted on Win2k8 and IIS7 to a new server running exactly the same. I’m sticking with the same environment because there are some things I really don’t want to risk breaking — we just needed faster hardware and more spindles. I figured I’d use MS Web Deploy 3.5 to move all the IIS settings from one server to the other (a task that was gloriously simple in IIS6). Web Deploy adds the following option to the IIS Manager context menus for the server and individual sites: It looks great! Simple and straightforward. Export or import. Indeed it’s a simple interface. I wanted to export everything, so I chose to deploy from the … Continue reading

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Making ejabberd 14.12 work with Microsoft Windows Active Directory LDAP

  By Scott • 2015-02-05
Wireshark tcpdump LDAP example

Why ejabberd? My office uses Google Talk for intra-employee instant messaging. This Monday all users got a broadcast message from Google saying that the Google Talk desktop client will cease working on February 15. (Though this may be an old automated notification from when Google was threatening to EOL Talk last February.) Update (2015-03-09): They finally did kill Talk for Windows as of February 23, 2015. Of course we can’t take the risk of Google actually shutting down our IMs, and I personally don’t like the new Hangouts Chrome app. Moreover, we want to limit employees to only messaging other people in our organization. We also don’t necessarily want Google being a party to all of our communication. That means … Continue reading

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Sprint / Netgear 6100D 4G Antenna Installation (Video)

Video

  By Scott • 2014-12-15 , , ,

What’s all this, then?

Back in August I reviewed the Netgear 6100D from Sprint and followed up with a post detailing some advanced configuration options.

The Video

I also installed a flat panel 4G antenna from 4G Antenna Shop. I made a video detailing the unboxing and installation (which I just got around to editing together):

It’s my first video of this sort, so if you have any feedback please let me know in the YouTube comments or by email!

4G Antenna Shop

I didn’t get into it in the video, but overall I’d recommend 4G Antenna Shop. The cable and antenna I got were both of very high quality and definitely worth the price.

Their customer service was great; I had a couple of questions about my order, and one of their guys (Robert) got back to me within 15 minutes and was extremely helpful. They shipped really quickly, too.

I did have two minor issues, both of which I talk about in the video:

During checkout they give you the option of selecting your device so that they can provide the correct adapters to go from the cable (if you order it through them) to the device. At the time I’d ordered, they had an option for “Netgear Sprint Spark LTE”, which I thought was the Netgear 6100D. There was no separate option for the 6100D, but it turned out that they were referencing a different product, and so I received the wrong adapters. (They’ve since added the 6100D as an option.)

I chalked this up to being mostly my fault, as I didn’t know that there was another Netgear LTE device out there for Sprint Spark.

My other issue was with the packing job. Again, it’s a minor complaint because nothing was damaged, but the box arrived pretty beaten up with holes in the top from the antenna mount having poked through. There was no packing material to keep the box rigid, and the antenna and cable were just sorta rattling around inside.

Bear with Me…

Oh, and sorry if I rambled on a bit in the video. If you couldn’t tell from a lot of my other posts on here, I have an aversion to brevity. :)

I’m hoping to get some more how-to and instructional videos out there in 2015, so please subscribe to my YouTube channel!

(Hey, I’m allowed to shill for myself, right?)

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Bash “Shellshock” Bug – Quick Vulnerability Test and Patch

  By Scott • 2014-09-25
Shellshock

This is not meant as a comprehensive guide to the Bash “shell shock” bug, but as a quick reference to test and patch for the vulnerability. First, test your version of Bash with this line: env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable’ bash -c “echo this is a test” If you get the world “vulnerable” in your output then you need to update Bash: vulnerable this is a test If your output contains errors followed by “this is a test”, then your Bash version is not vulnerable: bash: warning: x: ignoring function definition attempt bash: error importing function definition for `x’ this is a test Check to see if your distribution has an updated/fixed version of Bash available in its repository. … Continue reading

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SAN with Linux Cluster and CLVM: Is it Necessary?

  By Scott • 2013-09-04
remove_clustering_services

To answer the title of this post in one word: No. But as with all things computer related, that “no” needs to be followed by the caveat: “Well, it depends upon your needs.” From what I’ve seen, Linux clustering was designed primarily for high-availability services, with only a secondary effort to share disk resources across nodes. I have tried — and would never use in production — Linux clustering services for a VM host cluster. I know other people have done it and will continue to do it, but a properly configured (and managed) VM cluster does not need true clustering. (Again, “depending upon your needs”). Linux clustering requires fencing. (It didn’t always, but now it does). Fencing is a … Continue reading