September 19, 2008 - Reading time: 9 minutes

(A Post for the musically disaffected)

I’m sure a lot of people will disagree with me, but for those meager few who don’t, this should be useful. I detest ID3 tags and library interfaces that use them. I spent hours googling for alternatives and turned up virtually nothing, except for a few people voicing their anti-ID3 tag thoughts and getting forum flamed. So I will attempt to put together some lifestyle alternatives for the ID3-hating minority. This article is skewed towards a Windows audience, as less freedom is usually present amongst proprietary software.

Reasons Why I Have ID3 Angst

1. I’m a minorly-disorganized person who owns way too many CDs. As a result, I can rarely find the CD I want when I want it. I find it’s quicker to just download the CD than to go find the actual physical disc (In my office, in storage, in my car, etc.)

Why is this a problem? No one seems to ever be able to agree – despite internet databases – on how to spell a band’s name. If I load up my music library via ID3 tags, take a look at a few examples of what I get: Read more

September 13, 2008 - Reading time: 3 minutes

This has been out for a while, but it’s still worth a mention if you don’t know about it. Microsoft released a black theme for Windows XP last year to help celebrate the launch of their Zune music player. I’m not sure I’ve ever spotted a Zune out in the wild (my university is dominated by iPods), but this theme is pretty slick.

Download link (free):

https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=75078

Installation is simple, and requires no hacking of the uxtheme file (like with most 3rd-party themes). Here’s how it looks: Read more

September 12, 2008 - Reading time: 10 minutes

**UPDATE** This review is of the current build in the Ubuntu Repos, which the author of the software has notified me is out of date, for the most recent release (With several of these issues addressed), download one of the precompiled binaries (available for most any systems) from their website.

UPDATE 2: NoteCase is now a paid app. The free version has been discontinued.

I believe many people choose to use Linux on their laptops for the simple reason that it works, and works well on low-powered machines. As a student, a low-power machine is the only viable option. Also, as a student, good note-taking software is a must. Before I switched over to Linux, I was an MS OneNote guy. Let me begin by saying that there is no direct equivalent…yet. Read more

September 12, 2008 - Reading time: 2 minutes

I am pleased to report that Dropbox has fully opened to the public, no more invitations needed! A few weeks ago I reviewed Dropbox (see review) and concluded that it was the online storage service of my dreams. I still hold to that claim.

Everyone who signs up receives 2 GB of storage space. Not only that, you can easily link multiple computers to your Dropbox account and effortlessly keep your files in sync. It’s like FolderShare, but with an online backup element. Yes, it’s a dream come true. 🙂

Clients are available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. There’s even an iPhone client. Here I am installing the Dropbox client on Ubuntu 8.04. Read more

September 11, 2008 - Reading time: 2 minutes

I just upgraded from a Motorola Razor and bought an iPhone G3. You’ve probably seen your friends playing with their phones, and wow, it is really that cool. I never sucked it up to buy an iPod, so I enjoy the ability to have some music, a calendar, a camera, and a phone all in one little device. Some cynics may quickly point out that it isn’t a good iPod, or the phone sucks, or whatever; they are missing the point. This is an all-in-one thing. That can opener and cork screw on your Swiss Army Knife suck, but THEY WORK. The iPhone is the Swiss Army Knife of technology.

The only “problem” I’ve had so far is that when I bought the phone, it was activated within minutes. My Razor went dead before I had left the store, so I ran home as quickly as I could so I could hook up my phone to my computer. You setup your phone by launching iTunes (weird, I know). It only took a couple clicks and the thing was working. Some co-workers have had trouble with the sensors on the phone and have had to get the phone replaced. I’m wary, but unworried.

When you get an iPhone G3, you can surf the web all day without paying any extra money because you are tapping into the “public” G3 network… sometimes slow, but are you kidding? It’s frickin’ great. I took the subway home today and a gentleman asked me which stop he needed to get off at, and poof, I hit up Safari and Google maps and I told him exactly which bus to take and when he’d arrive within a couple minutes.

I have to stick it to the man and say “AT&T you suck”… seriously… they are getting enough of my money each month between DSL, landline, and a mobile plan. Some places, I could pay rent for less than what I pay AT&T each month. Da–yam!

You can now purchase an iPhone at any Apple Store, AT&T Store, or Best Buy.

-- Everett Griffiths

September 8, 2008 - Reading time: 2 minutes

Nothing cheeses me off more than lazy Mac OS X users who don’t lift a finger to secure their OS. Yeah, Macs are currently not the most common target for hacks and viruses (viri?), but that hardly means that they’re invulnerable.

You can read more about some OS X security stuff, but here’s the quickie way to turn on your secure virtual memory:

1. Open System Preferences.
2. Double-click the Security icon from within the Personal section.
3. Press on the padlock to enable changes.
4. Supply a username and permission possessing administrator rights.
5. Check the box for Use Secure Virtual Memory.

Even if this makes no sense to you, you should do it. If you don’t, talented hackers can read your swap files and gain access to all kinds of sensitive information… verily, they could read ANYTHING that gets stored in memory. Passwords, your web site logins, your porn…

A swap file is simply a temporary file that’s used while you edit a file. If you’ve ever used the OS X terminal, you may have edited files using one of the command line editors, like vi. You may have noticed that when you edit some_document.txt, there will be a file created some_document.txt.swp while you are editing the file… that file persists until you’re all done editing the file and you’ve closed the editor. Virtual memory works similarly… it writes the contents of the RAM to a temporary file. Enabling “Secure” virtual memory encrypts this temporary file while it’s on disk… so even if someone has access to your disk, they won’t be able to see the contents of your memory.

-- Everett Griffiths