computoman

Many people say the touchpad is replacing the desktop. I prefer to think it as supplementing the desktop. Though a physical case for a personal computer is much larger than than a touchpad, so much can be held inside the case. With the touchpad all the extra wires to make the system more bulky.  On the other hand with the desktop you can access anything the touchpad can via a network. Why I am less likely to get new equipment?  On both the desktop and the touch pads, you are not free to install what software or hardware you want. It is the vendor's way or the highway.  You do not treat customers that way, Apple, Android, and the rest of spoiled brats maybe off the market with all the new open platforms coming. With open source you are more likely to get software upgrades for a longer time. We still use early Pentium based desktops for various reasons . For example the Nexus 7 will still get software fixes and et cetera, but no more upgrades ...

Really feel for Mr. Banzi and the fact that everyone is making their own version of the Arduino. You can get the bare  chips and make your own. You can get the boards as low as ten dollars even at a retail outlet. Had a spare ethernet board I bought from Radio shack on sale. So when I saw a compatible board for only ten dollars, I had to get it. The main reason, I wanted this version of the board is that I have some Arduino chips that that can be plugged and played on the board versus the surface mounted versions which will not plug and play. For those systems that need acm $ sudo apt-get install hal $ sudo usermod -a -G tty $USER $ sudo usermod -a -G dialout $USER Speaking the Arduino, they have a newer IDE. When I downloaded a recent version, I had problems. The one I downloaded today seems to work. Tested the new Arduino board and the extra ethernet board we had. Seemed to work. The page for the new software is: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software One thing I like a...

Money for school test equipment down the drain.  Since  #Android does not want to support #ethernet , I no longer want to use android. Saying you do not support ethernet is amateurish. Not getting a new unit to get left out in the cold again. Android is getting the Apple/Microsoft  disease. Update: waiting to see if a5.1 fixes the issues. Whoopie!! Ethernet is fixed, but still have to test a direct connection to the Arduino, Could not find a setting to set the ip address, so it looks like I will have to use a router to make it work.

Emperor's new clothes?

A while back I did a pvc megaphone add on for the Nexus 7. Now there is a newer version that is more stable. Because of the acoustics, it works really well in the bathroom. for some reason. Basically you seal up the end that will be away from you. ------------- Tried to use the famous Kipkay's method for a sort of megaphone for the pad. Not stable enough. Used tees instead of right angles. Also sealed off the back side of the tees to concentrate sound.

After playing with my Nexus 7 for a while, I wanted to transfer some files to the unit. There were programs such as a spreadsheet that I wrote to work with qbasic.  Dosbox will certainly run qbasic.  Since Adosbox was available for Android I went and downloaded that. So far so good. Or so I thought.  Now how do I get the files to the Nexus 7. Can not use a usb drive. Hmmm. You pay for and then download an application that would get your files from a usb stick without being root. Why should I pay for something that should of come with the unit to begin with.  Now it is time to think out of the box. Well if I can download files from a web page without root, why can I not do that with a web server of my own? But how to do it. Alhough I do have an Apache web server set up, what about the times when it may not be available. Aha! The quickie web server (see links below) can be the answer. So I copied the files where I wanted to serve the files to the Nexus 7. then made sur...