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.

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.

Traditionally if you wanted to build an application for Android, you had to install a set of programs on the desktop computer. Doing so could cause a majority of problems. Now there are Android application environments now for direct use on Android such as the Nexus 7.  Such an application is called AIDE (Android integraded development environment). You can get Aide directly from Google play and download it directly ot your device. Now lets build a simple hello world program. Everyone's first program is usually the "Hello world" thing.  This will be a different experience from the days of: $ gcc progname.c -o progname or $ ./config $ make $ sudo make install 1. Get AIDE. It can be downloaded from the Play™ store. 2. Open up AIDE and it will ask to create a new project. AppName: HelloWorld PackageName: com.meetdageeks.HelloWorld 3. Goto MainActivity.Java and add the three lines (without the comments!). package com.HelloWorld; import androi...

Want to increase the sound volume of your touch pad or the like? This is for units that have the speaker on the bottom of the unit.  Try this neat trick. Take a length of about seven inches of one inch diameter pvc pipe. Your size may vary,   Most hardware stores carry pvc pipe, but you might have to get a long piece just to make a short piece. I had about a two foot long piece already,  Cut a groove in the pipe just wide enough to insert your pad. You probably do not want it too tight. You will also need two elbows. I just used right hand elbows as they were a lot cheaper than the slight angled ones. Press the two elbows on each end. Get your music going on your touch pad and insert it. You should have more than twice the volume without using any kind of electronics with your new megaphone!!

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...

Have had a chance to play with the Google Nexus 7 that runs Android (I think was built by Asus ) for little over a month now.  Generally have a good thoughts about it though there are just a few reservations which I may discuss later. Since the unit has been out a while, you probably already know the specifications of the unit (you can use you web search engine to get the details if you have not.) I was lucky enought the get the 32 gigabyte version of the unit. Getting anything less than that could make real challenges for you. What was the first thing I added to the unit. first was some experimentation with some home made stands. Even the dollar store had a plastic stand. I based one of my experimental stands off of it. The main reason why I wanted the unit was to see how web applications work with touchpads and maybe also develop some software for the unit. Found out right way that the touchpads react differently than t...