computoman

Revision3 was touting this one antenna that sells for thirty five dollars. Seems like a pretty uncomplicated design. Went to the site to see if they had the specifications. In some ways it was like antennas I have already made, That antenna tech has prior art so to speak for sure. Looking at the picture, I thought I could create something like it fairly easily. In about an hour a recreation was made. Anything but professional looking. Worked well, but not as good as what I have already made. It would not get the station with "The Big Bang Theory". So that was an immediate fail. In any case I have another antenna plan that can be easily implemented if I need to build an antenna on the fly. Details at: http://www.instructables.com/id/Cheap-wall-antenna/

One of the latest little gadgets to come out on the market is Chromecast. You can push out media (video) from almost any device that supports the Dial protocol ( https://sites.google.com/a/dial-multiscreen.org/dial/ ). Commercials show users sending their video from laptop, ipad, iphone, and etc to the unit when the unit is attached to the back of a tv set that supports hdmi. There may still be some security issues to work out (i.e. http://blog.gtvhacker.com/2013/chromecast-exploiting-the-newest-device-by-google/ ) , but software can always be upgraded in some cases. Third party developers say that it is easy to program media to the unit using HTML5. The future of web browsing. Originally some free time with Netflix was included. Google has allegedly now taken that part of the deal off the table according to news reports. At only $35, if you have not purchased a media streaming device then certainly consider it.  I will probably stay with using XBMC on the Raspberry Pi. 

One of the latest little gadgets to come out on the market is Chromecast. You can push out media (video) from almost any device that supports the Dial protocol ( https://sites.google.com/a/dial-multiscreen.org/dial/ ). Commercials show users sending their video from laptop, ipad, iphone, and etc to the unit when the unit is attached to the back of a tv set that supports hdmi. There may still be some security issues to work out (i.e. http://blog.gtvhacker.com/2013/chromecast-exploiting-the-newest-device-by-google/ ) , but software can always be upgraded in some cases. Third party developers say that it is easy to program media to the unit using HTML5. The future of web browsing. Originally some free time with Netflix was included. Google has allegedly now taken that part of the deal off the table according to news reports. At only $35, if you have not purchased a media streaming device then certainly consider it.  I will probably stay with using XBMC on the Raspberry Pi....

Wanted to have a no frills way to show what basic linux commands do without using or going to the command line. Slowly but surely the program is becoming more and more of a linux server monitoring tool. This is not the latest version, but you get the idea. This project is becoming more and more popular.  Could easly be adapted for the bsd based Fruit operating. Sure it could be modified for the Microsoft based operating systems, but I will let someone else do that. Also sort of became a management tool for non linux professionals. for example you can get the amount of disk space available with a touch of two buttons. Letting management know when to budget for a larger hard drive. You may just want to know what version of the operating system you are running. Time to upgrade yet? Of course these menus are hidden from the public with only permissions for the appropriate personnel. To get more information about using this type of script see:  http://www.instruc...

Wanted to have a no frills way to show what basic linux commands do without using or going to the command line. Slowly but surely the program is becoming more and more of a linux server monitoring tool. This is not the latest version, but you get the idea. This project is becoming more and more popular.  Could easly be adapted for the bsd based Fruit operating. Sure it could be modified for the Microsoft based operating systems, but I will let someone else do that. Also sort of became a management tool for non linux professionals. for example you can get the amount of disk space available with a touch of two buttons. Letting management know when to budget for a larger hard drive. You may just want to know what version of the operating system you are running. Time to upgrade yet? Of course these menus are hidden from the public with only permissions for the appropriate personnel. To get more information about using this type of script see:  ...

Allegedly, the Chumby cloud services were discontinued earlier this year. Since the Chumby is an open source device you can explore other options tto keep it in use. In fact, I had been using the web browser for the chumby more than I ever used the cloud services. Check out http://hackaday.com/2013/07/25/making-a-dropbox-with-a-chumby-and-bittorrent/ for additional options for the Chumby. A bit outdated, also see http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=6411: Update:  http://www.chumby.com/ is back up.

Simple drawing programs can actually do many tasks in terms of art. For most diagrams, can be done without the fancy expensive software. One free program I like to use is Tuxpaint. (import exiting pictures with usage $ tuxpaint-import filename.ext  $ tuxpaint-import neatpic.png There are many others depending on the computer platform you use. Of course you can do simple artwork. You can even make prototype drawings like was done in drafting class such as a boat or even a cabinet.  Actually built both of the units. You can even do simple electronics diagrams such as a connection for an adapter or say a connection of parts to an Arduino for a TV.out adapter. Then you could use the drawing program to describe simple or even more complex processes such as making beer. Last but not least, you could draw an interpretation of a local area network. Hope you will go back and look at the simple drawing program your syste...

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...

Though using a coffee maker is not technically computing, we did talk about making pasta in a coffee maker in an earlier article.  You can do other things with a coffee maker such as make, beer, cheese, oatmeal, and even hard boiled eggs. You definitely want to upgrade your geek skills in this area. For details see: http://www.instructables.com/id/Coffeemaker-meals-and-etc/

Friday July 26, 2013 is system administrators day. Yes, take care of present and former (if you want to find out if there are any backdoors) system administrators.

Though using a coffee maker is not technically computing, we did talk about making pasta in a coffee maker in an earlier article.  You can do other things with a coffee maker such as make, beer, cheese, oatmeal, and even hard boiled eggs. You definitely want to upgrade your geek skills in this area. For details see: http://www.instructables.com/id/Coffeemaker-meals-and-etc/

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 android.app.*; ...

Handhelds are really nice, but you get away from the traditional desktop we are all familiar with.  Some people have coined the icon based tablet interfaces as being made by Fisher-Price (a toy manufacturer).  Also too, people are wanting to lower the system requirements for computers being used primarily as terminals. One way to do that is to only have the basic operating system on the machine with just the browser as a single application. How useful is that?  You can use a web server to dole out applications as I  indicated in a previous article. You now have operating systems that work from the web. You can push out desktop operating systems  based on the traditional commercial software, but that gets into to some real heavy use. That requires a lot of heavy lifting (i.e. system resources). Now people are trending towards native web based operating systems that can be doled out with just a web server. Traditional virtual machine servers become less a neces...

One thing that is good for an network administrator is to be able to see if a web server is up without having to load a browser. Of course the web browsers usually run on port 80. Here is a short script to do that. Grab a root webpage and save the code. Great for seeing if a server is up. Usage:  ./webpageget.sh site outputfile ./getwebpage.sh oesrvr1 oesrvr1_rootpage rm: cannot remove `oesrvr1_rootpage’: No such file or directory <html> <head> <title> Offshore Educators (Main Page) 1 </title> <base href=” http://oesrvr1/oe/”&gt ; </head> <FRAMESET ROWS=”15%,*”> <FRAME SRC=”title.html” NAME=TITLE SCROLLING=NO> <FRAMESET COLS=”20%,*” FRAMEBORDER=no> <FRAME SRC=”tools.html” NAME=SIDEBAR noresize> <FRAME SRC=”notes.html” NAME=NOTES noresize> </FRAMESET> <NOFRAMES> <H1> Offshore Educators</H1> No frames? No Problem! Take a look at our <A HREF=”plain.html”>no-frames...

Talked about IAAS a while back, now here is another part of the cloud. From Wikipedia - History of SAAS: Centralized hosting of business applications dates back to the 1960s. Starting in that decade, IBM and other mainframe providers conducted a service bureau business, often referred to as time-sharing or utility computing . Such services included offering computing power and database storage to banks and other large organizations from their worldwide data centers . The expansion of the Internet during the 1990s brought about a new class of centralized computing , called Application Service Providers (ASP) . ASPs provided businesses with the service of hosting and managing specialized business applications, with the goal of reducing costs through central administration and through the solution provider's specialization in a particular business application. Two of the world's pioneers and largest ASPs were USI, which was headquartered in the Washington, D.C. are...

Oldies but goodies of instructables for XP computers including home automation: http://www.instructables.com/id/Microsoft-themed-instructables/.

Untitled Document The instructables Spiral antenna. Just a simple bipolar antenna that has no scientific basis for how it was done. O… posted on Jun 17, 2013 Let's get wired. Almost but not quite. Had to replace the ethernet cable from the bridge (aka mode… posted on Feb 20, 2013 Cheech and Chong computing. Why do I call it Cheech and Chong computing, because they do not need no stinking … posted on Jan 26, 2013 Raspberry Pi simple blog server.. Hopefully you already have your basic Raspberry Pi already set up with the Debian … posted on Oct 25, 2012 Three tool electronics kit. This kit is three simple electronic tools. A continuity, polarity, and logic teste… posted on May 18, 2013 Create animated gifs easily. Use free software to convert a series of pictures into an animated gif is real e… posted on Feb 19, 2013 Reuses for legacy computers III. Use that old composite monitor with your Arduino using the TV.out sof...