Technology
gregladen | September 10, 2016The history of what we call "OpenOffice" is complex and confusing. It started as a project of Sun corporation, to develop an office suit that was not Microsoft Office, to use internally. Later, a version became more generally available known as Star Office, but also, a version called "OpenOffice" soon became available as well. The current histories say that Star Office was commercial, but my memory is that it never cost money to regular users. I think the idea was that large corporations would pay, individuals not. This was all back around 2000, plus or minus a year or two.
In any event,…
gregladen | September 7, 2016Amazon FreeTime Unlimited is a subscription service that covers children. I normally avoid subscription services of any kind. But, I have a six year old, and suddenly it made sense.
Huxley is very tech savvy for a newly minted first grader. Last night I was reviewing a new tablet that had multiple operating systems on it. He was building a robot or something and watching me at the same time (I was projecting the tablet’s image on a big screen). I said out loud, but mainly to myself, “How the heck to I change operating systems on this?” Huxley reached over and pointed at a button that did not…
gregladen | September 3, 2016The simplest project in the new book Electronics for Kids: Play with Simple Circuits and Experiment with Electricity! by Øyvind Nydal Dahl is the one where you lean a small light bulb against the two terminals of a nine volt battery in order to make the light bulb turn on.
The first several projects in the book involve making electricity, or using it to make light bulbs shine or to run an electromagnet.
The most complicated projects are the ones where you make interactive games using LED lights and buzzers.
Electronics for Kids: Play with Simple Circuits and Experiment with Electricity!…
gregladen | September 3, 2016Not many of them, but so far at least 35. Here's what it looks like after the fact:
As you may know, I'm not a big fan of Samsung smart phones. The version of the operating system they put on your phone takes a HUGE AMOUNT of your storage space, so you are left with almost nothing. There is no apparent reason for that, and no apparent fix. So, generally, I would NEVER recommend a Samsung smartphone. Also, the company does not stand by their product, at least in some cases. We had to return a Samsung smart phone numerous times, and after realizing that ALL the replacements they were…
gregladen | August 25, 2016The ePaper Kindle is back in my life. I started out with one (the original model), then moved on to using tablets and phones and computers and stuff to read ebooks. Then, I got a Kindle Fire (see this discussion), and that was nice.
But I wanted an ePaper reading surface for all the reasons people tend to discuss. It is more like paper, perhaps does not have the down sides of constantly staring at a light emitting screen, etc.
There is an ePaper kindle that is under $80 (with the non obtrusive special offers on the sleep screen) that has very long battery time, holds a gazillion books,…
gregladen | August 24, 2016Want to make your own robot? You can do this the easy way, or you can do this the hard way. Or, both, if you like.
The basic home made robot is a robot because it moves around, and the way that is usually achieved is with two independently powered wheels, a third wheel (or something) to balance the thing, an energy source, some logic circuitry, some sensors, and some sort of remote control.
You can learn how all these technologies work, buy the various parts, put them together, program it, and have your own robot.
Or, you can just get one of these guys, and you're nearly done.
The robot…
drorzel | June 29, 2016When I was going through the huge collection of photos I have from the Forum in Rome, I kept running across pictures containing two young Asian women (neither of them Kate). This isn't because I was stalking them, but because they were everywhere, stopping for long periods in front of virtually every significant ruin and striking exaggerated poses for each other to take photos of. I had to carefully frame a few of my own photos to avoid them, but I did also take a few that deliberately included their posing, because it was so amusingly over the top.
Tourists taking photos of each other in…
gregladen | June 25, 2016No, not that one. This one:
SpotMini is a new smaller version of the Spot robot, weighing 55 lbs dripping wet (65 lbs if you include its arm.) SpotMini is all-electric (no hydraulics) and runs for about 90 minutes on a charge, depending on what it is doing. SpotMini is one of the quietest robots we have ever built. It has a variety of sensors, including depth cameras, a solid state gyro (IMU) and proprioception sensors in the limbs. These sensors help with navigation and mobile manipulation. SpotMini performs some tasks autonomously, but often uses a human for high-level guidance. For more…
gregladen | June 23, 2016This is one of four related posts:
Should You Install Ubuntu Linux?Installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTSHow to use Ubuntu UnityThings To Do After Installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Some Linux/Ubuntu related books:Ubuntu Unleashed 2016 Edition: Covering 15.10 and 16.04 (11th Edition)Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Desktop: Applications and AdministrationThe Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction
If you have already considered your options for installing Linux, done the installation, and learned your way around the Unity Desktop, then you are ready to tweak your system. This will be easiest if you use the terminal for…
gregladen | June 23, 2016This is one of four related posts:
Should You Install Ubuntu Linux?Installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTSHow to use Ubuntu UnityThings To Do After Installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Some Linux/Ubuntu related books:Ubuntu Unleashed 2016 Edition: Covering 15.10 and 16.04 (11th Edition)Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Desktop: Applications and AdministrationThe Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction
If you have installed Ubuntu with the Unity desktop, you'll learn how to use it mainly by playing around with it. Discoverability of its various functions is more or less built into the design. But there are a few things you…
gregladen | June 23, 2016This is one of four related posts:
Should You Install Ubuntu Linux?Installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTSHow to use Ubuntu UnityThings To Do After Installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Some Linux/Ubuntu related books:Ubuntu Unleashed 2016 Edition: Covering 15.10 and 16.04 (11th Edition)Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Desktop: Applications and AdministrationThe Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction
Linux isn't for everyone, so I'm not going to try to talk you into using this superior operating system if you have some reason to not do so. But if you have a computer that runs Windows, it isn't that hard to install Ubuntu.…
gregladen | June 23, 2016This is one of four related posts:
Should You Install Ubuntu Linux?Installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTSHow to use Ubuntu UnityThings To Do After Installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Some Linux/Ubuntu related books:Ubuntu Unleashed 2016 Edition: Covering 15.10 and 16.04 (11th Edition)Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Desktop: Applications and AdministrationThe Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction
Why you should install Linux
Linux is an operating system, as are Windows and Apple’s OSX. It is the operating system that is used on the majority of computing devices. Linux is the basis for the Android operating system, so if…
gregladen | June 20, 2016Which Android Tablet Is Best?
You will have to decide which tablet is best for you based on your specific needs, and no general review is going to give you that information in a useful way. But, among the many tablets there is a handful that rise to the top and should be looked at either to consider purchasing or to use as a benchmark against which to measure others.
Here is some guidance to help you decide which Android tablet are in that category, and that you should consider. Note that I look briefly at a very inexpensive option here (not included in the list below).
Nexus 9
Most of…
gregladen | May 26, 2016I'm not anti-government. I'm pro civilization. But I'm also an anarchist, of a sort. I think institutions should be dissolved and reformed regularly. What really happens is that institutions add bits and pieces over time, in response to things that happen, as solutions to interim problems, until finally the bits and pieces take over and nobody can move.
Do you know the The Gormenghast trilogy?
In this amazing story by Mervyn Peake ...
... a doomed lord, a scheming underling, an ancient royal family plagued by madness and intrigue - these are the denizens of ancient, sprawling, tumbledown…
gregladen | May 13, 2016I'm just passing this information on, I've not handled this device. But the price and performance seem like such a sweet spot that I am compelled to tell you about it. Let me know in the comments if you have experience with this item.
The Dragon Touch M8 2016 Edition 8 inch Quad Core Tablet is a competitively priced high quality tablet, with excellent reviews. It costs 80 bucks. A while back, I asked if you should buy a $50 Kindle Fire Tablet. I concluded that maybe you should, because it is cheap and if the main thing you are doing with your tablet is grazing your Amazon Kindle booklist…
drorzel | February 9, 2016As I go through my daily routine, I find myself sort of out of phase with a lot of the Internet. My peak online hours are from about six to ten in the morning, Eastern US time. That's when I get up, have breakfast, and then go to Starbucks to write for a few hours.
This means that most of the other people awake and active on my social media feeds are in Europe or Australia. And my standard writing time ends right around the time things start to heat up in the US. I do continue to have access to the Internet through the afternoon, of course, but unless I have a deadline coming up, I'm often…
gregladen | February 1, 2016Suddenly my computer tells me that copy.com is shutting down as a cloud storage service. That sucks, since I had a few terabytes of free storage with them.
I will now have to seek an alternative. What are your experiences with cloud storage, free or otherwise?
gregladen | January 16, 2016One mouse to rule them all
I had previously reviewed the Logitech Ultrathin Touch Mouse, suggesting it as a replacement for the Apple Magic Mouse. Now, I've tried it on my Linux machine (don't know why that took so long). It turns out to work very well, better than most, possibly all, mice I've used.
One's mouse is a very personal thing, and everyone is going to have a potentially different opinion about what the best mouse is. The Ultrathin is designed to work with laptops/notebooks because it is small, and it is assumed that everything you use with such a portable device must be small.…
gregladen | January 12, 2016A worthy Kickstarter science related project is afoot.
Face it. Most science is done on the command line. When it is not, we call it "science by spreadsheet" or name it by some other epithet.
Much of that is done on Linux or Linux like computers, but that actually includes Macs, and if you must, it can be done on Windows.
Bioinformatics, climate simulations, basic statistics using the r language, fancy math things using the appropriate python library, making graphs with gnuplot, and even producing nice looking results for dissimnation to our geeky peers using LaTex. Science-related…
gregladen | January 3, 2016This is a review of the Kindle Fire with 7" Display and Special Offers by Amazon. In short, this is a tablet/eReader that a lot of people will want, as long as certain needs are extant and certain expectations understood. I have one, and I'm very happy with it. It would take very little convincing for me to get a second one.
One of the main reasons to give serious thought to getting one of these is the fact that it will put you back a mere fifty bucks.
Don't expect a brilliant tablet for fifty bucks. You may want a nice full blown Android tablet, or if you prefer, an iPad. That will cost…