The result is, simultaneously, ridiculous, witty, silly, endearing, creative, charming, puzzling, cheap…and awesome.

Honestly, this is just plain astounding.  The fact that the film is cut up into 15 second intervals, and that each segment was independently created by whatever means necessary, means that there is more creativity on display than in probably any major motion picture this year.  You’ll see hand drawn animation, paper hats, flash video, kids in garages, office hallways, legos on sticks, and dogs wrapped in tinfoil.  And I haven’t even watched the whole thing yet.

This should be screened alongside Lucas’ 3-D redo of The Phantom Menace and then the crowds polled to see which one had the better experience.

I realize I’m already talking jibberish to some folks, and I had a pretty steep learning curve as well so don’t feel bad.  Jailbreaking is using a software hack to modify your iPhone to be able to install software from sources other than Apple. Unlocking involves hacking the phone again to remove the hardware lock to a particular cellular signal or carrier.

For this particular phone though, that wasn’t as simple as it sounded.  This phone runs iOS 5.0.1 and when the operating system was updated, it also updated the modem firmware (which gets the cellular signal) to 05.16.05 which rendered past unlocks unusable.  Plus there were some 3GS phones that aren’t jailbreakable at all.  I did a lot of internet research and the best information and tutorial I found was on everythingapplepro.net:

My phone was able to be hacked thankfully (I had to check the serial number – make sure you do as well when requested).  The issue that arose was that while jailbreaking would be relatively simple, unlocking would be trickier.  It’s impossible to unlock the iPhone with that particular firmware for the modem (5.16.05).  I tried at first and it just crashed and I had to restore my phone.  It turns out that to unlock the phone I would need to get a different firmware for the modem (6.11.00), which in many cases interferes with the GPS functioning of the phone.

I weighed the pros and cons of losing the GPS and decided to take the leap and try and unlock the thing.  Plus my wife needed a replacement phone and I could give her my old one.

I used a program called Redsn0w (that “o” is a zero btw) to jailbreak the phone and followed the instructions on the video.  It took some practice getting the phone into DFU mode (sort of like safe mode in Windows).  Definitely make sure to follow the instructions down to the exact detail, and make sure to back up your phone to iTunes before going too far.

When running Redsn0w I had to check off to install Cydia and downgrade the modem baseband to 06.15.00, which is actually for the iPad.  You can’t go back if you do this though, so just bear that in mind.

It took a little while to get the hang of getting the phone into DFU mode as well as getting redsn0w to recognize it, but once it worked it pretty much does itself.

After jailbreaking and installing Cydia (an “app store” for non-Apple iPhone programs) on the phone I downloaded another program called ultrasn0w (again that’s a zero) to unlock it.  I put my T-Mobile SIM card in, rebooted, and…

…nothing at first.  I got a “no carrier” message, and I thought I’d just wasted my time (and GPS) for nothing.  Lots of people had this problem, but I had trouble finding a clear answer to it.  I started tinkering with the settings a little and figured out what the problem was.  I went in to Settings>General>Network and turned off “Enable 3G”.  I also switched it on to airplane mode once or twice.  Then the phone caught the T-Mobile signal and I did the happy dance.

I get great reception, but the phone is limited.  The GPS is not funtional – at least when the cell network is on – and data only works on T-Mobile’s EDGE network, which is slower than what the phone is capable of.  However I am fine with surfing and doing other stuff when connected by WiFi and limiting my other data use when on the network.

The files required that I mentioned are all available at the link above on everythingapplepro and if you’re thinking of unlocking your phone for T-Mobile this was the most informative guide for me.  There’s lots of help out there so keep looking but be careful and do your homework before trying anything.

Good luck!!

It’s easy to think that you don’t have enough security.  The fear is that “the big one” will somehow slip through and steal your info or trash your system.  So is it better to have two or three antivirus programs running simultaneously?

The truth is, having multiple antivirus programs – even legitimate ones from major manufacturers – can cause your PC to slow to a crawl or even become unusable, as even just one antivirus program usually uses a lot of resources. Some aren’t even compatible with each other and will either crash your system or else just not install.

The truth is that you really only need one antivirus program, one software firewall, and one antispyware program – or better yet, a software suite that covers all three bases at once.

Some folks like to get security suites like Norton 360, as they include a slew of security features all in one package that are designed to go together.  Most major security software manufacturers have suites as well as stand-alone versions of their antivirus programs.  These suites can be costly though, and can include features that you may not use.  Plus, some manufacturers make great antivirus programs, but only mediocre antispyware programs.  If you buy the suite you get them both like it or not.

Another option is to look through reviews and find the best pieces you can find and put together your own suite.  This can not only provide optimal protection but also save a lot of money, as there are some really great security programs out there that are free.  I went from Bitdefender’s security suite to a mix of Comodo Antivirus, Malwarebytes Antispyware, and Windows 7′s own firewall – all were free (or included with Windows 7) and I haven’t had a problem.  Both Comodo and Malwarebytes have caught their share of viruses and other garbage before they messed up my PC.

Finally, be way of anything that tells you that you might have a virus that isn’t coming from your security software.  Sometimes these popups even look like they’re coming directly from Windows, so be cautious.  If something does pop up that looks suspicious, close your browser and any open windows and run your security software to make sure you don’t have spyware or a virus.

Safety advocates state that even talking on a headset promotes “zoning out” and therefore should be banned.  Users argue that there’s not much difference between talking to a person next to you and talking on a headset.

For my part, I fall on the side of it being safe to use a headset.  However the discussion about safety is one that still needs to be seriously considered, and I don’t think that headsets or hands-free devices are the primary culprit of distracted driving.  Technology itself isn’t the only problem either, but it can be a major part of the problem.

Overall we try and do too much while we’re driving – talk, change the radio station, glimpse at the GPS, fix the AC, you get the idea.  All of these things are distractions, and we can only eliminate so many of them.  Eliminating technology from vehicles is not going to solve the problem of distracted driving or “zoning out”.  I can recall zoning out several times driving across PA on I-80 from New Haven to Pittsburgh when I was in school, and I can say that there was absolutely no technology involved.  I didn’t have a cell phone, GPS or even a CD player back then.

I think blaming cell phones for all our motor vehicle accidents isn’t helpful or correct.  To completely eliminate distractions, then you need to take down the billboards and road signs, get rid of the highway markers, eliminate car stereos and GPS units entirely,  and make all vehicles 1-seaters so there can’t be anyone to talk to who might take your mind off the road.

We do need to realize how many distractions we have and how to minimize them when we drive.  We do so many things in the car that we simply don’t have to do while we’re driving.  In many instances, it’s a simple manner of pulling off the road or letting that call or text go to a message and checking it later.

I don’t have much of a Libertarian streak in me, but education and responsible use has always seemed more appropriate to me than simply banning something, especially when the reasons for the ban are hazy at best.

I am really in need of a new monitor.  I’m still holding on to my old CRT, only because – like so many other CRT’s – it won’t die.  It has some kind of brown gunk leaking out of it, but it still works.  Plus I”m just too darn cheap to get a new one.  Heck, as soon as I come up with an extra $100 it ends up going to fixing something or replacing something that can’t be fixed.

While I”m at it, I also can really use a new DVD drive.  I have a DVD burner and a DVD reader in my computer, as I like to be able to copy disks directly.  But the reader won’t open anymore.  I think the part that holds the disk and spins the disk has become magnetized and just won’t move.  I have several paperclips that I use to pop the tray out when I need it.  You can hardly buy a plain DVD reader anymore, and burners only cost like $25, so I’m not sure why I’m holding back so much.

Oh, and I’d like a new CPU.  My motherboard is old, old, old…at least by tech standards.  I made my PC to be upgradeable but really haven’t done much in the way of upgrading it beyond adding RAM and a new (and unnecessary) soundcard.  So finding CPU’s that are still compatible with my system is a lot harder today than it was a couple years ago.  AMD just doesn’t make processors that work with my board anymore.  But there is this AMD Athlon II X2 processor that’s about as high as I can go without significant tweaking to my board and would be a significant speed jump for about $65-70.

Well, here’s hoping!

Blue Canary in the Outlet by the Light Switch: “Whaaa?” you say?  Taking a cue from a They Might Be Giants song that was popular 20+ years ago, this nightlight will make a little birdhouse in your soul.  Just make sure the joke isn’t lost on them first, and keep it away from Argonauts.  $13

Casio Calculator Watch: This watch was banned when I was in high school due to its stealthy calculator.  At the time, this was about as awesome as an iPhone.  Sure it’s outdated and unnecessary, but this will send your geek into fits of childhood joy, followed by long stints in front of Hulu watching Robotech eating Quisp (and yes you can still buy Quisp!). $19

USB Classic NES Controller: There are some awesome emulators out there that let you play old-school Nintendo games on your PC.  However using the keyboard or your modern two-joystick 297-button controller is just plain dumb.  This looks just like the classic two-button-&-pad controller and uses any USB port.  $30

Vader’s Dark Side Roast Coffee: Real gourmet whole bean coffee roasted to perfection over Uncle Owen’s glowing embers.  $15 for 12oz bag

USS Enterprise Haynes Manual: If you ever need to change the brakes on your NX-01 then you’ll definitely need this on your shelf.  This hardcover explores the guts of each version of the Enterprise from Archer to Picard.  The Haynes manual designation makes it more fun than the typical Star Trek history book.

PC Diagnostic Dice: Roll these three dice to troubleshoot, diagnose and solve 99.9% of all IT problems.  It’s what those people on the other side of the phone are doing, so save yourself the minutes.  $20

Stickman Action Figure:  Make your own comical caution sign with this combo super-articulated action figure and yellow “caution” triangle.  Add your kid’s other action figures/etc for even more fun!  Your geek’s cube will love it.  $12

Techn’@:  I mentioned that I wasn’t that excited about Windows 8 and you begged to differ – so what do you like most about Windows 8?

Greg Holtz: I like how they are finally starting to pay attention to detail and fix/enhance the little things. For example, they have made big improvements to the Task Manager and Windows Explorer, which I use quite frequently in my job and at home. I like the Start Screen concept and how you can customize it the way you want, but I think it will take a little while to get used to. Most people won’t care (or even notice) these things, but I like how they are adding new features, for example, ISO mounting and Hyper-V. Lastly, I love how they are integrating Windows Live into the login process. Now you can login to any Windows 8 PC with your Windows Live account and it will pull down your Settings/Favorites/Bookmarks, etc from the Cloud. Being someone that uses up to 4 PCs, this is a great feature.

(for those of you lost already, Hyper-V is Microsoft’s new virtualization feature, which will allow developers and IT managers to install and run multiple OS’s on one machine)

Tn’@: Do you think it is going to make the basic home PC easier and better to use than Windows 7?

GH:  Yes, I think Windows 8 takes what was good about Windows 7 and makes it even better.

Tn’@: Do you think Windows 8 will be able to compete against Apple and Android on mobile devices?

GH: This remains to be seen. In terms of Phones, I think they are way behind and it will be tough to compete with the top 2. However, they may have a shot in the tablet market, if they can come out with a Windows 8 tablet very soon.

Tn’@: One thing that Microsoft has going for it that Apple doesn’t right now is a gaming console – the XBox 360.  Is Windows 8 going to be more integrated with the XBox and Kinect?

GH: Xbox will be integrated into Windows 8. (Greg linked the following video as well)

As far as Kinect goes, nothing has been confirmed, but rumors are that it will support it. It will definitely change the game, but I don’t think it will replace the mouse anytime soon. If you had to wave your hand every time you wanted to switch windows, your arm would get very tired over an 8 hour period.

And in the same way that it’s hard to still not equate Microsoft with Bill Gates, even though he’s not leading the company anymore as CEO, it’s impossible for me as well as most others to imagine Apple without Jobs.  Will it survive?  Probably.

But rather than muse about all the revolutionary and visionary stuff Jobs created and did, I wanted to think about what his death means in the grand scheme of things.  Jobs died at 56 from pancreatic cancer, a terrible and insidious disease.  That is a very young age to die.  There was much said about his coming back to work after his initial diagnosis.  While it wasn’t said out loud much, I think there was a lot of wonder and raised eyebrows about where his priorities were.  When one is diagnosed with a terminal disease, and pancreatic cancer in particular has a short prognosis, should one take time off to enjoy the “more important things in life” like family and life’s other pursuits?  Or is it more noble to live as if – as if you didn’t have cancer, as if tomorrow always comes, as if there will always be more time?  Is to not let the disease define you overcoming it, or is it denial?

I can’t claim to know much of anything about Steve Jobs beyond what I see in his appearances.  However I know other visionaries and for them the pursuit of the vision is often all-encompassing.  Everything is seen in light of it – family, happiness, life.  Visionaries love what they do, and they do it wonderfully.  And what they do impacts us daily in ways we recognize and in ways we don’t.  However vision has a cost, and it’s hard to say if we will ever be able to separate Steve Jobs from Apple.  That’s sad I think, in that he had to have been so much more than the imagination behind a company.  I think now there will be – I hope – more time to look at not just the stuff he dreamed up like the Mac and the iPod, but to look at who he was and what we can learn from him; how he died and how he lived.

Case in point:  I want to get a new bluetooth headset for my phone, so I surf over to good ol’ Amazon and type in “bluetooth headset”.  I get a page with some “featured” bluetooth earpieces, but I want to sort them from lowest to highest to get the best deal.  I do so and am immediately overrun with little bitty items like foam earpiece covers and neoprene cases.  I also get headsets that clearly aren’t bluetooth, or even have “bluetooth” in the title.  After going through 8 pages of this mess I decide to narrow the search to the $5-25 price range, which I hope will get me actual bluetooth headsets.

It’s a little better this time, but the list includes items way out of my price range and still some unrelated items.  Plus they still aren’t sorted by price as I can tell.  But at least I find one I’m interested in.  So I click on it and find out that it doesn’t qualify for free shipping as it’s not fulfilled by Amazon.  But then there’s a link that comes up to the same one with a slightly different name that is eligible for shipping, so I look at it.  But the price isn’t the same.  So I keep looking…and looking…and looking.  The best I could do was one for about $16, which is cheap but after all that work I had hoped for better.

After a lot of frustration I just give up.  Just for fun, I head over to Newegg.com just to see what they have.  In 30 seconds I find a decent one for $10 with free shipping.

Amazon used to be the best place to find stuff – period.  However with their new selling policies it’s becoming a victim of it’s own success.  It’s sort of like walking into a huge swap meet trying to find the one table that is selling the one thing that you need in a 50 acre field of tables with no map or directory to speak of.

Here’s hoping that Amazon can get their act together and make buying easier again.

My not-so-beloved Epson NX300 died recently, cause of death unknown.  It was a pretty basic model, but it did have the quadfecta of all-in-one printers: printer, scanner, copier and fax.  I didn’t use the fax all that often but when I did it really came in handy.  The document feeder was also a step up from what I had before, which was a 1 page at a time machine.   However print quality was fair, color printing was sketchy, and it tended to need a lot of TLC from time to time.  It also tended to drink ink, which I tolerated as it was cheaper than most inks at about $13 a cartridge (though it took 4).

Recently though it quit printing in color.  Repeated attempts at head cleaning and nozzle-checking didn’t help.  It’s probably 3-4 years old, which I guess is 107 in printer years, but I was optimistic.  I contacted Epson tech support by email, whose first response was “use genuine Epson ink.”  So then I bought a new black cartridge, as I was using a 3rd party brand (which had worked fine before).  I put the new cartridge in and it recognized it fine.  But then after trying again to check the nozzles it read that it was empty.  I took it back to Target thinking it was a bad cartridge.

I then went to Staples and bought a box of all four cartridges, which was about $40, top start fresh.  I put them in and still no color and it wasn’t reading them as full consistently either.  I called Epson again, and here’s basically what happened:

“Hi, my printer still isn’t printing color.”

“Take them out and reinstall them, then run the nozzle check and cleaner.”

“Ok…still didn’t work.”

“Try again.”

“…nope.”

“Sounds like a hardware issue – here’s a list of service centers and a link to our customer loyalty program to get a new printer for yourself, where we sell overpriced printers at 15% off.”

So of course I’m angry, and concerned that now I’ve spent $40 on useless ink that doesn’t fit any current Epson printer.  I go to Staples and try to return the ink, sob story in full effect.  No luck there either, but I can’t blame Staples for not accepting opened and used ink (I was actually quite surprised that Target took it back).

End result, I’m $40 lighter in the wallet, printerless, and never buying another Epson.

It seems like we have two options when it comes to home printers: cheap ones which can basically get tossed when the ink runs out, as the cost of 2 ink refills is more than the cost of the printer, and high-end ones that may last longer, but only because you can justify the repair cost when it breaks because you spent $350 on it.

Oh – and when I asked if they made any printers that still took my ink, he said they didn’t because the new printers that they roll out also usually require new cartridge formats.  The ink cartridges you purchased a year ago may not be compatible with this year’s models.  Sound like planned obsolescence?

The upside is that I wanted to upgrade to a wireless printer anyway, so this was prime time.  As there weren’t any significant sales I hiked on down to Wal-Mart and got a Canon MX340 that scans, faxes, copies and prints wirelessly all for about $80.  It took a couple minutes to get it to play nice with the iBook, but has been flawless since.

At least until it breaks…