casa.de.geeks

Archive for February, 2010

Unlike most things you see in Sci-Fi movies one intriguing and very useful piece of tech might be closer than I previously thought. No I’m not talking about flying cars or killer robots. I’m talking about a personal heads up display.  Something you wear as a pair of glasses or contacts that can display things like a GPS map or text messages. The University of Washington has made several contact lens style HUD’s that they’ve been testing and will hopefully develop into something that can be commercially made. Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you that don’t know what Homeopathy is let me enlighten you. Homeopathy is when you take medicine and dilute it so much that the medicine is no longer present but the remaining water “remembers” the medicine was there and can heal people. Ok ok stop laughing some people will believe anything. Read the rest of this entry »

So in this video you have a talking head blathering on about interest rates or some other bank related nonsense. All the while the dude to the left about halfway through the video starts looking at porn, and to make it even better he manages to do it while some guy is talking to him! So next time your at a bank watching your loan app getting shot down for some crappy reason or you see some bank CEO getting grilled before congress to explain why the economy tanked, and can’t. You will know why.

Video is safe for work as the images on his monitor are tiny.

Apple recently released the iPad – the most anticipated mobile device since the iPhone. However, most gadget lovers and tech heads alike will gripe about one flaw – a flaw that some believe will be fatal to the iPad. No multitasking! You can only run one application at a time on the iPad just like the iPhone and the iPod Touch. This seems to be a major part of the Apple mobile device formula and if you look at the numbers of these devices that have been sold along with other impressive stats like repeat customers and customer satisfaction, there is no denying that this is a formula that works. However, its a theory not shared by HTC which released phones such as the popular Droid and the Nexus One which run the Android OS, the product of search engine giant Google.

If you have ever used a phone with multitasking capabilities such as Windows Mobile or the Android OS, you have undoubtedly had issues with your phones system resources running out or just system lockups due to applications running in the background. Some consumers do not understand the idea of background processes and they don’t seem to be interested in learning about them or how to manage them. Can you honestly blame your average person who just wants a phone that works without the hassles of task managers and application startup options? With that said, I have to admit that my personal phone, a T-mobile G1 / HTC Dream, has had very little issues in the way of multitasking and background processes. Could it be that Google has found a way around the hurdles of multitasking and some day in the future it will be more streamlined for the average consumer? Or will Apple’s formula for mobile platform success be the victor in the end?

In the almost four years that I have lived in Oklahoma I have yet to see all The Sooner State has to offer! I actually am a bit ashamed of that. I think the idea of traveling to various tourist attractions in my own state seemed daunting at first because I am originally from Texas and travelling all of Texas was simply a daunting endeavor to take on. Once it sunk into my mind that Oklahoma isn’t nearly as large as Texas, traveling the state for attractions didn’t seem so unachievable. From the center of the state you can travel almost anywhere else in OK within a few hours and make it back home in the same day!

So how do you know what’s going on in OK? Two of my favorites – Wimgo and TravelOK.

Did you know this is the first year that the state of OK decided not to print copies of the annual Oklahoma Events Guide? Those in search of the paper guide are now sent to the TravelOK website, which isn’t too bad.

The CasaDeGeeks team is just waiting for the weather to warm up a bit before venturing out to explore OK. Maybe we’ll find a map to Candy Mountain and a Magical Liopleurodon who will tell us the secret of life.

Does anybody remember way back in the early 90′s when Microsoft was the king on the block when it came to innovation and releasing of cool new things? Remember that feeling when you first used Windows 95 after all the promotion on TV and the radio, I must’ve heard “start me up” a hundred times in that time.After using Dos and Windows 3.1 for years Windows 95 seemed like night and day. That was back when if you saw full motion video in a game it was awesome! Then most of the cool stuff still ran better in Dos, but that quickly went away. Windows was king and its GUI was genius. That and with the birth of the internet it just got even better.

So where do we stand today. Surely they would have taken us to glorious new heights by now. Unfortunately things kind of stop there, it’s like Microsoft’s frozen in time in 1997. Yes we do have newer versions of Windows and Office and they are better in various ways, but in alot of other ways they’re the same. After all we still have the start menu and we still have Icons. Now I can understand if its not broke don’t start trying to break it, but I would have thought that after 15 years they could have thought something else up. Then again with the fact that Windows and Office are pretty much the defacto standard for business I can understand the stagnation. Read the rest of this entry »

We are studying for the CompTIA Network+ certification exam on Tuesday and Thursday nights at CasaDeGeeks. We will be following along with the following books:

CompTIA Network+ Review Guide Exam N10-004 from Sybex

CompTIA Network+ Study Guide Exam N10-004 from Sybex

To be honest that just means that Fox, Shaun, David, and I will all be hanging out at the Casa going over the practice exams and taking time to focus on problem areas… All while cracking nerd jokes, belittling one another, drinking beer, and trying to convince Fox not to cheat by clicking “show answer” every time. When all is said and done, all four of us should be able to go pass that exam. Wish us luck!