Archive for February, 2010

HOWTO unlock your N900 and turn it into a 3G modem

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

After read­ing the recent Boing Boing post about HOWTO unlock your Nexus One and turn it into a 3G modem, I thought it might be worth putting together a sim­i­lar set of instruc­tions for the Nokia N900.

Some notes before we begin:

  1. This is a sup­ported use of your phone.
  2. There is no risk of brick­ing your phone.
  3. This does not wipe your phone.
  4. You don’t need to back any­thing up before starting.

1. Install Bluetooth Dial-Up Networking support

  1. Open the Application Manager
  2. Install the “Bluetooth Dial-Up Networking” Application

2. Tether your computer

Posted in computers, inanity | No Comments »

On some podcasts I like and some I lack

Friday, February 19th, 2010

I have recently taken to lis­ten­ing to audio pod­casts while at work and I find it to be a good com­bi­na­tion of enter­tain­ing and informative.

The set of pod­casts that I am cur­rently lis­ten­ing to is:

For the most part, I’m quite pleased by the set of pod­casts that I lis­ten to and a great many of them are either bal­anced or agenda-free (e.g. The Splendid Table) but oth­ers carry rather strong slants/agendas (e.g. Skeptics’ Guide), which is fine. However, the slants and agen­das that are typ­i­fied in the pod­casts that I lis­ten to are ones that I agree with and, as such, they don’t push me or make me think as hard as I would like. To that end, I am inter­ested in hunt­ing down some high qual­ity pod­casts that I dis­agree with.

I am putting the call out to you, Internet, what are some good con­ser­v­a­tive, lib­er­tar­ian, military-industrial, etc. pod­casts for me to lis­ten to?

Posted in art & culture | 1 Comment »

Palm Pre tagline: a critique

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

I keep see­ing the same adver­tise­ment for the Palm Pre on the sides of buses; the adver­tise­ment says: “Life moves fast. Don’t miss a thing.”

I under­stand what they are try­ing to say and it is a very good tagline for what they are try­ing to mar­ket but, when­ever I see it, I can’t help but think that it speaks to a sad fact of our cur­rent culture.

I wish that I could say one thing to every­one that this tagline appeals to: Not every­thing mat­ters. Relax.

Posted in musings | No Comments »

Barefooting for the win

Monday, February 1st, 2010

A cou­ple months ago, I bought a pair of Vibram FiveFingers shoes, specif­i­cally a pair of KSOs. I’ve been wear­ing the shoes pretty reg­u­larly and, to be entirely hon­est, they are prob­a­bly the most com­fort­able shoes that I have ever worn. The shoes don’t pro­vide sup­port in the way typ­i­cal shoes do so it takes some get­ting used to and rebuild­ing strength in mus­cles that have been under-utilized since child­hood. Once your feet get used to the FiveFingers, it becomes a truly fan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence to redis­cover walk­ing, jog­ging, sprint­ing, and the like.

Additionally, recent research shows that bare­foot run­ning is low impact in a way that shod run­ning is not. Apparently, run­ning bare­foot changes your gait, which I can anec­do­tally confirm.

Worth not­ing, in the neg­a­tives col­umn, you can­not wear tra­di­tional socks with FiveFingers and they will start to smell if you wear them reg­u­larly with­out socks. FiveFingers shoes are machine wash­able, which is an option, or one can pur­chase toe socks from Injini (or oth­ers), which is the solu­tion that I’ve cho­sen. Sadly, the toe socks solu­tion is some­what expen­sive but, for me, I’m suf­fi­ciently hooked on my FiveFingers that it’s worth it to me.

Posted in waksman | No Comments »