Share Your Wired Connection Over WiFi With Ubuntu 14.04

My First Video Post

Bear with me ;P

Please keep in mind that you need a WiFi capable computer (built-in or usb adapter) and an active wired connection in order to do this.

What A Wonderful App For The Unity Desktop

Unity Launcher Folders

A very easy way to group apps or internet links together in specific drawers in the launcher.

I have looked for something like this ever since Unity made its debut in Ubuntu. This is a great app that I cannot recommend enough for those wanting to clean up the launcher a bit. Check it out at the Unity-Launcher-Folders website.

Giving Windows 10 A Test Drive

I have installed Windows 10 Technical Preview

On my Foxconn Nettop PC with the Intel Atom and so far it is doing quite well. As this is a technical preview there are a lot of abilities that are simply not in place yet, such as DVD playback, Media Center, and a few others that some may not want to do without, those with touch screens may want to shy away at the time being.

Over all my initial feeling with Windows 10 is that this will be much better than the beleaguered Windows 8 (or 8.1). The awful start page is history although the basic idea is retained in the Start Menu which rests back in its proper place in the lower left hand corner. To make use of Windows Mail your account must have IMAP capabilities, POP is not supported.

If you would like to give it a go you can head over to Microsoft and download the .iso for yourself. 

I strongly recommend that you DO NOT install this on a computer that you wish to use on a daily basis nor should you choose to up-grade from an existing installation of another version of Windows. It is not yet determined how well this system plays with others as far as dual booting. It is simply best to allow it to be solely installed on one computer for trial purposes.

The Windows App Store will bring more secure way of finding software that is designed to work with the system and will also bring more of a Linux feel as well. It mirrors the long tradition of many Linux distributions own software repositories, such as Ubuntu's Software Center.

As has been proven by the Linux community, this centralized location for approved software, as long as it is properly maintained, should drastically cut down on the inadvertent installation of malware from third parties.

As time allows I will continue to put the New Windows 10 through its paces and provide any important info that I may come across. If I can save someone else from doing something stupid by doing it myself ... well, you know where that is going.

One Problem With Keeping Your Tabs All Open

Hmmm ...

OWCH!

Rumors are true.

I have been laid-up the last week on my couch nursing a dislocated and broken ankle.  Open reduction surgery was done and now I am looking forward to getting the staples removed tomorrow at the Doctors office. With any luck I will be a bit more mobile this week and will be able to get back into the shop to bring in some more repairs.

Go To Hell

This was on the bottom of an E-Mail I received today. I had to do something with it!

Performance and Style

WD My Passport Ultra Metal Edition 1TB USB 3.0 2.5" Portable External Hard Drive WDBTYH0010BBA-NESN Navy    

The case is very nice and being made of aluminum I would suspect it would help keep the drive running at a cooler temperature better than a plastic case would, although during all my torture the drive temps never showed any signs for concern. Although I dislike having to install proprietary software on my PC, the WD Smartware is a very easy to understand software and installed and even updated to the current version without a hitch on my Windows 7 Ultimate box, alas as is usually the case there is no direct Linux support. The ability to include your dropbox account is a nice touch although there are other services out there that offer much better plans (10 to 20GB) for free as well. Hardware encryption could be a plus to some, especially if you are the type that drag this thing around with you wherever you go. For the normal Joe that leaves it sitting at home as a Backup destination leaves little use for it IMO.

The Pro software provides licensing to three computers. Data transfer rates seem to be on mark with what you should expect from USB3.0 I was able to transfer a 1.1GB file to the device in just over 30 seconds. Transferring files from a second USB3.0 device saw rates of 70 to 72 MB/s for a sustained period of time and the drives never seemed to get any warmer than about 105DegF

On a side note for those that use and maintain OpenSource computers, this drive does work equally well on Linux systems especially once you ditch all the proprietary software from its internals, which will also see the recovery of disk space so you actually get a near 1TB (993GB) amount of room.

Overall I am quite happy with the performance aspect of the drive, and would recommend it to those looking for a simple option for backing up their PC that runs Mac or Windows. I would equally recommend it to those running Linux as long as they want to deal with a total delete and reformat of the drive prior to use.

Not exactly sure of why one would want (or is that need) to back up the files on the cloud? If the cloud servers mess things up you still have the files on your computer, if your computer messes up you still have the files in the cloud, and/or on your other devices that are synced with it.