Microsoft Band–First Look

Posted on January 10, 2015 by mhomewood

So I got a Microsoft Band as a late Christmas present and I’ve been using it for a few days and I thought I’d share a few of my thoughts on the device.

First though, I’d like to point out that I’ve been looking for quite a few months for a device that would:

  1. Give me continuous heart rate monitoring
  2. Give me calorie counts as I’m working out
  3. Not be tied to a particular Operating System (yes Apple Watch I’m talking to you here 🙂 )
  4. Sync to my phone or PC
  5. But can use it without having to have my phone with me (Samsung, I’m talking to you…:) )
  6. And do all of the above without needing to wear a chest strap

I’ve tried a few different watches/devices and have returned them all as they didn’t do any of the above things. Even when I returned the Samsung watch to Best Buy, they kind of admitted that the watch sucked 🙂

So I picked up the my Microsoft Band a few days ago and here’s what I’ve found

  1. I have a Galaxy S4 phone and the Band synced up using Bluetooth easily. (In fact the Band won’t work without a smartphone sync).
  2. But the nicest part…….I can use the band when I run or workout and don’t have to have my phone next to me. This is something that is pretty important to me
  3. I get email, text and phone notifications. I can even pay for my Starbucks with my Band. 🙂
  4. When using the Band as a workout device, it continually displays my heart rate, calories burned, and exercise duration.
  5. It is moderately uncomfortable (although I haven’t worn a watch in 20 years…..).
  6. The reports generated by the Band give a lot of interesting information.. for example:

First Boot Camp info

You’ll notice the spikes in heart rate and the timing durations. Now lets look at a sample run

First Run

And the part I found the most interesting….Tracking my tennis match

Singles Tennis Match which I won 6-3, 6-2

As you can see, I work really hard at tennis

 

Although I plan to further discuss this when I’ve had the Band a few weeks, my initial reaction to the Band is that I think I’m really going to like this product 🙂

 

Filed under: Computers, Excercise, Geek Stuff | Tagged: | Leave a comment »

2015: The year I got rid of my Ipad Part1

Posted on January 1, 2015 by mhomewood

People who know me know that I have a hate/hate relationship with Apple 🙂 It’s not that I don’t like their products (I usually do), but my usual complaints with Apple stem around 3 specific things:

  1. Apple products are overpriced.
  2. Apple requires me to install Itunes on my PC. As any self-respecting computer geek will tell you :), Itunes is a buggy piece of software, it slows your computer down, and it is a PITA to deal with 🙂
  3. The lack of available storage space on any Apple product is ridiculous!

About 4 years ago, however, I purchased an Ipad 2. The biggest reason that I purchased an Ipad was to use the device as a Comic Book reader. I had tried to use my Nook Color e-book reader to read my comics, but the screen size was too small. Apple was the first company to come up with a tablet that was large enough to read digital comics without having to resort to using a magnifying glass 🙂

I bought an Ipad 2 (16GB) for $499 and started to use it. As I started to use the device, a couple of things became quite clear to me.

  1. I loved the idea of having a tablet to use for general web surfing, reading magazines, and reading comics books. As the years passed, I used the Ipad an awful lot.
  2. Apple makes really good products. I’ve used my Ipad multiple times daily for about 4 years and I’ve never had a problem with it.
  3. I REALLY HATE ITUNES
  4. 16GB is not nearly enough space for any device that you want to store a lot of digital media on.
  5. Why the heck didn’t Apple put a USB port on the damn thing?

Although I’ve used the Ipad for over 4 years, the limitations really started to annoy me.

  • The contortions necessary to import my comics to my Ipad were cumbersome at best. I had to hook the Ipad up to my PC, select in Itunes what comics I wanted to import, and then have Itunes copy my comics to the Ipad.
  • I teach at a local community college and we use Canvas to interact with the students. Canvas is also the method that the students use to turn in their papers. Although Canvas had an Ipad app, I could only use it to grade homework questions. I still had to use the PC versions of Canvas to take attendance, grade long papers, and other necessary things.
  • It’s still a Windows world. 🙂 If I wanted to demonstrate a network traffic sniffer to my class, I still had to use my laptop. If I needed to show my students how to use a PC based program I had to use my laptop. So as a result, I needed to bring my laptop AND my Ipad to class.
  • I was constantly running out of space on my Ipad. As I mentioned before, 16GB’s is not nearly enough storage space for an Ipad. I ended up deleting apps and content that I really didn’t want to delete because of the lack of space on my Ipad.

Although I certainly got my moneys worth out of my Ipad, it was time to look at something else. The next part of this will look at the choice I made to replace my Ipad

 

Filed under: Computers, Geek Stuff | Tagged: | Leave a comment »

The Windows 8 Preview Experience-First Impressions

Posted on March 1, 2012 by mhomewood

So I downloaded the Windows 8 Consumer Preview (I guess we don’t call these things Beta’s anymore) and installed it last night. Here are a few quick inpressions

Test Machine:

Dell Latitude D430

2 GB RAM

Dual Core Processor

This machine is slightly better that a netbook, but because of the motherboard, will only take a 2GB of RAM at most.  This machine is not a powerhouse by any stretch of the imagination, so this might be interesting. As I go through living with this machine (I have a real desktop, so I won’t lose too much sleep with bad productivity 🙂

I downloaded the consumer preview ISO and started the install at 8:39 PM. By 9:00 I had a new operating system. This is probably the fastest I’ve ever been able to install an operating system.

So my first impressions:

  1. Where the @#$%  is my Start button! The default interface is the Metro interface that is presently used by Windows phone. Although I’m somewhat familiar with the Metro interface, I can see that the change will be quite jarring for many users.
  2. Where’s my Windows Live Apps? For whatever reason, Microsoft doesn’t have a Windows 8 version of Windows Live yet.
  3. The boot time is really fast!
  4. I really wish I had a touch screen on this laptop. Although Microsoft claims that Windows 8 will work with just a mouse and keyboard, I’d really like to see what a convertible tablet (Lenovo, I’m  available for beta testing) would do with this OS.

I’ll periodically post on this subject. If you have questions, leave a comment, and if I can, I’ll try to answer them

Filed under: Windows 8 | 1 Comment »

Video Resolution, DVD’s and Hi-Def TV’s

Posted on February 28, 2012 by mhomewood

So a person at work asked me a question the other day asking what 480p and 720p up scaling on DVD players meant as this person (I’ll refer to them as AK) was still using an old Playstation to play DVD’s on a brand new Hi-Def TV. Sometimes I forget that not everyone is as much of a geek like me :). So a quick answer…

For all practical purposes, TV definition is measured by vertical scanning lines, hence the 480, 720, 1080 numbers. The p stands for progressive scan. For AK, this means that the actual resolution that they are getting on their brand new Hi-Def TV is only 25% of what they could be seeing as the Playstation they are using for their DVD’s only outputs in 240p. Just using a regular 19.99 DVD player (which at a minimum will output at 480p) will double the resolution of the DVD.

So AK’s next question was what does the up scaling mean that is listed on some of the specifications the DVD players have. Another quick answer:

With the advent of Hi-Def TV’s, a way was developed to use computer chips in DVD players to adding resolution to 480 source material (DVD’s) to make them look better on larger TV’s. This is called upscaling. Most newer DVD players and Blue Ray players have this capability. Depending on the DVD, a decent case could be made that the upscaling on DVD’s looks almost as good as a Blue Ray. And please, before the comments go ballistic, I’m not saying that it looks as good as a Blue Ray, but it does look close.

So the last question from AK…Do I really need need a Blue Ray player? Hmmm..Depends..

Although at one time I’d say yes, now, I’ll say maybe. Here’s why:

1) AK gets most of the DVD’s watched via RedBox. Although some RedBox sites have Blue Ray’s, the selection of Blue Ray disks are slim at some sites.

2) Although I’m on record (see here for more specifics) as loving the combination of a Blue Ray player and HDTV, I can see reasons that it’s not necessary. Although I usually watch stuff with a lot of special effects that really pop on a Blue Ray player, if you don’t watch a lot of those types of movies, you may not get as much “bang for your buck” as someone like me.

3) Blue Ray players take a long, long time to boot up. Depending on the Blue Ray player, the updates that might be necessary, etc. I’ve seen 3 to 5 minutes before I’m actually watching the movie in question. Sorry, that’s too long for some people 🙂

4) In AK’s case, a reasonably priced upscaling DVD player will run about 30 bucks. Add a couple of bucks for HDMI cable, and viola, a much better looking picture for just a little bit of money..

 

SO AK…Get a dad-blamed player and stop watching DVD via your playstation!!!

Filed under: Computers, Geek Stuff | 1 Comment »

OK, this year I resolve to regularly post on this blog

Posted on January 2, 2012 by mhomewood

I promise to try and post more regularly on this blog. My present plan is to write a post every week. Plan on reading about how I love my iPad, Windows 7 phone, and how I lost 100 lbs in a year. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

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Adding A Video Card To Your Computer

Posted on August 30, 2009 by mhomewood

Although I know I’m supposed to be working on the method of watching your TV over the Internet, I’ve had a hardware breakdown of my 7.1 sound system, so I thought I’d show you how to upgrade your Video Card on your computer.

First, let’s examine why you’d want to upgrade your computer’s video card. With Windows Vista , if you’ve bought a computer without a dedicated video card, you’ll lose a lot of speed in the Operating System as Vista needs a lot of computer resources to draw the screen on your monitor. In Windows XP, not having a dedicated video card wasn’t as big of a deal, as the OS wasn’t as big of a resource hog 🙂 In Vista, if you don’t have a dedicated video card, then the OS uses both processor cycles and your computer’s memory to draw the screen. The idea of having a dedicated video card means that the video card does all of the work, freeing up processor cycles and memory for real work.

In this instance, I’m using a Vista launch machine that did not have a dedicated video card. It’s now my wife’s machine, and the main goal here was to speed up Vista/Windows 7 and to allow her to use a dual monitor setup (she’s jealous of mine) :)So to order the right video card, I need to find out what available expansion slots I have on the computer. If you don’t know by looking (or didn’t feel like cracking the case right this second), then just go to the manufacturers website (in this case HP) enter your model #, and the system as originally configured will tell you what available slots there are. In my case, I have a free PCI-e slot, so that’s what type of video card I looked for.

A word about NewEgg. This is where I order any computer part that I may need. Although I’m too lazy to have an affiliate click thru link on this blog 🙂 I’m of the position that they are the best place to purchase needed computer parts. So I need a PCI-e video card. One with memory, a PIC-e interface, and cheap:) I decided on the ASUS EN8400GS. At 41 dollars after shipping, it’s a pretty good deal. It has 512MB of RAM, and three outputs. You can spend as much as 600 dollars on a video card, but in this case it’s a bit much.

So now, let’s’ crack the box and look at the card

Instead of a fan, this video card uses a Heat Sink to disapate the incredible amount of heat that a video card creates. This makes the video card quieter. So now let’s crack the case of the computer

And now to insert the card. A word of caution here…I usually don’t use a grounding strap, but should, and I usually wear a hat when doing this in case I happen to be sweating. 🙂Additionally, make sure the computer is UNPLUGGED not just turned off for this.

Generally, you just place the card in the slot and gently (but firmly) place the card in the slot. And you may want to be a bit careful. This card can easily be broken if you aren’t careful. If you take a look at the next slot over, you’ll see that the open slot next to the PCI-e slot is now pretty useless. 🙂 After screwing in the card, put the cover back on and restart your computer.

Once you restart the computer, just put the driver CD in, and you should be set. This procedure took me about 15 minutes including the taking of the pictures.

Filed under: Computers, Windows Vista | Leave a comment »

Hack of the Month #2 Telling the Cable company To @#$% off Preview

Posted on July 8, 2009 by mhomewood

OK, First the ground rules 🙂  Off and On during the next month I’m going to try and pretend that I’ve turned Cable TV off, but being the TV junkie I am, have to get my fix from the Internet. There are a couple of possibilities, one of them requires hooking a computer to your TV, one of them requires setting up what is called a Media Extender, and in some cases, I may be able to access this from my Playstation 3

This will be a work in progress, as my sound system is in the shop being repaired. I don’t expect to get all of these part finished until the end of July. In the next few days, I’m going to cover the basic terminology. For my purposes, I’m going to grade each of these methods by seeing if I can watch the following shows:

Rescue Me

Burn Notice

The Closer

Kings

I’m interested in seeing what happens

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Hack of the Month #1 Expanding Storage Space on a DVR

Posted on June 8, 2009 by mhomewood

First, a little about how we watch TV in the house. We don’t watch anything live. We DVR it. But, when you have a Comcast High Definition DVR, the small storage space (usually about 150 or 180 GB’s) only allows about 30 HD hour long shows. I still haven’t watched the last three episodes or 24 or Lost, and we have almost the whole season of Damages to watch. I also watch Rescue Me in bunches, usually 3 or 4 episodes at a shot. So as a result, my DVR usually shows about 85% full. The problem with this is that I started having shows not get recorded because there was no space left on the hard drive on the DVR. The following are directions on how to expand your storage space of a Comcast Scientific Atlantic 8830 HD DVR. YMMV, but most other cable/FIOS boxes work the same way.

The Back of the Box

On the back of the SA 8830 box, you’ll see a few USB ports, a firewire port, and a SATA port. Depending on your cable company, most of these ports are turned off, but in Comcast’s case, the SATA (Serial ATA) port is turned on. Originally, Comcast wanted to sell/rent external HD to plug into this port, but they haven’t done this yet, probably due to the fact that this may cause more service calls.

Inside of the Box

Well, not really inside of the box, but close enough. For all practical purposes, your DVR is a computer running a small version of Linux (an open source operating system) with a hard drive and the DVR software. Our goal is to increase the available hard drive space. Once we complete the steps below, the software will pick which drive (internal or external) to write to. As far as the box is concerned, both drives are the same

What We Need

Here are the items we need

  1. External Hard Drive with a SATA connection (Depending on the model, you may find this referred to as eSTATA)
  2. SATA cord. If you buy this in a package this cord will come with the hard drive
  3. Power.
Steps
  1. Remove the power cord from your DVR (just like you are resetting it)
  2. Power up the external hard drive
  3. Using the SATA cable, connect the SATA port on the back of the DVR to the external hard drive
  4. Plug the DVR back in and power it up
  5. When the software for the DVR starts up, it should find the external hard drive and it will ask you if you want to format the hard drive. Answer yes and let it format.
  6. Click the MYDVR button on the remote and check the available space. If you don’t see any increase in space, you’ll need to repeat steps 1 and 4 again. When I did mine, I had to repeat the steps twice.
  7. Enjoy your extra space. In my case I bought a 500 GB external drive, and my percentage full went from 86% to 15%.
Caveats

You can purchase this type of drive from Western Digital and they are marketing as DVR extenders. They run about $120-$150. OR you can buy an External Hard Drive (I bought mine on ebay for about $52). The Western Digital is warranted for this and they have a handy 800 number in case you get stuck. Another caveat, once you’ve done this, if 1) your DVR fails or 2) your external hard drive fails, you’re out of luck. The DVR will assign a code when formatting the hard drive that will only allow the hard drive to be read from this particular DVR. So I can’t take the external hard drive to another DVR

FAQ
  1. Can I just record the stuff on the DVR and take it to my computer and burn DVD’s with it? NO. The method of encryption is such that it needs the DVR that it was originally formatted with to work
  2. I have a USB to SATA converter cable and a USB external hard drive. Will this work? Maybe. The thing to remember is that the data throughput via SATA is a lot faster than USB. If it would work, I’d think you’d see a lot of stuttering and video and audio lag. The SATA external cable is as fast as an internal hard drive
  3. Can I just replace the Internal Hard Drive on the DVR? Maybe..I’ve heard though, that Comcast, when you turn the box in, will check the internals of the DVR. They have coated the inside of the box with a dye that will pick up the oil that may be on your fingers when doing this. I’ve heard of people who wore nursing gloves and replaced the hard drive that way. But, is it worth the headache when a valid solution only costs you $52
  4. Can I get the parts from NewEgg and make my own? Yes, but it’s almost as cheap to do it this way.

Leave ideas for next month’s Hack of The Month in the comments

 

Mark H

Filed under: Hack Of the Month | 15 Comments »

The 8% Pay Cut

Posted on March 20, 2009 by mhomewood

In the interest of full disclosure, my wife and I work for the State of Delaware. Me as a computer geek and my wife as a Correctional Officer. Yesterday, we got an email basically stating that we were going to lose 8% of our salary due to the extreme budget shortfall the State is facing this year. Here’s how it will affect me:

  • My wife and I will lose 8% of our salary (around 7000 per year)
  • My wife and I will now have to pay for our health care (probably around 200 a month for a annual cost of 2400)
  • My part-time job as computer instructor at Polytech Adult Education, already down because of the economy, will also suffer an 8% pay cut (around 400 per year)

So, do I think it’s fair? For the first bullet, I’d say yes. Although the 8% might be a bit much, doing it across the board at least touches everyone.

Losing my double state share? (That’s when if both employees work for the State don’t pay for health insurance) NO. Although this has been the target of Ron Williams of the News Journal forever, just because you’re annoyed at some State legislator whose spouse also works for the state, don’t take it out on me 🙂

My Polytech loss? NO. When I teach a class at Polytech, it is considered an enrichment class and the classes I teach, when they make, create income for PolyTech.

So what am I going to do about it?

  1. Get interviewed by the News Journal J JL Miller called me this morning and we discussed this.
  2. Although I have resisted repairing computers part time for a while, I got my business license to repair computers. Even got a website http://woodyscomputers.net
  3. You think I shopped with coupons before, you ain’t seen nothing yet J
  4. Decide on how to best cover health care for 4 year old niece who we have legal guardianship of. My son is autistic and is covered under Medicaid, so I don’t have to worry about health care for him. A possibility may include suing for child support from my nieces biological father

Honestly, we’ll be OK. I’m just not sure how some single parents who work for the State (and I talked to one of them yesterday and she was in tears) will be able to make it.

One other thing. Although I think this sucks J I give the Governor a huge amount of credit for making a decision that NO ONE likes. Hopefully this action will buy him some time and next year we won’t be in this same mess

Filed under: Politics | 2 Comments »

Top Ten Movies of All Time Part3

Posted on February 19, 2009 by mhomewood

We are now in the second half of these posts. I felt like taking a break from my couponing posts, but I’ll get another one of those out tomorrow (probably)

7) Apollo 13

This is a movie that I watch on cable all of the time, and just like most of my favorites, I’ll watch it the whole way through. In a weird sort of way, I consider this the ultimate guys film. All of the stars, save one, are guys. The space program at the time was constituted of nothing but guys. My favorite parts of the film?

  • All of the Mission control scenes. Ed Harris gives a wonderful performance, and when they safely land, he makes it OK for all of the guys in the audience to cry.
  • When the engineers have to fix the C02 scrubbing apparatus with very little parts. “We’ve got to make this go into this, with nothing but this!” The geeky side of me goes nuts during this scene
  • When Gary Sinies’s character gives back the flashlight while trying to work the reentry procedure saying, ” They don’t have this flashlight up there. Don’t give me anything they don’t have up there”

Not as fond of the space stuff in this film, but it’s not that distracting.

8) The Dark Knight

Best comic book movie ever!!! And for now, the best reason to get a blue-ray player. The first 15 minutes in this film (the bank robbery) was filmed in IMAX and is just stunning on a Blue Ray player and HDTV. Although I liked most of the performances in this film, the one you know that will resonate will be the late Heath Ledger’s performance. I liked the first Tim Burton Batman (with Jack Nicholson as the Joker) but, honestly, we’re not even talking in the same ballpark here. Ledger has created a character that I hope is never played again that I’ll remember forever. I’ve got to give some props to the director, Chris Nolan. I’ve watched most of his films, and I’ve not seen one I’ve not liked yet.

9) Monty Python’s The Holy Grail

Funniest movie ever! I remember watching this as a teenager every time in came on WHYY late nights (either Friday or Sat) nights. We’d stop playing D&D or Kingmaker and sit through this whole thing. “And there was great rejoicing” The only thing that could be added would be more nudity J

Next part I’ll disclose my three way tie for 10th place on my list and touch on a few movies that just quite didn’t make the cut.

 

Filed under: Movies | 1 Comment »

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