Archive for the ‘Tech’ Category

If you’ve got a Kindle and are having trouble when you get the

USB Drive Mode
If you want to read or shop on your Kindle while continuing to charge over USB, please keep the USB cable attached, but eject your Kindle from your computer.

because ejecting doesn’t clear the message and let you keep reading, the solution is to eject the Kindle from Windows Explorer and NOT from the system tray (or Printers and Devices).

1. Make sure the Kindle is plugged in and unejected…if you’ve tried to eject it already, unplug it and plug it back in
2. Open Windows Explorer (Win+E) or go to Computer from the Start menu
3. Right-click on the Kindle
4. Choose Eject

This should do the trick for Windows 7 and Windows Vista. Here is a technical explanation of why this is necessary if you’re interested.

Whoa. Just noticed that today’s Deal of the Day at Amazon is for the Garmin Forerunner 405CX GPS watch with heart rate strap for only $149. Some of you may be aware that Murdoc is a runner, and one of the biggest things he’s done to improve his training is to use a GPS.

I use the 305, myself, but a lot of guys I know use the 405. If you run (or bike) and have been thinking about getting a GPS, here’s a good chance to get one pretty cheap.

Also makes a great Christmas present for the runner in your life. Seriously. Highly recommended by Murdoc.

Hurry, because I don’t know how long the deal lasts.

UPDATE: Looks the one-day sale is over, but it went up to only $159. Murdoc still thinks that’s a good deal. See the comments section for some more info on using these when working out.

I’m not super fast by any means, but I cannot overstate how much of a benefit one of these has been to my training and racing. It’s also very useful on the bike.

Kevin D. Williamson on how Steve Jobs and others like him have turned huge brick-sized monsters into iPhones:

Once you figure out why your cell phone gets better and cheaper every year but your public schools get more expensive and less effective, you can apply that model to answer a great many questions about public policy.

And he closes with this:

And to the kids camped out down on Wall Street: Look at the phone in your hand. Look at the rat-infested subway. Visit the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, then visit a housing project in the South Bronx. Which world do you want to live in?

Murdoc has been asked several times over the past couple of weeks how he started his site(s), how he grew them into something that people paid to advertise on, and how he used them to get paid gigs writing for other sites and print magazines.

But rather than bore everyone about how topics like the XM8 rifle, journalist Steven Vincent, Hurricane Katrina, and the general madcap goodness known as Linkzookery launched a legendary blogging career, I’ll just point you wannabees to Advice for a Young Blogger: How to get a million or less hits on your blog over some unspecified period of time, maybe.

Very good, basic points. Sure, it not everyone who follows them will reach even the level of internationally acclaimed success that Murdoc Online and GunPundit.com have achieved, but NOT following them is a good way to reach the plug-pulling level of success that MichiBlogger.net hit.

Via Instapundit.

Netflix publishes the results of a test of ISP speeds:

I think this is a great idea on their part. Murdoc currently has AT&T DSL and sees that his performance is middle-of-the-road.

I thought I’d posted a bit about this before, but I don’t see anything.

With Air Force’s new drone, ‘we can see everything’

This winter, the Air Force is set to deploy to Afghanistan what it says is a revolutionary airborne surveillance system called Gorgon Stare, which will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town.

The system, made up of nine video cameras mounted on a remotely piloted aircraft, can transmit live images to soldiers on the ground or to analysts tracking enemy movements. It can send up to 65 different images to different users; by contrast, Air Force drones today shoot video from a single camera over a “soda straw” area the size of a building or two.

It seems to Murdoc that this will provide a ton of data but that it’s going to take some time to really figure out how to analyze it and how to utilize it in the field. But there is a lot of potential there.

“This is all cutting-edge technology that is being fielded in a short period of time,” said retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, who served as deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

“If you look into the not-too-distant future, what these technologies will allow us to do is remove more and more ground forces and replace them with sensors where we normally would have to rely on people going somewhere to find something out,” he said.

This sounds like an awful lot of over-selling. I’ve got no doubt that, if used properly, this program can help increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our troops, but to claim that it it can “replace” boots on the ground in a truly meaningful way seems like a pretty big stretch. I think we’d be happy with the existing number of ground forces picking up a few percentage points in overall effectiveness by keeping them a bit safer and helping them make it a little more unsafe for the bad guys.

1,760 PlayStation 3s form new supercomputer

Putting 1,760 Sony PlayStation 3s in one room might make for the most awesome “Call of Duty: Black Ops” game ever. And, as Air Force researchers have discovered, they can also create the Defense Department’s largest interactive supercomputer.

The Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, formally unveiled the supercomputer, nicknamed the “Condor Cluster,” earlier this month.

Not only is it fast — the laboratory’s high performance computing director says it’s about the 35th-fastest computer in the world — and “green,” it was cheap, too. The laboratory spent about $2 million, which Wright-Patterson says is less than one-10th the cost of using traditional computer equipment.

The Condor Cluster will be used to process satellite imagery.

Today on Microsoft’s Bing search engine home page:

As usual on Bing, there are several hotspots on the image that give tidbits of info when you mouse over them. For instance, Murdoc didn’t know that 37 pairs of brothers were assigned to the USS Arizona.

‘Programming error’ caused Russian rocket failure

A Russian Proton rocket failed to get three Glonass satellites into orbit over the weekend, apparently due to computer programming issues. Glonass is the Russian equivalent of GPS. They’ve been trying to get the whole system back online after if fell into disrepair in the 1990s.

Here’s a bit from the AFP article:

Once separated from the Proton launch rocket, the upper-stage booster rocket with the three satellites aboard should have put them in orbit about 20 kilometres (12 miles) above the earth.

Wow. Just think how fast those things must be going to maintain orbit at only 12 miles. And the system works by listening for the things screaming overhead. “We just heard number seven, comrade, and that’s number fifteen. This must be Siberia.”

Okay, the article was probably supposed to say “20,000 km (12,000 miles),” which is about what Wikipedia says these things normally orbit at.

The instrument in Massey’s right hand is a Kestrel Pocket Wind Meter by Nielsen-Kellerman. The NV series of Kestrels is designed with military users in mind and are used by a wide range of users. The latest models incorporate Bluetooth to eliminate the need for cords when connecting to a computer or other equipment. Murdoc loves these things.