Gate Watch: Alteran
Now that summer has come I have released an alternative version of my Gate Watch watch face for the pebble which features an Alteran font. This is essentially the same watch face with a new font which should look familiar to anyone who watched SG-1 or Atlantis. And for those that did not watch the show it is quite easy to learn how to read the watch which I feel is one unique thing about the font. You can check out the font here if you would like, and feel free to download my watch face here, or scan the qr code below.
Download the Alteran Gate Watch
Gate Watch: A Stargate Inspired Pebble Watchface 1.0 Release
With the semester coming to an end I chose a bad time to decide to do stuff with the pebble, but that seems to be how it always is, too much work and not enough time. Being the geek that I am, having a Stargate themed tattoo, I thought I would complete that with a Stargate inspired watch face for my pebble. It features an image of the gate with the time in the center, and supports both 12 and 24 hour formats. You can see a mockup of it here (as there is no way to take screenshots). I plan on making a version with an “Ancient” font for those that are major geeks and fans of the show.
Download:
Scan to download the gate watch
Pebble First Impressions
After waiting for countless months to get the pebble smart watch which I backed on kickstarter, I was extremely excited to set it up and start receiving notifications. For those of you which are not familiar with pebble, it is a watch which connects to your phone using Bluetooth in order to send notifications to keep you in the loop while your phone is still in your pocket. Although this doesn’t seem like a necessary innovation, it has been a surprise to me how useful it actually is. Below is my review of this smart watch: Read more
PAX East Roundup
Although I did not do a writeup yesterday on day two, it was not because I did not attend, it was because I had low battery on my phone, and by the time I got home it was already 1:30am and I did not wish to stay up later. So I will be squishing all of day 2 and 3 into one, and doing my best not to forget anything. Read more
PAX East day 1
The exhibition floor has closed and for many of the casual pax attendees that means the end of the night, but for die hards like myself, it is just the beginning, because once the sun goes down, the real fun begins. Here is my story of pax east day one.
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Platform Update KB2670838 Casuing Blue Screens
As many of you know I work at a computer repair store, this gives me a unique opportunity to diagnose problems across various models. In a recent windows update (a platform update for windows 7 SP1 and server 2008 R2 SP1) KB2670838 many Dell Vostro 3450′s have begun to get constant blue screens of death. In order to fix this you must uninstall this update (either through a system restore or through the uninstall updates window). Then once you have it uninstalled, hide the update that way it will not be reinstalled later to have the issue come up again.
The Blue Screen error code you will be getting if this affects you is error code 50, page fault in a non-paged area. So if you are getting this issue and have a vostro 3450 which just installed updates, you may want to check if this is the issue.
Pebble Hacking [beginning]
With the pebble beginning to ship out people have already begun to tinker with their new gadgets. I however am not lucky enough to have received mine yet, however that has not stopped me from trying to help others tinker. After seeing dsemaya on the pebble forums post about his work on trying to learn how the underlying OS works (with his tumblr), it got me in the mood to do a bit of digging. Now although what I’m posting is completely separate from his, I just wanted to give him some credit because he got me in the mood to start this at 11:00 at night. My work after the break
Nexus 7 Repurpose: Part 1 Lock Screen Bypass
I should not be trusted with a tablet, because within 2 weeks of getting my tablet back from Asus for repair I cracked the digitizer. This means that the screen will not accept any inputs, which leaves me with 3 working buttons, volume up, volume down, and power. However I decided that I will take this opportunity to re-purpose the device to make me feel less like a failure (and because I don’t have the money to repair it). My plan is to use the nexus 7 to display current stats about my computer, at first it will only display volume, temp, maybe memory usage and stuff like that, however I will try and expand that to include stuff like Steam integration (maybe constantly showing the scoreboard for Counter Strike on a certain screen). Today I got over the first hurdle, bypassing the lock screen. Read more
Ingress Day 1
Today I got my invite to participate in Ingress. For those of you living under a rock and have not heard of Ingress, it is a game currently in closed beta being developed by Google. It is a location-based game which uses your GPS to determine where you are and you can interact with the virtual world around you. I am loving it so far, it has some nice cut scenes, and is very responsive. I have not done an analysis of how much data it uses yet, however I plan on doing that within the next few days. One of my favorite Easter Eggs, and the only one I have found (though I’m not sure it is intentional) is Ada, which I believe is a tip of the hat to Ada Lovelace, who is credited with being the first computer programmer. Below are a few screenshots of the game from my experience. Overall I can’t wait to play some more tomorrow while I’m around campus where I imagine there are some portals to hack. Read more
[Rumor] Coke won the bid
The rumor running around campus is that coca cola has won the bid to exclusive soda rights on campus here at the University of Rhode Island. I have heard from a reliable source that at the very minimum coke has control over the Memorial Union, however they didn’t know the extent of the deal, like how long the contact is, or whether it affects the whole camps. This is a major change, because Pepsi has been in control of the campus for longer than I can remember (this being my fifth year at URI). The contract takes affect on January 1st, so when we all get back from break, we will see what happened. The one thing I would love to see is for coca cola to bring their freestyle machines to the dining halls. I will certainly be keeping an eye out for the changes over break as I will be working on campus for a bunch of it.