Dave's Tech Blog
A Third Eye on Technology

Last night I passed through a lot of places that I’ve not been to for quite some time.  First on the list was seeing Bob Dylan at the Uptown Theater in Kansas City with my girlfriend.  It started with a quarter mile walk on a full bladder from the parking lot of Walgreens because it was the closest place we could find to park (who KNOWS where the “Salvation Army” is actually located).  Did everybody drive themselves or bring an extra freaking vehicle with them?  Anybody carpool?   I thought gas was expensive.

The concert went well, but it seemed like they went out of their way to give you the impression that the vocal audio was always bad, but in truth, Bob Dylan is not a great singer these days.  Sure, he’s got the energy and the notes, but it’s like his mouth is full of cotton balls.  I’m sorry if that offends you, but my girlfriend is the most die hard Bob Dylan fan on the damned planet and even she told me in advanced that I wouldn’t understand a thing he’s saying up there on stage.  It was like Eddie Murphy’s impersonation of James Brown.  Still, he had a damn sweet hat on.  And these 35 dollar T-shirts are pretty fucking cool.

Anyway, I just wanted to check in with you all and let you know that I’m going to be OUT for the rest of the weekend.  I’m heading up to the ABATE biker rally at Lake Perry.  Maybe I’ll see you out there.  I’ll be campin’ somewhere.  Hope nobody’s computer crashes or I’ll have to cut into all the fun I’m having. 

Coming Soon…

I was just browsing craigslist for the Topeka area and came across this thing:

It’s a man shaped computer….robot….thing.  I doubt it’ll do your laundry or cook your dinner but at least it won’t come walking into your bedroom at night asking to borrow money or your wife or something.  But then again, who knows what this thing can do for an asking price of $475.  Maybe it tried to assassinate its creator and they’re trying to pawn it before it gets another shot.  Let the buyer beware.

If you live in Topeka and feel like buying this thing, you’ll find it here.

I recently gave the lowest bid to the KABVI to build them a custom PC.  It’s the first quad-core system I’ve built, and also sports a very bad ass SLI-ready nVidia motherboard (capable of accepting up to three video cards in SLI mode).  Plus it has that cool piano black case.  Though this wasn’t built to be a gaming system (though it truth, it is capable…I should ask if I can barrow it and play Crysis).  It was built to be fast, familiar and stable, which is why it’s running Windows XP and not Vista.  It’s great to know you can still buy OEM licenses for SP3.  So thumbs up, Microsoft!

The PC was set up to function as a networked server.  I installed wireless adapters in two other PCs and maped shortcuts to a shared folder on the central PC that the other two can move files to.  I also donated a laser printer, a nice HP Laserjet 1200 that was given to me by another client of mine.

Here is the obligatory photo of the guts:

It even has a floppy drive with flash memory card readers built in.  Bling bling!

Anyway, it was a fun build.  First time I actually had to attach the heat sink with a backplate and screw pins.  (Yeah, it’s an Intel system).  I think the power supply might have weighed just as much as the case.  And the 22-inch widescreen LCD they had me plug it into was pretty sweet too.

The video will explain…

Less than a year ago when I first started writing this blog, I threw a couple posts out there (Part 1 and Part 2) that talked about the history of our existence.  Not the existence of mere humans, but of the existence of reality as we have come to know it so far.  The basic premise is that when the Universe was created, the state that it was in was that of the most simple form of energy you could find:  A white-hot plasma.  As time passed (in the scale of billions of years), the plasma began to cool, take shape, form matter, eventually solar systems and planets, later the building blocks of biological life, and then complex forms of life began to emerge out of that and so on. It’s been snowballing down the proverbial mountain ever since the beginning of time, gaining speed, momentum and novelty along the way.

My use of the word “novelty” (as well as a lot of the inspiration for these posts) comes from the late Terence McKenna.  Terence described and quantified novelty as newness, density of complexification and dynamic change as opposed to static habituation.  Others, most notably Ray Kurzweil, have echoed and expanded upon this idea a great deal (albeit on more of a scientific/mathematical basis instead of McKenna’s cosmological perspective).  There is plenty to be said about this steady and predictable trend of technological advancements in particular, which is where Kurzweil roots a majority of his observations and predictions (while McKenna takes on a more broad perspective).  Here’s a video of Ray Kurzweil talking about some of his predictions for the future of technology at a TED conference to help set the mood:

In a more broad sense, everything from the telescopic complexification of plasma into different forms of matter, to the birth and rapid acceleration of computer technology, are examples of an accelerating increase in novelty throughout history.  So is the birth of the Internet and the explosion of information it continues to deliver to us and make increasingly easier to access.  As is our ever increasing and eventual co-dependence upon it the Internet as we move closer to creating a mental symbiosis with it.  That is to say that we will eventually come to depend upon the Internet just as much as it currently depends on us for its existence and relevancy, and that our dependence on it is accelerating.

So what is “The Great Singularity”?   McKenna had a few different theories, the most interesting to me being the possible invention of a time travel, which would effectively cause the future collapse into the present and we would be immersed into a timeless “hyperspace”.  Kurzweil takes on a more technical prediction of things to come with no consideration for such a radical leap, basing his predictions mostly on math in a similar fashion to the way Gordon E. Moore estimated the anticipated speed and cost of computer processors in the future.

Personally, I feel the underestimated wild card in this deck is Artificial Intelligence.  I say underestimated because I feel that it will arrive a little sooner than Kurzweil anticipates and the impact it will have will probably represent something greater than your soon-to-be-daily paradigm shifting technological breakthrough.  We make small breakthroughs of increasing significance all the time it seems, taking them for granted. But A.I. really won’t be worth much to us until it’s smart enough to improve itself without aid.  There’s a lot of groundwork to yet be laid, and the foundation is the Internet itself.  A quote from McKenna that simplifies it all is, “The future is mental.”  And if you give some slack to his notion of time travel, it could just as well be some other form of paradigm shifting technology that would stand to be as equally jaw dropping.  Imagine how predictions about the future might be if one day such a thing as a sentient, self-advancing computer-based supraintelligence actually existed.

The Internet is like an embryo in a state of gestation, developing at our own hands until it ultimately births Artificial Intelligence.  But it’s not completely artificial because its source of information, its genetic construction if you will, is a product of our own human minds and experiences.  So in a very real sense, the Internet and our mental selves are gradually becoming one and the same.

I came across a TED video yesterday that got me back into mood of writing about this kind of stuff.  It was a talk given by Kevin Kelly, who is the executive editor of Wired Magazine.  In it, he points out that the capabilities of Internet technology as it exists today were once thought to be totally unfeasible just 5000 days ago.  And that in truth, we have seen it grow into something truly impressive in a very short span of time, achieving some of our wildest dreams (yet we are not impressed).  There is no reason to believe this process of development is anywhere close to being finished.

EDIT:  On roughly December 1, 2008, Movamail (mentioned below) apparently went out of business/offline.  It is still worth while to browse applications on getjar.com.

I’ve been using T-Mobile for about the last two years now.  The last phone I had was a Motorola V360.  My current phone is a K1, otherwise known as a KRZR (see below).  Now, the chances that you have either of these two phones are slim.  However, the odds that your cell phone supports J2ME (Java Micro Edition) applications are pretty good.  If you’ve ever gone to play a game on your phone and have been shown the “Powered By Java” splash screen, then you can be pretty sure your phone is running J2ME.

For quite a long time, I’ve relied on needing a PC nearby to be able to browse the Internet, or more importantly, check my business e-mail.  About two weeks ago I started searching around for a possible way of checking my e-mail from my phone, and hopefully be able to write messages too.  I would have paid money just to get an app like this on my phone.  Fortunately, I stumbled across a FREE app called MovaMail (below) which allows me to check my IMAP/SMTP account.  And while I was searching, I came across Opera Mini (above).  I found these apps (and hundreds of others) at GetJar.com.  Both of these apps are free and the only other requirement is that your phone has Internet access.  It is recommended that you sign up and pay the extra 5 or 6 dollars a month for the Unlimited MobileWeb Service (or equivelent from your own cellular provider).

Okay, let’s get these apps installed!

The first step is to visit GetJar.com and browse through their massive collection of applications that you can download from their site.  The file extention of these apps is *.jar, although there are sometimes *.jad files.  I am not sure what the difference between these two file types are, but I’ve leaned more towards using *.jar files.  If one doesn’t work for you, try the other and cross your fingers.

For example purposes, visit this link to view GetJar’s download page for the Opera Mini web browser application.  Click on the link they have shown for the jar file, and then save it to your computer in a easy to access location (like your Desktop).

The next step is to set your phone’s USB mode to “Memory Card” if it’s not already set to that, and then plug it in.  This will cause your phone to mount as an external storage device with it’s own drive letter.  Typically this is intended to be used for transfering pictures, videos and audio/ringtones to and from your phone.  But we’re going to do something more…

NOTE TO WINDOWS USERS: The contents of your phones’ memory card include several hidden files and folders, so that when you initially plug your phone in, you will only see the “Mobile” folder, and within it, three other folders (Pictures, Video and Audio).  In order to get all of the files to display, click (at the top of your file browser) Tools>Folder Options.  Then click on the View tab.  You should see the following:

You will want to make sure that “Show hidden files and folders” is selected AND UNCHECK “Hide protected operating system files” (as shown above).  This will make all of the files and folders on your cell phone visible.  Just be careful not to delete anything by accident (or you might “brick” your phone).

So now we can see everything.  Here’s what the contents look like:

The folder we will want to focus on is the “kjava” folder.  Double-click on it to open it up.  Inside there will likely be a lot of other files and a few folders.  No need to explore it, simply leave the folder open and find the Jar file you just downloaded.  Copy and paste (or drag and drop, which ever you prefer) the jar file you downloaded into this folder.  Once the file is finished copying, you’ll have to unmount/remove your phone by doing the following:

Once you’ve unmounted the phone, you can disconnect the USB cable.  Now, open your phone and go to the “Fun & Apps” section, where you would normally go to play a video game.  When you get here, you’ll see the regular list of apps you are already familiar with.  There is a shortcut at the bottom of this menu that says “[Install New]“.  Click on this, and you’ll see the name of the app (the jar file) that you just copied from your computer to your phone.  Select it from the list.  You may get a message that says, “This app is not signed.  Install anyway?”  Select Yes.

Once it’s finished installing, you’ll be asked if you would like to run it.  Feel free to try out your new Opera Mini web browser right away if you’d like.  While using Opera Mini (or any other application that requests Internet access) you will likely see a message saying “Use data network?”, with a URL shown, and the options:  “Yes, Always Ask.”  “No, Ask Later.”  and “No, Never Grant Access.”  This is effectively your phones firewall and java security settings just making sure that the application you’re using is supposed to be allowed access to the web.

There are a ton of apps (and games) available on GetJar.com that you can download, install and experiment with on your own time using the same installation procedure described above.  Though you should be warned that some apps do not work with all phones.

If you’re technically savvy, you might want to visit modmymoto.com.  Here you’ll find several forums pertaining to many different types of cellphones and discover other neat hacks you can do to your phone.  Just keep in mind that you should be very careful when attempting to modify the software your cell phone runs on.  As mentioned before, it can be easy to accidentally brick your phone.

Have fun!

I’m going to be a sponsor of a local golf tournament to help raise money for St. Jude Children’s Hospital.  The tournament is going to be at Western Hills Golf Club just off of Auburn Road on the west edge of Topeka.  All of the proceeds will go to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. It will take place this Thursday, August the 7th.

The fun begins at about 11 a.m., but you should try to arrive a little early.  Advanced registration is preferred.  The entry fee is $65 per person and covers for your green fees, golf cart, food (Chili’s restaurant will be providing fajitas!) and beverages (alcoholic and non-alcoholic).  Teams of four will compete for prizes!  Some of the prizes up for grabs include golf bags, coolers, camping chairs, and much more.  I will personally be giving away one hour of free on-site tech support to each member of the team who ranks first place at the end of the tournament.  So don’t miss out!!!

Not all things lately have been depressing, though you might think different after my last two greatly spaced postings here.  But as a matter of fact they’ve been rather uplifting for me.  Business is steady, one of my latest clients being a non-profit organization for the blind and visually impaired, as well as receiving a call from a local web developer who shares my mutual dislike for corporate policies designed to perpetuate technical difficulties for their customers.  (For example, a customer who is interested in a new computer would be talked into upgrading a current one for a ridiculous price, a price that was actually higher than a new PC).  In particular he admired my promotion of Linux, something some businesses are afraid to invest time and money in as I enjoy doing.

So my life in general and business has never been better.  My girlfriend and I are going to begin living alone together FINALLY and our relationship is fantastic.  Don’t tell her this, but I’m gonna ask her to marry me one of these days (gotta save up some money for a bad ass engagement ring first.  I want to make it a big surprise).  Though, her father began chemotherapy last week and it comes with its rough days.  My hope is those rough days don’t increase… The possibility of an early death in the family echoes in the back of everyones mind, but it is important not to dwell on such thoughts.  Doing so is a drain on energy better spent thinking about the positive here and now.  Besides, miracles DO happen.  I’m a firm believer of that.

So… just a moment ago, I came across a link to a site that I feel deep empathy for…

The website is a photographic essay by Philip Toledano of he and his father as they spend time together.  I don’t know much more background detail, but from the looks of it, a new photo is added day by day.  It will make you stop and think about life and likely bring at least one tear to your eye.  Click on the picture above to visit the site.  If it’s down, try again later.  It’s being hammered right now by Digg.com users who are flocking to see the pictures and read their captions.  I was simply lucky enough to catch it before the servers were slammed.