My newest hobby is hacking Ikea furniture..

I own one of these:



I removed the middle piece on both the left and right side of the top section, and made it into a TV stand. It's space between is flatter than a conventional TV stand one, but fits my NAD amp just fine. It's got air slots in the back so running wires isn't a problem. It's perfect, more so than the actual tv stands they sell at Ikea. It's smaller, sleeker, slimmer, and easier to use and did I mention cheaper??

Hacking Ikea will be a regular theme here I'm sure..

Ikea, Swedish for hackable crap..

VS



Toyota Tercel 1997
MPG (city) 28
MPG (highway) 35
MPG (combined) 31
Cost to Drive 25 Miles $3.29
Fuel to Drive 25 Miles 0.81 gal
Annual Fuel Cost $1977

Toyota Prius 2008
MPG (city) 48
MPG (highway) 45
MPG (combined) 46
Cost to Drive 25 Miles $2.23
Fuel to Drive 25 Miles 0.54 gal
Annual Fuel Cost $1335

This all sounds great, until you realize the cost of one vs the other..

You can find a great 1997 Toyota Tercel (these things last forever) for about $3000. A decent one for about $2000, and a dumper for about $1000. You can't find a Prius for under $15,000 on any market.

So we go ahead and crunch the numbers..

We'll say you paid for the most expensive Toyota Tercel in Pristine condition, like mine. $3000. (I paid $3300 for mine because I'm in Taiwan, but the car is like brand new, inside and out. The owner just changed the timing belts last year too, runs great, no problems.)

Let's take the average Ebay Motors price for a Prius about $25,000.

So the Toyota Tercel has got $22,000 head start on the Prius.

We do a little math to see when the Prius will catch up to the Tercel in terms of recouping the cost from fuel savings and we arrive at:

518,867 Miles.

That's how many miles you need to drive on a Prius before it "pays for itself" against a Tercel. But wait, there's more! At that many miles, the amount of pollution is ridiculous.

But a Prius is "cleaner" you say?? WRONG. Because the Tercel was already built!! You forgot to factor in manufacturing cost and pollution! When it's all said and done, for a tiny car, a used Tercel can't be beat. It gets great mileage, has pep, is not a hybrid (hybrid = worst of both worlds) and pretty much a Prius will never catch up to it in terms of savings.

And it pisses the tree huggers off..

I sometimes feel that I either have a 3rd eye or just more common sense than most.

When buying a car, coolness seems to be high on the list, that's why most people forget that above all else, UTILITY is the most important. And when I say utility, I don't actually mean SUV's..

One of the biggest items you HAVE TO HAVE is rear folding seats if you own a sedan. Basically, it's my #1 buying criteria.. Well, not buying a Ford is my #1 buying criteria, but this is a close 2nd.

I try to get AWD if possible, but folding rear seats is a must.

I put in a full sized hutch into my little Toyota Tercel yesterday on the way back from Ikea.. How was that possible? Rear folding seats.

It makes any car more useful. I searched for a long time to find one with a rear folding seat. You should too.. because you should ALWAYS be buying used cars instead of new ones.

If you don't know what David Allen and GTD are, you can pretty much bet that you are an unproductive person.. David Allen wrote the book "Getting Things Done" (GTD for short) and I have been a big fan ever since!

So this is so right up my alley! Efficiency Efficiency Efficiency!

So let's talk about you and your PDA phone.. Or me and my HTC Touch Cruise, same thing.

A PDA Phone should be used for the following:

1) Phone calls!
2) Contact Management
3) Calendar Management
4) JTD ~ Jotting Things Down
5) Making Lists


I am going to address each one of these.

1) Phone calls. Basically using it as a phone. Not much more than that needs to be said.

2) Contact Management ~ A lot can be said about this but basically, you need to be able to find info about a person be it a family member, friend, or client. I have purchased a business card scanner, mainly because I have a billion business cards, and so I will talk more about this in the future.. I REALLY hope the business card scanner works well and easily.. If it does, in the ideal world, this will allow me to keep my contacts organized.

3) Calendar Management ~ appointments basically..

4) JTD ~ Jotting Things Down. If you don't know what "Psychic Ram" is and you feel stressed all the time, you really should buy David's book. Basically, he talks about the fact that we stress because our brain doesn't trust that we have a system to remember or a system to remember that our brain trusts. And ideas are fleeting and so you need to jot it down as soon as you get it. When you do this, you will feel a sense of peace.. I swear it's true. My last PDA was a Palm Z22, which I loved to death but it died on me. In between when it died and when I bought my HTC, was about a 2 month period, and during that time, the amount of stress I had was incredible, simply because I had nothing to write things down with when I had a thought.

The app I used on the palm was called "Diddlebug" which is great.

The app I use on the Pocket PC is like Diddlebug++, it is called

apMemo

I seldom pay for software, but this is one that I paid for. It's that useful, and I would say that it dominates the majority of my PDA use.

Why something like diddlebug and apMemo and not something that types? Well, first, hand writing is faster. 2nd, you can hand it to someone to write something (which I often do) and they can just write with it, no need to teach them. 3rd, the context of the writing helps you remember the item.

Both of these programs allow for an alarm to be set on it. apMemo allows for different color backgrounds and pen colors. Also, this mimicry of pad and pencil allows for internationalization without the need for internationalization. It's really great.

Whenever you have a thought, you just write it down. My PDA is next to my bed and I often wake up in the middle of the night to write something down I just thought of or dreamed about. This allow will foster creativity and reduce stress, I kid you not! apMemo is on v2.3 as of this writing, but 1.0 is free. I highly recommend you pay for it though to encourage the continuation of good software.

5) Making lists ~ I had used Bonsai on the palm, which I didn't find all that easy to use, but on the pocket PC, the program I am using is called Check List Tree.



It's just a super simple tree listing. That's it. But it's powerful, because you can list things and collapse and expand the tree. I love this program and have donated to the author, and hope you do the same if you use it and like it. I hope auto-save and view/unview completed tasks are an option as well as nodal movement. When this is added, this will be the ultimate list making program.

So that's basically it, this is what I require from my PDA.

Email?? sure, I'd love to, but it's not that important, the occasional email yes, but it's not a substitute for my 22" monitor.

GPS? Yep, this is another item I wanted a PDA phone for.. With a GPS option, I can mark the locations of my favorite restaurants as well as drive around.. Exciting..

Just remember in the world of complexity, "Less is More" but only if you know what is the part you should keep and what are the parts you should cut.

When it's all said and done, I have to say that apMemo is the high high high recommendation here. I also recommend you quick button a button to it. You will after a while, discover it's a piece of software you can't live without..

So I wanted to buy a PDA. I was going to buy the Eten Glofiish M800, but when I was at the store, this old dude about 55 years old told me not to get the M800.

He said that he was semi-retired, and that his favorite hobby was to buy a bunch of electronics gadgets, play with them for a few days, and then sell it back to the store at a loss.. I guess whatever floats his boat..

But he said the only item he did not return and continued using was the HTC Touch Cruise. So he _HIGHLY_ recommended it to me...

So I bought it.

I bought the "Euro styling" version instead of the American version. I thought it looked better.

I first hacked it to install the English version on it, but found out after 2 weeks that it was nigh impossible to get chinese fonts back on it, because in a world of internationalization and compatibility, Microsoft made best efforts to prevent internationalization.

So I just reinstalled the Taiwanese version back on it, so I can use PaPaGo! Which is a GPS software for Taiwan..

The one thing I do like about this PDA is the USBmini connection for everything. I use to charge my cell phone at night, but with the PDA phone, it seems that I charge it during the day.. since I'm almost always at a computer, it's actually quite easy..

The Chinese version recognized Chunghwa telecom here in Taiwan and the signal seems stable. The English version was not. So I have no idea. The same thing with the GPS. The GPS signals were ridiculously weak with the English version but quite strong with the Chinese version..

So I guess when you buy a PDA, when in Rome, use the Roman PDA firmware.

I highly HIGHLY recommend against buying a PDA in a foreign country, you'll cry. Especially if it runs Pocket PC. Next entry I'll talk about software for the PDA...

If you don't know what NTP is, then you are stupid but it doesn't matter because you should still download this program anyways.

NTP = Network Time Protocol. It is like fiber for your computer clock, it keeps it regular. There are billions of freeware NTP programs out there and THIS ONE IS THE BEST.

You can download it from here.

Why is this one the best? Because when you minimize it, it shows the date of the calendar. This is a feature I have long wondered why does not exist in windows. Windows just shows the time, but what about the date?? Or do dates just not matter when you are using windows??

I bought a pocket PC and it seems that regions, and languages does not matter when you use a pocket pc, you want to add another language support?? YOU CAN'T. It seems to be the way MS works, they decide what you need and don't need, and if what you need is outside the scope of what they decide you need, then you are wrong, and that's it.

What? You think you are right?? Don't make me get Balmer to throw a chair at you!

All kidding aside, this is one of the best pieces of software I know.

Set it to start minimized at startup, have it align your clock every hour, and you will know the date and have an aligned clock.

The first thing I do when I install a new Windows install is install this.

It's a "can't live without it" item.

I have this guy in a RAID 1 configuration. Basically, it's a NAS++. It has a web interface, and it is fairly fast, but it cannot handle the amount of torrents I give it, so it's download is not really up to snuff. But the interface is excellent, and it should be a great solution for 99% of the people out there.

I love RAID 1, there's a sense of security you get with RAID1 you just don't get from single HD's or RAID0.

I use it to backup everything from my emails to my photos. But mostly for my photos. I envision we are 2 years away from everybody doing this.. the reason is, we have too many damn photos!! Can't back them up. So we need to run our own mini RAID1 at home. I do!

It's a great box, highly recommended. It's a little bit on the $$$ side but the quality is there.

Of course the first thing I did was upgrade it to beta software, and then hacked it so I could get ipkg on there running and working.

I don't want to download on it, the reason is, downloading to RAID1 is taxing; and also, isn't the point of a backup NOT to be so busy that it suffers from wear and tear and dies? So as you can see, I have a Buffalo HD-HG160LAN to do all my downloading.

At some point in your life, you will need some sort of backup of your photos and burning DVD's are not an option, maybe Blueray DVD's, but regular 4 gig dvd's aren't an option because I now have 320 gigs and I don't think 80 dvd's is the way to go. So you need a backup machine, and you need it to run RAID1, and this is the box I'd recommend.

This is the monitor I have.

Previously, I owned a Samsung 17" which I really liked, but that was 4.5 years ago, and now the prices are ridiculously low, and the quality is amazing.

I originally was looking for the version with HDMI, but as this is a monitor, there's only HDMI-video only, so I thought forget it. It does have both D-sub and DVI.

This monitor also has one of the most important features.. it uses a regular 3 prong computer power supply cable.



Those with the transformer on the OUTSIDE of the monitor are not as good.

With a maximum ratio of 5000:1 this monitor is beautiful.

One of the biggest questions that most ask is, with the availability of 24" monitors, why not buy a 24"?

Let me explain..

First, since 24" monitors are out, that's the most expensive. Since 22" are a step below, the only way to sell them is to drop the price, and so automatically 22" monitors are cheaper.

Also, do you have the desk space for a 24" monitor?

But the most CRITICAL of reason is this, when you sit down and look straight forward, assuming your monitor is reasonably place far away enough, you will find that 22" is the MAXIMUM your peripheral view can see without moving your head.

It sounds trivial, I know, but it's absolutely critical.

The fact that I can stare at the center and still see everything on the screen without panning my head like I'm watching a tennis match from center row, makes it absolutely the most important thing when selecting a monitor.

These are the little decisions that come back to haunt us later.

One hint, if you are using windows, the way to do it is to place the task bar on TOP for large monitors. Because looking so far down is difficult, top is where you want to place your task bar.

So how does this monitor do??

The reaction time is fast, and the video is smooth. One of the biggest problems I had with the old Samsung monitors was the power button, which is the one most often used. On the LG, it's a bug button on the bottom right side, below the LED blue triangle. It should last for years. The Samsung one was a small button that was only hinged on one side, making it prone to breakage.

The controls for monitor settings are shit, but like I keep telling people, when you've got it all set, how often do you really change your monitor settings??

I liken it to manual seat movement on a car. Buy the manual one if you don't share a car, it's probably 500lbs lighter than the electronic seat adjustment, so you can save gas, easy to fix if it ever breaks at all, and once you've set it, you don't really reset it, so carrying around 500 extra pounds is stupid.

A lot of people ask me what they should buy as far as computer products. I tell people that most of them are too stupid to think for themselves so they should just buy what I buy; when you do that, at least you get the benefit of someone doing some analysis vs blindly trusting the stupid guy behind the counter.

I have the Asus assembled version of this graphics card, it has 512Megs of DDR3 on it instead of 256Meg. Is there a difference? I'm not sure, because I've never used the 256M version, but I'm sure there is when graphics come crashing down on you for movies etc..

Like everything I pick, there was a HUGE amount of thought that went into picking a graphics card.

So it went like this:

ATi or Nvidia?

I'm not a big Nvidia fan, so I picked ATi. I picked ATi for another reason as well, Crossfire.

The ATI crossfire lets you put in 2 ATI video cards and connect them together so you can output video while using the GPU power of 2 cards. Yes yes yes, I know the environmental electricity drain, but I wanted the option. Before my new system, I didn't upgrade my system for SEVEN years, so I had no idea what kind of speeds I'd be facing. So I ended up picking a motherboard that was crossfire enabled, and an ATi video card.

For the $$, I thought the HD3850 to be a much better value than the HD3870. I just didn't see the benefits for the cost, and I am a man all about the maximization of cost/benefit ratios.

I actually gave the people at the hardware store my "spec sheet" and they built it for me. One of the comments I got was from one of the nerds behind the counter, and he said that if he was building a system for himself, these would be the EXACT specifications he'd use.. So it feels pretty good to get affirmation.

The video is smooth, the playback on the Intel CPU is smooth, and the graphics look great.

Highly recommended.

I have always been a HUGE fan of AMD. I hope they never go out of business because we need competition to keep Intel innovating.

But recently, while upgrading my entire system, I was looking into which CPU to pick.

I ended up picking the Intel E8400 with the Wolfdale core. When you take a look at bang for the buck, this is the king of the hill. The E8600 is too expensive, and this is a much better processor than the QX9650 it replaces.

With a HUGE 6M of L2 cache, it's cranks. But it still is light on the electricity.


None of the X2's in the AMD barn can touch it, so while I love AMD, I had to pick the best bang for the buck, which surprisingly, is not AMD.

Oh well.. This CPU however is fast, and when ripping movies or burning avi's to dvd's, it absolutely screams. Stability has not been a problem nor has heat.

I don't know about in the future, but at least as of this writing, the absolute best bang for the buck in CPU, bar none.