IT Geek Breakfast @ Huckleberry's, Modesto

"IT Geek Breakfast" at Huckleberry's is back on again for March! Saturday, March 13th, 8am. I've set up a Facebook Event to RSVP at. After last months success, we set up a Facebook Fan Page for IT Geek Breakfast so that we can centralize announcements.

This is a get-together breakfast of some Christians who work in the IT/IS/computer field (or are just hobbiests/enthusiasts!) so we can fellowship.

Everyone (non-Christians friends too) are welcome. But the topics will probably be highly geek/technical in nature, and probably boring for non-technical spouses.

Dropbox - The must-have online filesharing utility - Making it work on Fedora 12

Dropbox is a free online file transfer and storage synchronizing utility, which also optionally allows you to publicly share files and photos. It works on Linux, Mac, and Windows.

To get started with Dropbox, you first need a free account. You can sign-up for Dropbox free here.

Free Long Distance with Google Voice

Are you paying for Long Distance? What would you do if you could call Long Distance for free, any time, as much as you wanted?

I've written about Google Voice in the past, but I wanted to simplify the steps to use Google Voice to make free Long Distance calls for the common-day non-technical person.

IT Geek Breakfast @ Huckleberry's, Modesto

I wanted to invite everyone around Modesto to an "IT Geek Breakfast" at Huckleberry's this Saturday, Feb 6th, 8am. I've set up a Facebook Event to RSVP at.
If that link doesn't work, try searching Facebook Events for "IT Geek Breakfast".

Nothing formal, just a get-together breakfast of some Christians who
work in the IT/IS/computer field so we can fellowship.

Everyone (non-Christians friends too) are welcome, but the topics will
probably be highly geek/techno in nature, and probably boring for non-technical spouses.

Why you want Google Voice

Moments ago this conversation took place via SMS to my Google Voice number:

(408) 642-XXXX: My bad bt wat u doen 2:47 PM
Me: Who is this? 3:16 PM
(408) 642-XXXX: Wh0 iS dIS 3:16 PM
Me: Yes, that's what I asked. Who is this? 3:17 PM
(408) 642-XXXX: N0 N0 WH0 iS dISz 3:18 PM

Google Voice, Phones, Unlimited, and some such

Today I received my Google Voice invite. Do you remember when Gmail was invite-only? It's like that, for now. You can read about the features here. However, unlike Gmail, account owners don't have the ability to send invites of their own (yet?).

So what is so special about Google Voice?

Storm Upgrade comes to Verizon and other tips

Check you Application Memory Free Space via Setup - Options - Advanced - Memory. If it gets much below 10mb, you're sure to have some crashing soon.

I found this tip and thanks to it I'm now to 30mb of free
Application Memory Free Space:

Capturing Radio

One cool feature of many TV capture cards is the ability to hook up an FM antenna and listen to the radio. There is plenty of support for listening to live radio. But as for capturing the radio, there isn't much support. However, as with anything, if there is a will, there is a way. This isn't really anything new, if you compare it to using a cassette tape player to record the radio. What is novel is the ability to gather and store radio like a DVR (or in my case, on my DVR) - all nice and scheduled and automated.

Address book syncing

I've got too many address books in too many places. With over 6000 contacts, I don't want to have think about how to merge or maintain the them on an ongoing basis. I've got two Thunderbird email address books, two Google GMail address books and my BlackBerry address book to deal with. I want them all to sync live. I don't want to have to run a Windows server in order to run a BES server [?] and maintain it just for contact syncing.

Custom DVR

As I said in my last post, I run MythDora 10.21 for my custom DVR solution. MythDora is a combination of RedHat's Fedora [?] 10 and MythTV [?] 0.21 which bundles into an install most of what you need for a DVR solution. Here are a few screen shots I took today.

Adding Digital support to my custom home "Tivo"

I purchased a Hauppauge HVR-1600 (Model 1178) and sorted through adding it to my Linux-based home recording system which runs MythDora 10.21. I've already had a Hauppauge PVR-500 for 2 years and it works great for recording two TV shows at once, but it only supports analog. I've wanted to make the switch to digital for some time, but I knew that the cards at the time were still new and digital support in general was green.

Blackberry Curve 8330 coming to MetroPCS

I've had a Blackberry 8830 World Edition with Verizon which was nice and fast, and very nice as a modem tether to my laptop. More recently I've had a Blackberry 8820 with AT&T - the slowest I've ever seen, and a carrier I'd recommend against if you want speed. The Verizon GPS was locked down, but Google Maps pin-pointed it close enough to get directions or do searches. AT&T has the GPS unlocked, but the internet sluggishness is so annoying, even ssh crawls. Bother are excellent phones, no matter the cell company flaws.