Open .mobi files on Android 4.0

The Kindle app for Android will open the .mobi files. I used Dropbox to get to the file and thought I’d just be able to open it from Dropbox into the Kindle app like I can on the iPad. That didn’t work and it told me to download an app that could open the file type. I copied it from Dropbox to my downloads folder then used a file manager to try and open it without luck. Then I noticed a Kindle folder. I copied the .mobi file into the Kindle folder then opened the Kindle app and it worked!

Two ways to live


There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.

~ Einstein

Waterproof headphones for swimming

Last year I turned 41 and decided to get some exercise.  Those who know me know I’m not particularly active.  I’m an IT guy who’s hardest physical labor at work is to lift a server into a rack, and that doesn’t happen very often.

The year before that I realized that my weight was climbing with my age and put a stop to it by cutting out regular soda, watching calories and not eating boxes of Mike & Ike’s along with 2 liters of Mountain Dew.  So, I got my weight 20 pounds lower and have kept it there for a year and a half.  While I’m at an ideal weight I wasn’t in ideal shape.  I tried the P90x thing and made it through 6 weeks of that before I gave up, I hated it.  I tried working out in front of the Xbox with the Kinect and a workout game.  Hated it.  I tried a basic routine of pushups and situps, squats and such.  I hated it.  I figured if I don’t find an activity that I at least moderately enjoy then I wouldn’t keep doing it.  Running?  Sounds hideous.  Working out with machines at the gym, I have no idea what I’m doing and it doesn’t look fun.  Swimming?  Hmmm, that sounds kinda cool.  So, I began swimming about 6 months ago and I love it.  The other day while swimming I was kinda bored and thought, “it would be cool to listen to music while swimming.”

I jumped on the internet and did a bit of searching.  Most leads took me to H20 Audio’s website.  They have a waterproof case with headphones for the iPod shuffle.  There are a couple of places who have taken the iPod shuffle and made it waterproof on it’s own but they are more expensive than I wanted.

I bought the iPod shuffle and waterproof case from Amazon.  It didn’t come with the goggles.  I haven’t used it swimming just yet, but will be later today and will update with my experience.  It’s more comfortable than I was expecting and it’s smaller than the pictures make it seem as well.  I’m really hoping it works well and isn’t too uncomfortable.  I’d like to swim longer but get bored after awhile.  With this I’ll be able to listen to music, podcasts or audiobooks.

Update:  Ok, I got a chance this afternoon to use the headphones and waterproof case.  Wow!  It worked perfectly and it made my swim time much more enjoyable.  I played some great BT (it’s dance/techno and really good).  The case worked perfectly and I barely knew it was strapped to the back of my head.  The headphones were great too, way better sound than I expected.  I’m going to try a podcast the next time I swim.  The next test will be how well they hold up to 3 or 4 swim sessions a week.  I did forget to mention earlier that the waterproof case is really well made, it’s not cheap feeling at all.  I’m really happy so far with this purchase and I think it’s going to go a long way to helping me continue my swimming and finally keeping off the couch so much!  :)

  • Camera: E-20,E-20N,E-20P
  • Taken: 8 February, 2004
  • Aperture: ƒ/11
  • Focal length: 9mm
  • ISO: 80
  • Shutter speed: 1/1.6s
  • Title: OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Google SMTP mail and Astaro

I recently setup the home version of Astaro for my firewall because I use it at work and like how it works and how you configure it. After setting it up my wife’s laptop starting having problems sending email. It was receiving email ok, but couldn’t send. After some poking around the standard Astaro setup allows for SMTP SSL traffic through port 465 but Google uses port 587. To fix it I added a Google SMTP SSL service definition to the Email Messaging service group. The Email Messaging service group was setup during the initial installation as allowed traffic through the firewall. To add the Google SSL port: from the service definitions section locate the Email Messaging group and click the plus to add a new service definition. Name it what you want make the port 587 and you are good to go.

  • Taken: 8 January, 2012

Jawbone Up mini-review

20120108-084201.jpg

Im always intrigued with the various ways technology can be used in our lives. Especially when it reaches beyond my normal tech zones of computers and reading and video games. I purchased the Jawbone Jambox, a small Bluetooth speaker and was highly impressed by the quality. That prompted me to check out Jawbone’s website to see what else they were doing. I knew they did the Bluetooth headsets and didn’t need one of those. But then I saw the Jawbone Up and became curious.

After reading some initial reviews I wasn’t encouraged because it got a lot of negative feedback. Still the concept and images made me decide to ignore the bad and get one anyways.

I don’t workout at the gym but I do swim, so the idea of using it to track that exercise as well as the standard pedometer also lead me to take the plunge. On top of that I’ve been attempting to understand sleep and sleep patterns and how to get the best nights sleep.

So, how well does it do any of this? The sleep tracking works well and has been very interesting to see. It measures your movements while you sleep to determine how much deep and shallow sleep you get. It has a built in alarm to wake you at the optimal point in sleep, gently vibrating on the wrist instead of a blaring alarm clock. I still wake up groggy most of the time, but have noticed a few nights where it woke me at just the right time and I was ready to go.

The pedometer works well and has you set a goal so you can see how you do each day. It’s hard to get as much movement as you really should but that’s not anything to do with the device.There is a food tracking function but I haven’t used that much. It looks like it just allows you to take a picture of your meals. Not sure if it does more than that.

I haven’t experienced the issues of syncing, battery life and charging that others have reported. These issues have caused Jawbone to quit selling the Up temporarily until they can address them. They even went a step further by offering no questions asked refunds allowing the users to keep the device on top of the refund. Not many companies willing to stand behind their products like that.

As far as the workout mode goes I haven’t used it much to track workouts. The reason is my only workouts are swimming laps and I haven’t been brave enough to wear it while swimming. The band is listed as water-resistant to 3 meters. That should be enough to cover normal lap swimming but I didn’t want to take the chance. There are some who have said they use it while swimming and don’t have problems and just as many who have said they used it and then started having problems.

The band is comfortable to wear and I barely notice it’s there most of the time. The battery life seems to be around 6 days or so. It could probably go longer but I haven’t tried wearing it until it ran out.

I wish it had a PC or Android client. Currently its only on iOS for the syncing of data. I have an iPad so I use it on there even though the app is not made for iPad, it’s made for iPhone/iPod so it doesn’t look too good on the iPad. I also haven’t used it in conjunction to the iPhone to utilize the GPS tracking function.

Overall I’m happy with the device and may get up the guts to swim with it. Hopefully it’ll help me keep more active. Just the act of monitoring activity tends to make you want to be more active.

Come alive


Ask not what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive… then go do it.
Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

~ Howard Thurman

Pool

  • Camera: SGH-i937
  • Taken: 5 January, 2012
  • Aperture: ƒ/2.65
  • Focal length: 4.03mm
  • ISO: 50
  • Shutter speed: 1/20s

Better Windows file copying and moving with Teracopy

I’m not sure how I missed this one.  I remember trying Teracopy a couple of years ago but for the life of me I don’t remember why I didn’t keep using it.
Now that I’ve installed it again I wonder how I’ve got along without it all this time!  I have my usual utilities I install (Notepad++, Filezilla, Firefox, VNC, etc.) and now I’ll add Teracopy to that list.
Windows file copying is better than it used to be for sure but Teracopy just puts the polish on this highly used task.
I’m always copying files here and there and moving them and Teracopy just does a better job of it.  It’s faster, it has error recovery (one of the biggest frustrations with the built in Windows copying), pause and resume and more.  Head over to their website and check it out.  It’s free though there is a paid version that adds a bit more functionality that I haven’t tried but am very tempted to.

Current Book: Einstein biography by Walter Isaacson

20120104-000231.jpg

One of my New Years resolutions is to read more this year. The book I’m currently reading is Einstein, His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson. I haven’t actually finished the book yet. I’m close to finished and do recommend reading this book. I enjoyed Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Job so much I decided to see what else this author had written and found this as well as a biography of Benjamin Franklin.
I enjoy Walter’s writing style and this book has made me think way more than I planned on. When he writes about Einstein’s theories he gets very technical and in depth. Sometimes it’s almost a physics or math text book in the explanations but done so in a much more enjoyable way than I remember physics and math being in school! This is a great biography that gives great detail into the life of Albert Einstein.

Home furnace keeps shutting off, super easy and cheap fix

I’ve been having heating issues at home with the arrival of cold weather. Our thermostat is set on 68 most of the time. I’d notice the temperature would be 66 or 65 and the heater would not be on. Turning off the heat at the thermostat and back on seemed to get it going. After a few weeks of this I decided to replace the thermostat.

20120102-015745.jpg
This seemed to fix the issue and I praised myself for not having to pay for an expert to come out and do something simple for me. Until it started to not heat again a couple of weeks later.
Still determined not to pay someone big bucks I went to the greatest source of human knowledge and inspiration since God gave us the Bible, the Internet.
The main fan comes on right away, the heating element by the blowers lights up red hot then all three jets come on for about 4 seconds and promptly shut off.
It does this about 4 times and quits.
I noticed some led lights and they indicated low flame.
Googling this gave me some instructions on cleaning the flame sensor, a metal rod that sits in the midst of the flame and looks like this image:

20120102-014333.jpg
The instructions were to remove this and clean it with sandpaper. Apparently it gets dirty and fails to register the flame is working properly. So far this appears to have fixed the problem.
We’ll see if I once again avoided having to have an expert come out charge me big bucks!
Beware: I am not a heating and air expert just a DIYer with Google. You have been warned.
Here’s a sample link of the advice I used to get mine working:

DD-WRT and Xbox not getting and IP address


After recently replacing my main router on my home network with a Cisco e4200 and updating it with DD-WRT, my xBox refused to get an IP address from the DHCP server. I could see the IP lease on the router and even after deleting the lease it would generate another lease. But the xBox itself would not use the IP address.
I noticed the default lease lifetime was set to 0 and thought I’d try changing it to something else for the heck of it. I set it to 1440 (which is 24 hours) and voila it worked. All other devices were functioning ok at 0, not sure why the Xbox didn’t like it. Oh well.

20120101-204904.jpg

AT&T U-verse with DD-WRT router in DMZ mode

I recently got AT&T’s U-verse service at home and have been enjoying it so far.  The internet has been working much better than my Mediacom service had been doing.  My only issue was that I wanted more control over the router and I wanted to setup VPN access into my home network.  So, I installed DD-WRT on my Cisco E4200 wireless access point/router then got the AT&T setup in DMZ mode to pass traffic to the E4200.

This setup was working great for almost all aspects except when I would VPN into work or even do a SSL remote desktop session outside my network.  After about 5 minutes the remote desktop session would become unresponsive and I’d have to reconnect.  This was driving me crazy because I couldn’t work for more than 5 minutes at a time.  I did a bit of Googling and found the answer on the following site:

http://www.comprepairgurus.com/att-u-verse2wire-gateway-and-dd-wrt-router-in-dmz-mode/

Basically, the DMZ mode on the AT&T router was causing the DD-WRT to renew it’s lease every 5 to 10 minutes.  The DHCP responses were being blocked by the DD-WRT firewall.
Adding the following command to the DD-WRT firewall fixed the problem and I haven’t had a remote desktop timeout since:

iptables -I INPUT -p udp –sport 67 –dport 68 -j ACCEPT

(Click the Administration tab, then Command tab.  Enter the above command in the text box and click Save Firewall then reboot.)

Be sure to check out the above website where I got the fix from.  They have a lot of tips and fixes for other issues as well.

Death Valley Sign

Death Valley Sign

This was taken at 9:13 am. The temperature was about 60 degrees outside. Check back tomorrow for another Death Valley sign picture taken on the same day about 4 hours later at a very different temperature.

Categories

Archives