Dan Colish

Rocking the blank keys, booyah!

Das Keyboard: I’m not sure if this product is well known, but it really rocks! If you ever took typing in grade school or you remember the clicky keyboards, then you’ll love this one. Every key is built with the same mechanical switch as the legendary IBM Model M. The keyboard featured a mechanical switch design that gave excellent response. All the modern membrane keyboards feel dead in comparison. It’s the Remington of the keyboard world. Das Keyboard is designed in the good ol’ USA and made in Taiwan. I don’t know how many times I can say ‘It Eff’n Rules!

Now it appears that they have two versions: Professional and Ultimate. Both have a two port usb 2.0 hub and all the usual pc108 keys. I can say this with total confidence, you need the Ultimate. Only lamers need key letters. Seriously, if you’re not a touch typist, you should be, it’s 2008. I can already feel myself typing faster. Wooo… go out and get one already!

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they don't look dead, but they are

If you own an iPhone then you’ve got to have a pair of great headphones for listening to music AND taking calls. I tried the original headphones (those white ones that come with the phone) and they were ok; except they kept falling out. I’ve always liked headphones that are in-ear for the road. So I checked out a few brands and settled on the vmoda vibe duo headphones. They were kinda expensive and promised a strong feature set. It also comes with snazzy case. Well these stupid headphones cost $100 and now they’re playing mono. Eff that, I want them fixed or I want my money back. I am sick of over paying for crap build quality.

The overall fit of the headphones was never perfect. I feel into a range somewhere between medium and large. My ears would get sore after wearing them for about 3 hours. This is not a common time frame for me, so still no deal breaker. The style of the headphones was pretty cool. You look slick wearing them. I preferred the black color over the silver. It is much more subtle on the subways.

The sound was always good, sometimes excellent. I have to say that before I get into why I ended up disappointed. There was, as the reviews say, ample bass. All the highs came through loud and clear even in the noisiest conditions. One complaint about the sound was that in a data center it was difficult to make out voices on the phone. A noise canceling feature would probably help a lot. I ended up getting a jawbone headset instead (It’s Niiiice)

Now, I am not the gentlest on my electronics, but I always expect them to take a mild beating; esp. for headphones that you know will be worn on the mean streets. Sadly, these were just not up to the task. They started to become fuzzy in one ear for about a month or so, then they just cut out to mono (I’d prefer to have stereo). A quick look at the vmoda site shows a 1 year warranty, so I will try to send them in and see what happens. I guess the point is don’t spend $100 on headphones, they break as easily as the cheap ones.

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DISCLAIMER: DOING THIS COULD AND PROBABLY WILL MESS UP YOUR PHONE. ITS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED. Thanks Dan

Holy crap! This really is the best thing ever! I’m stuck in my hotel room and I’ve got four beers to split between my girlfriend and I. Only one big eff’n problem MacGyver… no opener. I tore that place apart looking for a good opener; door handles, dresser knobs, towel racks, hangers, nothing worked. As I sat there depressed and thirsty a thought occured to me, try the iPhone… A close study of the iPhone design will reveal a strong, sturdy edge.

I grasped my iPhone along the longest edge, tilted the edge under the bottle capped and cracked that darn bottle open. I am pretty sure the Nobel Committee will contacting me soon Well even if they don’t, Enjoy the pics.

~ Dan

PS: Hold it length-wise for more leverage on those pesky twist offs! dc.

The Optimal Edge for Beer Opening: Thanks APPLE!

Optimal hold for beer opening goodness

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ShellEd could be a nice project. I have been following for a bit now and I would really like to see it work better with the latest Eclipse, 3.4. It doesn’t seem to play well with other plugins, like Aptana, and it’s not giving me enough to fix the problems. Instead, I’m using the BASH-IDE: bash-support.vim plugin for VIM. This is better because it allows me to use my favorite editor, vim, and it gives me the features that I am looking for in a good bash ide. Look for more on this later as I try it out.

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This is some big news for the IT world. VMware ESXi Hypervisor Now Free - VMware. If you don’t know what ESX server is, it’s the leading virtualization platform and it used to cost a lot. Slashdot covers this as well with a snippet. I’m going to give it more attention!

Basically, it’s a simplified version of the ESX server for SMB deployments. It still features multipathing and bonding (NIC TEAMING as it is called on the VMWare site). The dom0 install only takes up 32mb of space which will allow it to run on anything from embedded hardware to the largest servers. The memory management strategy allows you to double the virtual memory.

RAM over-commitment. Increase memory utilization by configuring virtual machine memory that safely exceeds the physical server memory. For example, the sum of the memory of all virtual machines running on a server with 8GB physical memory can be 16GB.

I really like this feature! It can allow me to stretch the capabilities of a system temporarily, or even preminantly. Other features include easy setup, graphical management, strong security, and high-availability. All the features you’d look for in a free virtualization solution! I’ll give it a test and get back a review new weekend.

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