Geek Toys
Universal Car Mount for Portable DVD Players
Found! An inexpensive way to play DVDs on the road. This Universal Car Mount for portable DVD players really works. You can use this universal mount with your portable DVD player to securely mount the player in your car, so you can enjoy your favorite movies on your next long road trip.
The ridged bars on either end of the platform extend (thanks to internal shock cord) and hook around the headrest posts. This leaves the DVD platform suspended between the driver and passenger seats, perfectly positioned for back seat viewing. We use these on road trips to keep our son happy.
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Mac Performance Comparison at Geek Patrol
The folks over at Geek Patrol gives us rundown of relative performance amongst a variety of processors, the most wide reaching I’ve seen. To quote from their conclusions:
The PowerPC G4 has served us well, its time has past. It still performs reasonably well as a lower-end CPU, but when compared to the PowerPC G5 and the Intel Core Duo it’s sorely lacking; it was blown away by both processors in almost every test (save for the Blowfish tests). With the Intel Core Duo in both the iMac and the PowerBook1 hopefully we’ll see the Intel Core Solo replace the PowerPC G4 in the Mac Mini and the iBook.
Other comparsions:
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Bluetooth Laser Keyboard
This is just too cool. Projecting a virtual laser keyboard onto any flat surface, it allows you to add keyboard functionality to your PDA, computer, or other bluetooth device. We’ve seen variations of this type of gadget for sometime, but the bluetoothness just tips the scales. It even features virtual click sounds as you “type” each letter.
I have nothing other than geeky, gadget lust for this new Bluetooth Laser Keyboard that ThinkGeek is selling. I don’t spend a lot of time in small areas where a laptop would be too unwieldy (like a submarine or a Mercury space capsule), but that doesn’t make me want one any less.
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IntelliJ IDEA in Action
My latest book is now available at Amazon, and other fine book sellers everywhere. This book covers the ins and outs of IDEA, the amazing Java IDE from the folks over at JetBrains.
It’s current through the 5.X release, and covers everything from debugging to project management. If you haven’t tried this IDE I recommend you do so. You can get a free evaluation at the JetBrains website.
Even though I’m currently doing .NET development, I’ve been using this IDE for about 4 years, and can honestly say it doubled my productivity. While it’s got oodles of great features, the best has got to be its refactoring capabilities.
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Refactoring
Your class library works, but could it be better? Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code shows how refactoring can make object-oriented code simpler and easier to maintain. Today refactoring requires considerable design know-how, but once tools become available, all programmers should be able to improve their code using refactoring techniques.
Besides an introduction to refactoring, this handbook provides a catalog of dozens of tips for improving code. The best thing about Refactoring is its remarkably clear presentation, along with excellent nuts-and-bolts advice, from object expert Martin Fowler. The author is also an authority on software patterns and UML, and this experience helps make this a better book, one that should be immediately accessible to any intermediate or advanced object-oriented developer. (Just like patterns, each refactoring tip is presented with a simple name, a “motivation,” and examples using Java and UML.)
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Web Development with JavaServer Pages
I co-authored this book with Mark Kolb. This was one of the best selling books on JSP and has been well received by a number of publications, the development community, and several major universities who are using the book as their classroom text. It has been translated into seven languages.
You can download the Sample Code, but keep in mind it was writtein in 2000, and has not been updated to the latest and greatest version of JSP.
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Home Media Option (HMO) for DirecTV Receivers with TiVo Petition
If you are a DirecTV subscriber, I urge you to sign the this petition which requests them to add Tivo’s networking and multimedia features to DirecTV. The Tivo fully supports the ability to listen to music, view your photos, and much more through its Home Media Option which has never been made available to DirecTV subscribers. Likewise, you can’t use Tivo2Go, custom Tivo applications, or other cool networking features.
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New IP KVM
A company called Planet Technology now offers an IP Based Virtual KVM that allows you to control any computer, running any OS, or even just the BIOS, through a web browser. From the manufacturer:
With the innovative IP-based technology, PLANET has turned the conventional KVM switches into networking devices. The IKVM-1000 captures, digitizes and compresses video signal, then transmits it with keyboard and mouse signals through IP network. Multiple remote sites can monitor the same PC server simultaneously. With SSL authentication and data encryption, the IKVM-1000 provides a non-intrusive solution for remote access and control. The remote access and control software operates on its embedded processors only, but not on mission-critical servers, so that there is no interference with server operation or decrease on the network performance.
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MySql and PHP
I’ve been having trouble connecting PHP to MySQL on my new box, and it turns out that the reason is a change in password encoding schemes, luckily there is a solution available
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Pluck 1.0 Release Candidate
Pluck has released a release candidate for version 1.0 of their RSS reader and search tool. Check it out at their website.
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