The Tightwad Tech

Are you a teacher? Do you know a teacher? Have you ever met a teacher?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then The Tightwad Tech just might be for you. The Tightwad Tech is a podcast that is 37% humor, 86% tech savvy, 13% self-introspection, and 11% fabrication. Do the math. That 147% of podcasting goodness.

I'm exaggerating...but only slightly. the Tightwad Tech really is a podcast, part of Element Opie Productions, and it really is humorous and tech rich. Its target audience is (are?) "those in the education field who face ever-growing demands and ever-shrinking budgets". This may not apply to you directly, but you probably know someone that it does apply to. How about someone involved in the tech industry? Pass the word on to any and all of them. They might just find something in a Tightwad podcast that changes the way they teach or do business.

www.ElementOpie.com

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Okay...in the interest of full disclosure...

First, one of the hosts of the podcast is a long time friend of mine. Second, this little article might just win me a MP3 player! That being said, even if I didn't know one of the hosts, and I wasn't competing for an MP3 player, I'd STILL recommend it. Help me pass the word about this podcast that's attempting to help our teachers and those that support our teachers.

Thanks! And stop on by The Tightwad Tech and say "hi".

A Novel Concept

A while back, I read an article about some hackers that had been busted.  Apparently, they had created a website that when visited would install some malicious software on the person's computer.  Not only would this malicious software capture the username and password to that person's online bank account, it would send it to a server in Russia.  This server in Russia would then compute how much money would be safe to remove from the account without causing too many red flags, and withdraw that amount.

But that's not all.  Then, every time that person thought they were going to their online bank account, the malicious software hidden on their PC would redirect them through the Russian server.  The Russian server would then, on the fly, change the way the bank website displayed on the person's computer, so that the illegal transactions did not show up.

To the person with the infected computer, it appeared as if everything was fine.  The way that it was discovered is that someone actually brought up their bank's website on two computers at their house:  one infected with the malicious software, and one that wasn't, and could see the two different bank balances side-by-side.

Wow! Trojans...keystroke loggers...server redirects...rewriting HTML on the fly...these guys were geniuses.

My only question?

...

If they're this smart, why didn't they figure out a way to make money legally?

I'm in love with a robot...I mean...an Android.

Android phone, that is. I have an Android phone, and I love it. It's not the Motorola Droid that you've probably seen all the commercials for. It's the HTC Eris...Verizon's OTHER Android phone.

Is it the perfect phone? No. Is it better than the iPhone? Probably not. (However, Verizon's network service is better than AT&T's.) But it is a really cool phone. I won't bore you with all the geeky details of the techy stuff you can do with it (like analyze wireless networks) but I will share just one evening of life with my phone.

A couple of weeks ago I was at the youth service for my church. In the course of just a couple of hours one evening, I did the following (listed in order of occurrence, in case you were curious):

1) looked up something on the internet

2) used my phone as a guitar tuner

3) created an mp3 playlist for before the service

4) took some nice 5 megapixel pictures

5) emailed those pictures to someone

6) created a playlist for music after the service

Oh yeah...and I called someone, too. Pretty cool, huh?

Tonight my phone was laying on the table next to my recliner, and I saw that I had a notification that I had a new Facebook message. I could have logged onto my laptop, which was on a table on the other side of my recliner, but instead I just checked it on my phone.

It was from some friends who are babysitting for us tomorrow night. The message contained their address. My phone also has a trackball on it. Just to see what happened, I rolled the trackball and watched the cursor move down the screen. When it got the body of the message, what do you know? It highlighted the address. Just the address. It put a nice little selection border around the address. I clicked the trackball, and presto! It launched Google Maps and went straight to that address.

I have to admit I was impressed. I've had the phone for a few months, and I am still finding cool things it can do.

What will smart phones be like in 5 years?!?

Incredible Imagination

Some people's creativity just blows me away. I stumbled across an article the other day on Popular Mechanics website titled "The World's 18 Strangest Bridges". It was fantastic. Some bridges were included because of their beauty, while others were included because of their innovation. Here's a couple of pictures.

If this kind of thing interests you at all take a minute and read the article. Even if you don't read every word, just check out the pictures. Incredible!

Ingenuity Rocks

I have a great job. I work with great people and for a great company. I'm a Sr. Systems Analyst for a large ambulatory health care organization. I know...sounds exciting, right?

One of the funnest (most fun?) things about my job is getting to come up with creative solutions for problems. Usually my co-worker Bob and I tag-team on a lot of these problems. We've been working on one lately where we are migrating the documents for a couple of physicians from their old electronic medical record system to ours. A little over 30,000 of these documents are Microsoft Excel files. The system we are importing them into only accepts PDFs or other graphic file types (JPG, TIFF, etc.).

So, we needed a way to transform those 30,000 files from XLS to PDF. Bob worked out a system using PDF Creator, which can "print" pretty much any file type to a PDF, that could batch convert the files. There was only one problem. On every file the computer asked, "Do you want to save your changes?", to which Bob answered by pressing the "N" key. Now, of course Bob didn't want to sit at his desk for 34 hours hitting the "N" key. So he devised a plan. An ingenious plan.

To answer the question you must be asking: Yes, that is in fact a stapler, balanced on a stack of blank DVDs, pressing the "N" key.

Click on the image to enlarge it.

Google vs. Bing

Bing

Maybe you've heard of it. If you're like me, you've seen all the commercials about Microsoft's new search engine. Oh wait, my bad, it's Microsoft's new DECISION engine. Big difference, right?

Well, for someone like me that uses Google multiple times a day, if there's something better out there, I want to know. So I thought I would put Bing to a little test. Better yet, how about a head to head competition with Google? Sound fun? Okay, maybe not fun, but maybe interesting enough for you to keep reading.

I've taken a few random items, plugged them into both search engines, and evaluated the results. Here we go!

1) 23rd president of the united states

Google returned the Wiki article first and a Wiki list of presidents second. Third was some website called "presidentsusa.net". Fourth was a link to the official site for the president.

Bing returned the "presidentusa.net" website first, then followed up with the Wiki article. It's third link was to a biography page about President Harrison on the website for Harrison Elementary School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (This site was 5th on Google.) Fourth site for Bing? Amazon.com.

I'm going to give this one to Google, but just by a margin.

Score: Google - 1 / Bing - 0



2) Aquada (a really cool amphibious car)

This one was pretty much a wash, so I'm giving them both a point.

Score: Google - 2 / Bing - 1



3) Serenity (a pretty good sci-fi movie)

Okay, this was weird. Almost the exact same results.

Score: Google - 3 / Bing - 2



4) Eisley calendar (a great band, who I happen to know personally)

Well, Google's first link was "Eisley fan's journal - calendar", I didn't see that link at all on Bing. I thought Google had won a clean win. However, when I clicked on the link I found that the website hadn't been updated since 2004. Oops.

Score: Google - 3 / Bing - 3

5) Aaroneous Findings (you've got to do the vanity search)

Google, without a doubt, won this one. The actual address of my blog didn't even appear on the results on Bing. Google? Top of the list.

Final score: Google - 4 / Bing - 3

Google wins!


That being said, Bing does have a couple of cool features. The travel feature that they tout on the commercials is actually pretty cool. Is that enough for me to change search engines? Nope.

Plus, saying that you are "googling" something when you are searching the net sounds so much better than "binging".

I Saw a UDO!

Unidentified Driving Object.

That's what I saw yesterday while delivering pizza. It was a fully enclosed motorcycle driving down the street. It was one of the coolest looking things. It went by quickly, so I wasn't able to get a picture. Then, I took another delivery in the same area about an hour later and...there it was again! This time I managed to snap a photo with my phone through the window of the van.

It actually stopped at a stop sign directly in front of me and answered my fundamental question. Why doesn't it fall over? When it stops, two wheels (like training wheels) lower from the sides. In my (blurry) photo you can see the wheel hasn't lifted yet as it took off.

It took about 10 seconds on Google to find it. It's called the Monotracer. If you are interested in stuff like this, here's their website.

ItBroke

Mostofmyblogging isdone from a littlelaptopthatIkeep in thelivingroom. Mysonpulled offthespacebar. Iputit back, butit only workspart of thetime.

Frustrating.

My World Has Shrunkened

Tilt Shift Photography.

It's this cool technique where photographers use special lenses and angles to mess with your perspective on photos. It can make real life look like miniatures. The coolest thing is you can simulate the effect with a photo editor.

There's some great videos done by this Australian guy. Here's one.


Beached from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Here's a couple of photos I took while in Nashville at the Gaylord Opry Hotel. I "tilt shifted" them myself. You can see one of the original pictures here.

I've Been Set Free!

When we moved into our current residence back in April, we were sad to find out that we had too many trees for us to continue our DirecTV service. So we lost the NFL Sunday Ticket, which made my wife very sad, and we switched to cable. Charter Cable, to be exact.

Charter had been our internet provider for over a year, and I was pretty satisfied with the level of service we had received so far. However, when we tried to get a HD DVR (that's a high-definition digital video recorder, for the less tech-savvy out there) through them, it took them over a month to get it right. I won't bore you with all the details and the hassles that we went through. Suffice it to say, at the end of it, they gave us some significant discounts to make up for all the problems.

Well, the season of our discounts is over, and our Charter bill last month for cable television and internet access was...(drumroll)...$166!!! What?!?! That's crazy, you say? That's what I said. For someone making minimum wage, that's a serious chunk of change.

So, I went to Home Depot's website and found a nice little antenna and purchased it. Today, my friend Joshua came over and we installed it. So, as I am typing this, I am watching the Cowboys get beat by the Redskins in full 1080i HD on broadcast television...and it is free. That's right folks. Free.

My next project is a home-grown DVR.

I've been set free! From cable, that is. Viva la Antenna!!

Music City, USA

Today, my family and I are in Nashville. I'm here for work, but since I had a private hotel room, and the location was close enough to drive, I was basically able to bring the family for free!

Couple of things:

1) We ate dinner at the B.B. King Blues Bar/Restaurant last night, and the food and music was excellent.
2) The reason I am here is because the primary software that I work on is having their yearly convention. Now the cool thing is that the company that I work for was up for the Practice of the Year for large practices (there were also small and medium categories). We had made the finals a few weeks ago, but we didn't know until this morning that...drumroll...we won! Wahoo! It's a great honor, and we were all very excited.
3) My son has been having fun. He's a little worn out, though. A few minutes ago, he said, "Momma, I need a drink." My wife turned, grabbed his cup, turned back to him...and he was already asleep.

From here we are heading to Apple Mountain Resort!

Google Chrome - Gotta Have It!

Today Google rolled out their next step in taking over the world:

Google Chrome!

It's a brand new (and extremely cool) web browser.  It has so many new features, I won't even begin to tell you about them all.  Don't wait.  Don't be the last one to do it.  Just go here and download it.

Then go here and watch the short (very well done) demonstration videos so you'll know how to take advantage of many of the cool features.

And if you are geeky, go here and read the comic about it.

The only negative I have found so far:  it doesn't support live bookmarks yet...

The WWW - What An Incredible Time Saver!

(With a title like that, everyone will be reading this blog!!)

My wife and I were just discussing today about how convenient the wealth of information on the World Wide Web is in everyday life. No more phone books or encyclopedias! The world is at our fingertips.

Here's some examples of what I mean:

1. Look up the price of dimensional lumber at Home Depot - 4 minutes (Decided to check my email since I was already on the computer - 48 minutes (cats in clothes are so cute))


2. Needed a phone number for the IRS - 2 minutes (Checked my Facebook page to see if I had any new friends - 72 minutes)


3. Paid a bill online - 5 minutes (Clicked on ad on bank page...apparently, even though I am in a debt management plan right now, I can get a home loan for 100% with no money down - 17 minutes)


4. Checked my work calendar to make sure I don't have to be anywhere first thing in the morning - 1 minute (Hopped onto YouTube real quick - someone had told me about a really funny video involving yogurt, ostriches, and an oil filter wrench - 97 minutes)


5. Did a Google search wanting to read up on Michael Phelp's latest victories - 10 minutes (Instead, ended up reading about the history of the Olympics and the greatest medal Olympic champions of all times - 51 minutes)

See what I mean! A great timesaver!