Strange, really...

I've been receiving steady hits every day from this site, although I haven't posted anything new here. I'm assuming that this is mostly from search engine crawlers, but I'm still curious to see who is still following this blog. 

If you ARE in fact following, and are a human being (not a spider or web crawler), I'd love it if you would do one of two things;

1. Go to my new website, http://www.technoheads.org and subscribe there, either via email or via RSS.
2. Send me an email. If you have been following for this long, I'm truely grateful and would like to express my first-hand gratitude.

Heh. Now that all that is said and done, I hope everyone's had a happy new year, and a great holliday. Thanks everyone!

Cheers,

Salem

Looks like I'm moving...

It's been a REALLY long time since my last post, and I feel pretty bad for that. However, I have been doing a considerable amount of work rigging up a NEW site, technoheads.org. I'd REALLY appreciate it if anyone who still reads my blog would take a peek over there and check out what I've been doing. To start myself off, I'm going to end up posting a few reruns (sorry!), but I'll try to keep it updated with new content. I added a nice forum and chat to compliment the blog. Biggest thing, though is that users can now contribute to the blog! If you have an idea for something that should be front-and-center, just make an account and submit an article. it's really simple.

Once again, thanks in advance for following, and I hope to see you on Technoheads.org!

Magnets?

Recently I received an iPod Touch case and really liked it. It was a leather portfolio case; to be precise, it was Griffin's Elan Convertible. It was creative, well-fit, and came with a screen protector and a nice cloth. However, after about a week of using it, my iPod would regularly crash or close out of whatever I was doing and return to the main menu. Although there is no way to prove this, I think it may be caused by the fact that the case has magnets in it. You may be thinking, "You immature narcissist, magnets don't do anything to solid-state drives, such as the one the iPod Touch sports." However, there are more components to an iPod touch than flash memory. Its possible that one of these components were affected by the case's mgnets. Secondly, I'm not the only person who's experienced these problems; just look at the MacRumor's forum dedicated solely to the topic. There have been many counts of similar errors, and several were from the exact same case as mine.

So, I wrote an email to Griffin's customer support, telling them my problem and pointing them to the forum. They responded (in a remarkably short time... well done Griffin) that I was not the first person to bring them this issue. They said that since they could not replicate the issue at their facilities, they assume that it is an issue with specific iPod Touches. Other responses say that some cases may have had stronger magnets than others.

My response from Griffin is as follows:

We have also heard the reports of this happening, but have never been able to reproduce the issue with any of the cases customers have sent us. The conclusion seems to be that problem will only occur with specific iPod Touch's. Because this happens with your iPod Touch, a replacement Elan Convertible would probably encounter the same issue. Your case does have a one year warranty, however, and if you would like, we would be more than happy to exchange your case for any iPod Touch case we make.

My iPod has crashed less after taking it out of the case, but it still crashes from time to time. I think I'm going to see if I can get in contact with someone from Apple to see what they say about this... And if worse comes to worst, I may be in for a new iPod Touch (thank God its still under warranty).

RadioTracker

I have been wowed. I just made a rather hefty music library comprised of new artists who fit my tastes, and all for free. A simple program called "RadioTracker" recorded my interests, favorite artists, and favorite songs and, using internet radio stations, downloaded music that fit my tastes. In addition, it was recently awarded one of MaximumPC's Softy Awards for being so amazing. You can have RadioTracker look for specific songs to download, or you can have it search for general artists or genres. Its great, easy, and best yet, legal. You can get all this music for free (after purchasing RadioTracker for $40). For those who don't like spending money, it also has a nice demo that you can check out. Don't take my word for it, try it out yourself at radiotracker.com.


Now, I get to rant. I made the mistake of setting the music type to "Alternative" and then accidentally leaving it on overnight. I'm a big fan of alternative music, don't get me wrong, but some of the more... violent songs aren't my thing (i.e. deathmetal). So, upon waking up the next day, I checked my computer and found that I had about 45 MB of disk space left and that I had just smashed 14 gigs of music (a good 8 of which were deathmetal) on my laptop. So, although this software is great, BE CAREFUL with it. Another thing that gets annoying is the fact that you will sometimes get station identification audio at the end of a song. I was abruptly jerked out of a Red Hot Chili Peppers song by some guy screaming about his radio station. Just be careful of that.

Back!

Well, its been almost an entire month since my last post, and I really feel bad about this. The end-of-quarter assignments at school have left me working too much and I've had almost no time to blog. That being said, I'm going to post an update of everything that's happened since I've been gone.

Instant Action
Instant Action is finally out of public beta, so you can sign up yourself from here on out without need for a key or an invite. They also released a 3rd person 2D space shooter called "Zap," which I must say is an intensely addictive game. Lastly, they have started a private beta of their 3D Fps which, in my oppinion, looks absolutely awesome. To get in, you must invite more friends than anyone else in Instant Action (which will probably lead to mass-spamming) and will end by the end of this month. So, if you want to play, ask me and I'll send you an invitation.

Music
Panic! at the Disco's latest album, "Pretty Odd" was released on Tuesday, much to the delight of their thousands of fans (usually of the feminine persuasion). Although I don't have the album yet, I'm planning on buying it or at least listening to clips of it and doing a quick review of it at some time.
Death Cab for Cutie is also planning on releasing their latest album, "Narrow Stairs," on May 13. Although this is a long time to wait, I'll just have to wait it out. As soon as its released, though, you can bet on a review.

Gaming
Team Fortress 2 now has a new map: Badlands. The map is a port of a map of the same time from the original Team Fortress, but with a more western look and feel that has become so common in Team Fortress 2 maps. They are also in the process of creating another map, called Goldrush, which will introduce a whole new mode of gameplay in which a team must get their minecart to the other side of the map before the enemy does the same. Lastly, the rumor of new weapons for each of the classes, as well as new much-needed goals and achievements have kept a lot of Orange Box gamers on their toes. I personally can't wait.

iPod Touch.
An update wouldn't be an update without a quick overview of all the new iPod Touch news, would it? The SDK is officially released, but only to big corporations (such as Adobe, who will hopefully work on a flash plugin for MobileSafari). The 1.1.4 firmware has been released and jailbroken (already), and according to rumor, the 1.2.0 firmware, scheduled to come out this summer with the App Store, has already been jailbroken.

Last but not Least,
Harvard's student database has been hacked, and the hacker was quick to post the entire database available for Bittorrent Downloads. Oops.

Blog Updates...

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Chekwolf: Its finally back!

Checkwolf is a crimefighting organization, a group of talented vigilantes who have come together to battle corruption in their own way.

About 2 years ago, I got hooked on an audiobook podcast called "Checkwolf," depicting a modern-day rogue crime fighting group. I was very attentive and followed the series almost religiously. So, of course, when month after month went by without an update, it was pretty upsetting. So, being the curious person I am, I wrote the author, Remy Gibson, an email asking him what was up. He told me that he wanted to re-record all the episodes in a higher quality format. So, recently, he emailed me back and told me that he had successfully put his audiobook on podiobooks.com under a creative commons license. So, once more, I can look forward to listening to the intrepid adventures of my favorite fictional crime-fighting league.
Check out the Checkwolf Website
or go to the Checkwolf Podiobooks page.


Thanks, Remy!