Let's talk about the Grid. You know, that sucking vortex of time and space called the Internet - that crazy "system of tubes" that gives so much but can also take so much away. Just how connected are you? Check your email often? Update your Facebook/MySpace/ Twitter/LinkedIn/Flickr/AIM accounts very much? When your email client chirps at you about that new incoming message, how long can you resist before checking? Years ago, I owned a desktop Mac and a PowerBook. Both of them were required, since the PowerBook wasn't really powerful enough to use for everything, but the portability was so enticing. Checking email from the couch! A revolution, even if I had to use a 20 foot telephone cable back then to connect. Then WiFi came along and we were given more "freedom" to connect to the Grid from anywhere close to a base station - again, talk about convenience. Slowly, Mac laptops came along with more and more power until I could cut the cord to the desktop completely and live full time on my PowerBook. With the laptop, you still had to lug it around, it didn't go with you everywhere and even though you were connecting more often to the Grid, you could shut the thing off.

Cell phones tethered us a little more, if not to the actual Grid, then to the parallel lines of communication. Phones got smaller, more powerful and then, they got Smart. The smartest phone of all, of course, is the iPhone (IMO), but let's not forget the massive success of the Blackberry (Crackberry), Google's new Android platform and Windows Mobile. Now, we get data "pushed" to us - which is incredibly convenient and productive, but it has changed the way we interact with the Grid and with people in a big way. How many times have you seen two people "talking" while one of them has their face buried in their Smartphone? Multi-tasking? I don't think so. I think the message that is being sent is that whatever happens on the shiny little device is more important than this conversation. I wish I could tell you that I haven't done the same thing, but the allure is sometimes hard to resist, especially with that damn iPhone. There's an App for just about anything you want - except resisting the seductive pull of the thing in the first place. But maybe that's the point and I'm just becoming a luddite in my old age? ;-) I do know that I'm trying to unplug from the Grid a little more than I used to, focusing on completing single task while waiting to check email, not jumping to every Instant Message that pings me, leaving Skype shut down at night for an extra hour. Taming the beast, pulling out the best and leaving the rest behind to find a balance of all those high-tech shiny toys that I love with more single-minded focus on that quaint, offline stuff that I also enjoy so much.

How about you? Share your story and I'll feature some tips on how you handle the great balancing act.

Your iPhone is (was) under attack!

Up until last Saturday, that is. Apple released iPhone software 3.0.1 that fixed the SMS attack vulnerability. Apparently, if you received a text message containing just a single square character, you're being warned that your iPhone is about to be taken over by this SMS attack.

Once your iPhone has been attacked, it now can go out and attack other iPhones, and so on and so forth - you've seen those movies where all the appliances attack people....well, something like that.

So, connect your iPhone to your Mac or PC and upgrade your iPhone software to version 3.0.1 to stomp out this pesky "Take over the Earth" SMS vulnerability. I did the upgrade Saturday evening (See above article on being connected to the Grid to much) and have had no problems at all.

Here's the link to the original article about the SMS attack.

Many of you have asked how we make our stop-motion device disassembly videos. You may be surprised to discover that we do it using equipment and software that you probably already have at home: a digital camera, a tripod and Apple's iMovie software. I suppose that our secret ingredient might be the technician who takes apart and puts back together what ever gadget happens to be the subject of our latest video but, other than that, it's pretty basic. The flipping and floating effects are achieved by leaning parts up against paperclip holders or balancing them on erasers (or anything else I happen to have lying around). No 3D software or green screens are invloved in the process. In fact the 3GS Disassembly video is the first one that I've used photoshop on. The Magic Eraser that was holding up the box lid was too visable, even if it was only onscreen for a tenth of a second. Here's a 3 minute documentary showing how it's done:

Speaking of videos, if you haven't seen rapper and movie-star Ice T destroy his MacBook Pro with a hammer (no, not MC Hammer, just a normal claw hammer) then you have to check it out. This just goes to show that even the rich and famous aren't immune to the frustrations of computer malfunction. Do yourself a favor though, when your Mac stops working, just send it to us, and we'll fix it for far less than the price of a new one.

I've got one more link for you too. It's an online translation game called Translation Party. The object is to come up with an english phrase which will be repeatedly mistranslated to and from Japanese for as long as possible until, finally, it is turned into a phrase that is consistently translated back and forth accurately (or equilibrium). For example, the phrase "help is on the way," finds equilibrium in only three steps, being fist mistranslated into "in the way of support," and finally to "support options." If you find a good one (eg. ten or more steps), email it to me and I'll post it next week.

Lastly, I'll just add to Shannon's warning about the latest OS X update. It worked fine on my G4 PowerBook for some reason, but all of my user settings were alienated due to a permissions issue on my intel iMac after I installed the update. I just figured that Apple must have resolved the issue by now, ya know? All was not lost however, as I was able to resolve the problem by manually restoring administrator access to all of the sub-folders in my user folder to which I was denied access (the source of all my problems). They were clearly marked with a red 'do not enter,' sign, but I just got info on each, unlocked them and added read/write access for the administrator group, propagating all permission changes to enclosed items. According to the info window, I already had full access, in spite of my inability to open these folders, but adding the admin group gave me access for reals. I guess having a little past experience working as a sys-admin came in handy, but don't ignore Shannon's advice if you haven't already updated. My solution was long and tedious process.

Have fun and keep your system safe!

Brian Northway
TechRestore Animation Guy

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Labels: specials, video

link to this post posted by Brian@TechRestore @ 8/10/2009 09:30:00 AM