I started working in an office again last Fall and found myself wanting to access my home machine often. It was time to finally set up some sort of VPN. My home machine is a Mac mini attached to a projector and a Drobo. I have an iPad, phone, and work laptop, but that’s the extent of the computing devices I use at home. I use the mac mini essentially headless, accessing it via OSX’s built in Screen Sharing and file sharing. I wanted to recreate that experience remotely. Read the rest of this entry »
Pseudo-VPN using CocTunnel + Network Beacon on OSX
January 16th, 2011Music label subscriptions
January 15th, 2011
Lately, I’ve been stumbling across quite a few awesome musicians and then discovering they’re part of the record label Ninja Tune. (For example, Edwin linked to a Blockhead video today.) I quipped on Twitter that Ninja Tune should just offer a subscription service and send me all of their new music. Jo told me that such a thing isn’t completely far-fetched. She gave Ghostly as an example. As part of the Ghostly Music Service, you pay $15 a month and they send you a weekly update with all new releases, random back catalog selections, 15% of store items, and access to the previous 60 days of releases. You can gift the subscription too: $85 for 6 months or $150 for 12. It’s always a good idea to build systems where your real fans, the people that really want to give you money, can.
Google Science Fair video
January 10th, 2011Embedded above is the our latest Syyn Labs project. We built a Rube Goldberg machine to advertise Google’s global Science Fair. We’re also being featured in Fast Company this month.
Our previous RGM: OK Go’s This Too Shall Pass
Goatse t-shirt iPad sleeve
January 9th, 2011
A couple years ago I saw this clever reuse of a t-shirt as a laptop sleeve. I’ve been saving old shirts for this purpose ever since. When I purchased my iPad in December, it was certainly in need of some protection. So, on a recent trip home I had my mom convert my old Threadless Goatse shirt into the proper iPad sleeve pictured above.
DVD stuck in dead MacBook drive
October 12th, 2010Forgive the stilted title but I want people to actually find this post. I recently loaned my black 2008 MacBook to a friend. They inserted a DVD but it refused to read and wouldn’t eject using the hardware key. Standard procedure in this case is to:
- Reboot the computer and hold down the trackpad button while booting. Disk will eject.
That didn’t work. This is what did work (somehow) and it’s scarcely mentioned online:
- Reboot the computer and hold down the ‘D’ key while booting. Disk will eject. You will be overjoyed.
The D key is normally used to tell the computer to read the install disk in the DVD drive and boot into hardware test mode. System profiler says that the Macbook doesn’t have an optical drive which is why I assume the first method doesn’t work. I hope this helps you.
Tecca is looking for writers!
August 31st, 2010
About us
Tecca is a consumer electronics content and commerce startup based in Santa Monica, CA. We’re building a new online destination in the personal technology space and are looking for smart and creative folks to be a part of our freelance writing team. Do you love gadgets and call writing your craft? Read on for details on how to apply.
About you
You should have lots of interest and expertise as well as, ideally, some experience producing content in the realms of personal technology and consumer electronics. You should enjoy working in a fast-paced publishing environment and have the self-discipline to operate in a distributed virtual environment. You must have a fun, friendly, and positive attitude, and should love helping others solve technology problems and learn more about the industry.
Writers
We are building out our team of freelance contributors. We need people who can speak to all levels of technology consumers, from the experienced to the technophobic. You will be part of a large team crafting fun, easy to understand guides to and original feature columns about topics in consumer electronics. You’ll be covering both the buying process and usage after purchase. You’ll need to excel at working in a virtual environment and covering a broad range of topics. We expect you to both tackle assigned tasks and bring your own original ideas to the table.
How to apply
Send an email to apply AT tecca DOT com with the following information:
- Your background — let us know what you’ve been working on, what you feel your skills are, what your experience in the realm of personal technology/consumer electronics is, and what interests you about this position.
- Your contact information — full name, email address, phone number, instant messenger handle, where you’re located, the best methods and times to reach you, and your general amount of availability for freelance work.
- Example work: 3 or more bylined writing samples linked somewhere online. No attachments, please!
- Column pitch(es): You are also encouraged to pitch us on an original feature column idea (or several). For each column you’d like to pitch, please give us the overall theme and title for your column and between 5 and 10 example topics you would feel confident covering that fit within the overall theme.
We look forward to reading your application!
Android VNC Server
July 20th, 2010UPDATE: Check out Android Notifier which sends phone events to Growl
Yesterday I was firmly entrenched in my couch when I heard my phone chime. It was on the table and I wondered what was available to view my phone’s display remotely so I could read and send text messages.
I found a few references to the RFBserver in Android 1.0. You could attach to the VNC server remotely by forwarding the tcp port over the Android Debug Bridge. This would work but I was hoping for something less involved. I’d need to setup ADB over wireless to make it useful too. Read the rest of this entry »
Taking a stock Nexus One to Froyo
June 22nd, 2010The boss handed me a new-in-box Google Nexus One today leftover from a launch project they did. My G1 has been showing it’s age so I decided to take the new phone and update it to the most recent leak of 2.2. I did the following:
My dad
June 20th, 2010
Happy Father’s day, dad!
Read the rest of this entry »
Augmented reality mustaches
May 27th, 2010
Last night was the 100th Hacker Drinkup. We’ve been meeting almost every Wednesday in Santa Monica for the last two years. For the centennial, Chris and Pinguino decided to build a fun demo: augmented reality mustaches. We had all seen Mike Clare’s AR Cookies last week so we started by making fiducial cookies. Chris wrote a processing app that would identify the image of the marker and then place an image of a mustache over it in the live video feed. Right before you took a bite of the cookie, one of the mustaches Pinguino had drawn would appear. I’m actually holding an onigiri (rice ball) in the photo above. Pinguino carved the fiduciary marker into a piece of nori (seaweed) on its face. It was a neat toy and it captured photos in the background which you can find here.
