Tech Talk at ShieldsGroup

One of the most frustrating things about a fresh install of Ubuntu is that when it asks you to set your keyring password, it warns you of security issues. And when you set your password, it asks for it every time someone wants to connect to the secured wireless.

To get past this, try the following:

1. Right-click on your Network Manager applet in the upper right corner and select “Edit Connections”.
2. Click on the Wireless Tab, select your wireless network, and click “Edit”.
3. At the bottom on the following window put a check in the “Available to all users” box.
4. Close all windows and reboot.

This makes the wireless available without entering the keyring password.

-Steve

Tim and I are always arguing about batteries in our laptops.

He says that you can use and use your battery without accelerating it’s degradation and that keeping a lithium-ion battery fully charged is constantly exposing it to one of its greatest enemies: heat. I say that it’s best to keep it fully charged — that the battery’s enemy is exhaustion of life-cycles. I had once read that the average lithium-ion battery has a life expectancy of 300 cycles. If you cycle it daily, it will die in under a year.

This chart gives good information:
www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-21.htm

So the chart says Tim is right–you can use and use your lithium-ion battery. Heat and deep discharges are the enemy.

It still puzzles me that he’s been through two batteries in four years at school and in the four years I’ve had this PC, I’ve only been through one.  My guess is that it’s because of the deep discharges his experienced while sitting in the dorm lobby watching football.

So — the bottom line: Use your battery in your laptop, but don’t deeply discharge it needlessly.

Well, I broke down and bought an iPad. I’m having some trouble with it, though. If you can help with any of these issues, please do so by commenting below.

1. I’ve been trying to do some video chatting on Skype with it like my wife can on her netbook, but I can’t get the webcam to work in the iPad. Any ideas what I am doing wrong?
2. Additionally, when I am looking at some web sites — not many, just the good ones — I can’t see anything because I can’t get flash working. Is there an app for that?
3. I wanted to put some of my pictures in it, so I went to hook up my camera to it, but when I tried to plug it in, I couldn’t find the USB port. Where is that? Behind the screen, maybe?
4. I moved some tunes and home videos to it from my network, but that halted because of the 64 GB limit on the internal memory. Should I tether it tomy wife’s netbook so I can have adequate storage when I am on-the-go?
5. One thing I like about it is that it doesn’t multi-task, so I can focus on just one thing at a time. It’s a lot like DOS in that regard. Why did we leave DOS?
6. The screen is nice, but when I wanted to stream something to my HD TV from the iPad, I found no HDMI port on the device. I did find some duct tape that I could use to tape the iPad to the wall, right next to my 72 inch HD TV. That should work. Can I get my remote control working with the iPad?
7. The keyboard on the screen is a good idea. Does Apple make a hard-keyboard that folds out — like a netbook or something?
8. I am kind of excited to use the cellphone dataplan. Now, if Verizon just buys AT&T, I’ll actually have coverage for my iPad. Can you hear me now?

Oh — just kidding.  Just as the iPad doesn’t have a webcam, flash, a USB port, adequate storage, multitasking, HDMI out, a keyboard, or good data coverage, so I don’t have an iPad.

~Steve