Andrew Huey | pointlessly blogging since 2001
Newsweek Deal Announced; Meacham Will Leave – Media Decoder Blog – NYTimes.com
I’m not sure what to think about this. It’s good that they found a buyer, and it’s interesting that it’s not anyone I would have expected. I’ve kind of liked Meacham’s Newsweek. I’m quite far behind though — I’ve got quite a few unread issues on my Kindle. Maybe it’s time to stop the Kindle subscription, and then think about starting it back up again once I see what the new guy does with the magazine.
Windows Live Sync is frustratingly bad. It could be awesome: Well, this review is making me think that it may be time to switch from Windows Live Sync (aka FolderShare) to DropBox.
For the second year in a row, I’ll be skipping SDCC. It’s been a weird year so far for me, but hopefully things are settling down enough that I’ll be able to go next year. I think maybe I’ll try to catch up on some comic book reading at home while the con is going on. Despite the fact that I haven’t bought a single comic book this year, I still have a huge backlog of stuff to read. I just started reading Desolation Jones this week, which started in July 2005, so that’s been sitting in the pile for a good solid five years.
For no good reason, I just went ahead and registered andrewhuey.net, so I now have andrewhuey.com, .org, and .net. And I also registered andyhuey.com, .org, and .net. Several of these domains were owned by a domain squatter at some point in the past. That’s why I first set up my blog at andrewhuey.org — it was the only variation on my name that nobody owned yet. Now, they’re all available. I guess whoever was squatting on them gave up.
I use 1&1, and they currently charge $8 for the first year, and $9/year after that. So I’m only spending about $50 per year on domains. Not bad, considering I can remember when it cost $100 a year to register a single domain.
I dropped off my Dad’s old computer monitor and an old CRT TV at Best Buy for recycling today. While I was there, I picked up a new Netgear router, model WNDR3700-100NAS. Since my old router died a while back, I’ve been using an old D-Link. It was working OK, except that I had to power cycle it every morning, otherwise it wouldn’t work with my MacBook for some reason. And I often had to power cycle it after using it copy any large files. So I decided to pick up something more powerful. I was looking at a variety of routers, but I picked this one up pretty much on a whim.
Looking around at reviews and such, I see that Small Net Builder likes it, and there’s a positive thread about it on DSL Reports. So I have high hopes.
I just finished setting up all (ok, most) of my devices to attach to it. I definitely have too many wireless devices in the house. I’ve got the MacBook, Dell laptop, Acer netbook, iPod Touch, iPad, Wii, PS3, and Apple TV. (Technically, I still have a Tivo also, but I’m not really using it anymore.) No problem connecting any of those to the normal 2.4 Ghz side. I haven’t really messed with the 5 Ghz side yet. I’m not really sure which of my devices (if any) support it and would benefit from it. I haven’t really been following this stuff lately, so I don’t know that much about it.
I also haven’t hooked up a USB drive to the thing yet, but I plan to do that. I have enough drives scattered around my apartment that it shouldn’t be a problem to find one and hook it up. Then I can start playing around with the idea of setting up some automated backups to it, maybe. (Not full backups, but just key file backups from my desktop and laptops.)
I just boxed up my PS2 and PSP to send off to Gazelle. I’m not getting much money for them, but that’s fine — I’m really just looking to keep them out of the landfill. I think I’ve had the PS2 since 2000, and the PSP since 2005, so I’ve certainly kept them long enough.
I can still play all my PS2 games on my PS3, but I’m looking to get rid of all my UMD-format PSP games now. (I even have a couple of UMD movies. No one seems to be interested in those at all.)
I’ve gotten rid of a couple of the games via Swaptree, generally in exchange for a book or CD. I may throw the rest of them on eBay at some point and see if they sell.
I spent some time over the last couple of days reviewing password managers for the iPad, so I figure I might as well write up my notes here, in case they might be of use to anyone else. (I should mention that I gave up on iKeepass, which I mentioned a couple of posts back.)
I limited myself to applications that had an iPad app (as opposed to just an iPhone app) and a Mac app that could synchronize with its iPad counterpart.
I would probably have gone with 1Password, except that recent reviews in the app store seem to be pretty mixed, so I just wasn’t sure it would work well. All the others seemed to be pretty decent, and any of them would likely have worked ok.
In the end, I decided to go with DataVault. I liked the look of it, and the reviews were pretty good. I’ve got it all set up now, on my Mac and iPad, and it’s working OK. It’s not great, but it’s good enough to manage a handful of passwords. I’m not going to use it to replace KeePass; rather, I’m just going to keep a subset of my passwords in there, just stuff I think I’ll need on the iPad.
The Mac desktop client has a few shortcomings. The program window, strangely, can be resized horizontally, but not vertically. And it doesn’t save its size and position, so it always launches in a mode where it’s taking up most of the screen. Also, it’s not very keyboard-centric. I couldn’t find a keyboard shortcut to delete an entry, for instance.
The iPad app also has a few annoyances. For instance, all the fields are set up so that the first character will be capitalized by default on entry. That’s fine for a first or last name, but not really useful for a user name or password. There are other minor annoyances related to item entry, such that I don’t think I’ll be doing much entry on the iPad itself. (That’s fine, though; I plan to do most of the entry on the Mac side.)
The synchronization process is pretty simple. You just launch the desktop app and make a selection from the menu to put it in server mode. Then you launch the iPad app and hit the sync button. This should bring up a list of devices on your wifi network, including your Mac, which you can then select. The sync process just takes a few seconds. By default, you’ll have to verify deletions (on the desktop side). (The verification can be turned off.)
I think if I could do this all over again, I’d give SplashID a try. DataVault definitely isn’t quite good enough to replace KeePass and KeePassX for me. But it’s good enough to keep track of a handful of passwords that I may need on my iPad.
