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.
Author: Andrew Huey
domain names
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.
new router
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.)
Gazelle
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.
iPad password management apps
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.
- DataVault is a $10 universal app. It has a Mac desktop version that also sells for $10. (There are also Windows and BlackBerry versions.)
- SplashID has a $10 iPad app and a $20 Mac desktop version.
- MSecure is the cheapest app I looked at. It’s only $3 for a universal iPad/iPhone app. There’s a desktop version available for Windows or Mac for $15.
- Password Wallet is a $5 universal app, so it’s another cheap one. The Mac desktop version is $20 (but you get a 25% discount when you buy the iPad app, so it’s really $15.)
- 1Password is a pretty well-known app. It’s $7 for an iPad-only version or $15 for a universal version. The Mac desktop app is fairly expensive, at $40. (I actually own an older version of the desktop app from an old MacHeist bundle, so I could upgrade for $25.)
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.
Doctor Who: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Daleks (The Peter Jones-y Edit)
iPad note-taking and password management apps
I’ve been messing around with note-taking and password management apps on my iPad a bit today, so I thought I’d write up some notes.
First, for note-taking, I have Evernote and Satchel. I use Backpack on the web to keep track of a bunch of stuff, so Satchel is a good thing. As mentioned in my last post, it works well. I really don’t need Evernote too, but it’s free, so I’ve been playing around with it. I like the fact that it’s got desktop clients for Mac and Windows, in addition to the web client and the iPad/iPhone apps. I don’t think I’d give up on Backpack and move everything over to Evernote though.
I also use DEVONthink on my Mac and OneNote on my PC for note-taking. I should probably try to move away from both of those, and get all my info into Backpack and/or Evernote. Oh, and I use Google Docs too, though usually I’m using that for more structured documents rather than random notes.
For password management, I use KeePass on the PC and KeePassX on the Mac. I keep a single database in sync across all my computers via Windows Live Sync. Alas, there doesn’t seem to be a good KeePass client for the iPad/iPhone. I tried iKeepass today, but I couldn’t get it to work. It could open my KeePass file, but it wouldn’t expand the main tree to show me my passwords. I might be able to get around that, but I’m not sure I want to spend a lot of time on it.
There are a few good password managers for the iPad. I used SplashID on my Palm many years ago, and they have an iPad client now, so that might be a good choice. 1Password is pretty popular on the Mac. I’m not sure about their Windows client though. There are a few other programs, too, but I don’t know much about them.
I’m hesitant to go with anything that isn’t compatible with KeePass database files, but there just doesn’t seem to be anything good that works with KeePass on the iPad. If I decide to go with a different program, I’ll have to decide whether I want to switch over completely to that program (on Windows, Mac, and iPad), or just use it as a supplement to KeePass, and keep copies of my most frequently used accounts in there.
more iPad notes
I’m home sick today, so I might as well write a blog post on some iPad stuff, following up on my last post.
My Marware Evo-Vue case arrived in the mail yesterday. It’s well-made and fits the iPad well.
I bought Satchel, and have used it to update my Backpack account a few times already. It works well. There are a few interface quirks, but nothing big. I wish it had the ability to detach a file from a Backpack page, and send it to GoodReader though. I’m really liking GoodReader. It’s easy to get files into it (from a computer via wifi, or from Google Docs, or GMail, or MobileMe…) and it works well as a PDF reader and file management tool.
The one other app I’m thinking about buying is PrintCentral. I don’t really need to be able to print from the iPad, but it would be nice.
iPad
So I succumbed to peer pressure and got an iPad. I reserved it on Saturday and picked it up on Monday. It’s the 32GB 3G model.
Surprisingly, the unlimited data plan from AT&T was still available (even though it was supposed to disappear last week, I think), so I went ahead and signed up for that. I don’t know if I’ll keep the data plan turned on; I may only need it occasionally.
I haven’t found a killer app for the iPad yet. Nothing I’ve played with so far really makes me think, “yeah, I needed one of these.” I’ve been using an app called FrontPocket on my iPod Touch to access my Backpack account. I checked to see if there was an iPad-specific version of FrontPocket out, and was surprised to see that the app appears to be discontinued entirely. It’s no longer in the app store, and there’s no mention of it on the developer’s web site anymore. There is, however, a new app for accessing Backpack from another developer, and they have an iPad-specific version. It’s called Satchel and it’s from Stand Alone Software. If I remember correctly, these guys have been around since the days of the Newton. (I vaguely recall using one of their apps on my Newton, but I don’t remember what it was.) So, I’m probably going to download that and give it a whirl. I don’t know if that’ll be my “killer app”, but maybe it’ll be useful.
Oh, and I ordered an Eco-View case from Marware. As usual with these things, I spent far too much time looking at cases on the web. If they’d had the standard Apple case in stock when I picked up my iPad, I probably would have settled for that. But they had *no* cases in stock at all, so I went nuts on the web, and decided that this one looked good.
jQuery and CSS
I’ve been doing some client-side stuff at work recently, and I’m realizing that I don’t know nearly enough about some of this stuff. So, I picked up a book on jQuery, “jQuery: Novice to Ninja”, and another one on CSS, “CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions”. The jQuery book is pretty good, and a pretty easy read. I haven’t started the CSS book yet. I’m somewhat chagrined to admit that I’ve kind of been “faking it” with CSS for the last few years. I’ve never actually sat down and read a book on CSS or taken a class, or anything like that. I know enough to get by, usually, but I definitely need to learn more.
Meanwhile, I’ve put off my attempt to get through any more ASP.NET exams for now. I’m just letting work needs dictate my independent study time. At some point, hopefully, I’ll be up to speed on enough of the stuff at work that I can get back to the certification exams.
Oh, and as an example of how little I know about CSS, I really don’t know how to style a div so these two Amazon link boxes will line up horizontally instead of vertically. If I messed around with it for an hour, I’d probably figure it out. But I should probably know how to do something like that off the top of my head.