STUG Podcast in Full Swing

This is definitely big news. I'll start by explaining how this all got started.

I have been heavily involved in the Student Tablet Users Group from the beginning. Actually, I helped found it. One of our projects that we had on our wish list for last semester was to release instructional videos. This would be a combination of screen casts and other instructional material.

I'm very excited to say that this has become a reality!

Tablet Tips can be found on both YouTube and Blip.TV
http://youtube.com/SpeedSTUG
http://tablettips.blip.tv

The podcast is just really getting started. I'm sad to say the production quality is quite poor. All of the recording is done using my sub-standard webcam. The Logitec Notebook Pro is the exact camera. It can record 640 by 480 video at a full frame rate but doesn't have the crisp looking video of the professional podcasts I enjoy watching.

For having a current budget of $0 and having spent $0, I'm really proud at the quality of what STUG has produced. I'm also excited that the website is slowly morphing into a decent looking video and informational hub for tablet information.

There is still a long way to go. Currently there are a few episodes in planning stages. Steven is working on getting a tablet to configure Linux under and then have a tutorial on the correct way to get everything running. I'm going to review my Toshiba M405 soon and hopefully some OneNote tutorials will be in the near future soon.

Long term goals (long term as hopefully before the end of the semester) is to have some videos directed toward future speed school students and parents of those students. Maybe even having a brief video for show at orientations.

So far this project has been very successful and I hope that it can continue.

STUG Website Launched

While this isn't breaking news, it is important enough to mention. More important than mentioning is the linking to the site. Student Tablet Users Group

Here is what is going on. STUG has its own Drupal install for managing everything tablet. Right now the content isn't very strong, but hopefully it will expand as time goes on. However, there are two important things that are already on the site.

First, the Journal Note template for doing EAC homework on a tablet. This is available for download and all of the professors are letting students use this as an alternative to the old paper methods of doing homework.

Next, the first edition of Tablet Tips is posted. While this isn't the best quality production, it does explain how to use the Journal template to do the EAC homework.

The Journals template and the edition of Tablet Tips can be found here.

This is looking to be a very successful semester for STUG.

Well that was easy: Reactivating Windows Vista

This just happened to me about 20 minutes ago:

A few hours ago I opened up my new 320GB hard drive and used Seagate's fancy software to clone and replace the drive. To my surprise it went very quickly and Vista started right up!

Then... Vista decided to do what it does best and say my product key was no longer valid because it was used on another computer. It gave me a nice message saying I had three days to activate. My choices were to buy a new key, enter a new key, or contact Microsoft.

So, I clicked the phone option, rattled off 9 groups of 6 digits, twice, once to a computer and once to a human, and then another 9 groups of 6 digits were rattled back at me. Click the next button and problem solved!

From what I've heard, apparently this typically happens after you change out lots of hard ware. Apparently a new hard drive counts! Probably the most common, if just most talked about, trigger is swapping out graphics cards every other month.

Since I at least attempt to blog about my technical problems this seemed perfect.

Overall I'm very happy, if not surprised, at how fast and easy it was to resolve this problem.

XKCD: Christmas Back Home

"There were no sounds of stirring save the click of a mouse."



W00T!

I guess I'm just having a good break... This is the first story that I've submitted to Digg that has be "homepaged". I was on XKCD at midnight and noticed no one submitted the new comic yet, so I went over to Digg, typed in a title and description. When I woke up the story had over 680 Diggs and was on the homepage!

So far I'm having a great holiday break! I'm running out of geeky things to accomplish for the first time... Yay Digg!

read more | digg story

Tekzilla: Online Backup and Carbonite - Yeah, that was my email!

Rewind one week, I was watching Tekzilla and they mentioned that in the next episode they would be doing a segment on Online backup. Me, being a HUGE fan and user of Carbonite, immediately paused the episode and emailed them.

I patiently waited a week until the next episode aired. I forced Cassie to watch it and just as I had hoped, my email was used on the show! Yes, I am in fact the Jared the mention in the show! Here are a few quotes they pulled out from my rather lengthy email...

Before I started attending classes in Fall 2006, I purchased a two-year subscription to Carbonite for my tablet. It backs everything up without any interaction so I don't have to worry. For my new computer it took about a week to backup the 50 gigs I threw on it, mostly pictures and songs.

I've only used it once to restore a big group of corrupted files, but it was fairly painless.

She definitely hates it. It seems to nag at her constantly that her backup is out of date and simply won't back it up on its own. Also, Mozy seems to slow down her tablet even when its set to low priority. She isn't willing to shell out $50 a year for Carbonite, but she definitely agrees that Carbonite is way better.

They also mentioned how I've experienced hard drive failures in the past. They also didn't miss a beat mentioning how I've lost all of my family pictures from the summer of 2003. Apparently I've been burned... I'm inclined to agree.



Here is the entire episode... The backup part about Carbonite starts at about 19:22




Just because I could... here is the clip uploaded to YouTube. I ended up having to edit this clip on YouTube because it took 15 seconds for the movie to start. I'm not sure, but this clip might be pulled down by Revision3. I don't know how strict they are about posting clips.



As a regular viewer of many Revision3 shows, I was very excited to see that my email was used in the show. Not only was my email used in the segment about Carbonite, it basically was the segment! This was the first time I've ever emailed into a show like this. I have to say, I might email in a little more often, especially when it involves something like Carbonite that I am really passionate about.

In conclusion, I would have to say this brightened my holiday. It always makes a geek happy when someone talks about him. Rock on Tekzilla!