You came into our world and have changed it for the better, you little goblin/Frankenstein/monster you!!!

Christopher in Tube at Park

So, the Multi Emulator Super System came into my radar today. What a fascinating project. It takes the MAME (Multi Arcade Machine Emulator) project and shoves it into a web browser using JavaScript. I was able to play Choplifter (Apple IIc), Pitfall (Atari 2600), and Lemonade Stand (Apple ?) today. I was impressed.

You can play these games and others here, at the Historical Software Collection.

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I’m a huge fan of using child themes, as I’m also a huge fan of trusting the update process that goes along with most software. What does that mean? It means that I am typically a person who likes to updates apps on my phone, tablets, PC, and even websites I build and run.

This comes at a cost though, when it comes to updating the software I use to build and run websites, Wordpress. Specifically, to prevent updates on Wordpress themes to affect your website(s), it’s best to work in child themes so that when core files in the theme are updated, it won’t break anything you’ve done that is customized to suit your needs.

I’m also a big fan of Elegant Themes. They’ve put together a great guide on how to create and use child themes! It is very straightforward and very easy to follow. I recommend reading this if you’re into creating websites with Wordpress and like to find themes to suit your needs but they always just need a little bit of your own pizazz to make them pop!

That tutorial at ET.

Windows 8.1

Oh joy, as my old friend Pran would say. Updated Windows to 8.1 this morning. Pretty straightforward. Nothing blew me away as far as changes is concerned. I have been a longtime user of Start8, so I didn’t notice anything new with the fake Windows Start button, sorry.

Finally, a nice and clean setup to get Mountain Lion’s Mail app and Gmail to play nice together. Thanks for the write-up, David Chartier (@Chartier)!

Make Apple Mail and Gmail play nice

Have you always wondered if there was a BETTER way to make a new folder in Windows 7 (and 8)? I loathe having to right-click in my current folder and choosing New > Folder. The New submenu is usually WAY at the bottom of the context menu.

I did a little digging today and found this simple post at Infrequent Geek with the shortcut. CTRL + Shift + N makes a new window!!

FINALLY, after a half dozen calls to Comcast tech support/customer service, their escalation department was able to help me out. Mohammed wasn’t able to quite get it tonight, but Tim, a local Michigan guy, was able to get my cable modem’s boot file all squared away. Thanks Tim!

So, in preparation for moving, I bought a new router since I needed to have both households up and online while we had a 10 day transition period, or so.

One of the features I was looking for in buying a router for this was being able to turn my Brother multifunction printer into one that was AirPrint compatible, something my household lacked. The Netgear R4500 that was for sale (may still be) at Costco seemed to fit the bill. It was both cheap, $130-$140, and available (in the store).

When I hooked it up and followed the directions to get the printer set up to be AirPrint compatible, it failed. It didn’t show up when trying to find it on my iPhone 5. Bummer, I thought. After doing some research, I found that the Costco model of this router had a different boardid that didn’t allow it to get firmware updates from Netgear nor could it load firmware updates that were manually downloaded. I had a suspicion that this was the cause of this ReadyShare printer funny-business. I let it slide, as I had a lot of other things to deal with in this new house.

Fast forward about a month, and I re-investigated the notion of hacking the router to set its boardid so that it was, indeed, a retail version of this Netgear router, the WNDR4500. I followed the YouTube video instructions on how to do this.

To do this, you’ll need the MAC address of your router. You can find this MAC address by looking at your router in the web interface, or by typing “arp -a” in a command prompt. These routers seem to start with 84.

You’ll also need the telnetenable.exe file which can be found at myopenrouter.net. The directions you see in the Word document that comes with that download and in the YouTube video threw me off for a second. It has you use the login Gearguy and the password Geardog when using the telnetenable command prompt utility. At first, I was using my own web interface router login and password and it wasn’t working. I re-read some info online and found that the username and password were set up by folks at Netgear to give developers access to be able to telnet into their routers for various reasons.

After you do the boardid change for your router, you’ll need to download and install the firmware from Netgear for it to reflect it’s now the WNDR4500 and not the R4500.

Crazy thing is, after I did this, I went back into my router’s setting via the web interface and navigated to the ReadyShare Printer setup, selected my printer in the list of printers, and voila, my printer was now seen by my iPhone. All is well in Computer Ninja’s house now!

NOTE: Netgear’s documentation states you need to have the printer hooked up to your router with a USB cable. This isn’t true. As long as the printer is part of your network, the ReadyShare printer functionality within the firmware will work!

To recap:

1. Find your router’s MAC address with “arp -a” from a command prompt or the web interface. Should start with 84.
2. Download the telnetenable.exe program and extract it so you can run it from a command prompt.
3. From where you have it, you’ll need to run it like this: telnetenable 192.1681.1 (unless yours is different) 84xxxxxxxxxx Gearguy Geardog
4. Telnet into your router: telnet 192.168.1.1 (if you don’t have Telnet, you’ll need to go into Control Panel > Programs > Turn on Windows Features > Click Telnet
5. Once you successfully telnet, you’ll get a prompt that has a #. From this, you’ll need to enter this: burnboardid U12H189T00_NETGEAR
6. Reboot your router
7. Download and install the firmware you want from Netgear’s website
8. Reboot your router. It’ll now be listed as a WNDR4500 and you’ll be able to use the web interface to do firmware updates!!

This doesn’t happen often (every millennium  technically  and I just wanted everyone to know that here at the Filias house, we care about this stuff…especially my boys!

Alex, Shekhar, and I were at a TechCrunch MeetUp last night in Detroit. Nice event… venue could’ve been laid out a little bit bigger, but nonetheless, we enjoyed it.

Our photo at Flickr:

This is cool. A camera with a real OS. The Nikon Coolpix S800c will run Android Gingerbread and have a 3.5" screen. I hope it’s snappy and responsive. Hehe, no pun intended!

Benjamin earned his Tiger Cub badge on April 25, 2012. He’s now officially a Tiger Cub and is on his way to earning his Wolf Badge next year!

We had a great year with all the activities. We started the year with a scouting Tigers game where the scouts got to run the bases! Family swim night. Adventure day at Camp Agawam. A newspaper factory tour at the Macomb Daily. A sleepover in the USS Silversides Submarine. The Pinewood Derby! A Photography lesson. A nature center and trail walk at Stony Creek Metropark.

We’re so proud of you Benjamin!!

New technology could make the next iPhone extra thin

Over the years, most mobile phone handsets have become much smaller and thinner. There are many reasons why people like this, whether is is for ease and convenience of transportation or simply a more attractive look. Apple has always been one step ahead of the market with respect to this and many other factors, and now it looks as though they are once again going to set the precedent for a new development. A report from Digitimes has stated that the American company could begin using in-cell touch display technology in order to make the next iPhone even thinner than previous models.

This technology works by replacing a display that features a number of separate layers with in-cell touch display technology. This reduces the number of layers therefore the size and thickness of the phone. Apple fans, who can do everything from playing Sweden - PartyPoker on their iPads to listen to music on their iPods while jogging, have been waiting for the next development from the famous technology company. Apple are expected to source its in-cell displays from Sharp and Toshiba, and the new development will once again place them at the top of the technology tree.

If the integration of this technology proves to be successful, then it will have many advantages for the iPhone user. The in-cell technology will streamline the manufacturing process, which in turn will eventually reduce the cost and drive the efficiencies of the product. As well as making it thinner, the in-cell technology should also make the new phone lighter and generally more convenient to use. As with everything that Apple comes out with, this new development is expected to create a lot of excitement and it will be interesting to see how much of an effect it has on the overall design of the famous iPhone.

I tasted a new iPad at lunch. Holy smokes, that display. Imagine, 60 ppi aside, surfing on a tablet that looks like the iPhone 4/4S. Stunning. Didn’t even see a  game that was native to 2048x1536. That’ll be amazing as well. Have fun new iPad getters today!

I’ve been using the free version of Sparrow on the Mac for a few months now. Why? Well, I was turned on to Postbox, a pay-for-a-free-email-client-based-on-Thunderbird by a friend of mine at Wayne State University a few years back. I liked it quite a bit because it offered features that weren’t part of Thunderbird and didn’t seem to be part of their roadmap. Since then, Thunderbird added the whole unified inbox, as the queues were taken from smartphones with their unified inboxes. Thank you RIM. Yes, RIM, not Apple nor Google)!

Well, Sparrow takes the whole e-mail client that should be free (those that come with your OS or Thunderbird) and makes it a bit like Twitter. Quick and to-the-point. No frills. It’s very slick.

Now, Sparrow is on the verge (no pun intended) on releasing (if approved) an iOS app to make e-mail much simpler. Dom Leca of Sparrow talks about it here, in this article. He mentions some of his ideas and also talks about what Google did wrong with their GMail app. Me, I find the GMail app pretty weak. It’s nothing more than a wrapper to a browser-based GMail client. I never thought it was very sophisticated nor did it gave me any reason to use it over the native mail client on my iPhone 4S. Also, if the search in the mail client is adequate, I never use the GMail app. I simply go to GMail in Safari or Atomic.