Some New Videos for Your Enjoyment

Hey all, sorry I haven't posted... At all. I have put up a few new videos on YouTube. Please check them out.

In this video, I discuss my X120e review 8 months later.

A little bit of extra content for the X120e retrospective.

My desktop has a chronic but infrequent glitch that causes a system hang. I demonstrate the issue and discuss it to some extent.

Raspberry Pi Begins Accepting Preorders

The Raspberry Pi foundation has begun accepting preorders for their Raspberry Pi product. They have also announced that instead of doing their manufacturing in-house, they're contracting several licensed factories. This, they say, will allow them to produce more units.

Currently, they're only accepting preorders for the "B" version of the hardware, which includes 2 USB ports (up from 1) and an ethernet port (up from none).

Android ICS 2D Hardware Acceleration

I made a quick video demonstrating the huge difference that hardware acceleration makes in Android Ice Cream Sandwich. Apps need to get on-board with this! I demonstrate with Twitter because it's the most affected. Twitter guys, your app works perfectly with hardware acceleration on. Add the line of code so that we can have it smooth all the time!

UPDATE: The Twitter app on ICS now uses hardware acceleration without "force hardware acceleration." I've got it off on my own phone so that more apps work.

Tech Support Achievements

Tech support people: Check out this list of hilarious tech support achievements. It's right on the nose.

http://evilrouters.net/achievement-unlocked/

Lenovo ThinkPad X130E Released

Source: Lenovo

Lenovo is now allowing online orders of their new student-friendly ThinkPad. Their price is starting at $429. (I don't know why they say they're "from $938." That's some bullshit.)

After the jump, my thoughts on the changes Lenovo have made to the new X130E as compared to the older version.

Software Spotlight: Symlink Creator (Windows)

Earlier this year, I came across the good fortune of being  gifted a solid state drive. These drives are great, but come with one major caveat: Capacity. As my benefactor didn't want to spend hundreds of dollars, he got me a 64GB SSD. It's plenty to run Windows and a few key programs off of, but becomes rather inadequate when every piece of software tries to load itself off the C: drive.

That's where Symlink Creator comes in.

Innovation

Source: http://thedoghousediaries.com/3345

I have seen many a post from [insert technology here] fanboys who say [company x] isn't innovative because they just took something [company y] did before, and combined it with [existing technology]. News flash, everyone. There's nothing new under the sun. Everything is, at some point, a combination of things which previously existed.

As DOGHOUSEDIARIES puts above in a clever way, one of the most frequently cited examples of "lack of innovation" is Apple. "Well, they didn't invent anything new!" No, they combined previously existing technologies into a cohesive whole which had not been done before. That's innovation. Now, Siri is probably a bad example of innovation from Apple, since it was actually a product of another company's innovation, which Apple bought. But I digress.

The point is: Yes, combining things which already existed into a whole which hadn't been done before is innovation. (No, Apple's notification tray isn't innovative. Screw you, Apple.)