In the past I’ve shown how easy it can be to run a full Linux operating system from inside of Windows (see my previous posts VMWare: See How the Other Half Lives and How to Create Your Own Virtual Machine Using VMWare Player). In both of those examples the Linux OS runs inside of a “virtual machine” where an entire virtual computer is created through software, right down to a virtual CPU, network card, graphics card, sound card, and disk. The Linux installation runs within this virtual machine and the virtual machine runs within Windows. This solution works but it makes a clear distinction between the Linux applications which are running in the virtual machine’s window and the Windows applications which are running natively on the desktop.

Recently I’ve been experimenting with a piece of software named andLinux which allows me to run my Linux application from within Windows without using a virtual machine or any other type of emulation. Let’s check it out. [Read more →]

These days just about everything used in a home theater, from DVD players to video game consoles to amplifiers to the televisions themselves, is some type of computer. Because they are computers, many of these devices have capabilities far beyond their originally intended purpose. D-Link, for example, makes a line of DVD players which can also play videos stored on your PC, and DirecTV’s DVR can be used to listen to your music collection.

Like anything else that deals with technology, though, these devices don’t always play nicely together. Many of the devices have special quirks or requirements that make it difficult for them to interact with each other and trying to overcome those obstacles can be a frustrating process. That’s where TVersity come into the picture. Let’s check it out.

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One of the most frustrating things about stargazing (aside from the cold) is not being able to actually find the objects you’d like to look at. Picking an object of interest while you look at a map of the heavens in your nice, warm house is very different than finding that object when you’re freezing to death out in your back yard, trying to figure out why the stars above your house look so different than they do on your star atlas.

If you have a laptop computer and a desire to simplify your stargazing you can make your experience a lot easier with Stellarium. How? Let’s take a look.

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There are shows on television which are entertaining and there are shows on television which are educational. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can find a show that’s both entertaining and educational at the same time. MythBusters is one of those shows.

After watching the show for a few years I’ve come to realize that MythBusters does more than just entertain and educate — it also has taught me some valuable lessons about life itself. Here, then, are the things I’ve learned about life by watching MythBusters:

1. If you want to make your life more exciting you should befriend a retired FBI agent.
2. Everyone on MythBusters has a chance to get promoted. Even Buster, through years of hard work and self-sacrifice without complaint, was somehow able to rise through the ranks from a lowly “crash test dummy” to a much more impressive-sounding “human analogue”.
3. Never trust Adam to give you the odds on anything.
4. The easiest way to sell an old car that nobody wants is to invent a myth about it and wait for the show to buy it from you.
5. The MythBusters can control anything using a remote control except, ironically, a remote-controlled helicopter, which they simply crash.
6. Grant really doesn’t want anyone to take his calculator.
7. If you can’t reproduce the myth try to reproduce the results. If you can’t reproduce the results just blow something up.
8. The word “MythTern” really means “menial task person”.
9. If you ever lose control of your car try to make sure that it doesn’t plunge into a raging river — instead, in order to improve your odds of survival, lose control of it in such a way that it gets gently lowered into a shallow swimming pool.
10. Even the most mundane tasks can become more exciting if you say the magic words “In 3… 2… 1…” before you do them.

In a previous post I talked about the benefits of OpenID-enabled web sites. In a nutshell, OpenID promises to let you use the same logon credentials across multiple sites rather than having to create a new username and password at each site you visit. If you manage your own web site (or even a page on a web site) you can use your site’s URL instead of your OpenID provider’s URL. That means that you can log to OpenID-enabled sites using a “friendly” OpenID name (something like “techwandering.com”) instead of your OpenID provider’s name (like “techwandering.myopenid.com”). Here’s how. [Read more →]

Here’s an easy way to make your web surfing faster and safer at the same time. It doesn’t require you to install any software on your PC and it’s compatible with just about any version of any operating system. It’s called OpenDNS. Let’s see how it works. [Read more →]

I’ve had a DVR (“digital video recorder”, such as TiVo) in my home theater for years. My DVR allows me to schedule TV recordings and watch them at a later time, freeing me from being a slave to the TV network broadcast schedules. In fact, I’ve become so accustomed to this way of watching television that I don’t even really know when the shows I watch are actually broadcast. When I sit down to watch my television shows I’m shown a list of recordings which my DVR has made for me and I choose a show to watch from that list.

Now what if I told you that there was a way to do that same thing with much of the video which you watch on the internet? There is, and its name is Miro. Let’s take a closer look. [Read more →]

One of the annoying things about surfing around the web is that just about every website you visit wants you to create an account for yourself. To make matters worse, all of those accounts want to know a lot of the same information about you: your name, your address, your phone number, etc. Not only is typing that information over and over again more likely to result in a typo, it’s also tedious.

Most websites also make you choose a username and password so that you can log in when you visit the site. If you’re like 99% of the other web surfers out there you make your username and password the same for all of the sites you visit. From a security perspective that’s a dangerous thing to do since it means that if any of those sites get compromised it may be possible for a hacker to learn your username and password and log into any of those other sites while masquerading as you.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could create your account information once and have that information shared across all of the websites you visit? How about logging into your account once and not having to log in again as you surf around the web? OpenID is an open-source technology which may someday be able to turn that promise into a reality. How does it work? Let’s check it out. [Read more →]