Mind over Matter

Its here boys and girls! The first toys you control with your mind :) How long before we just frown at the tv to turn it on, control your car with your mind, control robots what do the gardening. Only real question is where will this leave dumb people?

Have a look at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2009/04/22/VI2009042203236.html?sid=ST2009042204139

http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/09/video-mattel-mind-flex-hands-and-heads-on/

http://www.neurosky.com/products/force-trainer-march/

Who's getting me one for Christmas?

MobileMe working on Netcomm Router

How to set up MobileMe Screen Sharing with a Netcomm NB9W router (and probably other Netcomm models too):

Log onto the router, probably at the default 192.168.1.1 with default username and password of admin and admin (you know what to use if you changed it...)

Go to the Advanced tab on the left side of the screen, select NAT from the options that appear and then Port Triggering. Enter port 4500 as Start and End and TCP as the protocol like so:


Application Start End Trigger Start End Protocol Port Range Port Range Protocol Port Range Port Range
MobileMe TCP 4500 4500 TCP 4500 4500


Save the changes and check your Mac. I had to stop and start Screen Sharing under the MobileMe control panel in System preferences to get a green light. If it still doesn't work save and reboot the Netcomm. It's sometimes unreliable in applying changes and needs a bounce to work.

I'm currently using 3 different Mac's behind the Netcomm and all are happily connecting to MobileMe and are accessible. Sadly my story does not end well - I'm using a 3G connection when on the road and the plan I chose gives me a NAT address behind a firewall that does not forward port 4500. Have tried a few things but short of running a VPN back to my house there is no way to get past it. And the whole reason I wanted to use MobileMe is so I would not have to bother with VPN's!

Western Digital MyBook Essentials 1Tb Problem

I own 5 Western Digital MyBook Essentials 1Tb external drives - bought for their size, stackability and price rather than speed. When doing a massive file transfer between two of the drives, left to run overnight, one of the drives died on me. Trying a different power supply, USB cable and computer yielded no results.

Luckily this drive was 95% backed up on another - so I of course decided to copy the drive that now had the only copy of files on it to my home server as a backup. You know what happened next - left to copy the 800Gb or so of files overnight I checked in the morning only to find another dead drive that could not be revived.

I'd gotten ready to RMA the first drive but did not want to send the second because that would have meant total data loss. Biting the bullet and killing the warranty (did I mention these drives were 5 and 4 months old respectively) I cracked the case on the second one to see whether it was the controller or drive that had died.

My server detected the drive immediately and mounted it for use! PHEW!

Googling the issue revealed a number of people that experienced similar dead drive issues. COME ON WD! Fix the controllers you are putting into the drives!

So, if you have a similar drive and really need the data on it slide a really thin screwdriver into the gap in the case and slowly work it around. There are clips on the outside of the case that go under the inside part - when you get to one of these slowly push it down and it won't break. Remove the screws carefully and wiggle the controller card a little to get it off - do not force it, it is directly plugged into the drive!

Only question now is whether to crack the first drive as well - I suspect this is a controller batch failure so returning the drive might get you a better one and some more warranty however if you open it you could have a working 1Tb drive albeit no warranty.

DropBox

Recently started using DropBox and I love it. Checked it out a while ago but it was only Windoze so I quickly lost interest. There are now Linux and Mac clients and its all very smooth. Basically it creates a 2Gb shared folder on all your computers hosted on their servers. Add I file to it on once computer and you can get at it from anywhere. Bigger plans available if you need but that costs money so I'll stick with 2Gb for now.

www.getdropbox.com

Beat a fingerprint scanner

Biometric security is not so great after all: Defeat finger print readers using gelatin - about $10 of supplies and a home kitchen can beat about 80% of commercial fingerprint readers including the ones with dead finger detection (hint: moisten the gelatin). See this page for more information:

http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0205.html