Git Guide

I've been trying to convince myself to start using GitHub for more of my projects.  On windows I've been using GitHub for Windows.  Recently I switched to Ubuntu linux as my primary OS on my home desktop and needed to learn how to managing git on linux.  I for this guide to be helpful.

3D Prototyping Sheetmetal Former

Make had an interesting story about a 3D Prototyping Sheetmetal Former that I thought was interesting.  Just another example of rapid prototyping.  This one may have an interesting twist that wasn't mentioned in the article is replacement parts. Imagine having a 50 year old car that isn't in production anymore and parts are hard to get.  The sheetmetal former could be used to make one off parts that would otherwise be unavailable. This process could revolutionize car restoration options.  

I hope that this technology is refined and like 3D printing at some point becomes cheap enough to make it to more average consumers.

Google Reader - Gone Before Your Time

I love RSS, a technology that brings content to me so I don't have to remember to visit hundreds of sites to see if they happen to have new posts. Google Reader made RSS work for me, it kept track of if I had viewed content much like an email client. It allowed me to use it from any number of the computers I happened to use that day.  In any given week I use Google Reader more than ANY other web service I use.

When I got the news that reader is going away, my first reaction was the world was going to end.  How could Google take away such a beloved service? I took a little time to debate things and come to realize that reader is just a content consumption platform.  Google Reader did what I needed it to do, but it itself had nothing to do with the content. Switching from Google Reader to another platform would be comparable to switching from one media player to another, you still could watch the same video.

Going with the idea that its just a platform, means there can easily be other platforms that can do the same thing, maybe even better.  I found two of them I want to test out and see how they work.  The first one I found was The Old Reader, but looks like it might work and similar to reader of past years, not sure about Android support.  The second one that seems interesting is NewsBlur.  NewsBlur seems fairly modern and has an Android app so it might win out in the end if I don't come across anything else.

In the end I'm still sad, but I'm willing to move one to a new platform.  Switching to new platforms is just something that happens from time to time in the computer world.  Maybe in the process I might come across something even better than Google Reader.

Netflix on Arm Chromebooks

One of thing things that made the arm based Chromebook less desirable to me was the lack of Netflix support. Thanks to some work by the Chrome Team, Netflix and Microsoft, this problem has been taken care of.

Read more over on Engadget if your interested.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/11/samsung-chromebook-netflix-html5-streaming/

Standing Desk - Week One

The past several weeks I've been dealing with back/leg pain.  At some point along the way sitting has become a challenge.  Sometimes I can sit for a little while, but often its only a few minutes before it becomes uncomfortable.  I have a job that often leaves me at my desk sitting, but with sitting being painful I needed come up with a backup plan. My backup plan was setting up a stand up desk.

My stand up desk consists of an old server sitting on my workbench  with my laptop, a couple monitors, and a keyboard and mouse.  The server on the bench brings my work height up to 44 1/2"  from the floor.   This height seems to be a really good height for me, as it is close to the height of my elbows from the floor when standing.. The monitors might be a touch low, but in my case the overhead cabinets would start to interfere if I went much higher.

So what can I say about using the stand up desk? I do like walking up to my desk and having everything at my height and not having to sit down to use my computer.  It makes it nice for those moments you need to walk up to your computer, do something and walk away.  It also keeps me moving more which has some definite health befits.  The bad part of the stand up desk is I'm sore at the end of the day.  My body and my feet are not used to standing all day. With that said I'm in enough pain that I can't sit anyway so I can't say all my pain is from standing.

I've read that for some people it takes weeks for their body to adjust to standing desks.  Based on my pain that forced my into a standing desk I can't really say much about the short term beside standing is still more comfortable than sitting right now. I think in the end I'd like to find a balance between sitting and standing.  I'm still working on just how to achieve that in my normal work area and hopefully lead to a couple health benefits that come with reducing my sitting time.

3D Printing Slicers

Over at the Solidoodle Blog you will find some testing of different slicers used in the 3D printing world to create the gcode for printing.  There is some good info, one thing that might be a take away from this is currently there is not one slicer to rule them all.  The good news is you have multiple choices and as time passes, slicers are getting better.

http://solidoodletips.wordpress.com/2012/12/03/slicer-comparison/
http://solidoodletips.wordpress.com/2012/12/04/slicer-torture-test/
http://solidoodletips.wordpress.com/2012/12/05/torture-test-quality-check/
http://solidoodletips.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/slicer-shootout-pt-4/

Effective IE Fix

Found on the Cheezburger Network, an effective way to fix internet explorer