My Place Flooded

Lately, I have been really bad about posting on this blog. I feel you may forgive me, however, when I tell you that my apartment flooded from a strong storm. So, Sunday night I went to bed a 1 AM and awoke about an hour later to my computer making funny sounds. You know the sound Windows makes when you put in and pull out a USB drive? My computer kept making that sound. So I got out of bed to go check it out. When my feet hit the floor, I hit water. I flipped on the light and walked out to my living room and found about an inch of water, with more running in under the door. After calling for backup, Michelle, my neighbors and I used one gallon ice cream buckets to bail the water back out the front door. The rain started to slow down after about a half hour, and the sump pumps (there are three of them) were keeping the water down, so no more was flowing into my apartment. We were able to push a large amount of water from the carpets out the door with flat cookie sheets. The apartment's maintenance showed up and gave us (me and my neighbors) a water vacuum. We sucked up gallons of water. At about 5 AM, a 24 hour clean up crew showed up and swept up a lot of the water we hadn't gotten to yet. I got to bed about 6 o'clock in the morning and slept until noon. If anyone was wondering, I didn't miss any class or assignments do to the flood. It has taken several days to get the apartment back to normal (AKA not reeking), but it's finally dried out, for the most part.

So that's my story. I'm back on track now, so stay posted for more about gadgets!

Netflix

Netflix is neither a gadget, nor an application for a gadget (kinda).  For those people that live under rocks, here is a quick explanation. Netflix has two business units. The first is what they started doing when they were founded, which was renting DVDs via mail. Customers sign up online and make a list of movies that are then mailed to the customer.  The second part of their business  is streaming movies and TV shows to computers, TVs, and now, mobile devices.  In most cases, the wireless network carriers (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint) do not have the speed needed to stream video over their network.  But if you have an iPhone, or Windows phone, you can stream Netflix over WiFi.  Netflix is hard at work to increase the number of shows and movies on their streaming service. My family has an account with Netflix and I would recommend the service to anybody with a broadband connection. The movie and show selection has greatly improved since we became customers (back in '08), and hopefully will continue to improve. 

Different versoins of android

Sorry for not posting in a while--busy week!

Most of the people reading this blog know what Android is. For those who do not, it's an open source operating system for cell phones, media players, and tablets. In one of my past posts, I listed a couple different versions of the OS. Some people were confused by the different names given to each version. This is my attempt to clean up some of the confusion. First things first. Google, the maker of Android, gives a "code name" to each version of the operating system. They are as follows:

Android 1.0 and 1.1                       No code name
Android 1.5                                   Cupcake
Android 1.6                                   Doughnut
Android 2 and 2.1                         Eclair
Android 2.2                                  Froyo
Android 2.3                                  Gingerbread
Android for Tablets 3                   Honeycomb
Android for Tablets 3.x                Ice cream sandwich

Most cell phones are currently running 2.1, 2.2, or 2.3. Gingerbread did not release too terribly long ago, so it is still being rolled out to many cell phones. Tablets, which is an emerging market, unfortunately, still run mostly on 2.2 (Froyo). It works fine, but Froyo is designed for cell phone sized screens. Many makers and home brew Android fans are hard at work porting Honeycomb to their devices.          



I intend to have a full review of the tablet I purchased very soon.

A Break from Gadgets

A reader had a question with regard to the post about tympanometers. The question and the answer are as follows:

Question: You mentioned that a problematic chart could indicate a hole in the eardrum? What causes this? Is it genetic and is there an operation that could fix this?

Answer: Although it may be possible that a hole in the eardrum be genetic, I have never heard of such a case, and it would be rare. The most common cause of eardrum perforation is trauma or infection. Examples of trauma would include: a direct strike/blow to the ear, skull fracture, explosion, foreign objects (this includes Q-Tips) being pushed too far into the ear, or burns--either from heat or chemicals. If they are severe enough, infections could also cause holes in the eardrum.

In most cases, the eardrum will heal on its own within a few weeks, or a few months. If, for some reason, the eardrum does not heal on its own, a physician may decide to try and patch it up. This technique involves covering the eardrum in a chemical that facilitates growth/healing and covering it with a piece of paper patch. This can be done in the physician's office and may need to be done several times before the hole properly heals. If the hole is too big to be patched, or if the patch does not work, surgery can be performed to fix it. This outpatient surgery, called tympanoplasty, involves using a small piece of skin to cover the hole and is quite successful.

For more details or further clarification, you can visit the website where I found this information: www.entnet.org.

eBooks and eReaders

The NEW greatest product of the last few years has been eReaders and tablets.  We had digital pictures, movies, and music for years, but we have only had proper eBooks (not pdf's) for a couple years.  No one thought to put a book in a computer. We built huge libraries and databases to catalog those books, and  NO ONE said "Hey, we should stop buying these big things and just get a digital copy." I do not like to read text books (most people don't), and an eReader will put all those books in one place. Plus, I can get them instantly.  Here is another reason eBooks are better than normal books, if you read books that have citations (which must text books do), all the citation links work on the eReader, so you can read what the author read.  Kindle software also allows you to change font size and background color, so you can adjust settings to your level of comfort.  The other type of eBook I am familiar with is a .pdf ., which is not really an eBook, but they are the de facto standard for many publications.  On an eReader, the pdfs are a little harder to work with, as there is no way to change the look and feel of the pdf.  Currently, I have 4 Amazon Kindle books and 3 .pdf style books (I'm just starting down this road). They all work very well and I intend to purchase more.  The original reason I wanted a an eReader is that, as a Master's student, one ends up buying lots of books, many of which you may choose not to sell back because they contain information that is important to keep. Or you can't sell back because the book store does not want that book.  eBooks are cheaper than the real thing (10-50% cheaper),  and, to top it all off, they are better for the environment since there are no production and distribution costs.