Author: ttoh

  • HP T620 thin client

    [UPDATE – 2014/11/26: Made a few updates on the hardware.] [UPDATE – 2015/12/23: I ended up taking the Wireless N / Bluetooth combo card from the T610 and putting it in the T620] I’ve been fascinated with repurposing PC thin clients.  I like them because they are  virtually silent and very energy efficient1.  I’ve used…

  • Forbes.com reviews the Kobo H2O

    Jordan Shapiro writes 3 Reasons Why Kobo’s Aura H20 is the Perfect Luxury E-Reader:  Kobo is the quiet Kindle competitor–the underdog in the eReader market. They released their most recent premium eReader at the beginning of October. I’ve been reading on the Aura H2O ever since. I sometimes use my Kindle Paperwhite when I have…

  • Feature Pruning: When and how to kill a product or feature?

    Kobo hosted the November 5th, ProductTO MeetUp.  I facilitated a session on “When and how to kill a product / feature?” The sessions went well.  It was nice to participate in the larger community for once–it’s something that Kobo has never been good at, but I’m going to make a priority for 2014 to host these…

  • Setup pfSense as an OpenVPN client for specific devices

    One of the most powerful features of pfSense is it’s ability to direct your data requests through different end-points using NAT rules. In my case, I like to be able to access the content in Netflix US. In comparison, Netflix Canada’s content is somewhat anemic, although we do get such gems as Community and the…

  • Apple Pay vs. CurrentC: One addresses a customer issue, the other a business issue

    CurrentC requires an app, password and QR Code to be scanned. It works for pre-paid, cash accounts. This is a solution to a business problem (lower transaction fees, better customer tracking) that is being touted as addressing a customer need. People like using their credit cards. The US economy (and Canada to a lesser extent)…

  • Apple Pay: Addressing a customer problem

    [stag_intro]I think one thing that people don’t understand about Apple is that they are really trying to solve customer problems.  [/stag_intro] A lot of people think that Apple is about selling more hardware, creating lust for their products, but deep down, I feel that they are trying to address real problems and pain points for their customers.…

  • HP T610 thin client: low-powered, low-cost XBMC box

    [UPDATE 2015/06/26]: I ended up buying an HP T620 for my XBMC box.  The T610 here is now my pfSense router firewall with a dual Intel Gigabit NIC. I’ve been looking for something to replace the aging Asus O!Play HDP-R1.   While the media player still plays all my content, the usability is absolutely atrocious.  It…

  • Failure

    Engineering is not rated by success alone; it is, in fact, scored most viciously by failure.

  • Happy Anniversary

    Jen and I celebrated our 8-year anniversary this past Tuesday at a wonderful dinner at L’Avenue, a neighborhood restaurant. My wife wrote a very heart felt post about the love that we share between each other and the relative value of that love to our two kids.  Given that I was involved in the conversation,…

  • Oculus Connect 2014 Keynote: Frank comments from John Carmack

    This is a great keynote from John Carmack. It was like he said, I don’t have any slides, so fuck it, let’s have a good chat. He goes through some of the issues and proposed solutions for the keynote. Road to VR has a great write up on the salient points, but I encourage those…