Pixels and Widgets

A blog by Tai Toh

Author: ttoh

  • Ars Technica: Review of iOS 8

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    As expected, Ars Technica presents their usual deep analysis of iOS 8:  iOS 7 and iOS 8 feel like two halves of the same update, two equally necessary steps in the journey from Old iOS to Modern iOS. iOS 7 was a facelift, a new release that added some nice user- and developer- facing features…

  • “Kobo’s offering is the peak in terms of e-reader hardware right now…

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    Techcrunch reviews the Kobo H2O:  “Kobo’s offering is the peak in terms of e-reader hardware right now – Amazon’s device is slightly smaller and lighter, but you get a far superior screen from the Aura H2O, as well as the built-in water resistance and superior reading light. The only thing you don’t get access to…

  • Old blog posts added

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    [UPDATE 09/20/2014] I have completed Drupal migration. [UPDATE 09/28/2014] I’ve added my old Movable Type posts.  Still a lot of cleansing that has to happen and relinking of images. [UPDATE 09/30/2014] I have cleansed and reformatted posts to Jan 2003. Still trying to figure out if I should bring in the comments. I have finally begun the arduous process…

  • I don’t know how this sells Cup Noodle ramen

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    I don’t know how this sells ramen, but I’m not complaining.

  • USB Sound Cards: Omni Surround Pro 5.1 vs. Recon 3D USB vs. X-Fi 5.1 Pro

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    Update [2014-05-16]: I updated some thoughts below on sound quality. [Update 2014-09-14]: Added a pretty big caveat to the Omni Surround. I am a bit nuts about external USB sound card / DAC /AMP combos.  I’ve bought 3 from the same manufacturer.  They are all part of the Sound Blaster line of sound cards from Creative.…

  • Getting old posts back in 2014 and the new Fuji X-T1

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    My site has been running in some form since 2002.  However, I have lost data multiple times and I have always meant to go back…get my old posts back on the web, but I never do. It doesn’t help that I keep changing blogging platforms. Movable Type, Textpattern, ModX, Tumblr, Octopress… I’ve committed to getting…

  • Well, that was unpleasant

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    So I had some server unpleasantness that I noticed after I posted my 2014 Goals post. The site just froze and logins were barely possible. I immediately SSH’d into the prgmr.com server, but was greeted by an extremely slow console.  I actually had to access the VPS Xen configuration menu and do a hard shutdown…

  • Goals for 2014

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    I’ve been thinking about 2014 and what, if any, goals I have. For the past few years, I don’t think I’ve been focusing much on me as a person–there were other more concrete things that I could latch on like my family or my career.  They seemed right at the time; no ill feelings towards…

  • pfSense on Watchguard Firebox x550e

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    [UPDATED – 2014-11-24]: I noticed that I had gotten the model wrong in the title of the article.  Fixed that. One of the odd things as I have moved up the food chain into (product) management is that I don’t have the opportunity to work directly on the products that teams build. Keeping a software…

  • pfSense performance on an HP T5720 Thin Client

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    Working pretty well so far. Uses about 25 Watts (with USB enabled). It handles unencrypted traffic flawlessly. OpenVPN connections (using the AMD GEODE LX encryption block) via my StrongVPN account tops out at about 30 Mbits per second down. It is not as fast as my Pentium-M based laptop that was my original router (it…