Let’s be up-front about this: you pay a premium for the convenience of built-in WiFi. A regular 8gb Class 6 SDHC card runs about $10 on Amazon whereas the 8gb Mobile|X2 is 8 times that (although keep an eye out for price drops, I got mine for $60). On top of the higher price, you’ll get poorer battery life in your camera (unless your camera supports Eye-Fi cards in their menu system which lets you turn off the wireless sync to save battery life).

That being said, it’s amazing that this little SD card also contains a WiFi radio that allows for wireless synchronization and backup of your photos directly from your camera to your PC (or some supported online services like Flickr). And when it works (it takes some setup), it’s pretty slick.

There are some gotchas, however, and it’s not all magical. The Eye-Fi card is meant primarily to work with your home wireless network. After installing the Eye-Fi Center software on your PC you can configure the card (via the included USB card reader) and enter your wireless SSID and password (the Eye-Fi card doesn’t support RADIUS authentication, however, so if you’re trying to use it in a corporate environment, forget it). Then, whenever your camera is on, in range of your network, and the Eye-Fi Center software is running on your PC, your photos will be uploaded to your computer. An important thing to note is that the photos are not (and cannot be) automatically removed from the card after they are transferred, so you’ll have to delete them yourself. If your camera natively supports Eye-Fi cards like mine does, photos that have been already uploaded will have a special symbol on them when you view them on the camera’s screen.

Ok, that’s cool when you’re at home, but what if you’re out-and-about, taking photos? You can pay $30/year for hotspot access, which lets your card upload from AT&T hotspots in Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, aiports, etc. It also lets the card upload from any open WiFi access point. Another add-on service is geotagging ($30 if the card you bought doesn’t come with it) which uses WPS (WiFi positioning system) to tag your photos with the coordinates of the location you took the photo. This can be used with services or software to show your photos on a map. The gotcha here is that WPS is not the same as GPS (which uses satellites). If you’re in the middle of the Grand Canyon and you take a photo, unless there happens to be a WiFi network in-range of your Eye-Fi card the photo won’t get tagged. Just something to keep in mind.

If you don’t want to pay annually for hotspot access (and I didn’t) the new X2 cards have the ability to create their own WiFi network. “Direct Mode” lets your card send your photos directly from the camera to the free Eye-Fi app on your iOS or Android device. The gotcha here is that your card can only be configured to upload to a single device at a time and you have to use the Eye-Fi Center software on your PC to change it. You can’t change it from the web either, so if you’re away from home and don’t have access to a PC with Eye-Fi Center on it, you’re out of luck.

Another gotcha is that you can’t just plug the Eye-Fi SD card into any ol’ card reader that might be built into your desktop PC or laptop. Due to the extra power requirements, you must use the included USB card reader when connecting the card to your PC. Your PC might recognize the card without it (mine did) but you won’t be able to read/write to it (strange things seem to happen). So if you’re travelling with your Eye-Fi card, don’t forgot to throw that card reader in your bag, just in case!

The Eye-Fi Center software itself is another gotcha, in my book. It’s like the iTunes of photo sharing: slow, bloated, and buggy. And it needs to be running (which means your PC needs to be on) in order for the Eye-Fi card to upload its photos. I’d rather run something on my Linux media server (which is on all the time), and the hacker community has come to the rescue in this regard. I found and tried four different Linux-based Eye-Fi solutions:

• Eye-Fi Standalone Server v2.0
• eyefiserver 
• Eye-Fi Framework
• Eye-Fi Card Manager (iii)

I’m currently using the first one. Written in python (so it will actually run on Windows and OS X as well), this Eye-Fi Center replacement supports multiple Eye-Fi cards and is pretty easy to set up. It didn’t work with the app on my iPad or iPhone, though, but I was able to make a few changes to the code and get it working (you can download the patch/diff for my changes here). Now I don’t have to worry about having my desktop PC on. And if I’m out, I can use direct mode to transfer my photos from the Eye-Fi card to my iOS device, and then VPN into my home network and transfer the photos to my media server via the python server. Nice.

In summary, once you understand the abilities (and limitations) and get all of the pieces set up and configured properly, the Eye-Fi card is a digital camera accessory worth considering.

 … in the not-so-distant future the world has turned into a very bleak place, but luckily there is OASIS, a virtual reality world that is a vast online utopia. People can plug into OASIS to play, go to school, earn money, and even meet other people (or at least they can meet their avatars), and for protagonist Wade Watts it certainly beats passing the time in his grim, poverty-stricken real life. Along with millions of other world-wide citizens, Wade dreams of finding three keys left behind by James Halliday, the now-deceased creator of OASIS and the richest man to have ever lived. The keys are rumored to be hidden inside OASIS, and whoever finds them will inherit Halliday’s fortune. But Halliday has not made it easy. And there are real dangers in this virtual world.

After hearing Jick talk about it on a Kingdom of Loathing podcast last year, I picked up a copy of  “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline. I have to admit, this book had me hooked after referring to “Heathers,” Oingo Boingo, the Atari 2600, and 800XL, Galaga, and “Family Ties” in just the first few pages.

The beginning gave me a distinct “Daemon” vibe: when an eccentric software developer and creator of the OASIS (think the Matrix), James Halliday, died he left behind a massive virtual scavenger hunt inside the massive online system. The first person to find all three keys, pass the three gates, and find Halliday’s easter egg becomes the sole heir to his entire estate and owner of the OASIS (the similarity to “Daemon” ends there since Halliday isn’t trying to kill people and take over the world from beyond the grave).

Our protagonist, Wade Watts, is a high school senior and an expert in all things Halliday. He’s just one of millions of gunters (or “egg hunters” trying to find Halliday’s egg. But it’s been five years since Halliday’s death and no one has even found the first key yet. That is, until Wade (known as Parzival in the OASIS), makes a breakthrough discovery and the hunt is suddenly on. Wade quickly learns that the search for Halliday’s egg is serious business in some circles, even worth killing for. Can Parzival and his fellow gunters find the egg and keep the OASIS free from the hands of the corporate behemoths who want sole financial control?

“Ready Player One” takes place in 2044, but it’s chock full of 80s pop-culture (check the wiki page for just a few!). “Whiz Kids,” Cory Doctorow, Will Wheaton (who reads the audiobook version), “WarGames,” “Blade Runner,” and Monty Python all make appearances. It was those references that really appealed to my nostalgic side, having been a geek in the 80s (the golden age of dungeons and dragons, video games, music, movies, and TV) when being a geek wasn’t cool. Without getting into spoilers there was a whole interactive fiction section (I took great pride in figuring out the “dwelling long neglected” puzzle chapters before Wade did ), and I had actually listened to Rush’s 2112 the day before it came up in the book. On top of all of that, I learned some things: I had no idea the last level of Pac-Man was a corrupted split-screen (I never got that far), or that the very first easter egg was in Adventure on the Atari 2600.

I also couldn’t help but wonder if Cline had modeled James Halliday on Steve Jobs with the way he is portrayed in the story (an intensely private person who built something that changed the world, and died, tragically, of cancer). Halliday’s business partner, Ogden Morrow, even reminded me of Woz, and the evil empire of Innovative Online Industries could have been Microsoft.

Overall, “Ready Player One” was an immensely enjoyable ready for me. If you were a nerd in the 80s, you really should read it.

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she’s made it out of the bloody arena alive, she’s still not safe. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Who do they think should pay for the unrest? Katniss. And what’s worse, President Snow has made it clear that no one else is safe either. Not Katniss’s family, not her friends, not the people of District 12.

I just finished reading “Mockingjay,” the last book of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy. (Warning … slight spoilers may follow!)

The book picks up immediately where “Catching Fire” ended: Katniss has been rescued from the arena by the rebels from District 13, but they were unable to rescue Peeta who is now in the hands of the government forces. As part of the resistance, Katniss reluctantly becomes the titular Mockingjay, the face of the revolution, and a tug-of-war of propaganda ensues between the revolting districts and the Capitol.

The revolution in Panem takes center-stage in this final book of the trilogy while the love triangle between Katniss, Peeta, and Gale continues to be a main plot point. Peeta is eventually rescued from the Capitol but turns out to be brainwashed, no longer his gentle self, but a ticking time-bomb programmed to (hopefully) kill the Mockingjay.

Can Peeta fight his demons be returned to normal? Will the Districts be able to overthrow the Capitol and win the war? Will Katniss get her final revenge and kill President Snow? Most (but not all) of your questions are answered in the final chapters. I found the end to be a little rushed (and my daughter had ruined one of the major surprises for me) but still enjoyed the series.

It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out on the silver screen. We went to see “Beauty and the Beast” in 3D today and all of “The Hunger Games” movie posters were hanging up (only two months to go!) which got my daughter all psyched. It’s going to be PG-13, though, and even though she’s read the books I’m not sure how seeing some of those sequences on screen are going to affect her (real or not real?) so we may have to do the “wait and watch at home” thing.

The 300HS is a 12.1MP camera with 5x optical zoom, a 2.7″ LCD screen (no viewfinders anymore!), and shoots 1080p HD video. The controls are almost identical to my SD600, so the learning curve was pretty flat and I was almost immediately comfortable with using the camera. It’s slightly thinner and wider than the SD600 and I like the matte black, textured metal casing.

HD video is recorded in MOV (QuickTime) format, which is a pain since I like to keep all of my video in MP4 (but it’s nothing WinFF can’t take care of, just an extra step). My only gripe with video recording is that the microphones are on the top of the case (near the power button) so you tend to hear more audio closer to the camera than what you’re actually pointing at. The video quality, however, is excellent. I don’t see why I would use my mini DV camcorder anymore when I have HD video capabilities in such a small, portable package (and no tapes!).

This is now the third Canon PowerShot model I’ve owned in a row and it seems like every time I get a new one the megapixels have doubled: my A70 was 3.2MP, the SD600 was 6.0MP, and now the 300HS is 12.1MP. I guess that means around 2017 or so I should be getting a new 24.0MP PowerShot.

I do need to get a new SD card now, however, because the old 2gb one I had isn’t a Class 6 so it can’t handle the recording of HD video. It’ll do about 45 seconds and then stop as it can’t keep up with the amount of data being thrown at it.

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark. But it was a victory won by defiance of the Capitol and their harsh rules. Katniss and Peeta should be happy. After all, they have just won for themselves and their families a life of safety and plenty. But there are rumors of rebellion among the subjects, and Katniss and Peeta, to their horror, are the faces of that rebellion. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge.

During our summer road trip we listened to the audiobook version of Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games” and my daughter quickly read the remaining books in the trilogy shortly afterwards. With the upcoming March 2012 release of the movie, I know I’ll probably be taking her to see all of them anyway so I figured I might as well read the rest of the books myself.

“Catching Fire” is the second book in the series and begins about six months after Katniss and Peeta emerged as the dual victors of the 74th annual Hunger Games, as they prepare to go on their Victory Tour of the other Districts. This year’s Hunger Games will be a Quarter Quell, which occurs every 25 years and usually includes some sort of miserable twist to the Games. The surprise for this Quell is that the Tributes will be selected from past victors, which means Katniss and Peeta are going into the Arena … again.

The secondary plotline continues to be the unrest in the Districts towards the Capitol. As the title suggests, Katniss has become the spark that could ignite a revolution and the Capitol will do everything in its power to prevent that. So where the first book focused more on the Games themselves, this story gives us more detail on the other Districts, their relationship with the Capitol, and the current political situation in Panem overall.

Just like the first novel, “Catching Fire” is laid out in three parts of 9 chapters each, and is an easy read (not surprising since it’s really young-adult literature). It seemed to end rather abruptly just and events were really picking up, but having started “Mockingjay” now I know it picks up immediately and keeps going, so it was the logical break point for the book.

Just remember who the Enemy is …

woot! had indicated the Kindle had a 1-year warranty from Amazon, so I called up Kindle Support (or rather, they called me once I initiated the request from their support site, which is pretty cool). The support rep (an extremely friendly, American gentleman) told me refurbished devices only have a 90 day warranty, not a year, and the warranty on my particular device expired in July 2011 (a month after I got it, so that must have been tied to the original warranty before the unit was refurbished and then purchased by me).

I was dismayed by this, since woot! claimed the 1-year warranty which turned out not to be true. The rep told me my options were to (obviously) buy a new Kindle or for $40 they would replace my broken unit with another. Digging a little deeper with the rep, I learned that the $40 replacement fee would get me a 3rd generation Kindle (now called the Kindle Keyboard) with the same free 3G service my daughter’s current Kindle has. Basically they would give me the closest current device to what I already owned. That sounded almost too good to believe so I went ahead with the replacement request.

Two days later (thanks to my Amazon Prime membership), my daughter’s new Kindle Keyboard arrived. Not only is it smaller and thinner than her 2nd gen device, it has the free 3G plus WiFi, has more storage, and it’s not the “with Special Offers” version either (it’s the $189 one). Very nice! Except for the fact that the new Kindle didn’t fit in her M-Edge GO! case, my daughter was thrilled. I was able to easily re-download her all of her books by “pushing” them from the Amazon web site and she was back in business (except for having to re-create her Collections).

I’m sad the Kindle 2 screen only lasted six months before inexplicably dying (I see a few other people on the woot! thread reported the same problem, so maybe it was just a bad batch of refurbs) and I’m a little upset at woot! for misrepresenting the warranty, but overall I’m very satisfied with Amazon’s support and the final outcome.

A plane over the Atlantic suddenly needs to reboot its computer to stay in the air, and the pilots barely avert disaster. A hospital network mixes up patient information, resulting in the death of several people. A law firm, which has lost all of its clients’ data and can’t get its system running again, turns to Jeff Aiken, a former government analyst and computer expert. He discovers that all of the crashes are insidiously connected, and an even greater disaster is coming.

I just finished reading “Zero Day” by Mark Russinovich, a cyber-thriller on par with Daniel Suarez’s “Daemon” or “FreedomTM.” At its core, “Zero Day” addresses a real-world, incredibly difficult to solve dilemma: with so many unprotected/unpatched computers in the world today, could a well-crafted virus potentially wreak havoc on the global economy?

The plot: an insidious computer virus, masked by different rootkits, multiple variants, and seemingly multiple authors, is secretly infecting computer systems all over the world, with a trigger date of 9/11. The virus is only noticed ahead of time because some of the computers it infected had incorrect system clocks which caused it to trigger a month early, completely crashing them. Jeff Aiken, a computer security expert, and his former colleague Daryl Haugen, the Assistant Director Computer Infrastructure Security Unit at the Department of Homeland Security, are on the trail of the virus, trying to track it back to its source before the zero day strikes. Who is behind the virus? How long has it been propagating? How widespread is it? Can it be stopped? Will anyone believe them?

We’re all familiar with the concept of viruses and malware and the importance of running anti-virus software and firewalls and keeping our computer systems patched. The reality is, however, that there are a lot of machines complete unprotected or unpatched, which opens a lot of vulnerabilities for the bad guys to exploit. Russinovich, a Technical Fellow at Microsoft, is well-versed in the topic at hand, and so I found his novel to be a little more realistic than the Suarez books I referenced above.

The book is fast-paced and a good read even for those of us in the computer industry. For more information about “Zero Day,” check out the book’s website.

It was an enjoyable, funny show and our whole family had a good time watching the antics of the Addamses and the Beinekes. I didn’t find the music/songs to be as earworm-worthy as those from “Wicked” or “Rent” but they were still pretty good. As a comedy goes, though, I found myself laughing a lot! If the US tour is coming near you, I recommend you check out a showing.

Lisbeth Salander, the brilliant computer hacker who was shot in the head, is alive, though still the prime suspect in three murders in Stockholm. While she convalesces under armed guard, journalist Mikael Blomkvist works to unravel the decades-old coverup surrounding the man who shot Salander: her father, Alexander Zalachenko, a Soviet intelligence defector and longtime secret asset to Säpo, Sweden’s security police.

“The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest” by Stieg Larsson is the final book of the Millenium trilogy and I finally finished reading it this past weekend during my trip up to Ohio.

“Hornets’ Nest” picks up immediately where “The Girl Who Played with Fire” ended: Mikael Blomkvist has found Salander miraculously alive after being shot in the head and buried at a remote farm where she tried to kill her father and half-brother. Lisbeth and Zalachenko end up in the hospital under police guard while the authorities try to piece together the events that occurred in the second book. Meanwhile, The Section, the secret division of the security police is mobilizing to protect its secrets and its past history. Once again Blomkvist and Salander are at the center of a political, legal, and far-reaching scandal that threatens both of their lives and the lives of their associates.

In “Fire” we learned about Lisbeth’s backstory and history with Zalachenko and The Section. “Hornets’ Nest” unravels the inner workings of The Section, its history inside Säpo, the players involved, and explains how the conspiracy started and continued into present day. It gets a bit complex and at times I found it hard to keep everyone and everything straight, but Larsson does a good job of intriguing the reader and keeping the plot moving forward at a good pace. Even the big courtroom scenes at the end, which are mostly expository, are riveting to read. It’s not until the final pages of the epilogue when everything finally falls into place and is neatly wrapped up.

Having cancelled Netflix recently, I won’t be able to watch the third installment of the Swedish movies, but the US version of the trilogy starts in December.

Back in 2009 I had jumped on a similar deal and snagged a Buffalo WHR-G300N wireless N router for $35. After getting it all set up with DD-WRT, though, I discovered that with the lack of external antennas and no high-power radio the wireless signal wasn’t strong enough to cover my entire house like the WHR-HP-G54 was currently doing. Since I had effectively voided the warranty by flashing DD-WRT onto the router, I kept it for use as a switch in my office (and am still using it today, in fact).

I was hoping that the three antennas (two external, one internal) and high-power radio in the WZR-HR-G300N would do the job of replacing my WHR-HP-G54 plus give me a gigabit switch in the computer closet. I was also excited because Buffalo now included their own branded version of DD-WRT (they call it the “professional” firmware) on the router, so no more voided warranty issues!

Things never go as planned, though.

I set up the new router with identical settings to the existing one so I could just do a simple replacement. Once everything was ready, I turned off the old router, swapped in the new one and powered it on. My iPhone, iPad, and Foscam cameras re-connected to the “new” wireless network just fine, but the TrendNet cameras wouldn’t associate. I tried changing a bunch of different settings on the router and even posted on the Buffalo tech support forums but could not get the cameras to connect. Frustrated, I tried upgrading DD-WRT to the latest build from Buffalo’s web siite … and it bricked the router (it had a solid red diag LED and I couldn’t even connect to it via TFTP).

I ended up having to return the router to Amazon and put the old G router back in place while I waited for the new one to arrive. Once it did, I tried again to upgrade to the latest Buffalo DD-WRT again and it kept failing (but at least it didn’t brick it this time). I’d never had this many problems with DD-WRT before so I decided to just go with the community build instead of Buffalo’s customized version. After upgrading to v24-sp2 (build 17201) I again configured the router to match my existing setup and did the swap again. Just like before, though, the TrendNet cameras wouldn’t connect. WTH?

I jumped through several more hoops (setting up a “guest” wireless network, playing with wireless security settings, switching channel widths and network modes, etc. etc.) but could not get the TrendNet cameras to connect. Buffalo and TrendNet support were no help so I gave up and decided to use my original router alongside the new one. I re-configured the WHR-HP-G54 to set up a wireless network specifically for all of the cameras … and it worked just fine. So I’m now running two wireless routers instead of one (so much for consolidation) but the new setup does have the benefit of separating all of the camera/Zoneminder traffic from the main wireless network.

I ran into a few more setup issues (DynDNS not updating, NAT loopback) but they were all related to the build of DD-WRT I was using, not the router itself, and I was able to work around them with command scripts. Finally I had the home network back to “normal” with the new router in place. Whew!

It’s been over a month now since I put in the WZR-HP-G300N and I haven’t had any problems with it. The signal strength/coverage seems to match the WHR-HP-G54. Even after tweaking the power settings and antenna orientations I wasn’t able to get anything better than the old router, which was a little surprising, but at least it wasn’t any worse. I wish I could get the TrendNet cameras to connect to the new router, but for now everything is stable so I’m leaving well enough alone.