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20081120

Twitter-painted - Click!

Yes! I am now on Twitter. I figure if I'm paying $92 per month on a phone bill, I may as well do stuff that is work paying that much. (If you say "Buy Music", you're an idiot!).

Twitter is a free service that allows you to do mobile blogging. (Don't worry, I'll still be here.) Think of it as updating your Facebook status when you post to everyone, or instant messaging when you contact someone specifically. A great thing about Twitter is that you can control who can contact you on your mobile phone.

I'd like to use this on the G1 next year. (Find me the money to dump AT&T and it can be this year.)

P.S.: Twitter Me at @MrHacks.

Labels: blog, phone, twitter

posted by Bushido Hacks 11/20/2008 05:53:00 PM (0) comments top

20081115

NASA, you have a problem! - Click!

Years ago, NASA was once the pride of the American science community. But since the goverment has put money into other programs (many of them "Faith-based initiatives" that discriminate against science projects because of the entire "creation vs. evolution" argument), NASA has been runing out of funds and it take a long time for them to make simple repairs like fix the toilet on the International Space Station.

Now NASA has bigger problems to worry about than the Russians: The Chinese and The Indians.

It has been a long overdue thing that NASA has put off. And thanks to partisian politics, a broken patent-trademark-copyright office, the outsourcing of science jobs, and of course the pissing contest between Creationists and Evolutionists (pardon my french), America is in big trouble again.

Hopefully under the Obama adminstration, we can find some reason for the Government to get excited about NASA again.

Labels: government, NASA, news, science

posted by Bushido Hacks 11/15/2008 06:23:00 PM (0) comments top

20081114

SDHC does work on SD devices - Click!

Contrary to what you may have hear, Yes, SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) cards do work on devices that use SD (Secure Digital) devices.

There may be a few devices that are not compatible with SDHC, but so far it works on my computer's media card reader, my Palm Treo 650, and there is a good chance it will work on the Wii.

In any case, now is a good time to stock up on SDHC cards for Chirstmas items such as digital cameras, music players, cell phones, and computer file storage.

I still haven't run into any DRM issues, then again, DRM is really stupid in the first place.

Labels: handhelds, hardware, palm, phone, Wii

posted by Bushido Hacks 11/14/2008 10:57:00 AM (0) comments top

20081112

Layaway Online Shopping and other Ideas to Preserve Credit

Online shopping is great. You can find exactly what you want, tell others about it, and most importantly save it to a wish list.

But some wishlist items are down right impossible, especially if you are trying to curb spending, pay off some of your credit cards or loans, or if you want to save money rather than spend it.

Credit cards provided the means to get what you wanted now, and make payments on your credit card later. But there are many problems with using credit if you abuse it,if the credit card company abuses you, or if your information is stollen.

Before I get into todays subject, the following things can possible happen, of which they shouldn't.

How you could abuse your credit.	How your credit card company may abuse you	How other people may abuse your credit
You max out. You spend over your limit, now it is time to pay the piper! You were dumb enough to skip a payment. If the creditor brags about this, DON'T DO IT! Hell, just don't in general! You were dumb enough to pay the minium. If you spend $150 on credit items, don't pay the minimum. Even if you didn't spend any credit, NEVER PAY THE MINIMUM! You have several credit cards and are doing the above points. If you are doing this, either you have not done anything constructive to control yourself or you are part of the problem.	Creditor jacks up the APR. You were at a cosy 3% to 9%. Now though no fault of the possible reasons in the left column (unelss you did one of the items of the left more than once), you are paying 16% to over 25%. When this happens, it is time to transfer. Preferably to a 0% for one year card. But don't do any of the things in the left column. Creditor increased your line of credit. Technically, it is not a bad thing. The problem is some people assume that they can splurge that money. DON'T! Creditors luring teens and college students. Parents worry that their kids will come under the influence of alcohol, drugs, and gambling. The truth is, it is the stuff that comes in the mailbox or is in the bottom of the bag at the school book store: The Credit Card offer. Much like the tobacco industry, the credit industry also seeks to "hook'em while they are young". Warn your kids about this. Creditor didn't transfer everything that you asked. So you decided to tranfers your credit balance to another card. Be sure that the entire amount that you asked to be transfered was transfered. Your creditor is about to go belly up. In an effort to make sure that their CEO has a gollend parachute, your creditor decides to freze your credit, jack up the APR, and press the self-destruct mechanism while they made you and their employees drink the kool-aid. While we hope this NEVER EVER happens to you, it has for alot of banks and creditors this year. If this happens to you, sic the FBI on them.	Theives stoll your info. It doesn't necessarily have to be Credit Card numbers. It could be anything. Drivers license numbers. Bank accounts. Social Security. Insurance policy, employee id, or club membership. A good bank or creditor will tell you if your card has been used without your permission. Paypal generally does it. Reguardless, there are some other websites that the government has that can help monitor your information for about a year should this happen. Theives "stoll a laptop" containing your information. Don't these stories in the news make you want to kick the guy's ass who not only stoll the computer but lost it too? What kind of self respecting company uses laptop computers for offline storage? Aside from seeking monitoring, you should find someone else to do business with. Inside Job. How else does a conartist find a job at a bank? They start out with such a clean record. Walk right in and help clean house. Fortunately, there are pleanty of checks and balances to make sure that you can be confedient that the man at the bank isn't double dealing or salami slicing. Dangerous Liaisons. That one night stand you had, where was you wallet? OK, maybe you didn't have an affair, but if your missing money, and the new person you are having relations with is suddenly gone and/or is spending your money, don't rule out the ones you love. Remember that a good relationship requires communication and trust. If he or she is not telling you they borrowed the money or if they decide to take advantage of you trust, it is probably best to end your relationship. The Ultimate Inside Job: Your family! Most people can trust their family. In fact, most of the time your family can help you set up an account at the bank as they have done it themselves. But then of course there are the disheartening stories about how parents stole from their kids accounts or the kids stole from the parents accounts. Families don't steal from each other!

Layaway seems to be an effective form of preserving credit, but it requires patience. Something that credit cards bypased and instead let you make payments after the fact which as we now know is probably not the best idea if you are trying to pay for the fancy items you want to get for Christmas if you are doing lay away in november, unless you just need to make two payments.

But many places no longer do layaway. I remember when I was a kid, my mom took me to pick up a winter coat she had put on layaway at JCPenny. But Places like JCPenny, Sears, Dillards, Macy's, Walmart, Target, and K-mart don't have a layaway department anymore.

Now with online shopping, there are things, that even with credit, make you wish there was layaway for. While you aren't going to find Layaway on eBay, Places like Amazon.com, Overstock, Shopping.com, Best Buy, Circuit City, and of course all of the places mentioned in the previous paragraph could benefit from reinstating that program.

Think of it like this: The best time to buy a TV is at the end of football season in Feburary. If Football starts back up in August, then the TV you put on layaway is yours after making six months worth of payments. The same goes for buying baby needs. It takes nine months for a baby to develop, so why not pay over that nine months toward baby furnishing rather than nine months of credit payments that can go up after birth?

As a computer expert, I've often wondered to myself "Gosh it would be nice to afford that laptop, but I can't pay for it all in one sum and I certainly don't want to pay for two laptops with my credit when I only bought one laptop." College books should be the same way, but it requires the professors to decide what books they should use before classes start.

Layaway should be manditory in both paying for technology, books, furniture, clothing, and other items. But the credit card industry decimated layaway.

It sure would have been nice to do layaway even before we had this credit crisis. It would be even better if online retailers got with the program.

posted by Bushido Hacks 11/12/2008 12:12:00 AM (0) comments top

20081111

The Battle of the Virtual Cooks - Click!

Videogames are starting to evolve from a form of entertainment into a fun learning lab. They are becoming more interactive, educational, and physical. While game maker now have integrated many of the physical and interactive attributes thanks to more advanced technology and better programming, the next step now comes to make games more educational and fun.

Words like "exergaming" (exercise gaming) and "edutaiment" (educational entertainment) are starting to become quite popular as there are certainly more skills and degrees of freedom to work with.

We are already seeing this phenomenon with games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band sparking more interest in learning how to play music. (From my own personal experience, learning the piano (somewhat well), guitar (not so well, but still having a good time), and the harmonica have been fun when you find time to play them.) And the Nintendo Wii and Konami's Dance Dance Revolution have certainly been praised for the involvement of physical activies.

But how would they be applied with other skills such as mechanics (tuning a bike, repairing a car, or building a small robot), gardening (in general, or just taking care of a few house plants), or in the case of a rising videogame trends, cooking?

Videogame developers had to be smart with this genre. Though many people have critized the genre of cooking videogames like they have exergames, they've probably never have been scared of working out in a gym, playing a musical recital, or cooked a mean without using the microwave.

Learning to cook is probably one of the most important skills for any person to learn. By instinct, it is one of the fundamental survival skills that a human being must know along with how to build a fire, what plants are healthy, edible and can be grown over the length of one growing season, which speices of fish or fauna would taste good to eat, and how to tend to injuries or other medical emergencies.

Face it, eating out is expensive. Eating out at fast food can be unhealthy. And eating pre packaged foods or the same thing constantly can also be unhealthy.

So it is important to know how to cook (and to plan meals if you are on a diet) so that you can live a healthy life style, along with exercise and good hygine.

Since good hygine isn't really something a videogame should teach (as you should probably learn this on your own), and exercise (be it mental or physical) seems to be undergoing a revival in the gaming industry, cooking seems to be the next challege of the video game industry.

Enter the battle of cooking games!
The game series that seems have kicked off this genre is Cooking Mama. It's mild popularity has sparked the interest of Gordon Ramsay and Alton Brown to jump on board. (Hopefully, Rachel Ray will sit this one out.)

Cooking Mama is an outstanding series. Despite the deadpan reviews by the critics (who also gave deadpan reviews to many other exergame and cooking games), Mama has persevered. So much so she has recieve sponsorship and endorsements from a couple of food companies as have her rivals.

In fact, embeded advertising has become quite popular in video games. If advertisers do a good job (easter eggs in online games, visible advertisments), gamers become interested in their products. If advertisers do a bad job (i.e. subliminal advertising, constant berating, lame products, or annoying adverts), gamers--and consumers for that matter--are less interested. (Take a few tips from Google Adwords, madmen.) One of the most interesting product placements this year, being an election year, was the campaign of the President-elect Barack Obama, who's campaign bought ad space in virtual reality and was certainly a good talking point in terms of advancement in technology.

Mama's latest advertising has been with Nestle. (Cheat: If you can't want for the latest Mama game to come out, check out Meals.com. Although, I've traditionally been a fan of Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book.)

There are pleanty of cooking websites out their with many recipies either through interest, method, grocier, distributor, food, or culinary style. Thanks to videogames, cooking is now something to get fired up about.

Labels: cooking, food, games, Wii

posted by Bushido Hacks 11/11/2008 08:02:00 PM (0) comments top

20081107

Follow Up" Palin gets Palinized by John McCain - Click!

Ever since their loss on Tuesday Night John McCain has not at all been happy with Sarah Palin. So much so, that the shrewd Vietnam veteran has sent G.O.P. representives to repo her extravagant wardrobe. For a small list of things that Mrs. Palin bought with her $150K+, check out this website..

posted by Bushido Hacks 11/07/2008 05:56:00 PM (0) comments top

20081105

Kit Bond's Carrier is OVER!

The election is over, now it is safe to say that even though Kit Bond (R-MO) still has two years left in his term IT WILL BE HIS LAST!

Last week at a McCain-Palin rally, run by America's most clueless Hockey Mom in Cape Girardeau, MO, the crowd was fired up when he warned them about his view of Obama's judicial philosophy.

"Just this past week, we saw what Barack Obama said about judges," Bond said. "He said, 'I'm tired of these judges who want to follow what the Founding Fathers said and the Constitution. I want judges who have a heart, have an empathy for the teenage mom, the minority, the gay, the disabled. We want them to show empathy. We want them to show compassion.'"

--source CBS News

To which various disabilities advacates were not at all impressed.

Certainly, Lt. Governor Peter Kinder (R-MO) should distance himself from such individuals, especially people like Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK) who whould rather do nothing about her youngest child's Down Syndrome or any other child with ANY disabiltiy except group them in a PROVEN FAILED government program, the Individuals with Disabilties Education Act,and kill important research projects at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill.

Needless to say, the doctors at UNC were not impressed with "Doctor Palin".

I guess this is probably why she didn't say a whole lot last night after John McCain's concession speech. If Kit Bond was wise, it would probably be in his best interest to do likewise.

Labels: disabilities, honeybees, missouri, stupidity

posted by Bushido Hacks 11/05/2008 11:01:00 AM (0) comments top