Month: March 2014

Google Play is having it’s second anniversary this week as well, and to celebrate, Google is having a sale on some Play Store items. Check them out! They are different depending on where you live, so you will have to check it out yourself!

And, I know, some of you don’t care. Like, mainly the Gamemaster!

The Raspberry Pi computer had its second birthday this week. The Raspberry Pi Foundation, with help from Broadcom, is working toward an Open Source graphics driver for the Raspberry Pi computer.

This new graphics driver is supposed to enable hardware-accelerated graphics for Linux, Android and other operating systems, running on the Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is promising a $10,000 reward for the first person making Quake III run at a decent framerate on its hardware.

I also saw an article this week that reported that someone had hooked a lot of Raspberry Pi machines together into one array that allowed that new configuration to be essentially a supercomputer. There’s a lot of cool stuff happening in the Raspberry Pi computing space.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve ordered the Raspberry Pi, and it came in… I just haven’t had a chance to play with it yet; and when I do, I hope to do a walk-through report on that, either on the Dr. Bill show or on the Hand Held Hack… I’m not sure which. So, stay tuned for that!

So, it was announced this week that Windows 8.1, Update 1 has leaked into the public. The odd thing is, it seems to have been leaked by Microsoft… from their servers! How does that work?

On Wednesday of this week, Microsoft released the RTM of Windows 8.1, Update 1; the update includes changes to the Metro UI, the taskbar bar appearing in the Modern environment with a permanent shutdown button on the start screen, and some other minor fixes.

Microsoft is also ending support for Windows XP next month, which means that Microsoft will not be providing any further security updates for Windows XP.

So, now’s the time to move on to a more secure operating system! Since Windows XP currently holds just under 33% of the market share of all operating systems, obviously, a large group of users are at risk! This means that this group of users had better move on to either a later version of Windows, or move to the free Linux operating system, of which there are many distributions, but as you know, my favorite is Linux Mint!

Though, I must it admit that with my new MacBook Pro, I’m getting very close to recommending that people move to Mac as heartily as I recommend that they moved to Linux! (What can I say? I’m excited!)

Well, hopefully all of you survived the Great Ice Storm of 2014. It’s nice to have power back on, because one cannot use one’s neat electronic toys if there is no power! And, of course, I had just gotten in a ton of really cool electronic toys, and was looking forward to using them, when in fact, we lost our power. Of course, we also lost our heat, everything in our refrigerator and freezer was at risk; and I actually thought of that later on! After, of course, fretting over the fact that I would not get to play with my electronic toys!

But, after a night in a nearby hotel, which did have power, and in which I could use my toys, all is well! And, there is some excitement in the fact that when you return home all of the power is on, and life is good! So all in all, an interesting experience, but one I’m not looking forward to experiencing again for quite some time, if ever. In fact, I would be up for just missing it altogether!

So, I trust all is well with our readers, and netcast viewers. I know that not all of you live in the area in which I reside, but if perchance you do, I hope you have power. More power, more power!

I know that there was a report that 50% of all households in our area were without power, and we were among that 50% that had none, but, now we do! Good deal!

What I have talked about for all these years, dreamed of, conspired about… and so forth! A genuine, official, brand new Macbook Pro! It came in this afternoon, and is SO cool! And, by this weekend, I will have two 8 gig DIMMs to upgrade it to 16 gig! AWESOMENESS!!!!!

I also got a cool stand for my new, cool Macbook as well! Check it out below!