StopGeek

Unlock Your iPhone With Ease

JohnnyV — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:54:37 +0000

WARNING: Going through with this walkthrough could cause problems with your iPhone. Stop Geek is not responsible for any irreparable you do to your iPhone. Proceed with caution

Image Metrics - Is She Real?

JohnnyV — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:32:16 +0000

Wow, this is a pretty cool tech demo. It’s about the technology ‘Image Metrics’. I stumbled across the video not knowing what it actually was. Needless to say I was surprised when I got pretty far into it.

Pixar Upgrading To Windows’ Supercomputers

JohnnyV — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:44:48 +0000

Wall-E, if you haven’t seen it yet do yourself a favor and go this weekend. I’ve been a huge Pixar fan since the days of Toy Story. I’ve seen all of the Pixar films, and have liked each one. It looks like the guys at Pixar are upgrading their operating system, along with their rendering program.

It’s Hard To Imagine Pixar Has Been Around For 20 Years

When Microsoft officially releases their Windows HPC Server 2008, it will be their most advanced operating system on the market. The Windows HPC Server 2008 is used for high-performance computing clusters and super computers. So I’d say that the system will have enough power for the rendering that Pixar will be using in the future.

Here is a quote from Todd Needham’s, Senior PM in HPC blog, “4 versions going back 20 years, nothing else like RenderMan, and now you’ll be able to work with 64-bit datasets, get some choice in your pipeline configuration, faster AOVs, enhanced threading, let’s put it this way, your graphics pros, your render wranglers, they just got their headroom doubled, I’m talking creative headroom”

[via: Computer World]

Make your own ringtones for the iPhone with just Itunes for free.

RodneyS — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:04:57 +0000

I recently got an iPhone and was very unhappy to discover I couldn’t use one of my own mp3s as a ringtone. I thought this was very strange until I discovered Apple wants you to pay again for the right to make a ringtone. So you pay $.99 for the song on itunes, then they want you to pay another $.99 to make it a ring tone. Ok that doesn’t sound right to me. I have already paid for the song once, why should I have to pay for it again? Well I remembered that if you ripped an audio book, you had to rename the file to get it to be in the audio book category. That got me thinking maybe you could do the same thing with a ringtone. So I did a search and found they had an extension of m4r. I tried renaming an mp3 to that but it did not work. Then i converted an mp3 to aac and renamed it, still did not work. Then I discovered that ringtones are normally around 30 sec long. So I converted 30 sec of an mp3 to aac (made it an m4p for some reason) and then renamed it to m4r. That worked, so now you can make any song you have into a ring tone.

Here is what I did to make my ringtone.

1. In Itunes right click on an mp3 and click “Get info”.

(more…)

Archos 705 WiFi Review

RodneyS — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:11:16 +0000

Today, I am going to be telling you about the Archos 705 WiFi. I received mine as a gift for my birthday in June and have been playing with it ever since. The first thing I noticed about the player was the size of it. It is larger than you would expect. My wife has an Archos 605 WiFi but the 705 dwarfs it at 7.05″ x 4.96″ x .775″. The entire 605 is the size of the screen on the 705.

The 705 also comes with a remote that works without having the dock. Surprisingly, I used it more than I thought I would. The ability to skip 30 sec was my favorite feature of the remote. I was also surprised that it worked from across a room.

The screen of the 705 is 7″ with a resolution of 800×480, which is roughly the resolution of a DVD (720×480). I have watched many videos on the 705 at different resolutions and bit rates, and the 705 handles them very well. It has a zoom feature so you can make a full screen movie wide screen, but i do not recommend it. The screen is crisp and has a fast refresh rate with little artifacts during fast action scenes. The biggest problem I have with the screen is that it does not show up in bright sunlight very well.
(more…)

Hydrogen fuel cell cars finally in production.

Vic — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:45:54 +0000

We have been hearing about the benefits of hydrogen full cells for many years now. Well finally a car manufacturer is going to start releasing them. Honda is the first to start with their FXC Clarity. It is a four seater that is they claim is three times more fuel efficient then a gas powered car. Honda plains on producing 200 of these cars over the next 3 years. The biggest obstacle that I can see is the lack of fueling stations, currently they are only in California. With the Soaring gas prices that we have here in America these cars look to be a good alternative.

Honda’s official sire for the FCX Clarity
If you would like to read more on hydrogen fuel cell wikipedia has a very good article on their webpage here.

A great DIY project for all of you who want to hide your thumb drive.

Vic — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:38:11 +0000

Many times you will have a thumb drive that you want to keep private. Here is an easy way to hide it in the open. This will probably void any warranty you have on the drive. Here is a pic of the finished product.
Link to the DIY article.

Engineers Gone Wild!!

RodneyS — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 13:48:12 +0000

Super Mario Bros. is arguably the best and most famous video game ever made. There is something about that simple little game that keeps Geeks’ fascination and attention for all of these years.

There have been many tributes to this game over the years. From costumes to spin-off games to artwork, there is always someone finding a new way to immortalize this game. Today I have come across a tribute to this game that I can’t figure out what to think about it.

Instead of describing it, I will just let you watch the video…
(more…)

It’s Like Comparing Apples and Oranges!

RodneyS — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:14:13 +0000

Most “computer-minded” individuals have a certain knack for programming. For some it may be websites, for others networking applications, for others yet, microprocessors. I’ll admit, my passions are web applications and to a lesser degree stand alone desktop applications. But each end goal has it’s own means of allowing the adventurous programmer to reach that goal. Herein lies the question, is it fair to compare usefulness and therefore quality, of programming languages?

I am most proficient in .NET languages, C# and VB to be more specific. I recently got into a heated debate with a friend of mine over the use of PHP and Ruby on Rails. I brought up ease of use with the Visual Studio IDE, and the great ability for .NET developers to use the built in “intellisense”. His retort was
(more…)

Genius In Motion

RodneyS — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 13:45:33 +0000

Well I guess this counts as a mod right? Or is it just genius? Wow! I wish these guys were my neighbors… I particularly love the proud look on the masterminds face as his friend just stares in amazement…