It’s hard out there for a (pimp) gadget monkey

Posted on March 15, 2011 by Jenneth Orantia

The title is a reference to the theme song of the Terrence Howard movie Hustle & Flow, in case you were wondering.

Argh, today was pretty full on as far as technology went – one frustration after another! Spent most of the day doing the research for a feature I’m writing, which entailed wading through the murky waters of shareware software. Geebers – there’s so much crap out there, and it’s hard to weed out the good apps without actually trying each one! This is where a Windows app store – like the Mac one – would be handy, so I could read peoples’ reviews on software and whittle down the shortlist somewhat, and also have some confidence that what I was installing my computer wasn’t brimming with malware!

I have a Dell laptop that I’m using for testing in this feature, and for some reason the damn wireless wouldn’t work. Such things usually work out of the box on review units, and I tried everything I could: turning the wireless off, then again, running through the troubleshooter – no love! I ended up having to get Dell support call me and try to figure out what was wrong with the unit. His final suggestion was to try doing a Windows Update (which found 44 important updates!), and in the mean time, he’d see if he could track down another review notebook for me. I hooked the Dell notebook up to my router using an Ethernet connection, set up Windows Update to grab everything it needed, then went about doing other things. Came back when it was done, restarted, and voila! It could see my wireless network! I called the support guy back, reassured him everything was okay, then lugged the notebook to my study… at which point it gave me that dastardly ‘no networks found’ message again. WTF?! And then it hit me. I walked the 1.5 metres to my wireless router and sat the notebook directly in front of it – and hey, there was my wireless network again! With TWO BARS OF SIGNAL. Wow. I’ve heard of notebooks having poor wireless radios, but this really took the cake. Even my tiny little smartphones are able to get wireless signal from the study, but this hulking big laptop couldn’t? Epic fail.

Then my partner started complaining that our Internet connection was crap. He’s only just gotten into playing Call of Duty: Black Ops on Xbox Live, and I think it’s safe to say that he’s well and truly hooked! Typical bloke At first I thought it was because he was using the older 802.11/b/g wireless adapter for the Xbox 360, so I swapped it over for the Belkin Play Powerline HD Dual Pack that the nice folk at Belkin gifted me with awhile back, which promised “fast, reliable speeds for streaming HD video, playing music and online gaming”. Having tested powerline products before, I was confident that it was a matter of just plugging one adapter into the Xbox 360 and the other into my wireless router, and it would be good to go. Wrong! The two adapters refused to see each other, much to my chagrin. I tried resetting them, resetting the security, nothing. I ended up going with an older (and slower) TP-Link 200Mbps Powerline Ethernet Adapter Starter Kit, which I had reviewed sometime last year, and this worked exactly as it promised, with an “effortless setup”.

Alas, the gaming Gods weren’t letting me get off that easily. My partner then reported that he was still getting cut off from the online tournaments, and that after running the troubleshooter on the Xbox 360, it was reporting that he was getting bad performance because he hadn’t setup NAT on his router. Oh FFS! I’m not a gamer, so I’m not experienced with port forwarding and all that jazz, but seeing as how I’ve taken personal responsibility for anything even slightly tech-related in the house, I dutifully did a bit of research and found a Wired Wiki on how to setup port forwarding for Xbox Live. Thankfully, this seemed to do the trick, and I was free to retire to the study and continue reading my book of the week: Bryce Courtenay’s Fortune Cookie (author of the magnificent ‘Power of One‘, which was later made into a movie starring Stephen Dorff and Morgan Freeman). I’ve only just found out that Fortune Cookie is available as an iPhone/iPad app as well! Got another 150 pages to go (I had to buy the paper version as it’s not available in the Kindle store as an eBook!), so if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll finish it before I get back to work!

Dealing with clowns on Gumtree

Posted on March 9, 2011 by Jenneth Orantia

Day three of selling stuff on Gumtree. Seriously, you could take a shotgun to my head and fire it point blank – that would probably be less painful! Based on previous experience, I though Gumtree would be simpler to sell stuff on than eBay, as I could list the price and be done with it – no bidding, auction periods or any of those shenanigans, and meeting the buyers face to face meant I didn’t have to worry about rogue buyers or fiddling around with postage costs.

Turns out Gumtree has its own set of problems. Few people seemed to appreciate the concept of a fixed price, and would email me either asking for my ‘best price’ (usually accompanied with a promise to pay in cash – what the hell else are you going to pay me with – seashells?!), or offering a ridiculously low figure. Bah! Most people also wanted me to come to them, to places up to half an hour’s drive away from where I am! As if!

Runner up for douchebag buyer of the year goes to one guy that I contacted about a pink Sony netbook I was selling. It went through to his voicemail, so I then called the next interested person on the list, who answered his phone promptly, didn’t give me any bullshit about ‘best prices” and made arrangements to come and meet me at a nearby location, despite being new to Sydney and not knowing his way around. Afterwards, el doucho calls me back and I tell him that I’ve already arranged to sell it to someone else, at which point he proceeds to argue with me that he should be able to buy it instead! After politely but firmly rejecting his claim, I hung up, and one minute later he calls back to again insist that he should be able to buy it. What the hell?! I ended up raising my voice at this stage because he was just being an annoying ass-hat, and I hung up on him. Did he really expect to antagonise me into selling him the netbook? Some people…

But the douchebag buyer of the year award goes to a guy that ‘expressed interest’ in buying my Canon 14mm lens. This lens goes for around $2400 retail, and I had it listed for $2000 – a fair price considering its pristine condition and the fact that Canon L lenses retain their value extremely well. Mr Douchebag Of the Year emailed me the following:

“You can have this in your hand *new* for $1650 (including GST and customs fees) *with* a valid Canon international warranty.

Are you negotiable on price?”

To which I replied:

“Oh yeah? From where?”

His reply:

“http://www.dwidigitalcameras.com.au/store/product.asp?idProduct=1476
Add shipping, subtract shipping discount, add GST plus customs fees (or take the risk and declare it under $1,000 and get it even cheaper if customs don’t pick it out).”

To which I replied (too politely, in hindsight):

“You have linked to the 35mm f1.4L lens here. I am selling the 14mm f2.8L II lens: http://www.dwidigitalcameras.com.au/store/product.asp?idProduct=1895
Completely different lens, and as you can see, more expensive. Add shipping + custom fees, and you’re well over $2300″

No reply.

Sigh.

Big sale – everything must go! :)

Posted on March 8, 2011 by Jenneth Orantia

Being a gadget monkey is extremely hard on the finances, as you can imagine! Sure, I get a lot of stuff for free as a journalist, but a lot of the stuff (most of it, actually), I have to pay for myself. Add to that the fact that I’m very bad about selling off old stuff, and that equals every available nook and cranny in my house just packed to the gills with boxes. Crazy!

But now that I’m expecting a new addition to the family in a couple of months time, I had to make room for all of the baby stuff – clothes, diapers, and all of the paraphernalia like the changing table, bassinet, stroller, toys… That, and it’s been a slow few months, and any extra income I could scrounge to pay off my various debts would be quite welcome! After dropping round to my partner’s brother’s house to pick up all of their old baby stuff that they were generously giving us, I knew I had to finally set aside a few hours to photograph everything and post ads for each individual item.

My old MSI Wind U100, hacked to run Mac OS X 10.5.7 and SOLD for $115!

A few hours? Ha, try two full days now! I spent most of yesterday making sure each of the boxes had the necessary bits and pieces, then taking a couple of photos of each item, figuring out how much I could sell it for, then trying to write a ‘thoughtful’ description of each item that would hopefully stand out among the deluge of other items that are available! I started getting the first bites this morning, and as of 7.45pm this evening, I’ve sold 5 things (out of 29 items!) for a grand total of $705! Not bad! Looks like I’ll be able to pay my rent this week after all I’m selling another four items this evening, which will bring me up to a total of $980. Considering all this stuff was just lying around gathering dust, it’s practically free money + more shelf space for the baby! WIN WIN WIN!

I’m expecting to sell a bunch more stuff tomorrow and the following day, the most significant being my Canon 14mm f/2.8L II USM lens for two grand! Much as I’d rather hold onto this unique lens, I barely use it, and the money would be better off in the bank as ‘just in case’ money for the baby. Turns out selling all this stuff wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be – although there are a few annoying people that insist that they should be able to buy something I’m selling despite the fact that I’ve told them I’ve promised it to someone else already. *sigh* I actually hung up on one guy this morning for that reason!

BTW, any Aussie readers interested in buying some cool tech stuff, lemme know

What I’m doing right now: February 2011

Posted on February 26, 2011 by Jenneth Orantia

I didn’t end up finishing my Camera Craft 3 course. What a waste of $780! I’m not sure what it is – a combination of not being all that impressed with the teacher, not feeling inspiration at the moment, priorities currently shifted elsewhere… whatever it is, I’m really keen to get my mojo back!
My Barbie dreamhouse is coming along really well. The new couches are just perfect for the living room, I’ve got Netflix working, we recently upgraded our Xbox 360 to the Elite so we can have a HDMI connection to the TV, have also set up the Kinect and played (or more accurately, watched my partner play) that a few times. Still need to replace the TEGA v2 for a more suitable ‘media centre PC’ to connect to the TV full time so I can stream Hulu and my partner can play Zyna Poker on Facebook from the TV! At the moment, I’ve got the TEGA v2 connected to the TV via VGA, with a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse for using it from the sofa.
I haven’t done a lot of reading this month in between moving house and a bunch of other stuff, but still obsessed with Dennis Lehane and currently reading ‘Gone Baby Gone‘ on my Kindle. I’ve seen the movie already, so the ending is spoiled for me, but I love reading his writing so much that it doesn’t really matter!
Favourite show of the month: Hmmn, I was into Hawaii Five-0 for a brief period as I think Alex O’Loughlin is awesome, but got bored after a couple of episodes, and now I’m making my way through season 4 of 30 Rock on Netflix. That show never stops being funny!
Favourite movie of the month: None yet, but today I’m going to be watching No Strings Attached starring Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman – haven’t seen a good rom-com in awhile, so that may very well be my fave for the month. Also watching Case 39 tonight – a horror movie with Renee Zellweger that’s meant to be really good – how can it not be, when it’s got the same creepy little girl from Silent Hill!
Favourite photo of the month: would have to be one of the HDR landscapes that I shot at Tamarama Beach:

Shot at Tamarama Beach

Momentary hiccup to your regular programming

Posted on February 13, 2011 by Jenneth Orantia

Moving can be disruptive to regular routines – who knew? I usually update Gadget Monkeys first thing every morning, but since the move on Friday, I’m still trying to re-establish all of my little rituals. So please be patient with me while I wrap my head around all of this change!

The Platform theme that I use for Monkeys also looks like it’s gone a little wonky. I received a notification in my WordPress Dashboard that there was an update available for it, but after hitting the Update button, it now looks like it does at the moment, with the light grey background, white text and lurid fuchsia accents on the top and bottom of the screen. Eek! I know a little bit of HTML, but probably not enough to fix the problem. I’m just going to hold tight until (hopefully) the designers issue a new update!

IKEA now on the banned list!

On the up-side, my shopping expedition for furniture and other household items went quite well yesterday. I originally planned to meet my parents at IKEA to buy a sofa there, but after checking out the over-priced ugly sofas there, we quickly hightailed it out of there and went browsing through the other furniture stores nearby and found a great chocolate brown ‘leather-look’ 3-seater + 2-seater set for $950. It’s getting delivered on Tuesday – can’t wait!

We went back to IKEA to get lots of miscellaneous things like a toothbrush holder, ironing board, etc, but quickly discovered that it’s an absolutely horrible place to go armed with a shopping list. IKEA is definitely not designed for the man with a mission! For starters, you’re essentially forced to traverse the entire store, as there’s only one entrance and one exit, each at either end of the store! And I simply found it too hard to find specific items. It’s a good store if you’re willing to wander through the aisles for hours, but not if you want to get in and get out. I’ve now put IKEA on my barred list until further notice.

My mum came through like a champ, though. She ended giving us an insane amount of things from her house that she wasn’t using, including a portable air conditioner, plates and bowls, stainless steel pots, a wok and rice cooker (also stainless steel), extensions cords and power boards, a dishwashing rack and a kettle! God bless her!

Nesting

Posted on February 12, 2011 by Jenneth Orantia

Oops – missed out on posting yesterday, so I’m going to sneakily backdate this one so I can keep up my ‘one post a day’ New Years resolution!

I’m pretty much all settled in to my new place! My workspace is nicely set up in the second bedroom (although my desk is old and manky – can’t wait to get a new one!), and the built-in wardrobe there has been a Godsend for stashing all of my gadget boxes and review items – no more piling all of the stuff on the floor!

Office setup - lots of cable clutter at the bottom though! Any suggestions?

The Foxtel got installed the same day we moved, and the Telstra technician came to set up my ADSL as well – but I was heartbroken to discover that I need to get another technician out to ‘jumper’ the connection from the ‘MBF box’ downstairs to my unit. All gobbledegook to me, but the end result is that I have to wait a few more days before TPG can send a technician around to do the final steps. Boo, hiss! I suppose I can wait a few more days, given I’ve been a year on 3G already! My Optus 3G connection is nowhere near as fast here as it was at my old place; I was getting up to 700KB/s before, and now I’m lucky if I get 200KB/s!

The living room is coming along nicely, though. I’ve set up my surround sound system for the first time in ages, and all of my consoles are plugged in. Still a bit lacking on the furniture front – right now, we’re using old furniture until we buy a new lounge, coffee table, dining table, TV stand, etc. We’re going over to IKEA today to stock up all of the kitchen stuff and other bits and pieces that we’re missing, and maybe even find a lounge and dining table if we’re lucky!

Ultimate entertainment setup - just need a media server!

The end of an era

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Jenneth Orantia

Well, by ‘era’, I really mean just one year of my life – the first year of my 30s.

Today’s the big move, and in just over an hour, removalists are coming to haul my life – packed into cardboard boxes – away.

I’ll definitely miss this place. It was such a good location: fifteen minutes walk to my favourite shopping centre (Bondi Junction Westfield), also fifteen minutes walk to Bronte Beach, and a bus stop and lots of shops and restaurants right at my doorstep. I’ll miss my massive room, which is twice as large as my new bedroom, and the lovely breeze I would get through the windows in the afternoon. I’ll miss the huge balcony out the back, which I didn’t take advantage of nearly as often as I should have – although I did throw a couple of BBQs with friends.

I'll miss you, old room!

Dear balcony, I should have taken advantage of you more!

Most of all, I’ll miss my dog, Rick James. Unfortunately, the new flat doesn’t allow pets, so I have to leave him with my flatmate, who’s positively thrilled to be adopting him. I could have left him with my parents, who would’ve been happy to take him as well, but my flatmate and Rick James have bonded so much in the past year that it just makes sense to leave him with her. Plus, I’m only moving five minutes down the road, so I can – and will – visit him as often as I can, whereas my parents live an hour’s drive away – and they’ll make him stay in the backyard, as my mum is paranoid about dirt entering the house.

I'll miss you, Rick James!!!

But there are things that I’m looking forward to with the new place, as well. I’m moving in with my partner, which in itself is a big perk. While our bedroom is smaller than my old room, there’s a second bedroom that I’ll be using as my office – significant, as it’s the first time I’ll have a separate room for my work area. That should really help with reinforcing some work/life balance! The place has a lock-up garage and a storeroom – again, a first time for me, so for once my poor car won’t be roughing it in a street parking space! There’s a lot of storage areas for me to stash my million and one gadgets (the ones I own, and the ones I get sent in for review), there’s a separate laundry room (another first!), large bathroom with tub, good-sized lounge room and kitchen and wrap-around balcony.

As I mentioned in a previous post, one of the things I’m looking forward to most is having a broadband Internet connection, which is going to be installed today as well. We’re also getting our Foxtel HD hooked up today. One thing I won’t miss from my old place is living on top of a chicken shop with exactly the same street number as me! Incredibly annoying, especially as I get couriers coming all the time to deliver things and pick up old review items and they can never find the place!

The next big step is getting all the extra furniture we need! Mainly a sofa, which my parents have kindly volunteered to buy, and whatever pots, dishes and cutlery we need. I’d love to go all out and buy everything new, but with money in short supply, I’m going to have to go easy on that and acquire only the essentials for now!

So, this is the last time I’ll be updating my blog – or writing anything – from this location. As soon as I hit Send, I’ll be packing up my iMac and reassembling it at my new house!

10 ways I’ll be making the most of new unlimited Internet connection

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Jenneth Orantia

I don’t think it’s possible to over-state how much I’m looking forward to moving house on Friday. Part of it is the whole ‘new start’ aspect, even though moving is always a massive PITA. I’ve only been living at my current location for just over a year, and yet I’ve somehow managed to accumulate an alarming amount of “stuff”. I wouldn’t quite call myself a hoarder in that regard, but I tend to throw things out in batches after a big cleaning spree rather than as and when I should.

Anyhoo, the big move is in a couple of days, and I’m especially looking forward to it because I’ll finally, finally have a broadband Internet connection again! I’ve been limping along on a 3G connection through my smartphone the whole time I’ve been living here, as my unit doesn’t have a phone line and I was refused a cable connection by the Optus nazis because my unit is above a shop and on a busy street. Wah! My new place, however, has a phone line, and I’ve conveniently timed it so that the Telstra technician comes out on the same day that I move so they can hook my phone line up to the nearest ADSL exchange. Huzzah!

Essentially, I feel as if I’ve been dieting all year, and now I’m ready to storm the buffet and stuff my face with cake. Internet cake, unlimited, all-I-can-eat, speedy Internet cake! I opted for TPG‘s unlimited plan, which costs $59.99 a month including line rental. I’ve already made a list of all of the ways I’m going to take advantage of my new unlimited broadband connection:

(1) Download movies in Full HD, and then delete them if I don’t want to keep them. Ah, the decadence! I anticipate a lot of new external hard drives in the future to house all of the movies I’ll be downloading!

(2) Stream TV shows and movies over Netflix. I’ve had a Netflix subscription ever since I got my iPad last year, but I hardly ever use it. Of course, this will change with my new Internet connection, and I’ll either be hooking my iPad up to the TV or streaming Netflix through a laptop over a VPN (as it’s technically not available in Australia)

(3) Watch all of the catch-up TV on the channel 7, 9, 10, ABC and SBS websites. Again, this will have to be through a laptop connected to the TV. I’m not all that big on watching free-to-air – I usually download all of the TV shows that I want to watch. But every now and then there’s something good, and it’s a nice option to have just so I can keep up with popular culture shows like The Biggest Loser and Australian Idol

(4) Start using Skype more. I have a Skype-in number that I use as my ‘landline’, but since I haven’t had an always-on Internet connection, it hasn’t seen much use. That will definitely change, and I may even get a separate Skype handset or headset just for making calls. I’ve also got a couple of friends overseas that I really don’t talk to enough, and I’m going to make more of an active effort to make both audio and video calls over Skype!

(5) Stream Internet radio stations around the clock. I was given a Pure Sensia last year by their lovely public relations manager, and I use it all the time for listening to digital radio stations, but I’m barely scratching the surface of its capabilities as I don’t have it connected to the Internet. With my new always-on connection, I’ll be able to stream Internet radio stations, stream music from my iMac (which technically I could have done without an always-on Internet connection, but I haven’t had a wireless network set up as I didn’t need one), and use it for viewing the weather, Facebook and Twitter streams, RSS feeds and more.

(6) Start gaming again on Xbox Live. My partner will probably take advantage of this capability more than me, but it’s nice to have the option, and I’m looking forward to trying the online features for The Sims 3 and Fallout New Vegas.

(7) Rent movies through the various online services like Xbox 360, iTunes, etc. This is something that I definitely couldn’t do with a 3G connection – just too wasteful for my meagre download limits! Now, I’ll actually be able to give this a go when there’s nothing to watch on TV! I may even get an Apple TV box for this very purpose, and also so I can finally try using AirPlay on my iPad.

(8) Consider replacing Foxtel IQ subscription with Foxtel on Xbox 360. My partner has a Foxtel subscription that he’s going to be transferring over to the new place, but it’s not cheap – over $100 for the full package. The attraction with the latter service (which is all streamed over the Internet) is that it’s much cheaper than the full service. Even if we add on the extra movie and sports packages, it’s still only $59.50, plus we can cancel the service whenever we want to, which isn’t the case with Foxtel. We’re still thinking about it. If Foxtel ask us to renew the contract as a condition of transferring it over to the new house, then I’ll think twice, but if we can sign up on a month-by-month basis, then it’ll be worthwhile just to try it out and see whether we use it enough (considering all of the other entertainment options we’ll have on tap!). My partner is big into sports, and he’ll miss out on many of the sports channels by signing up to the Xbox 360 service, plus it doesn’t have any PVR recording capabilities for saving shows to watch later.

(9) Centralise all of the household’s multimedia on a media server, and then enable the option to stream that content to me and my partner’s smartphones. I’m not sure how I’m going to setup the latter, but there are a few commercial solutions available like Homepipe. I have a Cisco Media Hub that I’m going to be using as the server, and I believe it has an option for streaming content to smartphones.

(10) Make more video calls! I referred to doing this over Skype at number (4), but since I’m having a baby in three months (!!!), I think I’m going to be doing this a lot more once the baby is born for calling daddy while he’s at work, calling the grandparents so they can see the little bubba, and calling overseas friends so they can see the baby too. I’ll probably be using Skype as my main service, although I’ll give Face Time and maybe Tango a go as well. My partner has a jailbroken iPhone, so it’s simply a case of installing one of the apps that lets you trick the iPhone into thinking it’s connected over Wi-Fi so he can receive Face Time calls over 3G.

So that’s it! I’m going to be even more ‘switched on’ than ever, which is just the way I like it.

What I’m doing right now: January 2010

Posted on January 27, 2011 by Jenneth Orantia

This month’s literary obsession is Dennis Lehane. He wrote the books Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone and Shutter Island, which you may know better by the adapted films). I’m currently going through his Patrick Kenzie series of books. Fabulous writing, really one of those ‘can’t-put-it-down’ styles of writing!
As for TV shows, I’ve finally, finally started on Dexter! My brother got me series 1 for my birthday last month, and now I’m on the last episode of season 4 and just about to start downloading season 5. I know – how on earth do I manage to get any work done!
I’ve just gotten a new writing gig: doing a weekly smartphones column for the PC and Tech Authority website! Getting paid to write about things you’re passionate about – does it really get any better than that?
Favourite gadget of the month: I haven’t used it that much, but I’m really liking my new Flip Ultra HD! It’s small enough to bring with me everywhere, and it’s so simple to start recording video.
Favourite photo of the month: it would have to be of the rear end of a stack of scaffolding that I spotted around the corner of my house. Nice and abstract

Who knew scaffolding could look so sexy?

Happy Australia Day!

Posted on January 26, 2011 by Jenneth Orantia

The Aussie flag. Proud!

Today is the nation’s special day, where we remember what it means to live in the lucky country! And what’s not to love? Great people, gorgeous weather, a fantastic welfare and medical system, and so many opportunities to better oneself and live a wonderful life.

My parents migrated to Australia from the Philippines when I was only two years old, after saving for many years to be able to afford the move. While I was too young at the time to really appreciate the significance of this, I’ve seen what lives are like in developing countries, and I realise how unbelievably lucky I am that my parents were industrious and hard-working enough to bring us to a western country!

So today, I’m going to salute Australia in the best way I know how: go down to the beach for a spot of snorkeling (how lucky am I to live within walking distance to the beach!), then follow it up with an authentic Aussie BBQ. You beauty!

Gadget Monkeys

Living the digital lifestyle … and loving every second!

Category Archives: Personal