Welcome to Sin City, my home away from home for the next week.
The view from our hotel room in Vegas.
Amazon released an update for the Kindle Fire today aimed at fixing some of the bugs and interface frustrations people were complaining about. The update brings the Fire’s software to version 6.2.1 and so far does seem to be a noticeable improvement. Touch responses are far more accurate, and everything feels snappier in general.
If your device doesn’t automatically prompt you to update, you can do it manually by downloading the file from Amazon. Their instructions state that you need to download the file to your computer, and then plug your Kindle in to copy it over, but this isn’t necessary. All you need is a file manager such as EStrongs File Explorer. Once you click download on Amazon’s page for the software update, the file will be downloaded to your device.
You may have noticed when you came to this page that the site is loading a lot faster than it has in recent weeks. I’ve moved to a new server – one that’s all mine! Ok, so I don’t own the actual hardware, but I purchased a virtual server that gives me dedicated resources that I don’t have to share with anyone else. The result, combined with better software that takes advantage of the new server’s abilities, is a much faster and more reliable site.
That said, as I tweak things to work perfectly, there may be a glitch here and there. If you encounter something weird, please let me know so I can resolve it.
Mi casa e su casa, so feel free to whip around here at new-found breakneck speeds 
For those who are curious, the site is now running on a Media Temple (ve) 512mb. I’ve been a huge fan of Media Temple since I switched to their (gs) service earlier this year, and wanted to stick with them as I made my upgrade.
This year for Christmas and New Year’s the whole family is going to Las Vegas. My parents have been once before, but for the rest of us it will be the first time.
In addition to the normal Vegas Strip activities we’ll be checking out things outside the city. I plan to post pictures and updates while we’re out there.
If you have any tips on things we shouldn’t miss, please leave a comment.
For many months I’ve been using a Yubikey as a staple of my cyber security plan. It makes me exponentially more secure and at the same time makes it easier for me to stay secure. The only part of it that isn’t drop-dead simple is the configuration, though even that isn’t very difficult. I’m going to show you step by step how to configure your Yubikey to get the most out of it and set yourself up for success.
After the bulb sockets in my car’s corner lights and the turn signal socket in one of my tail lights went bad, I decided it was time to replace a number of the exterior lights on her. I replaced everything except the headlights, which are the OEM units from the factory (I really like the OEM HIDs, so I see no need to swap them out).
As of yesterday, I have a new callsign: W3RTX. My original callsign, KB3MMY, is no longer in use. You’ll notice that all amateur radio content on this site now falls under W3RTX.
Why the change? Perhaps the biggest reason was that I just wanted a vanity callsign. It’s goofy, I know, but I thought it would be cool to pick my own callsign. I also wanted one that wouldn’t indicate when I got licensed, and that I’m relatively new to ham radio.
When it came time to decide what I wanted my new call to be, I had a few criteria already figured out. First, I wanted to keep the ’3′ area since that’s where I live. I also wanted a ‘W’ prefix call, because I just like the way it sounds on the radio, both normally and phonetically. I also wanted a call whose letters don’t sound like any other letters. For example, my old call had the letter ‘M’ in it twice. The letter M can easily be mistaken for the letter N when saying it over the radio, which could cause confusion. I wanted to get as close as I could to a call with letters that sound totally unique.
I made a list of ones I liked that fit my criteria, and settled on W3RTX because in addition to it meeting all the requirements, also kind of looks like ‘RX’ and ‘TX’ (receive and transmit) are right in it, which made it extra cool for radio use.
So there you have it, the story behind my new callsign. The letters have no meaning beyond themselves, I just like the way it looks and sounds. If you hear it on the air, give me a shout!
My office ordered a Kindle Fire for me to use, and it just arrived! Being an Amazon product, it arrived in what they call “frustration-free packaging” with which I would agree. All I had to do was pull a rip tab to open the box, and there was my Kindle.
Below the device itself was the charging cable, and inside the lid was a small card introducing the user to the Kindle Fire. No other material or paperwork.
The device itself is similar in form factor to the Blackberry Playbook, but according to a tear down the hardware is actually quite different. The body is shiny black plastic, and the front is just the screen with no buttons or other adornments.
The back is black soft touch, with the Kindle logo stamped into it and the Amazon logo printed below.
The only buttons or connectors on the device are along the bottom edge: the power button, a Micro USB port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. That’s it.
Powering it on, the device boots to a screen asking you to choose an avialable wireless network.
After that, it asks for your time zone.
The device comes pre-programmed for your Amazon account, so you don’t have to enter any account information. I actually don’t like that as it’s a security risk (what if it gets delivered to the wrong address by mistake?), but that’s how they do it. It automatically registers itself with your account, and then checks for software updates. There were updates available when I first powered mine on, so it took a little time to download and install those.
You then swipe to unlock (the background of the unlock screen changes periodically to a random pre-designated image).
The software then walks you through a few screens of familiarization.
That’s it! The Kindle Fire is ready to go. It comes preloaded with a few apps and books, such as Facebook, Amazon, and the Kindle Fire manual.
The manual is a Kindle book, and gives you all the information you need about the Kindle Fire.
One thing I noticed right off the bat is that Amazon has FINALLY added better font controls for Kindle books.
I set mine to a slightly larger sans serif font.
That’s pretty much as far as I’ve gotten. After I’ve used it for a few days I’ll write up a review, but so far I’m really enjoying it!
Just a quick post to note that at the exact moment this post is published it’s 11:11am on November 11, 2011. In other words, 11-11-11-11-11.
Carry on.