Tim Banks » Personal

Intel should stick to processors

Tim Banks — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 04:44:15 +0000

I was taking some old clothes up to the local Goodwill to donate them and decided to browse around while I was there. I found myself in the back of the store where they keep all the electronics, secretly hoping to find a good deal on something. As I was skimming the less than desirable selection, something caught my eye. At first I thought it was one of the original PS3 controllers (see below), but after taking a closer look I actually started laughing out loud. It is a wireless controller from Intel that is a god awful shape. The controller is apparently part of a series of wireless devices from Intel as you can see on front of the box.

I am not sure Intel is ready for the game peripheral market just yet.

ESPN GameDay in Columbia, MO

Tim Banks — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 17:10:31 +0000

Since I am a big football fan and a big fan of the Missouri Tigers I was so excited to hear that ESPN’s College GameDay would be headed to Columbia, MO for the first time ever. With OU and Mizzou holding #1 and #11 ranking in the BCS poll, this game is huge for Missouri. Not to mention it is Homecoming for Mizzou. Below you will find some pics of the stage on Friday night before the GameDay broadcast along with a video where Lee Corso fakes the crowd out by putting on a Missouri Tigers helmet and then switching it with the OU mascot.

The crowd was huge and very loud. After the live broadcast Chris Fowler and the other hosts turned around and mentioned that we were an “awesome, awesome crowd”. When I was listening on the radio I could barely hear the announcers talking over the crowd in the background. I hope the enthusiasm continues into the stadium tonight.

Thoughts on the IE9 Beta Q/A with Reddit

Tim Banks — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 18:28:12 +0000

When the Internet Explorer 9 Beta was nearing release, Microsoft approached Reddit to get feedback from the community regarding the browser. Users of Reddit were able to ask questions that would eventually get answered by the IE development team themselves. They were hoping that if actual users/developers nit picked the beta, they might actually make a decent product.

It has now been a few weeks since the beta came out and Microsoft has answered some of the initial questions. After reading through some of the answers, I have a feeling IE9 is not what I was hoping it would be.

“We believe users are in the best position to make decisions about what software they want to run.”

One reason IE6 stuck around so long is that Microsoft didn’t force users to upgrade to the newer version. Most users do not understand why they need to upgrade or even know how. When there are security reasons involved, there needs to be some sort of automatic update. Just take a look at what other browsers are doing. Why can’t Microsoft follow that pattern?

“We started by building a tool to look at the top 7000 sites and what web APIs they used. In IE9, we set out to support the standards that showed up among those sites”

“we measure ourselves not just on whether or not we have implemented a standard, but whether we can enable developers to write the same markup”

I couldn’t care less what the top 7000 sites are doing. There are standards for a reason and they should be supported regardless if the top 7000 sites are using them or not. How do we know the top 7000 sites reflect what the rest of the web is doing. If standards still aren’t supported there will still be IE only sites that are built and will still only look good in IE9. Why doesn’t Microsoft just support the standards like other browsers and not worry about who is using what.

“we’ve integrated the sites seamlessly into the Windows7; so that your sites become more like native applications and work just like you’d expect”

Unless there is a standard for integrating websites into an operating system, I can see this leading to more IE9 only sites. I can see the advantages of having websites work closer with the OS, but not if it is OS specific. Does Apple have features that only work in OS X?

I haven’t had a chance to read through every single answer, but reading through the first few didn’t sit well with me. I am not a Microsoft. I actually want Microsoft to succeed with IE9. Developers need Microsoft to succeed IE9. So please Microsoft, listen to the community instead of your marketing team when choosing what goes into IE9.

First post from WordPress on the iPhone

Tim Banks — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 21:33:29 +0000

I have had the WordPress app on my iPhone for months and never actually opened it up. I decided that today would actually be a good day to check it out since I am planning on making a post about the new HDR photo feature in iOS 4.1.

I have found the app to be a little sluggish when changing views and saving information. I would rather it show some sort of message instead of just hanging.

Below I am just testing out the ability to and images and such.

Testing the iOS 4.1 HD video upload to YouTube

Tim Banks — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 20:12:25 +0000

Today Apple released iOS 4.1 for the iPhone 4, 3GS, and 3G. One of the noted features was HD video upload to YouTube. I have uploaded a couple videos to YouTube in the past and the quality was far from desired. After the installation I took a quick 20 second video of the view from my porch outside. I selected the option to upload to YouTube and let the phone go to work.

The upload process was actually pretty quick. The video is was 6.8 Mb and it took about a minute or 2 to upload. As soon as it was uploaded it was viewable online which was pretty nice. Below you will find the video that I uploaded.

The first thing I noticed was that the 720p option was not available to select. The phone can apparently support up to 720p recording so I am confused as to why it didn’t upload in 720p. Other than that the video turned out pretty good. I think this might be a nice feature to actually use in the future.

UPDATE: It looks like the 720p option is now available. It must take a little extra time for some processing to happen on the server. This is exactly what I was looking for when Apple first announced the ability to upload straight to YouTube.

Ridiculous RAM Requirement when signing up for DSL Service

Tim Banks — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:58:00 +0000

I was recently trying to find the best price for internet service in my area and came across a question asking me how much RAM my computer has. I was surprised by the options in the dropdown.

32MB, really?

Luckily I had at least the minimum requirements.

Changing the battery in my 2004 Infiniti G35 6MT

Tim Banks — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 01:48:00 +0000

I recently replaced my battery in my 2004 Infiniti G35 6MT and found the lack of instructions annoying so I am posting the steps I took to replace the battery. I hope this helps others that either don’t live next to an Infiniti dealer or just want to do it themselves (I fall into both categories). Any image can be clicked on the get a larger version.

Step 1

Remove the rubber lining around the battery cover that is closest to the windshield

Remove the rubber lining from the edge of the cover

Step 2

Remove the pins from the battery cover using a flathead screw driver. These should pop out rather easily. There should be 5 that you have to remove.

The 5 holes where there are pins to remove

Use a flathead screwdriver to remove the pins

Step 3

Remove the battery terminals from the battery using either a wrench or a socket. The negative cord should be easy to move out of the way, but the positive cord was a little tougher since it had some extra hardware on it.

The negative terminal has been removed and moved to the side

Preparing to remove the positive terminal

Step 4

Unplug the two plugs from the bottom of the positive cord in order to maneuver it out of the way a little better. Using a flatehead screwdriver push in on the little bracket that is holding each plug in place.

Push the clip in to remove the plug

The first plug has been removed

Both plugs have been removed and the main terminal is moved to the side

Step 5

Unbolt the crossbar holding the battery in place. I only unbolted the end that is clearly visible and then unhooked the other end by twisting it around until it came unhooked.

Unbolt the crossbar holding the battery in place

Step 6

Remove the battery. This can be tricky since there is very little clearance. You may need to bend the plastic covering a little in order to have enough room to get it out.

Very little clearance to move the battery out

Now that you have the battery out, you should be able to reverse the steps to put everything back together. Back in step 1 when you are replacing the pins, make sure to slide the pin up a little before pressing it into the hole. The image below should help out.

Keep the "disc" of the pin around the middle when you insert it into the hole

After I got everything hooked back up I fired up the car and I was back on the road.