CJ Julius

  • Building a 1975 Altair 8800 Taught Me Something Important

    Okay but why? I have worked with computers since I was old enough to remember. The first computer I had in my room was a Commodore 64/128 (you held down the C= key on boot to switch). It was an elderly machine by the time I got it in the 1990s, but it started me…

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  • How I Turned an Old Computer Into a Mobile Digital Vault

    For a couple of years I’ve had an older HP AMD64 sitting around that the motherboard went out on, and I’ve been looking for a use for the parts. More specifically, I’ve been looking for a way to use the 500GB SATA HD that’s inside. It seemed like an awful lot of space to waste.…

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  • Google Plans to Take Over the U.S. (and that’s a good thing)

    As I’ve pointed out before, when you list the industries that consumers like least usually the cable companies make the top three. Sometimes they’re beaten out by airlines or gaming companies (EA), but the common wisdom is true. People hate their cable companies in mass, and for very good reasons. As much as I’d like…

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  • Sherpa, A New Challenger to Siri

    I’ve used Siri a bit, and not to say that it isn’t an impressive piece of software, but it didn’t really wow me like I thought it would. It (she?) had the problem of misinterpreting what I said, or in some cases being very confused as to the nature of my request. I speak in…

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  • Windows 8: I’ll Admit It; I Like It.

    With the headlines about Windows 8 Killing PC sales, and the laundry-list of complaints from tech websites about problems with the OS, you’d think that Windows 8 was the worst thing since, well… Vista. But it’s not. I promise you it isn’t. It’s old-hat by now. Microsoft releases a new operating system, tech people throw…

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  • Data Caps for Home Internet Are a Terrible, No-Good, Very Bad Idea

    I had been lucky enough to get in on AT&T’s unlimited bandwidth for the iPhone before they decided that they could make a boatload more money if they charged based on caps. You’re probably familiar with these caps if you have a smartphone of any kind. They’re a bank of data that you can use…

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  • Didn’t do the reading? With Digital Textbooks, Your Professor Can Prove It

    I’m of two minds about the creation of digital textbooks. On the one hand, they are cheaper to produce and therefor cheaper for the student. Also, they have a lot of extra capabilities, such as the ability to copy/paste or reference easily for papers and assignments. But on the darker side, they do give the…

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  • Bitcoins Aren’t New, But They Sure Are Interesting

    Despite the fact that they’ve seemed to come out of nowhere, bitcoins are an idea that have been around for a bit. I remember hearing about them some time ago, but only recently have I seen them gain any real popularity. Now that they’re trading at over $200 a coin, it’s not hard to see…

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  • My Life After Google Reader

    I’ve used Google Reader for quite a while, probably five years or so. I wasn’t an early adopter, but the service had definitely become the cornerstone of how I interact with news from around the internet. It allowed me to take all of the different websites that I enjoyed and pull them into one feed,…

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  • How 3D Printing Actually Works

    3D Printing, while a relatively new technology, does have a lot of exciting applications. These first few steps into designing relatively simple things are neat in and of themselves. I can’t wait until 3D Printing matures. The possibilities are endless. The video is a little disappointing though. It doesn’t really add much to the article,…

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