It's been a little bit since I posted about my becoming a fanboy. My friend Jim hit the nail right on the head in his comments, both that I got an iPod Nano and a watch band so now I have an iWatch! Also his comment on FireCore's products I totally agree with. I have since seen a new iPad and a new AppleTV hit the market and I don't have a desire to upgrade either. My iPad 2 and my AppleTV 2 do just fine for me and on 5.0.1 they are both untethered jailbroken just like my iPhone and iPod Touch. The improvements made are not enough to convince me to trade-up. If I had been using an AppleTV 1 or an iPad 1, that may be another story. So unlike some people I know, I am not a "rabid" fanboy, I can stand not owning the latest generation of a given iDevice. So for now iWill iWatch my iPod Nano on my wrist. I'm waiting to upgrade to 5.1 until the untethered A4/A5 jailbreaks are released as well. As good as everything works, I have to say, iHappy! :)

For well over a year now I have been acquiring Apple iDevice products. Everything from iPod to iPad to iPhone to AppleTV. Prior to this, I didn't think much of the products other than they seemed to be a simplistic product line geared toward users who I considered to be less than "power users". After owning and using these products though, and through experiences with its jailbreaking community, I realize that the potential behind the devices is only limited by Apple. If Apple were to unleash the true capability of them as the jailbreakers have, the market for the power user would open up more. The market that appeals to the Android owners. I intend on continuing to jailbreak the devices using tools provided by the community and my opinion of the devices has taken me from a fledgling fanboy to a full-blown one. I'm going to make a next logical purchase soon and will update here once that happens. As an appetizer for you, I have an iPod Touch which is primarily a music device, an iPad which is primarily a tablet computing device, an iPhone which is primarily a communication device, and an AppleTV which is primarily a video device. The next purchase will be primarily something as well but will be different from the others. The TIME will be soon, so keep WATCH on this blog.

I've always liked Apple since I was a kid in school and got to use Apple ][ computers. Apple was always trying to appeal to us with easy and fun user interfaces. They have also always come at a premium, unless of course you were a school, in which case you usually got a nice discount. After using Apple computers in elementary and more modern ones in High School, I switched gears a little in college and found out about PCs. Computers being used in the business world. I've pretty much continued down its path for many years and yet always had a fondness for what ideas were coming out of Cupertino. A few years back, I got really interested in emulating or running natively, the Apple OS on my PCs and since then I have kept a closer eye on Apple. Not too long ago, I picked up a 3rd gen iPod Touch and realized just how good Apple was doing with that premium hardware these days. The chrome casing, glass touch screen, it screamed quality and style and was powerful. It instantly replaced my Zune. I liked it so much that I started thinking maybe a bigger version of it would be that much nicer. In between there I started testing a netbook we now come to call the forerunner to the Chromebooks, the Cr-48. it too felt solid and clean but when I started using my iPad 2, the Cr-48 took a back seat. I still use it off-and-on but not like I had been. Apple struck another blow. Keep in mind, I'm a network engineer and computer enthusiast so I love hacking electronics. I couldn't wait to jailbreak the iPod, which I did and have done since with each software upgrade, but I also jailbroke my iPad 2 and my most recent Apple invader, the Apple TV 2 as soon as I was able to. Today, 2 days after the Apple TV 2 arrived, I convinced Jodi to get us both iPhone 3GS cell phones when we renewed our AT&T contract. Apple is truly invading our home. As much as I don't want a data plan, I want the elegance and quality, as well as the user interface I enjoy in my personal cell phone. With some coaxing, Jodi agreed (she needed an add-on physical keyboard). So soon, Jarvis, PADD, and Apple-TV (thinking of renaming it "View-Screen") will be joined by 2 new iDevices which will also get creative names and will further strengthen Apple's foothold on this PC guy's electronic territory. For once, I welcome an invasion.

I grew up watching cartoons on TV including the Justice League. I always thought each super hero brought their own "cool" powers to the group and Green Lantern was no exception. He could make anything he could think of appear to help him battle evil. I was happy to see this hero was being brought to the big screen in a live action movie and knew I wanted to see it when Ryan Reynolds was cast as Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern (I like him in other movies and knew he'd make a great Green Lantern). Last night I went to see the new movie and here's my review...(spoiler alert)

Having never read the comic books, I did some background work by getting a synopsis of the birth of the Green Lantern and the corps from a mini-book that was included in the box with a toy light up green lantern ring (yes, I AM that geeky) which is a couple sizes too small for me it turns out. I had seen the trailers for the new movie and was excited to go see it. I have heard some mixed reviews as the movie made it's official "green lantern carpet" premier Wednesday but decided I would go see it and make my own decision. The movie does a great job covering the background of how the Green Lantern Corps came into being and what it represents, an intergalactic police force of a sort. We meet Hal Jordan and find out he's a guy who lives recklessly and has the hots for the boss's daughter. Fortunately, she is into him too. There are some good "Dog fighting" scenes in the beginning where we get to see what Hal does well at, flying. Hal almost gets himself killed and manages to destroy a brand new fighter plane in the process, which at first the boss isn't too thrilled about. Some co-workers end up losing their job over the incident and come back to haunt Hal a little later on. Unbeknownst to Hal, one of the Corps finest warriors Abin Sur has been mortally wounded by the evil Parallax and has crash landed on Earth. Abin Sur tells his ring to seek out and choose well a replacement for him as he is near death. The ring's emerald energy finds Hal and whisks him away to meet with Abin Sur. When they do, Hal wants to save Abin Sur's life but Abin Sur stops him and tries to tell him what he can in his last breaths about what he is getting himself into thanks to the ring's choice. Hal gets some of it, enough to know he needs the lantern that's still back in Abin Sur's spaceship. Hal's friend picks him up and they go back to Hal's place. There's a funny scene where Hal is trying to figure out how to make the ring/lantern work. Abin Sur said to say the oath when recharging the ring but Hal has no idea what that oath is, he starts saying all kinds of funny oaths and finally the lantern decides to help him out a bit, zaps Hal and Hal starts saying "In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight, let those who worship evil's might, beware my power, green lantern's light" and then realizes that is what he's supposed to say. He goes off to Oa a couple times after that and learns what the Corps is all about and even gets some boot camp training with a couple other lanterns including Sinestro. Hal learns about what it takes to be good at being a lantern and that Sinestro doesn't think he can cut it. Hal thinks he's right and heads back to Earth. It's only after needing to use his power to save Carol Ferris (the boss's daughter) and a Senator's life does he realize he may be cut out after all. He knows there is an evil causing problems on Earth and goes to the Corps for help. They don't seem to buy it that he's cut out for this nor that Earth is worth their time. They are more concerned with preparing for Parallax's eventual attack of Oa. Hal heads back to fight Parallax himself. He does battle with Parallax which is quite epic and lures Parallax toward a star knowing that the bigger you are, the easier gravity like that will draw you in and crush you. His plan works and Hal is finally accpted by the Corps. On a side note, Sinestro pleads with the guardians to use yellow energy (fear) against Parallax and is convincing enough to get the guardians to make a yellow power ring which at the end, if you stay long enough, you get to see him put it on and feel the power of fear... a good jumping off point for Green Lantern II. All in all, I would say this was a good, funny, action packed film with some good acting and manages to squeeze a lot of story-line into a single film. I think this is a great start to a string of sequels and would go see it again. A solid 4.5/5 stars.

I've had and enjoyed my Cr-48 "Chromebook" now for a few months and there's still one nagging problem with it. You can't stream Netflix on it! Google and Netflix have been working on this however at the time of this blog entry, I am still met with the message shown here that it's still not ready. This is something that should be remedied before the first Chromebooks go on sale officially or else caveat emptor.

After sleeping on it, I decided to bite the bullet and set up hosting for www.theussorion.com as a test for the other 2 domains including this one. I began uploading files to the new hosting and found out that if it's too good to be true, it probably is. There are ads at the top of every page! I'm contacting godaddy about it now since saying something is included with domain registration to me means the normal product you would pay extra for is being included however I doubt anyone who pays for economy hosting has ads at the top of their pages... stay tuned.

I've host hopped quite a bit in my time online. That is, I've had several websites, a few domains and a multitude of web host providers from fly-by-night places to full on top tier web hosts to Google hosting, the list goes on and on. One thing I haven't really done is host with my Domain Registrar because I usually look for free hosting and theirs usually is extra. I found something interesting today, my registrar includes free economy hosting with my domain registration! I don't know how long ago this started but it has me seriously thinking about moving the 3 domains I have over to them. They have virtual windows and linux servers available and I like the idea of having a one-stop-shop for domain and web hosting. I still prefer Google hosted mail etc. to any other but the web hosting I think I could accept running on the domain registrar's servers. Right now, one of the domains has its web hosted with my uncle on his plan so I would probably run it past him before moving it and I would probably try to update the forum software I'm using there at the same time I move the site. On the flip side, my own domain has had web hosted with Weebly lately and I like what they have done for me for free. I'm a bit torn though because I get free web hosting with the domain registrar and I feel like I'm wasting that. What to do, what to do...

So I thought I could hold out but something just kept eating at me to try flashing the BIOS and installing other OSes. Finally I gave in a couple weeks ago and took the plunge. It actually wasn't too bad. I made sure to learn by others mistakes and backed up my bios ROM image first and then flashed the custom bios to my Cr-48 thanks to Hexxeh's Luigi utility. At first I kept Chrome OS running on the Cr-48 and ran OSX, Ubuntu, and even Windows 7 from a thumb drive. After a bit of playing with that I decided to really delve in and wipe the SSD and install the OSes native on the SSD. I started with Ubuntu, an easy choice as the usb version was the netbook one and had a built in installer. That worked amazingly well on the Cr-48. The wifi worked great, the OS itself was light weight enough that it didn't bog down. The 2G of RAM actually made Ubuntu do very well for me, but it was time to move on. Next I tried OSX. I have a thumb drive I've used on a different laptop and that worked OK, it really wasn't optimized for the Cr-48 and the wifi didn't work out of the box. I instead tried iPortable which is a customized OSX on a thumb drive. That one had the wireless working no problem so I installed that for a day or so. I tried Windows 7 on a thumb drive but it was excruciatingly slow, so installing it on the SSD was awesome by comparison. That said, everything worked as well if not better than iPortable OSX or Ubuntu. Out of all 3, the 3G I was unable to make work. I tried installing drivers etc. but never really got anywhere. Finally yesterday, I popped in the Ubuntu USB drive and booted up and ran luigi again and reverted back to the stock bios file I had originally saved. Popped in the recovery thumb drive of Chrome OS and here I am, back on Chrome OS. One of the things I did in all this was defeat the bios protection with a piece of electrical tape so I am free to flash back to the custom bios whenever I wish. I have a feeling I will stay with Chrome OS for a while now though. I actually missed it even though on the other OSes I was able to install Google Chrome, it just wasn't the same. I'm much more interested in seeing what Google does with this OS, I alerady know how they are doing on the other OSes. I also missed the ability to use the search button to open new tabs and the functionality of the top row of buttons was much more generic in other OSes. Perhaps someone will write a windows or OSX or linux program to remap the keys for the Cr-48 in them so that I can keep the same functionality. I think at some point in the future, I may go back to Windows 7 on the Cr-48 as it seemed to be the most usable of all of the alternative OSes. Other than messing around, I don't see that happening on a pernanent basis until after Google is satisfied with all this testing of their own OS. Thanks again Google for a nice laptop with a potentially great OS.

So after playing around with the Cr-48 for the better part of a month, I'm really enjoying it. I finally bit the bullet and flipped that "Dev" switch by the battery and so far I think it's making me like the Cr-48 better. I'm a geek so I like to have a good CLI at my disposal and the Dev mode makes that possible. I can now get root access basically and do all kinds of fun stuff. I have decided though that I will use some restraint and not flash my BIOS or install other OSes... yet. When Google is done with the pilot program, I plan on flashing the BIOS with Hexxeh's magical script Luigi (http://hexxeh.net/?p=328117655) and then trying out everything from Ubuntu to Windows 7 to OSX on it. Of course, I will document my experiences here so you know how all that goes but not until I have fulfilled my obligations to Google. Ultimately, I think I will come back to ChromeOS though as I really enjoy the "living in the cloud" idea with this. It really does pull things back in when you start over on it, that's very nice. It's also nice to know that if I go to any other PC and log into Chrome with my gmail account, all my stuff will follow me there as well. So for now at least, I will use restraint.