CyanogenMod breathed a whole new life into my 2 year old Nexus one. It was snappier, appeared to get battery life and had a whole host of awesome new features. The only reason I finally upgraded to a newer phone was because the power button broke (again!) and the headphone jack wore out. If you're sitting on an older Android device, consider trying CM. It really turns your phone into a geeksphone.

AFRAID NOT! Touchdown Confirmed!!

As many as it takes until we know what happens to this awesome nuclear powered rover with frikin lasers on another frikin planet!

I've tried the freezer trick to help what sounded like an ailing bearing , but with limited success. No amount of freezing seemed to help. To make things worse, when I took the drive out of the freezer, moisture started condensing immediately on the cold PCB. I tried to place it on a sponge to help sop up the water, but I can't imagine this helped the drive at all.

I have some friends that swear by this, but I am extremely doubtful especially because of the condensation problem. I feel like this is an a apocryphal bit of "knowledge" that has been passed down from a time when drivers were larger, slower and had less precise bearings. I can imagine that on a big old drive freezing the drive *may* have helped. But then again, perhaps it's something like throwing a pinch of spilled salt over your shoulder or touching wood--something your grandma told you to do, but doesn't actually do anything.

And once again we are reminded that using the same password on every site is a terrible idea for just this reason. I know I'm guilty of recycling a generic password on sites I don't care about, but I fear that my family members are even worse. I'd say there's an 80% chance that my family recycles the same password on both social and banking sites.

It doesn't help that many password validation routines choke on spaces. Being able to use a passphrase is way easier than trying to remember some random group of characters that just happen to have a high entropy. The Correct Horse Battery Staple model is my new favorite for any site that will accept spaces. Sadly, one bank that I have done business with won't even allow a password that is more than 8 characters and only accepts letters and numbers. They try to shore this up with some bogus security questions on the following page, but I don't feel really "secure."

What other password strategies do you all use to make sure you keep reasonably secure? I eventually gave in to using KeePass to keep my less frequently but more important passwords secure.

My first job in Norway after a 6 month wait for a visa was with a brewery. I was simply excited to be working after six months of forced unemployment. I really enjoyed learning all of the processes and my coworkers were fantastic. The perks were definitely awesome too: I had an endless supply of new beers to evaluate and a sweet employee discount on packaged beer.

I worked at a fairly small brewery so I had a chance to do almost every job from brewing to packaging. Most of my responsibility was wrestling our packaging line while trying not to get any limbs amputate and cleaning. Oh the cleaning.

After about six months of the brewery, I landed a teaching gig and felt a whole lot more satisfied. It's what I actually trained to do and enjoy. The pay is slightly better, but it definitely lacks in delicious samples of adult beverages. I also can't swear as much.

Here's a nifty time-lapse from a rotten day of packaging cans: http://youtu.be/aMm31zgIDLY

Geek can be a style! Check out this amazing Nixi Tube Watch. It's awesome, geeky and pretty great to look at. It doesn't go too well with an Armani suit, and it isn't quite classy enough to flash around a funeral, but it sure would score you some points at a geeky interview.

Watching my wife play Katamari is almost as much fun as playing myself. Sometimes it makes me want to hurl, but it's fun to watch all the subtle and hilarious entities get rolled up when you don't have to focus too much on where to go next.

Are you a professional gamer, developer, or debugger? Or have you found some genius way to monazite putting a dent in a couch in a basement somewhere? If you have, can you please elaborate?

I have some fond memories of dragging my full-sized P3 Tower all over hell and creation to build a BNC network in a friend's basement. I sure am glad that I don't have that heavy sucker any more.

But as you say, my hobbies have drifted farther and farther from gaming. I'd much rather build something or create something. Though I do enjoy a few hours of BLOWIN' STUFF UP in Ratchet and Clank (probably the funniest FPS ever made). I enjoyed playing Portal 2 in single player mode, but I don't have the patience to spend hours playing on line so I can keep up with the caffeine fueled thirteen-year-olds on line.

I would much rather spend a lazy Sunday afternoon modeling and 3D printing a toy these days. I also find myself spending less and less time in front of the screen and more time reading or spending time outside as I get older. Maybe I'm making up for a mis-spent youth.

You mean oil?

No! Black Blood of the Earth

Man I love Big Trouble in Little China

Gesture based input is lousy for coding, managing systems, writing books and pretty much anything that depends on the accuracy and specificity of a keyboard. But that doesn't mean that a display like this doesn't have its uses. Rendering and manipulating objects through this sort of interface would be amazing! Also, think about how clunky and absolutely STUPID touch screens were just ten years ago. Heck, you can still find the same old crap displays at airport checkin kiosks. Now think about how a good implementation in iOS/Android devices has totally changed the world of touch interface. The inovations of Apple, Android and others have given us totally novel ways of interacting with our data. I would have never voluntarily brought one of those old touch screens into my home, but I cary one around in my pocket every day now.

This implementation might not be perfect, but it's a step in the right direction for novel forms of input. Once someone cracks an awesome 3D/Gesture interface that works well and doesn't make you feel like your stomach is going to push out through your eyes, it will quietly creep into ubiquity just like the (good) touch screens today.

The Norwegian government had to recalculate my taxes and my wife's taxes no less than three times. They have the power to deposit money and withdraw it from my bank account. I tried to work out their calculations, but not being a native Norwegian speaker, I struggled to understand how they were doing things. I just have to trust that things are correct.

The Norwegian government always seems to do what they say they will, they just do it in their own time and usually with six or eight tries to do it right...