Automated Post to Facebook.

Posted on by pfaustino
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So I found an app today called ifttt.com which stands for If This Then That. It’s a simple but very useful thing. Rather than explain what it does, I’ll give some examples.

If “I post on my wordpress site and add a ‘facebook’ tag” the ifttt will also post a link to that wordpress article on my facebook status.

Let’s see if it works.

Review: Skytex Skypad Alpha 2

Posted on by pfaustino
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I recently got a Groupon.com coupon for a Skytex Skypad Alpha 2, a 7 inch android running Gingerbread. A quick look at the offer and some Amazon.com research made me decide to buy it.

It was on sale for $125+$5 shipping which was much less than Amazon’s lowest price of $159. Having researched other androids that were going for twice the price, I decided to purchase it because of the following features.

Spykad Alpha 2 Pros (pre-purchase)

1. micro HDMI output (in lieu of  bluetooth)

2. up to 32GB microSD card expansion

3.  256MB system storage, 5Gb built in storage

4. Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade coming soon (the new android OS)

5. Prett good Amazon reviews (great value)

6. Supposedly rooted

7. Supposedly works with my choice of apps (Youtube, Netflix, Flash 11)

Skypad Alpha 2 Cons (pre-purchase)

1. only one camera (front facing)

2. camera is in the corner

3. camera is 0.3 Megapixel

4. Uses a proprietary but bountiful market (not Android Market)

5. Tinny sounding speaker but it had a

I received the product 15 days later (yeah, kinda long for an Internet purchase). It was pre-charged and ready to go. I turned it on and quickly realized that the buttons were working because I hadn’t unlocked it. The sliding unlock didn’t look like my current phone but once I slid it with a finger, everything came to life.

My next step was to connect to my Wifi. It was simple and very similar to my   current HTC Evo 4G.

Here’s where some problems started.  I started installing some applications using the 1Mobile Market app that it came with. I set off to queue the downloads of 5 apps. As downloads finished, one by one, I got pop-ups asking me if I wanted to install. Of course, I said yes.

Most installed fine except for Flash 11 and Youtube. I kept getting a “parse error.” 1Mobile Market has a section called MyApps where you could see a list of your current, recent and installed downloads. I thought maybe the download was corrupted. The problem is that there was no way for me to re-download. I’m stuck with selecting the downloaded Flash file and it kept giving me the parse error.

1 Mobile Market also doesn’t tell you where the files are downloaded to. It took me a while to figure out that it downloaded the files to the 5Gb internal storage.

Determined, I went to websites to try and download the bad apps manually. I found Flash 11 and most other apps at freewarelovers.com/android

I’ve since been installing lots of apps. Most install fine but there are the occassional “parse error” messages. According to Skytex support, this is a problem with 1Mobile Market and that they are working on fixing it.

Verdict: It’s worth it.  It’s much faster than my Evo 4G and there is very little jittering or pausing. GTA III plays like a champ and so does Minecraft.

I’m waiting anxiously for ICS to play around with it.

How To Dungeon Heroics in Cataclysm

Posted on by pfaustino
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If you’ve played WoW throughout all it’s expansions from Vanilla to Burning Crusade to WOTLK you will probably agree that this one, Cataclysm, is the hardest. As a healer, I will definitely say that it is the hardest. This article will give general ideas on how to play heroic dungeons based on your class.

Blizzard has made dungeons so that each pull requires a party of adventurers to use their skills. It’s no longer just tank and AOE everything down.

Here are four KEY THINGS to know in Cataclysm heroic dungeons.

1. Stay out of “fire”  – “Fire” is a generalization for things that hurt if you stand in them. In past expansions, fire has been incidental. You could stand in it for a while and even if you did, the healer could heal you thru it as well as heal the tank. In Cata, however, you have a second to react. If you don’t react quickly enough, you will most likely be dead or very close to it. And healing you back up to full is going to make your healer very mad because he/she is now closer to going OOM and has to focus on the tank. So just because u didn’t die from standing TOO long in fire, it doesn’t mean you are pro. You are only pro if you get at most 1 tick of fire damage. Almost all bosses in Cataclysm has a mechanism that drops fire under you or the boss turns to look at you to shoot something that will one shot you.

BTW, download a mod called GTFO from curse.com. It will really help if you’re the type to stand in fire. It makes 3 types of loud beeps depending on how bad the fire is. I use it because I sometimes zone out and need a little nudging when things get hairy.

2. CC. – If you started playing WoW on WOTLK, you may not know cc or crowd control. Crowd Control is a means of managing all monsters (mobs) in a pull so that they don’t overwhelm the tank or the healer. Most trash pulls in Cataclysm require cc, especially if the group is not well geared. I’ve seen a lot of wipes because a well geared tank assumed that his healer could handle healing damage coming from all the mobs or didn’t realize that his group didn’t have enough dps to nuke things.

Each pull requires a quick look at what the mobs are and what kind of damage they can do to the party. Then take a look at what cc is available to your party. The more of the mobs you can keep controlled, the easier it will be for the tank and the healer.

3. Interrupt

4. Kite

A Pox on Your House

Posted on by pfaustino
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I was catching up on “House” episodes, one  of my favorite TV shows the other night and saw that irritated me. It irritated me because I look at House as a very smart show with great dialog and wit, and yet it failed on me this time.

House is a show about a brilliant doctor who, along with his team, diagnoses patients with mysterious illnesses. You can catch episodes of it at Hulu.com.

[WARNING: Possible Spoilers] This particular episode, “A Pox On Our House”, dealt with a family on vacation in the Caribbean had discovered a bottle with a Pox in it. The bottle breaks and causes the family to get infected and bringing the CDC to House’s hospital. What bothered me about the episode was the prelude which showed very sick slaves in a Dutch ship that was in the Carribean. A father telling his son, in Swahili subtitled in English, about his origins and knowing that he was going to die tells his son that he loves him. In Swahili? I could see this error in TV shows and movies from the 70′s and even in the 90′s.

Why does cultural America think that slaves from Africa speak Swahili? Is it because of old movies like Mogambo or the African Queen where they genuinely spoke Swahili? The ignorance in this country about the continent of Africa boggles me. OK, I grew up there and am pretty intimate with its geography but I am often surprised when I hear things like, “Oh! you’re from South Africa?” No, somebody told you I was from Africa because they couldn’t remember Tanzania and now you are assuming I’m from South Africa which is just one of the countries in Africa.  And no, you don’t have to apologize about White Man’s oppression of South Africa because we didn’t have apartheid in Tanzania.

African slaves brought to America came from the West Coast of Africa and I would venture to guess none ever came from East Africa where Swahili is spoken. It reminds me of a true story of a man I met as a checker in a Safeway supermarket. His name tag said “Rafiki” which if you’ve seen the Disney animated movie, The Lion King, you would know is the name of a venerable baboon uncle of the child Lion King. Rafiki is the swahili word for friend. In an effort to get back to his roots, perhaps through Alex Haley’s book or movie, this man had gone out of his way in the 1970′s to change his legal name to “rafiki”. He took lessons in swahili and when he finally was able to speak it, he set off on his journey to Liberia where African American slaves eventually landed after slavery was abolished. Of course, upon landing, he realized that Swahili was never spoken anywhere in the western side of Africa.

Mind you, I’m no slavery expert but I would venture to say that there were never any Swahili speaking slaves brought to America or the Carribean simply because of the geographical location. So why is Swahili the defacto spoken language of American slaves when depicted in entertainment over the decades? I can only point to persistent ignorance and hope to educate people with this blog.

Now, I wonder how smart the House team of writers really are. I thought they were above the usual ignorant depictions and very factual about things. They have even depicted other misconceptions in previous episodes. I could go on about bad Swahili accents and incorrect subtitle interpretations but meh, it’s just entertainment and I could be wrong. Maybe at one point, they did have Swahili speaking slaves in the Americas.