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Friday, November 30, 2012

Mintduino

I never thought I would have so much fun with a 20 MHz processor and 32 KB of ram.  I mean honestly, those sound like specs from 1970, and yet the Arduino micro controller system operates on just that.  I have been picking up pieces of the Arduino for almost a year now, but I found something the other day that really got me going with this whole micro-computer thing.  At Radio Shack they have mint tin kits from Make:, and by far the coolest one is the Mintduino.

The Mintduino is an Arduino based micro controller in a mint tin.  Its a DIY kit with a solder less breadboard and almost all of the pieces you need to make your own Arduino.  And the coolest thing to me is that the whole thing runs off of a single nine volt battery.  It doesn't come with the USB connector, but I found you can buy it from Make:'s website for fifteen bucks.

I know it sounds terribly geeky of me, but it is totally awesome that you can now buy a web server in a mint tin.  That's amazing.  Till next time catch you on the flip side.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Another Patch Tuesday

So, another Microsoft patch Tuesday is coming, and this time there are several critical errors being fixed.  Nineteen errors in all will be repaired, a few of which will affect the brand new Windows 8.

It worries me that a product that just rolled off the shelf in the last couple of weeks could already have known critical security flaws.  Honestly, to be releasing the patch so soon means that they knew about these security flaws before the product launched.

So, if you've spent the money already and bought a new Windows computer or Surface tablet, make sure you patch.