"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." (Robert A. Heinlein)

Friday 31 December 2010

Happy New Year!

I learn from Giovanna's Blog that the coming year is a prime number ... will it be also a "prime year"?
 Happy 2011 everybody!

Friday 24 December 2010

More wireless bridging

I recently had to move one computer to anther room, so I had to connect two rooms with my router placed in the living room. Not willing work with cables across the house I decided to expand the wireless bridging I already had set-up by adding a new access point. This time I double checked hardware characteristics before to buy and I eventually decided for a Netgear WG602 (V4) access point. Using only hardware of the same producer is not mandatory but it often helps.

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Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!


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Friday 10 December 2010

Synergy: how to make comfortable your netbook at home

Netbooks are, in my opinion, one of the most important innovations in mobile computing: they represent an unique mix of low price, flexibility and mobility. On the other hand netbooks lack a little on the ergonomic side. Netbook's small keyboards and mousepad aren't the most comfortable things to use, often they they are even less comfortable when your netbook is placed on the desk near your desktop computer.

A software solution to a hardware problem

External mouse and keyboard can, of course, be plugged to your netbook but this would mean having to deal with hardware switches, cables or, in case of wireless devices, Bluetooth configurations every time you switch between your desktop and your netbook computer.
Here comes Synergy: a simple utility that lets you use your desktop computer's mouse and keyboard to control your netbook without the need of any extra hardware but a network connection, in the most intuitive way by simply moving your mouse pointer off one side of the screen like you were using a single computer with two displays.