niostuom

The Verge has an awesome series called “What’s in your bag?” where they “ask people to tell us a bit more about their everyday gadgets by opening their bags and hearts to us”. The idea of doing something similar has been circling in my head for quite some time now, so I figured I’d give it a shot as well!

I’ll have to preface this by saying that I’m an IT bachelor student and I make all of my notes digitally. I am also deep into the whole Microsoft ecosystem.

The bag itself: Condor E&E bag

I have a lot of bags, but this one has made it to become my daily driver for a good few years now. It’s spacious, durable, has handles, is comfortable and gives some contrast and unformal-iness to my style in general -- goes well with my Mechanix gloves, too.

Laptop: Surface Pro

While not exactly a laptop, it has well replaced the need for one for me. While I don’t usually need the horsepower of the i5, it is nice to have that peace of mind knowing it can and will run anything you want to throw at it. Studying IT, every now and then I run into situations where I just need that legacy support and compatibility with older systems. VPN to school network? Easy peasy. Support for all possible file extensions? It’s there. Could go on for a lot longer. The only downside of the old Pro for me is the weight, it isn’t exactly the lightest of machines. Then again, compare it to any laptop from the time, we’re quite alright. One great thing about the pro charger is that it also has a USB port for charging the phone!

Tablet: Lenovo Miix 2

I have admit I don’t have this daily with me, but when going anywhere further, it has a crazy-long battery life that just makes it awesome. Also, that full x86 legacy support here too! (lacks the full size usb’s due to thinness though).

Phone: Lumia 925

I’m currently rocking the Nokia Lumia 925 and it’s been by far the best phone I’ve had so far. Two-day battery life, fantastic camera, great navigation and a sturdy build quality. It does lack wireless charging, but then again that is redeemed in thinness.

Headphones: Koss PortaPro & AKG earbuds 

I listen to music all the time. Everywhere. I love the PortaPro’s for their openness in that I can wear them while cycling and not get run over. Another great pro is the “I can take anything” -build quality. The AKG’s are there for when headphones can’t be worn or wouldn’t be appropriate.

Battery bank

I have no idea of the brand, since it was given to me as a gift, but it is great for keeping you charged when sharing 3G to WiFi. It can also give around two and a half full charges to the 925, so it keeps me going through a weekend easily.

Microfiber towel/cloth

While it sounds odd to have that with you at all times… It doesn’t really weigh anything and considering this is Finland, there’s always the chance someone asks if you’re up for Sauna. It’s proven itself useful enough times already to deserve its place. Throw in a fresh set of clothes and I can go for a whole weekend!

Pocket Pouch

Now this thing has everything and anything from painkillers to zip ties in it. It’s not there? It’s not needed.

Condor pocket pouch

Painkillers

Comb

Lighter

USB stick

Toothbrush & toothpaste

Shower gel

Minigrip bags

Zip ties

Earplugs (proper ones)

Climbing hooks

Microfiber cloth

Touchscreen pen

Backup earbuds

The Universe

Also there is miscalleneous stuff in the bag that don’t need a headline, those inclunde, flashlight (LedLenser P7), few folders and a 0.33 bottle of water.

I built my current computer in 2012 and I think it’s time to do a check up on what has changed and whether everything is still relevant. The current spec is as follows:

ASRock z77 Extreme 4-M

Intel Ivy Bridge i5-3570K, 3,4GHz

2x ASUS DirectCU HD7770 (1GB) in CrossfireX

2x 4GB of Kingston HyperX DDR3 RAM (8GB total, two slots free for future upgrade)

Noctua NH-U9B SE2 CPU cooler

Silverstone 850W Strider Gold Evolution v2.0 modular PSU

Crucial MX100  128GB SSD

Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB hard drive for storage and rest of the applications

Fractal Design Define R3 ATX case

ASUS DVD drive 

Two years have passed, with the only change so far being a hard drive swap from the original Kingston 60GB SSD to the 128GB Crucial one.

Here are some of the things I think I did right and what I could’ve taken into account from the get go.

Few remarks that could prove useful.

Get enough RAM from the get go. While you can always upgrade this later, you most definitely never want to be maxing on RAM usage. I’ve had to deal with computers sporting too little and it is pain. I’d say 4GB is an absolute minimum these days – while you can get away with less right now, it’s only a matter of time the tabs start piling up and you notice your performance suffering. 8GB is still enough, and to my experience, probably will be for quite some time.

SSD’s, oh the SSD’s. The difference they make is humongous. Even the low-end SSD’s that are dirt cheap nowdays (120GB run for 0,50€ a GB) beat out most if not all mechanical hard drives by a big margin. Considering they’ve become so cheap, get 120GB. 60GB is enough if you are willing to always pay mind what you are installing a where --  120 gives much more headroom while not braking the bank. With SSD’s more capacity seems to correlate with speed too, so if you are building a more high-end rig, that is definitely something to pay mind to. There are benchmark comparison sites in the web, use them.

Do your research regarding CPU and GPU. It was amusing to notice the HD7770’s still get recommended for the mid-tier builds in late-2014, two years(!) later of the release. By this time, the retail price had dropped by mere 10€. That’s less than 10% of the original price (these being ~120€ cards). Read the reviews, invest the TIME and you might just save quite a bit of money.

Buy a USB optical disk drive, should you ever need one. Honestly. Internal disk drives are dirt cheap, I know, but there’s still no point in buying one if you’re never going to use it. USB one you may still use with your other devices, borrow and keep with you even should you entirely dump the computer at some point. You’ll get your games through Steam sales (praise Gaben) or Humble Bundle anyways.

That’s it for now. I’m planning on doing some upgrades, but lets save those for a later time. Peace out! 

Yup, I shouldn't be running out of storage space anytime soon.

Microsoft announced pretty big upgrades to both free and subscription users of OneDrive a while back and those are now rolling out! 

What this means, is that if you have no subscription whatsoever (either won or paid), you went up from the base level of 7GB to 15GB. Although 7GB is plenty in itself (dropbox starts out with 2), 15 starts to truly be in the "holy crap I can actually put stuff in here without being afraid of running out of space" category.

Then there was the other bomb they dropped. If you are a Office 365 subscriber (like I am), you get upgraded from 20GB to 1TB (1,024GB to be exact). Whaow. There's not much I can say about that other than that that is a lot of space. (I've barely managed to use a TB of space on my desktop)

The cheapest way to go about getting the 1TB 365 upgrade (if you're a Finnish uni/AMK student) is the 79€/4 years Office 365 University subscription. That's less than 1,65€/a month and with that you get the essential Office apps, the 1TB upgrade to OneDrive + 60 minutes of monthly Skype-to-phone call time. Not a bad deal if you ask me, but hey, that sounded so marketing-y already that if I praise it any more it'd start looking really weird.

I haven't had much to write lately, but boy, this is something I just had to share!

Windows Phone 8.1 Developer preview is out! 

If you have a dev unlocked device, you can download the updater from here and you're on your way. After installing and running the app, your phone tells you that there should be a new version available to you through phone update (found in "settings"). Do note that to download the update, you'll need a wifi. Aaand that I'm in no way responsible if something goes wrong -- as the software tells you, this may void your warranty.

One of the big, visible changes is the fact that now you can add a background image to your start screen. You are free to choose whatever image you want (although some format restrictions might apply) and just like with the lock screen, you can crop it on the go.

There is now also a new option to show more tiles on the start screen. Enabling this gives you two extra collums vertically, which is something I've personally been drooling the new gigantic Lumia's for. Keep in mind that this is running on Nokia Lumia 720 -- not on one of those resolution monsters.

Notification center is now there too!

It's not something I've been missing too much, but it's definitely something I'm welcoming. The four slots for toggle settings is a great addition as well. 

Volume is now divided into Ringer/Notifications and Media/Apps, which is just great. Some of the stuff may still change for the final release, but so far the updates have been very functional and neat looking.

Build 2013 has kicked off and Microsoft put out a preview version the Windows 8.1, or “Blue” as the press called it. Gets better, just like the previous Windows 8 previews (developer, consumer & release) were, it’s free!

Without going too much into all the new features and tweaks that have took place, let’s see how to get it up and running to see it for yourself.

There are two ways you can go about it – either by downloading the .ISO and performing a clean install or by downloading a small Windows Update file and performing the actual OS download and install through Store.

The latter is only possible if you are running Windows 8 in one of the supported languages. Unfortunately Finnish is not listed so you’ll have to go through it the disc image way. As of the moment of writing this post, the ISO files are not available. However, they will be, from http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/iso-preview

My friend Joel did a great tutorial on installing Windows 8 from USB stick not too long ago. The install process should be similar, if not identic, so I strongly recommend checking that out. http://aktivori.wordpress.com/2013/06/14/lenovo-thinkpad-t430u-33-installing-windows-8-from-usb-drive/

If you are running Windows 8 in a supported language though, like I am in English, you can already do the install through store. Navigate to http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/download-preview , click Get the update and run the .msu file. Let Windows install the update and follow instructions. The whole process is very simple and straightforward, but the update installing right took me couple of tries. After a reboot, you’ll go to the Store app and install the whole update from there. It's in an obvious spot right next to the spotlight. Another reboot afterwards, some configuring and you should be good to go.

Curious of how this post would look on my native Windows 8 Reader app? Head on out to http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/fi-FI/app/niostum-reader/c91df50b-d3b7-4a03-b303-7868d2f4d9a3 and find out!

You heard me right, there is now an app for my blog on the Windows 8 store. That's kinda cool if you ask me! The app is free and available to both Windows RT and Windows 8. 

More info on the app and screenshots can be found from http://niostuom.tumblr.com/reader

Also I want to give a big shout out to Drazen for helping me out with publishing and for just being awesome, you rock! :)

You've got a little bit of geek in you, don't you? Let it show!

Ever had an idea for a killer app that absolutely needs to be made, but don't quite know how to create it? Now's the time to get your hands dirty and find out just how easy it is. 

Geek Out is all about helping you turn your amazing ideas into amazing apps. It's about giving you the tools, assets and knownledge on how to bake your idea into Windows 8 store ready app that might just be the next big thing!

Oh, and it's also about getting a chance to win a Windows 8 device!

That is how your desktop typically looks, isn't it?

With just a small tweak you can make the desktop user experience on a tablet device much more comfortable and maybe even a bit more productive. You most likely already know how to do it, but just haven't thought of it. What I’m talking about is switching the taskbar to either side of your screen instead of having it in the bottom.

Why would I want to do that? There are few reasons.

Lets look at how you typically hold your device. I usually grab my tablet from both sides, my fingers steadily gripping it from the back and thumbs resting on top of the device. This means that to switch between applications in the desktop mode or to open the virtual keyboard I normally have to change my grip to reach the bottom of the screen. With the taskbar on left (or on the right, whichever way you prefer), the icons and running programs are right under my fingertips naturally.

How about screen space? Typically I use my tablet for browsing the web, chatting or to take notes. In all of those, more space vertically is always a bonus. I can fit few more lines of text on my screens, and even though it doesn’t sound like a lot, it's noticable.

It will take a while to get used to, but I recommend you give it a try!

  Lets quickly go through how to easily change the position of the taskbar. This is simple enough for absolutely anyone to do, but I thought I’d add screenshots too, just in case you aren’t reading this on a Windows device and still want to get a hang of what I’m talking about.

Long press (or right click) some free space on your taskbar to open the pop up menu.

  Click Properties.

Select the taskbar location of your choosing, click Apply or OK and you’re good to go.

And that's how simple it is.

So... I, uhh, might have dropped my phone last weekend.

I tried to play not finding it cool as I hadn't really used it during the day, but at midnight it started to get to me - I had no idea where it was. Having systematically gone through my clothes, bag, car and the apartment I had to admit that I had lost it. It was still receiving signal, as my friend could call it so I hadn't given up hope just yet.

This is where the I<3WP stuff comes in. I realized that hey, wasn't there some safety measures against losing/getting your phone stolen built in in Windows Phone 7. There was and uhh... well, I'll let the picture speak for itself. 

I had spent the day at local ice track. That's what I usually do at winters when I'm not tinkering with some tech stuff or talking to awesome people. The GPS tracking was so accurate that I could roughly pinpoint the corner I had lost the phone in. Sure enough, drove back there and there it was (under few centimeters of snow).

Now my excuse for dropping it there is, that I was pulling a fellow driver out of the snow bank there and it had fell out of my pocket. I've got to say though, that I'm 99% sure that without the positioning from GPS, I would've never have found it.

This link, https://www.windowsphone.com/fi-fi/my/find = <3

Since your phone is (or definitely should be) paired with your Microsoft account, you can check its location by just logging in at windowsphone.com and navigating to find my phone. From the same place you can remotely make it ring and vibrate, erase your personal data or lock it down.

Trust me, you don't want to go back.

What f.lux does is that it changes the temperature of your monitor colors. By warming up your monitor colors after sunset (as measured from the location you give it), the program supposedly helps you fall asleep better. I can't confirm that, as I still stay up way too late just about every night, but what I can tell is that my eyes haven't got strained due to my monitors in a long long time.

Of course, that could be attributed to tons of other factors like me re-positioning my computer desk and things like that, but I'm positive it's because of this.

What I like about f.lux also is that you don't really notice it even being there after you've set it up and got used to it -- unless you turn it off, that is. After ten minutes of using the thing at night, try turning it off just to see the difference. You'll be quick to turn it back on.

Occasionally it seems to do something weird after I boot up to Windows (8) but other than that, it just is there. (By weird I mean setting itself to max "warmth" and then slowly cooling to what it's supposed to be)

I have heard from a lot of people that the 32 or so GB on their Windows 8 device isn't enough to store all their music and photos. I can totally relate to that and that's why I've gone ahead and doubled the space available for them by using a 32GB SD card.

Now there are few things you have to do in order to make the operating system allow the locations you have over there to be part of a library, as removable media (USB memories, SD cards) aren't by default allowed.  The tracks can be accessed from the SD without doing this, but this way we'll make the Xbox Music and Photo apps aware of their existence.

First we'll have to go to the disk management. An easy way of getting there with devices that have keyboard is a keyboard combination Windows key + X. Click disk management and you're there.

However, if you're on a touch device, we'll have to go trough few more steps. I've found the fastest way to be going to file explorer and clicking active the Computer tab. Here, click manage on the upper bar (computer tab). If this isn't visible to you, the arrow pointing downwards just below the window close button and next to the ? (help) button reveals it.

Click Disk Management on the left column (under Storage).

Right click (if you have a mouse) or long press the removable drive you want to assign and choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths...".

Click "Add..."

Click "Browse..." and create a new folder on your local drive. I suggest you create right at the root with the same name you have the drive itself.

Click "OK" and you should be good to go. If you look at your C drive now, you can see that there is a new File Folder with the name you assigned it to. Clicking the folder leads you to your removable media, but as you can notice, the path you took there is C:\SD\ instead of D:\

Now, we can actually go and add the locations we want to the libraries to include. To do that, go to the file explorer and choose which library you want to add (I'm using Pictures for this example). Choose the library you want to modify from the right column and click properties

Click "Add..."

First select your C drive and then the folder we created earlier (the one that leads to the removable drive). You can access the folders within the removable media and navigate as you would normally. I recommend creating a Pictures folder inside the removable media to put your pictures in. Click "Include folder" and we're almost there!

Don't forget to save the changes! Before closing this window, I recommend you select the folder located in the removable media as a default save location so that in the future all your pictures will be saved over there too.

Next time you launch your photos app, it should fetch all the pictures for you.

Do the last few steps for other libraries (Music, Documents, Videos) and they should get included as well.

Did you know that in Windows 8, instead of having to only use the typical "tablet style" virtual keyboard that lacks some of the keys that normal physical keyboards have, you can change it to the standard PC layout? Well, now you do!

It's an easy function to miss, since you have to go trough some of the settings to make it available.

The traditional tablet keyboard in Windows 8 (and other tablets) looks like this.

While it's good for typing relatively fast and without too many typos (thanks to wider spacing between the keys), sometimes you just need the full keyboard with alt, tab, arrows or Windows key for various things like shortcuts within old desktop apps.

In order to make the traditional PC layout appear in the options on the bottom right corner of the keyboard, you'll have to go to your PC settings.

To open your settings, swipe from the right and click the cogwheel, and then "Change PC settings" at the bottom. There, choose the "General" tab and scroll until you reach the option saying "Make the standard keyboard layout available". Switch that to On and you're good to go.

Now the traditional keyboard layout should appear in the menu where you can switch between different layouts. Note that the layout is out of the box fit for your language -- in my case Finnish.

So, as I said, here's what my trusty pc consists of. As a sneak peek I posted a photo of the graphics cards and CPU cooler.

I built the rig by myself last summer, and it has really served me well. I mostly play Guild Wars 2, Battlefield 3 and Planetside 2, but whatever I've thrown at it has ran just beautifully. I might do some review of independent parts like the case at some point. Should I ever need more performance (I will, eventually), I should be able to overclock the CPU without much trouble. As of now though, the temps stay low and the system quiet, so having no need for the extra performance I'm happy with how things work.

I'm running Windows 8 pro as operating system, so boot times are absolutely amazing. When awaking from sleep/hibernation, the PC is ready to use usually before my screens have all even turned on.

For my gaming peripherals you can check my other blog post http://niostuom.tumblr.com/post/38300760048/how-i-roll-in-the-interwebz

The full set up is as follows:

ASRock z77 Extreme 4

Intel Ivy Bridge i5-3570K, 3,4GHz

2x ASUS DirectCU HD7770 (1GB) in CrossfireX

2x 4GB of Kingston HyperX DDR3 RAM (8GB total, two slots free for future upgrade)

Noctua NH-U9B SE2 CPU cooler

Silverstone 850W Strider Gold Evolution v2.0 modular PSU

Kingston 60GB SSD for operating system and some of the more vital applications

Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB hard drive for storage and rest of the applications

Fractal Design Define R3 ATX case

ASUS DVD drive (that's not even plugged in right now...)

Just testing how tumblr handles photographs. I'm still new to this stuff!