4K Struggle

To be a broke college student and have a need/want for new hardware sucks. As you might already know I just built my own workstation ready to blast through video and photo editing projects. However I neglected to buy a new monitor for my work station and I have been using an old Gateway monitor from 2006. After eight years of use this monitor has developed a dead pixel line.

As you can see it is quite apparent and is often distracting while working. But when you're watching a movie I swear you can't see it at all!

Black Friday just past and I missed out on a awesome deal on a 4K monitor. It was under $500 and had many of things I was looking for, however it also sold out in a matter of minutes. I am hoping to find a similar deal really soon due to Cyber Monday. I have been reading a lot of reviews online and found that most of the 4K monitors that are going on sale now aren't the best at giving you true color. Color is something that is very important to me because I want to make sure all my work is represented correctly on all screens whether it is on a computer notebook or a movie projector. I've always had a problem with buying things that are on sale only to find out that it is crap later (cough cough 13'' macbook pro.)

Should I go out a buy something on sale and later regret it or fork up the money for something really good that would last for years to come. The answer is obvious.

Damn I hate paying for things, ouch my wallet hurts.

Finally Android 5.0

It only took me all day yesterday and a part of today but I finally managed to get Android 5.0 Lollipop on my Nexus 5. Android really manages to get the look right with this latest release and I'm really enjoying the new animations and design. There are many subtle UI changes such as in the lock screen where you now have the option to swipe right to make a phone call, swipe left to open the camera, and swipe up to unlock the phone. I don't miss the unlock ring from previous versions of Android. The home screen looks cleaner with Android's "Material Design" and hopefully all app makers will start incorporating the Material Design look to their app icons and apps too.

Although I am use to having a rooted phone I don't feel the need to root this version of Android quite yet. The pull down menu now has enough of the controls I am looking for in a phone without having to change the UI myself. Pulling down from any screen brings you to the Notification menu where things like email and text messages show up. One more pull down on that screen brings you to your controller menu where you can change things such as brightness levels. This isn't new to Android but a few mirror changes such as adding the a flashlight button and casting a screen to Chromecast are now built into Android without 3rd party apps.

Overall I'm really enjoying the look of Android 5.0 Lollipop. I'm still learning about this latest release and I will give my final review of Lollipop in the coming weeks.

The Struggle of Unrooting and Reseting

I like to tweak all my phones. I've always jailbroken my iPhones and now I'm Rooting my Android phones but to update to the latest firmware from jailbreak or root has always been a pain in the ass. I'm in the middle of factory restoring my Nexus 5 so I could upgrade to the latest firmware Android 5.0 Lollipop. This is my third try at restoring my phone and I keep running into problems that I could only blame on rooting. I rooted my phone when I first got my Nexus 5 last year because I love having the option to customize my phone. But now when I want to update I'm stuck with a reset phone with nothing on it. I did back up all my photos and contacts but I will not stop till I'm running Android 5.0 tonight!

Our Garbage Computer

I was 12 when my 13 year old brother and I brought home our first computer. Unlike the children of today, we lived the first half of our life without a computer. It was the late 90s and it wasn't uncommon for a household to not have a computer.  It was literally a piece of garbage because we found it in the trash and of course it didn't work. We didn't know shit about computers, other than the ones we used at school, but that didn't stop us from taking it apart and trying our best to figure out how it worked. We unscrewed enough pieces of its metal frame to peek inside the dusty tower. I don't remember what our parents must of thought but I'm sure my mother wasn't happy we were spreading dust and metal all over the living room floor. 

My friend at the time just got his first computer as a birthday present and I still remember his set up. He had a huge tower that sat next to his 15 inch CRT monitor, his computer ran Windows 95. My brother and I were jealous, we wanted to have our own computer too. So when we saw a complete computer and monitor in the trash we jumped at the chance to finally own a computer and took it home.

We never did get the garbage computer to turn on but it stayed in our room as a clue to our future.

First Post

Hello humans and bots! Welcome! I'm new to this blog business so I'm going to make this first post simple. I'll be reviewing and talking about you guessed it, Gadgets!

Things will include but will not be limited to:

Computers
Smartphones
Wearables
USB devices
Small electrical items
Anything portable
Whatchamacallits (not the chocolate bar... maybe)

Enjoy!