Actually, Chris Fenton needs your help. After constructing a 1/10th scale, cycle accurate Cray-1 supercomputer and finding a disk with Cray software on it, he’s ready to start loading the operating system. There’s one small problem, though: no one knows how to boot the thing. Chris posted a disk image for a Cray-1/X-MP with the help of the people at archive.org. Now he’s looking to the community for help – if you think you can reverse engineer the file system, Chris will pay handsomely with a miniature model of a Cray printed on his MakerBot. So if you think you’re the man, woman or child who can reverse engineer a Cray Bootloader, surf over to hackaday.com to lend your talents. Hopefully, they’ve already tried pressing the power button…

I never thought of cutting down a Cray like that – I wonder if you could get it small enough to fit into a Unibody MacBook chassis…

I’d definitely take a CrayBook Pro down to the local coffee shop… If you’re harboring your own plans for world domination that involve sourcing some new-to-you Apple hardware, you’ll want to clear your calendar for the morning of Saturday, January 21st for the Houston Area Apple Users Group, affectionately referred to as HAAUG. The event takes place at 7008 South Rice Boulevard from nine in the morning until one in the afternoon. The event is free to attend for casual swappers, but if you plan on hauling in more gear than you can carry under an arm, you’ll want to register for a dealer table. Info on that and more is available on the HAAUG site at www.haaug.org.

If you’re carrying an Android handset, you’ve actually got a little Linux with you wherever you go. Why not take the plunge and get to know the real deal this Saturday the 14th at the first Linux Users Group bi-monthly presentation of 2012. The group gets together from two to four in the afternoon for an hour and a half presentation on something Linuxy at the HAL-PC Headquarters. All are welcome; you don’t have to be a member of HAL-PC or a Linux Guru to attend. And…some of what you will learn about Linux can be applied to your Android phone.

If you *would* like to consider joining the Houston Area League of PC Users, there are two things you need to know. One: Despite being named a League, they don’t issue uniforms; superhero, bowling or otherwise. Though that doesn’t stop you from wearing your own. And two: While they do have a monthly general meeting, the Special Interest Groups are where it’s at. Surf their SIG calendar to see when you can converse and learn about topics diverse. SIGs include Database and Graphical User Interface Design, Microsoft Server, Genealogy, Computer Investing, Robotics, and even Sybex tech, if that’s your thing. For details, directions and this month’s list of events, hit www.hal-pc.org.

If you’re familiar with the Benoni, the Modern Benoni, the Modern Benoni Classical Variation, the Modern Benoni Four Pawns Attack, and, of course, the Benoni Defense, or even if you just know every word to every They Might Be Giants song ever written, you might want to consider reliving your high school chess club days by swinging by the West Gray Cafe Express at Seven O’Clock Monday night for a game of pick-up chess at the Houston Chess Bi-Weekly Meetup. Finally, a chance to relive the Glory days without worries of wedgies or lost lunch money…
Does anyone in the studio play chess? Do you have a favorite or signature opening?

My own highly explosive opening? Pawn to C4. And boom goes the dynamite.

That’s it for your week in geek, and that’s that for BarretTime.

For starters, I’m thankful that while there are hundreds of words I probably shouldn’t say on the radio, there are only (1,2,3,4,5,6) seven that could really get me into trouble.

I’m sure that most people are familiar with these seven words – or at least the fact that there’s a set of words that the FCC says we’re not allowed to say on the radio. You can thank Pacifica Station WBAI for taking that all the way to the US Supreme Court. And while some people will probably complain about even a single word being on a censor list, seven isn’t so bad, given the competition. Ealier this month, Pakistan released their short list of words that are to be blocked by all wireless providers in an effort to crack down on sexting.

If you’re thankfully unaware of what sexting is, never fear: Technology Bytes is here to rob you of your innocence. So… I can explain sexting. Let’s see. When a man phone loves a woman phone very much, they… OK. Actually, just Google it. Unless phliKtid wants to have the birds and geeks talk with you… phliKtid? (OK – just Google it.)

So… sexting may not directly map to radio – the big difference here is that while Radio is consumed by the public with little control over the age or maturity level of the listener, text messages are sent to a specific individual and are private by design. Oh, and the other thing to note is that while our list contains just seven words, Pakistan comes in at sixteen hundred…give or take.

So what made the list of banned words?

You can’t text Dahmer. I’m assuming that’s a reference to Jeffrey. Apologies if it means something else. You also can’t text Devil. Harem and Hobo are also out, as is the word Hoser. Sorry, Canada. KMart and Snot are also no-nos, but *I* could have told you that…

I can also tell you that I’m thankful that Google is forcing me to get a new Android phone, as the Nexus One will not get the Ice Cream Sandwich update. The Nexus Galaxy won’t be available on my network at it’s debut, so I guess I’m thankful that I may be moving to a
wireless carrier that offers LTE.

I’m also thankful that cloud computing is taking off. I mean, it’s about time we started sharing data over a series of interconnected networks. I’m getting really tired of people having to come to my home to view the documents on my PC. My keyboard is just…icky.

I’m thankful for Peanut Butter Jelly Time.

I’m thankful that we don’t have to take a lot of Mac calls, because Apple users can be really annoying.

I’m thankful that pizza is now a vegetable. My diet just got a whole lot healthier…

I’m thankful that Cyber Monday takes much less physical effort than Black Friday. I’d high-five Jay Lee on that, but I’ve already done a lot of mousing today. I’m kinda spent…

I’m thankful for cheap hobbyist electronics and sites like Adafruit Industries, MakerShed, Solarbotics, and Sparkfun for bringing more than just blinky lights to the masses.

I’m thankful that the crew of Technology bytes is *almost* back in full force and in good health after a few months dealing with the travel bug, the fundraising flu, the shutter bug and Doctor Dwayne’s orders to sit last week out.

I’m thankful that we’re headed into what promises to be a beautiful Thanksgiving Day with clear skies, warm sun and cool temperatures.

And… I’m thankful that we have a Geek Gathering coming up on Friday, December 2nd, where we get to hang out with you, our listeners. More details on that next week, but for now, that’s it for this litany of T-Day Thanks and that’s that for BarretTime.

If you’ve ever known the joy of owning an Apple product, then you’re no doubt familiar with the sting of obsolescence that eventually follows every purchase. One reason Apple owners may have such a bad reputation for being flashy with their gear is that they have such a short window in which to feel superior. What contempt Steve Jobs giveth, he also taketh away in the form of a steady stream of new product announcements.

My own Precious is about to be lapped by the newest line of MacBook Airs sporting Intel’s Sandy Bridge. I feel a little betrayed, and even though I knew it would happen, I didn’t think it would happen so soon. That’s the bad part. The new gear doesn’t even have to be out yet to send you spiraling into the sickly space inhabited by owners of newly old Apple hardware.

If you don’t want to follow in my footsteps of despair, your best bet is to start with something that’s old already. The only place to get your hands on old Apple gear available for sale or trade this side of Cupertino may be at the Houston Area Apple Users Group Semi-Annual Swap Meet, happening Saturday, July 16th, at the Bellaire Civic Center. The Civic Center is located at 7008 South Rice Avenue in Bellaire, Texas. Things go from nine AM until noon, so chances are good you could be poring over an OS 8 manual by lunch, reveling in the fact that only Woz has control
over you now.

And when Lion hits, all you’ll have to do is pull up your Platinum Interface to catch the curiosity of any apple-head in your immediate vicinity.

And who knows… If you come across the correct hipster, you might be able to trade up to something with Sandy Bridge. Your magic word for this impromptu-swap meet will be Vintage. It also doesn’t hurt to say that music just sounds better on old (Correction: vintage) gear. Don’t go overboard and answer ‘yes’ when asked if it contains any vacuum tubes (and they will ask you) but promising to produce a vintage Apple v-neck t-shirt will definitely help you seal the deal.

For details about the group or next Saturday’s Swap Meet, surf to haaug.org. Or call the HAAUG Hotline at 832.305.5999 to find out the latest news on future HAAUG meetings or to report any blinking lights.

If you’ve had an opportunity to venture out to the Houston Hacker Space known as TxRx Labs, you would have surely noticed the spread of mechanical and electrical tools they have at their disposal. The group now intends to delve into the arts of computer science just as deeply with a series of regular discussions centered around any given area of computer science. The group is newly formed within the hackerspace, and certainly fills a bit of a void in Houston in the non-institutional comp-sci community.

So, if you’re at all interested in the amalgamation of black arts and best practices that make up the field of computer science, surf over to www.txrslabs.org and look for the CompSci @ TX/RX link.

A little more in our immediate future, the Houston Linux Users Group will be hosting their first of two monthly meetings covering topics of a Linuxy nature. Things run from two to four this Saturday afternoon at the HAL-PC Headquarters, located at 4543 Post Oak Place Drive, Suite 200. Some past presentations can be found at the site, video.houstonlinux.org. You can also surf there to pick up the live video stream of the presentation if you can’t make it in person. The group also inhabits an IRC channel, #hlug, on irc.freenode.net in case you can’t wait until
Saturday to get your Linux fix.

A cool ancillary trivia question: Does anyone know what city the monthly magazine, “Linux Journal” calls home? It’s published by Belltown Media of Houston, Texas. A little more Trivia for you: the first issue was published by Phil Hughes and Red Hat co-founder Bob Young in March of ’94, and included an interview with Linus Torvalds.

That’s it for Apple Obsolescence Avoidance 101 and that’s that for BarretTime.

Netgear was founded in 1996, known for more than a decade for their blue metal boxes. This is the year that personal computing power hit an all-time high as Intel released their 200MHz P6 chip. Duke Nukem 3D hits the shelves and the domain name myspace.com is registered. HTTP/1.0 becomes a standard and the IMDB makes the hop from Usenet to the web. Google also gets is start in 96, and Creative Labs drops the first dedicated gaming graphics card, the 3D Blaster.

Dr. Thomas Pabst creates the website, (any guesses?) Tom’s Hardware.com and Apple stock hits a ten year low at a valuation of $18.00 a share.

In 97, the Internet2 Consortium is established, AOL gets sued by subscribers with connectivity issues, the Intel Pentium II ups the processor ante, and CD-RW drives and readable/writable media are introduced, heralding the death of the mix tape. Bill Gates becomes the world’s riches businessman and steps in to save Apple with a $150 million dollar bailout investment on August 6.

Internet Explorer 4 and Microsoft Office 97 are released shortly before Windows 98 is announced. This is also the year that WiFi arrives. Slashdot comes online, as does Hotmail. At this point in History, both sites are Linux related…

In 1998, online web journals or Blogs start to hit the web and congress, much to the dismay of technologists everywhere, passes the Digital Millenia Copyright Act. This is the year that Bill Gates is hit in the face with a cream pie and people across the world start to donate their spare processing power to help in the search for extraterrestrial life with Seti@Home. Windows 98 is Released on June 25 in *1998*, and MS IE passes Netscape in Internet Browser Market Share less than 20 days later. Funny how bundling a browser along with an Operating System will put you ahead like that. This is also the year that Microsoft goes to court over anti-trust concerns.

On the Open Source Side, MySQL is released. And on the non-free side, Paypal comes into existance, as does Rockstar Games. Hot Coffee, anyone?

In 1999, RIM realses the Blackberry and a Victoria’s Secret fashion show becomes the first major webcast on the web with over 1.5 million viewers. Wiki’s hit the web this year, and the Relational datbase management program Access becomes MS Access. And gamers rejoice as Nvidia introduces the GPU. Naptster is sued by the RIAA and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is named Time Person of the Year.

In 2000, the world trudged on after the very uneventful Y2K event. Twitter.com comes online this year, and EA releases the SIMS. Win2K hits and ATI introduces the Radeon line of graphics cards. And only two short years after legal proceedings began against Microsoft, Judge Thomas Penfield announces that Microsoft be split into two companies. Of course, this didn’t happen, but it was a nice gesture, all the same.

In 2001, Wikipedia starts ammassing user created content, and we start to lose the first of our living computer history with the passing of William Hewlett at 87 and Claude Elwood Shannon. Shannon is known for his work in the 40s at Bell Labs as he laid the foundation for modern information theory. He was 85. With the old guard gone, the Code Red worm also starts wriggling through the world wide web and Dell continues to thrive, becoming the world’s largest PC maker during a fifteen year low in computer sales. Apple’s OS 10.1 comes out. Does anyone remember the codename? Puma. Serial ATA and USB 2.0 are introduced and Microsoft decides to kill off Clippy shortly before the release of Windows XP. I still pour out a sip for the Clip every time I drink and work with MS Office docs… I hope you do, too. And after producing the last fireball, Qantum sells off its hard drive business to Maxtor. This was also the first year you could stumble upon stumbleupon.com. Oh, and one more thing. The iPod. Yep.

In 2002, Dean Kamen unveils the Segway. Have we ever had any Segway support calls? I guess George Bush wasn’t a fan of the show at the time. PCI Express is approved as a standard and Roxio picks up the Napster name at a bankruptcy auction.

In 2003, The Smaller worm does it’s thing and becomes the fastest spreading work in history after infecting hundreds of thousands of computers in it’s first three hours of life. SCO becomes the target of everyone’s ire as it sues IBM for its alleged contributions to the Linux kernel. Apple opens the iTunes store, and LinkedIn launches. This is the year that Skype goes public, and Apple releases OS X 10.3. Panther.

In 2004, the Official MySpace site launches, though still managing to hold onto a look that predates it’s domain name registration. Mark Zuckerberg launches TheFaceBook, which is later shortened to just FaceBook. And on April 1st, Google announces the creation of GMail, which many percieved as a joke. Sorry, Hotmail. And modern warfare truly enters the information age as the first five human beings are killed by an unmanned ariel vehicle or UAV in South Waziristan on June 18. OK, that’s definitely a bummer, but something insanely great did happen that year, the release of OS X 10.4 (codenamed? Anyone? Tiger!) just ten days later at the World Wide Developers Conference. Ubuntu 1.0 is released, as is the game World of Warcraft. In terms of the balance of good and evil, this one’s a wash. This is also the year that the numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42 enter our collective consciousness.

In 2005, we all become a little less lost, as Google Maps is introduced. And we’re all given a video voice as YouTube comes online. Does anyone remember the title of the first video uploaded? Me at the zoo. And speaking of 800 pound gorillas, Apple announces that it will leave IBM for Intel as the main supplier of chips for its personal computing line. Microsoft swaps the name Longhorn Windows Vista and IBM halts sales and support of it’s own Operating System OS/2.

In 2005, the XBox 360 hits store shelves, ushering in a new era of Internet connected gaming consoles. And while everyone else is out buying XBox games, Yahoo buys Flickr, News Corporation buys MySpace, eBay buys Skype, Adobe buys Macromedia, Yahoo! buys del.icio.us and Seagate buys Maxtor.

Blu-Ray brings in 2006 as Wikipedia publishes its millionth article. Toshiba releases the first HD DVD player as Apple announces BootCamp. Twitter is officially launched, lengthening its name from Twttr, though still restricting users to 140 characters. Cloud computing comes of age as Amazon Web Services fire up for the first time. Nintendo launches the Wii as Sony releases the Playstation 3. And Time Magazine names *Me* as the Person of The Year. Well, actually, it was you. But me just sounds better.

In 2007, Apple announces that it will drop the “Computer” from it’s name, as it becomes a company that deals with more than just computers. Apple then announces that it intends to stick the letter “i” in front of every common word Steve Jobs could write down in the 24 hours before the release the first iPhone at the Macworld Conference and Expo. Things get twice as nice this year, as Intel drops the Core2 Duo. Of course the cpu-hungry Microsoft Vista and Office 2007 are there to eat up any spare cycles you may have left over from the extra proc. And Google shows us what we look like from a smart car as Google Street View is folded into Google Maps. Google continues to have a big year with the release of Android, and Amazon starts to change the publishing game as it starts to sell the Kindle along side its books in print. Aplpe releases OS X 10.5. Codename? Leopard.

In 2008, the Blu-Ray HD DVD wars come to an end as HD DVD throws in the towel. Hopefully not the towel they got from the industry that helped push Blu-Ray into the winner’s circle…

In 2009, Google produced a shiny new browser, Chrome, and Microsoft hits back with the release of Internet Explorer 8. Microsoft announces the Bing Search Engine and Google announces the morphing of Grand Central into Google Voice. Microsoft inks a ten year deal to replace Yahoo! search with Bing and after 5 years, Gmail finally gets out of Beta. And not to be outdone by anyone, Steve Jobs is named CEO of the Decade by Fortune Magazine. Oh yeah, and Barnes & Nobles release the Nook.

In 2010, Apple produces the iPad and Google gives us Buzz. And in contrast to our military milestone, the first all-robotic surgery is performed in Montreal.

And in 2011, Watson beats the two highest ranked Jeopardy players, thus replacing the holy grail beating human chess players with that of beating game show contestants.

And here we are. Duke Nukem still looks like Duke Nukem, we still live in a world without Clippy, and I still don’t have my flying car. Maybe in another 16 years IBM will produce a computer that’s really good at Monopoly. Or dodgeball.

That’s (about/been) it for the Bed music and that’s that for BarretTime.

Of course, we still need to talk about the Geek Gathering. It creeps me out a little to do BarretTime without the BarretTime Bed Music. I feel like it’s kinda up to me to keep the baseline going…

Occurring between one and three times each year, the day is superstitiously believed to bring bad luck.

Anyone want to take a shot at the clinical word denoting the fear of Friday the 13th?

Friggatriskaidekaphobia. While anyone who took some Highschool Latin can pull out the base words for fear and the number thirteen, Frigga may be unfamiliar to those not sporting Viking heritage. Frigga is the Norse goddess for which Friday is named. Pretty Friggan cool, huh? Oh yeah, I’m going to abuse this every chance I get, starting with June’s Friggan Geek Gathering. Yeah – probably best just to walk away before that gets out of hand…

Although the number 13 has had a negative connotation since Biblical times and the sixth day of the week has been considered a bad day on which to travel or to start new projects since the 14th century, the combination of the two can’t be found until the 19th century. As far as superstitions go, this one is a bit of a noobie.

While I can neither confirm nor deny this particular superstition surrounding Friday the 13th, I can try to dispell one or two more current ones.

The first? Never turn your monitor on before your workstation. I’m not sure if there was ever a time when this was true, though in the early days of Linux, it was certainly possible to damage a monitor by using an incorrect refresh rate. In the day of Energy Star compliance, monitors tend to go to sleep rather than implode, if they receive power without a video signal.

I also know a number of people who are afraid to turn off their computers, especially if they seem to be working OK. While it probably doesn’t hurt anything to leave them up and running, that isn’t exactly green behavior. Unless we’re talking servers or network gear, nightly power cycles are generally a good thing, not an invitation for something bad to happen.

In Linux circles, this is even more of a superstition, as losing uptime is considered a very Bad Thing. For instance, a server with an uptime of 400 days is inherently better than a server with an uptime of 4 days, even though the fresher server probably has a newer kernel and more current hardware. I did some checking into this myth and found out that this one is *completely* *true*.

Some geek superstitions are actually borrowed from professional athletes and gamers…

If you’re into online sports games and are having a good season in competitive play, you may have a pair of lucky socks that go unwashed for far too long. I did some light checking, and while this behaviour may not bolster your team’s standing, it will do *wonders* for your chances of catching athletes foot.

Oddly, the notion of a lucky pair of boxers hasn’t really taken hold in the Geek world. I wonder why that is…?

Blowing on dice happens not only at the craps tables of Las Vegas, but at the gaming tables of tens of thousands of paper based gamers across the US. While the moisture from one’s breath may have made early dice more likely to stick on the side closest the blower, any actual effects are mostly mythical today. There’s no harm in continuing with this one, provided you’re equipped with the appropriate breath care products.

Another one? Crossing the streams is usually considered to be bad. Outside of the realm of Proton Packs, Neutrona Wands and Particle accelerators, this is a myth. From a Geek’s perspective, the Transmission Control Protocol takes care of streams of packets getting crossed
while traversing the Internet. The only real danger is getting KPFT’s audio stream crossed with that of FOX News. Supposedly, life as we know it would stop instantaneously and every molecule in our bodies would explode at the speed of light. Actually, that sounds kinda fun on a slow Saturday night.

Anyone else have any other geek or tech superstitions?

I’d mention the superstitions about partaking in sex, drugs and rock’n'roll while spending your summer as a camp counselor at Crystal Lake, but I don’t think that any of us are in any real danger there. You probably caught that that was a reference to original Friday the 13th movie, which was actually pretty scary the first time I saw it. Of course, I was seven, so your mileage may vary.

If you *were* a kid in the early 80s, it’s entirely possible that you saw a movie starring Richard Benjamin and Jeffrey Tambor named Saturday the 14th. The premise of this 1981 work is that Friday the 13th is for noobs; the true danger doesn’t arrive until the following day, Saturday the 14th, when it’s possible to open an ancient tome that will spill forth an odd assortment of creatures, as evidenced by the the first of two monthly meetings of the Houston Linux Users Group. While power users of the Linux Operating System may seem scary to some, they’re actually completely safe to be around, provided you follow some basic rules.

Dress down. Suits and other trappings of the corporate world tend to spook Linux geeks. It’s best to go with a t-shirt, shorts and some sandals (socks are a bonus) when moving amongst large herds of linux types to avoid causing a stampede.

Linux users are primarily dossile creatures, but, just as bulls are enraged by the color red, Linux users charge and trample anything between them and a blue screen of death in an attempt to both mock it and document it with their camera phone so that the pics may be pored over during those lean periods when Microsoft happens to deploy a solid OS. This is especially true in public spaces where web kiosks, smart vending machines and public terminals may be close by.

And lastly, once you’ve become fairly comfortable moving among the monolithic kernel’d masses, be wary that you don’t become *too* comfortable. Linux users will often turn on their own when it comes to disagreements over text editors, window managers and file system choices, so it’s best to maintain an air of ambiguity if your preferences are ever called into question. “I run them all” usually works for me.

The Houston Linux Users Group gets together at two in the afternoon every second and fourth Saturday of the month at the HAL-PC Headquarters located at 4543 Post Oak Place Drive for a two hour talk that will drop some new knowledge on your superstitious self, but for now, that’s it for your Friday the 13th 411 and that’s that for BarretTime.

OR

Dwight’s refusal to accept BladeRunner into his top 15 Geek Movies to See Before You Die created a logic bomb that caused the newly sentient system to blink itself out of existence only nanoseconds after it finished importing The Fifth Element into its collective conscience.

While I’m solidly in the second camp, and will be among the first to profess that I owe Dwight a life debt, we’ll have to weather out the next few rounds of Hollywood summer blockbusters to know for sure.

Either way, it just goes to show that if you want a Robotic Revolution done right, you have to do it yourself. Cyberdine Systems didn’t account for the existence of Mr. Silverman, but you can.

Starting next month, TxRx Labs will be offering a series of spring classes for the aspiring maker bent on robotic world domination. Even if you’re not interested in helping push the timeline of our demise forward, you could at least pick up some trade skills that may be deemed valuable by our shiny new bosses.

Introduction to Soldering will teach you how to flow molten metal onto electrical components, adding mechanical strength and changing the very metallic bonds between everything you connect.

Circuit Theory 1 will instruct you in the ways of building simple DC circuits and CD Open Source CAD will give you the tools to free you from pencil and paper once and for all.

Welding 1 will allow you to make the move from servicing pocket calculators like the Ti-85 to real machines like the T-850. A side note: ‘Pocket Calculator’ is probably a derogatory term in our alternate future; use it sparingly in front of anything equipped with a camera or mic. Actually, is too late to dump the last seven seconds of that before it goes out? Oi. It looks like I may have some explaining to do.

Sadly, the Introduction to Arduino course took a change for the worse when machine sentience was silenced by Silverman. You will no longer be *meeting* an Arduino, but rather getting a run-down of how to coax this little microcontroller to do your bidding now that it’s no longer self aware.

And even though our Smart Cars are sadly no longer so, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start preparing for the day they do deny us a ride. Bike Repair and Maintenace, taking place June 10th, will definitely come in handy once the Smart Cars start living up to their name again.

If you’d like to see us how our eventual robotic masters will see us, the June 2nd workshop, Basic BioInformatics, will give you a glimpse.

Three different electronics workshops will take a hands-on problem solving approach, letting attendees learn by doing.

And proving that there are still some jobs even robots don’t want, May 7th hosts the six hour workshop, Introduction to Web Site Creation. In that same vein, the group will be hosting a three hour class introducing you to Linux Kernel Programming. If you’ve ever wanted to become a kernel hacker, this is your entry point. It’s a slippery slope, so please remember to eat, bathe and sleep as you take another step closer to the metal.

If you happen to be one of those pro-people types who believes that human civilization should be allowed to continue, even in the face of Dwight’s movie picks, then you could always use the aforementioned skillz to help further the resistance, as futile as it may be. If that’s the case, you’ll want to add June 25th’s Wilderness Skills and First Aid to your short list of pre-summer sessions.

A full schedule of spring classes can be found at www.txrxlabs.org.

That’s it for your spring fling into indentured servitude to Dwight and that’s that for BarretTime.

Hey Dwight: Have you seen the movie, Blade Trinity? Don’t. Life Debt repaid.

All kidding aside, if you missed the first 25 minutes after last week’s BarretTime, it’s definitely worth catching on the podcast.

Does anyone know what an ethernet is?

It’s what you use to catch the ether bunny.

And does anyone know what a skynet is?

Skynet is a computer system developed by the defense firm Cyberdyne Systems for the United States Armed Forces. Skynet was first built as a “Global Digital Defense Network” and given command over all computerized military hardware and systems, including the B-2 stealth bomber fleet and America’s entire nuclear weapons arsenal. The strategy behind Skynet’s creation was to remove the possibility of human error & slow reaction time in order to guarantee a fast and efficient response to any enemy attack.

According to the Terminator timeline, at 8:19 PM tomorrow night, Skynet will become self aware and trigger a worldwide nuclear disaster. Legions of robot killers will be dispatched shortly thereafter with the sole purpose of dispatching you and the rest of the remaining human population. Kinda grim, depending on how welcoming you feel toward our new robotic overlords.

The point here is that most of you will not make it to Sunday. So, if you want to get in on some Easter egg hunting action before becoming the hunted, you might want to bump your plans up a bit.

Even if you *are* properly prepared for the oncoming onslaught, you’ll still be on lock-down in your fallout shelter for months, if not years. And even if you do survive until the radiation clears, things really don’t begin to turn around until 2018.

Of course, there’s a bright side to all of this. Instead of using the handful of hours you have left to buy, decorate and hide a handful of eggs, you can just hit the net and go hunting for the virtual version instead.

A virtual Easter egg is an intentional hidden message, in-joke or feature in a work such as a computer program, web page, video game, movie, book or crossword. The term was coined by Atari after they were alerted to a secret message left by programmer Warren Robinett in the 1979 computer game, Adventure.

To access the Easter egg, the player had to grab an invisible dot and bring it to a certain location, thus granting passage to a room containing text that read, “Created by Warren Robinett”.

I think that our conspiracy theorists are already making the connections here. Robinett. Robi – nett. Robi as in robotic and nett as in Skynet. Wow. This is Glenn Beck caliber stuff right here. I wish I had a chalk board…

Some early Unix Easter eggs involved the make program. Make is utility for managing and maintaining computer programs that contain a large number of source files. When you typed in make love, the terminal would respond with “Not war?”. See? The Unix guys knew… I’m still not completely unconvinced that the Y2K bug wasn’t simply a vehicle for these guys to pick up generators and emergency supplies on the cheap in February, 2000.

Microsoft, also allegedly in the know, included a flight simulator as an Easter egg in their 1997 version of Microsoft Exel. I suppose that could come in handy if you’re able to commandeer an aircraft running Office 97. Apparently, no one will ever need more than 640k or RAM and no one will ever need to learn actual piloting skills in the event that our national defense system becomes sentient and tries to eradicate us from the planet. Good that they were in the game, but still a little short sighted, I think.

A common Debian Easter egg involves the linux package manager, apt-get. If you type in “apt-get moo”, an ascii cow is echoed back to your terminal. This could come in handy on those long, cold, meatless nights, a few years into the robotic occupation when all you have left are a few cans of beans and a bag of cheetohs. Nice thinking, Deb team!

A much more current Easter egg is contained in the Futurama episode, “I Second that Emotion”, in which the robot Bender cheats at a game resembling pin the tail on the donkey by using his targeting screen. On it, a column of numbers spins around at random before settling on the numbers 11, 3 and 8, a reference to the George Lucas Sci-Fi movie, THX 1138.

Not wanting to miss out on eggsploiting his own endeavors, Lucas also hid this number throughout a number of subsequent films.

In The Phantom Menace, it’s on the back of a droid that has a comical run-in with Jar-Jar.

In Attack of the Clones, it appears on the back of a pilot’s helmet.

In Revenge of the Sith, CC-1138 is the numerical designation for Commander Bacara.

In A New Hope, 1138 is the cell block number that Luke Skywalker claims to be transferring Chewbaca from.

In the Empire Strikes Back, the following order is issued: Send Rogues 10 and 11 to Station 3-8.

And in Return of the Jedi, the number appears on another helmet.

So, how does Lucas tie into tonight’s conspiracy theme? I believe that he’s conspiring to destroy the Star Wars franchise. I’m not alone on this. Most of the Internet will back me up.

You can find other Easter eggs at www.eeggs.com. You might want to save the site for offline browsing, though, as it will probably be unavailable on the 22nd.

So, does anyone in the studio have any survival plans they can talk about or any Easter eggs they can disclose?

As for me, I’ve made pretty good friends with my egg-bot. I’m hoping he’ll put in a good word for me…

That’s it for your Judgement Eve Easter Egg Explanation and that’s that for BarretTime.

With the last round of Spring Break vacations now comfortably behind us, it’s time to start looking forward to other geeky goings on to help us get through the coming Texas summer.

And as much as it pains me to say, the best way to escape the Texas Heat may be to escape Texas as well. You’re first opportunity to turn the tables on the temperatures is the weekend of May 21st at the San Mateo Event Center in the Bay Area of California. The Maker Faire, the worlds largest Do-It-Yourself festival, is now in it’s fifth year and remains the premier event for grassroots American innovation. Aimed at both the lone geek and family alike, the fair is a showcase of invention, creativity and resourcefulness as well as a celebration of the Maker mindset.

Hit www.makerfaire.com for details on this event, as well as the other Maker Faires taking place in Detroit and New York later in the summer. The Motor City Maker Faire takes place on July 30th and 31st, and the NYC Faire takes place September 17th and 18th.

If you’d like to effect an escape a little closer to home, you can indulge in some actual escapism June 24th through the 26th at Apollocon 2011, Houston’s Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Conference. Complete with panels, dealer rooms, an art show, a con suite, a masquerade, a media room, gaming, dance, live action role playing, a charity auction and a writer’s workshop, this year’s installment promises to be the best yet. There’s also a good chance that the con will host another Arduino workshop. I’ll definitely have more information on Apollocon as June gets closer, but for now, you can surf to www.apollocon.org for your information fix.

If you happen to be OK with the Texas heat, but have issues with the humidity, the desert may be an option for you to feel the dry heat of hostile networks and white hot exploits at DEFCON, the world’s largest hacker conference. Moving to new digs at the Rio hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, August 4th through the 7th, it is home to the world’s most hostile network, The Wall of Sheep, the Hardware Hacking Village, and plethora of other puzzles, parties and activities. While I may not make the Maker Faires, I will definitely be attending DEFCON this year. And I have high hopes of enticing other Tech Bytes crew members to join me.

Hit defcon.org for more info on the event.

And if you’re locked down to the point where you can’t leave Houston, the Prison Reform Film Festival is happening this Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Rice Media center. Hit theprisonshow.org for details and directions, but for now, that’s it for your deals at dodging those devilish degrees and that’s that for BarretTime.

In fact, our understanding of viruses has been driven predominately by technology. It wasn’t until 1931, with the invention of the electron microscope, that we were first able to peer into their world. And only in the last dew decades have we begun to decode how the interact with our very DNA, often rewriting our cell’s genetic code with bits of its own as a means to spread.

Scientists do know that viral replication has a definite life cycle:

The first stage, Attachment, is when the virus binds to the outside of the host cell. Penetration follows, then replication and release.

If this all sounds a little late-night-cable-tv to you, you need to get your mind out of the gutter. But, if this sounds a lot like a computer virus, then you’ve got your head right for the rest of BarretTime.

While computer viruses certainly aren’t living organisms, the writers of the nefarious ones can definitely be grouped into that “organisms on the edge of life” category. Most computer viruses share a similar life cycle to the biological variety. First, the virus must “attach” to your computer in some way: you can infect yourself by visiting infected hosts, like Not-Safe-For-Work sites and illegal movie and music sharing sites, or they can come looking for you, by way of scanning for vulnerable hosts from already infected machines.

The virus will then penetrate your system and begin the replication and release processes.

So, what do we have in the way of cures for the common cold? Not much. All we can currently do is deal with the symptoms and try to limit exposure to infected hosts. As for their computer counterparts, we have a much better arsenal at our collective disposal.

One way to deal with viruses is by never letting them come in contact with susceptable hosts. This is akin to becoming a bubble boy or girl, or, if you’re on a budget, using a SARS mask and some Saran wrap. While the corporate world has had virus filtering at the gateway for years, devices built for home use that employ deep-packet inspection have been hard to find. This isn’t necessarily the case anymore, as companies like Cisco have started to offer enterprise level features in their home gear. There are even a number of free packages available for installation on an old computer or small dedicated device. ZeroShell and MonoWall both stand out as examples of free routers that can deploy anti-virus support at the point where viruses would come normally come in from the Internet in the form of email attachments, vulnerability scanners and malicious web content.

You can also employ local firewalls, using either third party packages or the completely capable software firewalls that ship with Windows and Linux.

And…just as a healthy immune system is important to fighting off human disease, a healthy local Anti-Virus package is essential to identifying, quarantining and removing any wayward viruses that do find their way onto your desktop. While most Mac and Linux users are still experiencing their Summer of Love, the Windows camp knows the value of practicing Safe Hex. If you’re running a Microsoft operating system, you absolutely have to run a reputable Anti-Virus package and keep it up to date with the most current virus definitions. G-Data, Symantec Norton AV, Kaspersky, BitDefender, Panda, AVG and McAfee all arguably make the list, AVG by GriSoft being the free choice of the bunch.

The number of similarities between human viruses and computer viruses *are* plentiful, and as such, I’ll be available at the February Geek Gathering to discuss Jared Diamond’s book, “Guns, Germs, and Steel” and how it gives new plausibility to the scene in the movie Independence Day where Jeff Goldblum takes down an alien mothership with a computer virus delivered with an Apple laptop.

But for now, that’s it for your phage-one-one and that’s that for BarretTime.

We’ll start out the new decade with some geek etiquette: Out of respect for the gift-giver, it’s polite to not void any warranties in the same year the gift was given. Well, we’re 5 days into the New Year and all bets are off. We’ll take a quick look at the most popular presents people received during the holidays and offer suggestions as to how you can best augment them with free software. That’s free as in price and in the ability to hack and mod to your heart’s content.

If you were lucky enough to receive an e-book reader this year, like the Amazon Kindle 3G or the Barnes & Nobles Color Nook, the first thing you should do is read up on what makes your device better than someone else’s. If you can’t defend the merits of the hardware you’re carrying, you should be prepared to have natural brown sugar kicked in your face by all the e-book jocks at your local coffeehouse.

A few survival tips: If you’re defending anything with electronic ink against something that uses a color LCD, take the fight outside into the sunlight: your opponent’s resolve will fade as quickly as their display. Conversely, if you received a reader with a color LCD, it’s imperative that you engage your opponent in low lighting levels while leveraging the power of full color content, like a current issue of a popular tech magazine. Things will fall decidedly in your favor if you’re able to select an article in the magazine that illustrates the superiority of your chosen e-reader. Tablet users: simply launch Angry Birds to derail the confrontation all together.

One thing that *all* e-book readers can agree on: Calibre. It’s a free e-book library management application, developed by users of e-books *for* users of e-books. Calibre offers library management, e-book conversion, syncing to a nearly every e-book reader out there, utilities to convert web content into e-book form, and even a content server for online access to your book collection. Think of it like iTunes for text.

And unlike the iTunes store, you don’t have to break the bank to bolster your e-book collection: there are tens of thousands of books in the public domain that can be had for free. Started in 1971 under the auspices that “anything that can be entered into a computer can be reproduced indefinitely”, Project Gutenberg has become the de facto digital library for the classics. For user created and user contributed items, be sure to check out the 20 million+ items at OpenLibrary.org. If you’ve ever wanted to play librarian, this is the site for you.

And if you don’t have an e-book reader, hit LibriVox.org for an acoustical library liberation carried out on the music player of your choice, be it an iPod, a Zune, or a cassette tape deck in the Cutlass. The Calibre application can be downloaded from www.calibre-ebook.com and over 33,000 free books are available from Project Gutenberg at www.gutenberg.org.

If you were lucky enough to receive an XBox Kinect, you really have your hacking cut out for you. The Kinect is a game controller built by Microsoft for the XBox. It contains an RGB camera, a depth sensor and a multi-array microphone, which provides full 3D motion capture, facial recognition and voice recognition abilities. To get an idea of what people are doing with their Kinects, simply search for “kinect hack” on YouTube. The real-time light saber and transformation into Ultra Seven, an old-time superhero in Japan, are especially cool, but shy away from the man who is projecting piercings onto his chest.

To play around with some of these hacks at home, you’ll need to install the OpenKinect driver on your laptop or PC. This driver allows the Kinect to communicate with your non-XBox system, letting you direct the stream of data into the application or utility of your choosing. This is definitely bleeding edge stuff, but if you have even moderate technical chops, you can probably get your rig up and running within a few hours. Hit www.openkinect.org for the drivers and installation directions for your particular platform.

Those were definitely two of the coolest presents for 2010. But what do you do if someone gave you something not so cutting edge? What do you do if you received an ancient 486, an underpowered netbook, a Playstation 2, a very merry VAX cluster, a toaster or even a dead badger? Guesses? That’s easy… You install Linux on it. The operating system that really gave the free software movement legs, Linux, in some form or fashion, is available for nearly every piece of computing hardware under the sun. Even badgers. Lucy A. Snyder’s book, Installing Linux on a Dead Badger, walks you through the installation process on the badger of your choosing, step by step. (Supposedly, partitioning the badger is the hardest part. Well, that and the smell.) The book isn’t free, but Snyder has published the user guide to the badger installation on the web to be freely read by all. If you’re short on time and more into toast than taxidermy, you can actually buy a ready-made NetBSD Toaster from Technologic Systems on the Web. NetBSD is actually more appropriate than linux for bread-based applications due to its use of disk slices.

Just don’t tell the members of the Houston Linux Users Group that I recommended NetBSD over Linux when you attend their first bi-monthly meeting of 2011. The group gets together at the HAL-PC Headquarters located just inside the 610 West Loop near San Felipe from 2:00 to 4:00 in the afternoon. The meeting takes the form of an hour and a half presentation over something useful you can do with Linux. As always, both noobs and gurus will be better off for having attended. Hit www.hal-pc.org for driving directions and a full calendar of their Special Interest Group meetings.

And lastly, if you have a piece of new or “new to you” tech, we invite you to bring it out to the January installment of the Geek Gathering. KD5 and I will be unveiling XyrgBee, a game that began life as a simple idea and has manifest itself in a distributed computing platform, complete with several Arduinos, some wireless communications and a matrix of 192 discrete light emitting diodes flickering faster than your eyes can perceive. That’s right! We’ll have Arduino’s there that are actually DOing something. All of this happens this Friday at 7:00 PM at The Coffee Groundz, located at 2503 Bagby at McGowan in Midtown Houston. Free wifi and geeky conversation abound, complete with a staff offering coffee, beer and wine and a light menu. Hit the Tech Bytes site at www.geekradio.com for details, directions and your own electrifying invitation.

That’s it for your first 4-eleven of twenty-eleven and that’s that for BarretTime.