Moving Sparks Online…

The time has come to update the SparksOnline website. I have some time before and around Christmans to use as I please and this is as good a use as any. As you can see, the new site is a WordPress blog. Actually a WordPress blog with content imported from a Google blogspot blog that I played with for a while.

This new site  will be including a forum which at the moment is giving me some trouble. As many of you know, the old forum was constantly being spammed with ads for Chinese knock-offs and as amusing as the ads were, it became a constant job of manually pruning the posts.

The game servers have not moved / will probably stay the same.

I hope that many of you will sign up and post occasionally on the new forum, just to let the rest of us know how you are doing. I will add as much of the old content back on the site in an archive as possible.

Posted in General Hoo-Ha | 6 Comments

Clingo Universal Cell Phone Car mount

Lots of videos out there, but not many reviews, so here is mine…

Let me begin by describing the material that sticks. It is an ultra-sticky rubbery plastic that is much like the rubbery toys that you used to throw at a wall and they would slowly pull loose and roll/flop down the wall as if crawling. Similar to the rubbery dashboard mats that you can lay coins on and they won’t slide off, but much stickier.

For the most part, the mount works exactly as advertised. Almost anything smooth will stick to this thing. I have a T-Mobile G2x which is on the heavy side for a phone. A wee bit bigger than an iPhone 2. It stays put. iPhones also stay put, even in a shell/case. The back of the G2x is not flat, the camera lens area forms a bump at the top of the case and I recommend not letting this part stick to the Clingo pad as the plastic lens cover could pull loose eventually because the pad is sooo sticky. Nonetheless, there is plenty of surface area on a G2x to support the phone and make complete contact with the Clingo pad. You can actually record video of the drive ahead with the phone while using the mount, which is kind of cool.

It does not take much pressure to get the phone to stay put. It’s practically magnetic which is good.The suction cup has the typical lever to stick and release it at will and works properly. It also comes with a black plastic disk that has a double-stick adhesive to mount it places where the suction cup may not adhere properly. Then the suction cup is “sucked” onto the disk.

The Clingo pad does not leave a residue on the phone (or lens). Actually, the pad will pull dirt, grease, gunk, etc. off the phone where it touches. I could also see it pulling the battery cover off some phones if you are careless about removing the phone.

As much as I find this mount favourable and easy to use, there are some caveats. The first being that the arm between the suction cup and the swivel joint that holds the pad is roughly 7 maybe 8 inches long which can lead to the phone getting rather jiggly on bumpy roads. In a car, especially with a lighter phone, it’s not so noticeable. In a four-wheeler with stiff suspension and heavy phone, it shakes a bit – not unusable, but more than I’d like.

Another issue that has happened on hour long drives in the sun is the phone may detach from the pad when going over a bump. Understandably, flexible, rubbery and sticky materials get a bit too flexible when hot. If one were to remember to press the phone against the pad every now and then on hot days, I don’t think it would be a frequent issue.

Lastly, if you live on a dirt road or dusty area, you will need to clean the pad more frequently. In an urban environment, you might get away with monthly cleaning. In sandy, dusty, dirt road use, you may want to clean it weekly.

In summary, this mount is super versatile. If you have a car shared by drivers with different phones or devices, it is a brilliant solution. Ditto, if you are a constantly upgrading phone junkie. The pad won’t interfere with charging cords and can hold a lot of stuff securely.

Posted in Android, Reviews | Comments Off

Dear China,

TO: China
CC: Germany, Russia, Korea

Dear China and script kiddies everywhere,

Please, please tailor your scripts to fit the appropriate server you are trying to attack. I know that machines running Microsoft operating systems are perfect enlistees for your growing bot armies and I don’t want to harsh your buzz, but there are a lot of us running respectable servers on Linux and BSD operating systems that actually log your hacking attempts. I can’t speak for all the *nix users out there, but reading line after line of failed login attempts with user “Administrator” is getting old.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret… None of the Unix OS descendants come with a user named “Administrator”. Not happening. You are wasting all our time and a considerable amount of bandwidth trying to guess the password of a user that doesn’t exist.

Frankly, I find it a little bit insulting that you would even consider a *nix server such an easy mark. It’s like sending Albert Einstein an acceptance notice to the “Busy Hands Daycare and Nursery School.” Practically a racial slur… “Oh, all Americans look alike, know each other and use Windows on their PC’s.” Gimme a break. Know your enemy for crying out loud.

Just trying to help us all save a little time and gain understanding.

Sincerely,
The Non-MS Users of America

Posted in Linux | Comments Off

Easy Solar Savings

The electricity bill finally came!! Yay! Why should I be so excited you ask? Let me rephrase that…”Why should Spark E. be so excited?” I imagine some imaginary reader would ask. I am excited because I have managed to cut my electricity bill by a whopping 43% over last year.

I have to give most of the credit to Ikea for making so many energy saving lighting systems and hackable solar lighting thingies.

I’m not an eco-maniac or anything. Well, maybe. I dunno. I just don’t like to be reliant on limited natural resources. I don’t really like to be reliant on anything. I also don’t like wasting anything. The City of Tacoma gives us these great big bins for yard waste and recyclables which are free. We only have to pay for garbage. You pay by the size of the bin and even though I have the smallest size, I still only use it every other week at best. When you consider that the recycle bin will take all manner of plastics, aluminum, glass and non-food-soiled paper goods and the yard waste bin can be used for food scraps and food soiled paper goods (like pizza boxes) the only thing I really need the trash bin for is cat litter, tin cans, milk cartons and the occasional tea bag. Have you (the imaginary reader) ever been to a landfill and seen all the stuff that goes in there? It’s a huge waste. Okay, time for a new paragraph of rant:

So these huge companies mow down (for lack of a better term) huge tracks of land with equipment that guzzles petrol like I guzzle coffee and spews tons of crap into the air like I spew ummm ranting words on a blog page. They do this to dig up metal ore, harvest wood, extract more crude oil which in turn gets turned into products and containers that get used once. Then they are tossed into a trash bin which gets emptied eventually to a concentrated location. IE. Landfill. Where we just fill it in and pretend that it doesn’t exist.

To simplify, we spend enormous amounts of energy destroying the environment to gather tiny bits of material from all over the world only to use it once, concentrate it, bury it and pretend it doesn’t exist so we need more, lather, rinse, repeat.

WTF?

Why the f___ are we not mining the landfills? Please someone tell me why?

Fun, now back to the subject of saving energy. Not that I have any keen insight to saving energy, just some tangible results from the following steps:

1) Incandescent bulbs have been replaced with compact fluorescent bulbs.

2) Wherever possible, use L.E.D. lighting instead of CFL or incandescents.

3) Wherever possible replace all the above with solar powered L.E.D. lighting. Ikea sells a whole bunch of solar powered outdoor lighting like mini Chinese lantern strings that can be used indoors. The solar collector and battery module gets set in the window and turns on after dark. I like to have enough lite on so I don’t fall on my face (it has happened) walking to the can in the middle of the night. The solar lighting is perfect for this.

4) Use motion sensor lighting controls to turn lights on when you enter an area then auto shut off when you leave.

5) Use outlet strips with big on/off switches to control groups of appliances that draw power even when turned off. That would be “vampire devices” like wall-warts, home entertainment equip like TVs, subwoofers, computers and monitors. Etc.

6) Timers and light sensors. I live in Tacoma, WA. It’s not exactly the kind of city where you can leave your doors open and car unlocked. Security lighting is a must. I have a fluorescent low watt flood on a dusk-till-dawn light sensor over my parked vehicle. I have certain items that need to be on when I am home, like cell chargers, wifi router, etc. Things that are a pain to turn on everyday manually. It’s just as easy to plug them into an outlet strip with a timer that turns them on during the hours I am normally home.

7) Turn off lights when you leave the room.

8) Heat or cool only the room you are going to be in if possible. This means space heaters, window air conditioners.

Forty-three percent cut in electricity usage is a pretty cool result both ecologically and economically.

Posted in General Hoo-Ha | 4 Comments