Backside Bus

Even though I told myself I wouldn't, I went ahead and did it. Did what, you ask? Went ahead and installed the Windows Phone 8.1 Developer Preview on my new Nokia Lumia Icon. I was hesitant at first, since it's basically an unsupported OS and Nokia needs to tweak it to work with their phone, but anyone who knows me well could probably have predicted that I would cave and risk bricking my phone for the allure of new technology. I just installed it last night, so I haven't had too long to play with it, but I am already impressed. Even before the new release, I was a Windows Phone convert... the live tiles and overall polish of the OS really work well for me, plus the performance, even on mediocre hardware, is great. But I really think that the new release has put the Windows Phone OS up there with the big boys. Here are some of my first impressions of Windows Phone 8.1 My Start Screen Look and Feel The Windows Phone 8.1 update enhances the look of Windows Phone by

As I mentioned in my post about blog posts, I am trying to get back into updating my blog on a more regular basis. On that note, I have identified a few things that I want to blog about in the near future, and I'll list them here to (hopefully) inspire myself to follow up. Since I forgot to publish this earlier, I already have a post linked!  Yay for me! We'll see exactly how well it works...  anyway, here are the topics I am planning to touch on: Favorite Windows Phone apps Windows Phone 8.1 Windows 8.1 Update (as opposed to Update to Windows 8.1) Windows Small Business Server 2011 Bare Metal Restore (oh the humanity!!) The Web programming I've been doing lately An update on Building a Box I'll update this post with links to the posts as I write them.

As some of you know, I've been using a Windows Phone since early 2013. I had been planning on writing a review of Windows Phone 8 at some point, however, with the impending release of Windows Phone 8.1, I will hold off on that since the new OS is a major change and I'll have a lot more to write about. Just last week, my HTC Windows Phone 8X decided it didn't want to charge any more. Full disclosure, it was my 3rd HTC 8X because I broke the first 2 (swimming and dropping). In general I liked the phone, however there were some quirky things that it would do. For example, due to a poorly designed SIM card tray, the phone would lose contact with the card and either shut off or not be able to make any calls until I restarted it. This was due to the tray deforming due to the placement under the power button and the plastic case of the phone. The simple fix was to "thicken" the SIM card with two pieces of tape, basically jamming it in the slot. So when the third one

I know that my posting schedule makes "once in a blue moon" seem like a NASCAR race, but I get busy with work and life in general and can't keep up. I'll get an idea and start an article, but by the time I finish it, the information will either no longer be relevant. Other times, I start something but don't get a full-fledged post out of it. In any event, I am going to try to be a little more regular in my posting, perhaps even trying for the "once in a blue moon" standard rather than the current schedule. Happy reading (if I ever do post anything...)

I purchased the Seagate Central 2TB NAS a few months ago to use as a media storage/streaming hub for my home network as my main media PC was being difficult sharing over DLNA. It is doing well in that role, and I thought it was time for a review. My household has a large number of devices on all platforms (PCs, iPad, Android, Windows RT, Windows Phone, Xbox, PS3) and, once it was set up, the devices all detected and were able to access the NAS. I did have a small issue when I first added it to the network - the first PC didn't connect until I went to the Seagate website and grabbed a piece of software (which is recommended in the setup instructions). Once I connected and set up the NAS, I applied a firmware update and subsequent PCs were able to connect without the software. None of the DLNA devices I used had an issue connecting. By default, the NAS has a public folder with subfolders for music, photos, and videos that is accessible to all users that connect to the device. Users