Rise of the Dark Angel by Carol Brearley

rise_of_the_dark_angel_iconA few years back, a series of books made an international splash.  The central thread of the trilogy was a young woman who was mistreated and abused in a horrific fashion.  And throughout the three book series, the central character ultimately had her revenge.  That series was ultimately known as the Millennium Trilogy and was written by Stieg Larsson.  Many know the series better by the title of the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  It was an international smash hit and, at its core, it dealt with a woman who had been horribly wronged.

Fans of the Millennium Trilogy are likely to appreciate the visceral drama at the heart of Rise of the Dark Angel.  Only where Stieg Larsson literally spent hundreds of pages slowly spinning his tale and taking lengthy side trips, Carol Brearley tells a tale that is much more on point while equally gritty and engaging.  It’s the story of Aingeal, a young woman living in New York City.  The story opens strong and hits the reader hard as we experience how Aingeal is wronged first hand, through her eyes.

In many ways, this is one of the things that makes this story so powerful.  It’s told in the first person.  The reader experiences everything through the character’s eyes.  The fear, the pain, the need to heal, and ultimately the thirst for revenge.  The author, Carol Brearley, puts the reader there, front row for the roller coaster ride that is both Aingeal’s pain and her road to recovery.
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ShareMouse: The Software KVM That Works

sharemouse_iconMac users looking for a software solution that allows them to share a single keyboard and mouse with multiple computers have had a likely experienced a great deal of heartache over the years.  Synergy has been around for a long time but it’s always been a bag of hurt.  It’s cross-platform but not user-friendly, let alone Mac-like.  If you can get it to work you should count yourself lucky.  But don’t worry, your luck won’t last long.  One day that setup will just stop working and then the real pain begins.  The problems with Synergy were what made me a big fan of a solution called Teleport.  At one time it was a great solution and far easier than Synergy to configure.  But then the Mac OS was updated and updated again.  And either the developers of Teleport weren’t interested in maintaining support or they just weren’t up to the challenge.  Teleport hasn’t worked properly for me in years!  Looking at the support forum and searching Google quickly proved I wasn’t the only one having trouble.

So where does that leave us?  If you’re a computer user who has more than one computer on your desk, in a perfect world, all of those machines could be controlled using a single keyboard and mouse.  For example, I have a Mac Mini with 2 monitors attached.  But I frequently need to use my MacBook Pro at the same desk.  I want to control both the Mac Mini and the MacBook Pro from the same keyboard and mouse.  And while Synergy and Teleport have either proven unreliable or outright failures, an alternative software solution called ShareMouse, thankfully, has proven an extremely viable solution.
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Review: Island 731 by Jeremy Robinson

island_731_iconJeremy Robinson comes through again with another great action/thriller. While the chilling danger faced by the characters of this novel is fiction, shockingly it is grounded in fact. The infamous Unit 731 was obviously the inspiration which fueled this novel. And while the book shines a light on many outrageous atrocities, few readers are likely to realize how many historic references are factual.

Island 731 is a chilling thriller and a troubling cautionary tail warning of what might happen scientific advancement is put ahead of human decency and morality.

Looking for more information on Jeremy Robinson?  Find it on his web site, at www.jeremyrobinsononline.com. You can also find him on Facebook as well as Twitter.

Network— Your Digital Footprint Is NOT Out To Get You

The info surfaced in this 3 minute video is fascinating. It details the sort of information that can be surfaced by evaluating an individuals aggregate digital footprint.

But in the video’s final moments it takes a wrong turn and tries to explain that all of this information is somehow malignant. I disagree. I think that summation is unfair. Yes, the data is out there. No, it is not inherently destructive or damaging. In the end, all of this information is a part of what we commonly refer to as the internet and that is a resource that has benefitted mankind in ways far greater than the sum of its detriment.

Roll Your Own Fusion Drive: Benchmarks

fusion_drive_iconApple’s new so-called Fusion Drive technology is interesting.  The cost of SSD drives is falling but not at a rate that consumers (or apparently Apple) would like.  To that end, Apple engineers have come up with a novel solution that is proving to be a surprisingly effective middle-ground initiative.  A Fusion Drive is comprised of two separate drive mechanisms.  The first is an SSD drive 128GB or greater.  The second drive is a conventional spinning hard drive, either 5400rpm or 7200rpm, now typically referred to as an HDD.  The HDD can be pretty much any size, currently all the way up to 3TB.

What turns these two disparate drives into a Fusion Drive is the way they’re formatted.  Apple’s Core Storage API includes the ability to effectively stripe the two drives into a single logical volume.  Think of the single volume as a hybrid: the best parts of SSD (fast, fast, fast) with the best parts of the HDD (lots of cheap space).  But what makes the Fusion Drive truly remarkable is what happens to the data on the drive automatically and invisibly once formatting is complete.  Once the SSD and the HDD have been merged into a single Fusion Drive, the Mac OS becomes responsible for distributing the data across the two separate drive mechanisms.  It does this allocation with intelligence.   The most used data files, or files that benefit most from faster access times are stored on the SSD.  Larger or lesser used files are stored on the HDD’s spinning platters.  The idea being that the files on the SSD can be accessed more quickly, having vastly superior read and write times.
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VPNGate.net: The Free VPN Project and What it Means

There was a fascinating story on TorrentFreak.com today extolling the virtues of VPNGate.net.  It’s a project brought to us by the Graduate School of University of Tsukuba, Japan.  Essentially, it offers free VPN access to anyone in need.  The goal is to subvert censorship in the digital age.  For example, Iran and China block access to YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.  But internet users in those geographic areas can bypass their nations network filters by configuring their computers to route all traffic through an internationally based Virtual Private Network, or VPN.  For example, a Chinese college student could configure his laptop to use a VPN server in Japan.  When that student’s VPN connection is properly configured, all network access will be tunneled though that VPN connection.  Any web site he visits won’t show his Chinese ISP’s IP address in the logs.  The logs will records the IP address of the VPN server in Japan.

At its most altruistic level, this is a tool of free speech.  VPNGate.net offers a range of VPN server locations based in the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia, Italy, Czech Republic, and the UK.  You literally select a desired VPN end point, configure your computer, and off you go!  The project offers a wide range of VPN protocols as well.  The tried and true L2TP/IPsec is supported, as is OpenVPN, as well as SSL-VPN.  This means just about any personal computing device can use the service: Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android.  The project’s web site has documentation explaining how to configure each operating system.

First and foremost, proper configuration of the VPN tunnel is absolutely critical.  And I want to draw special attention to this point since many of the people who use VPN access on a regular basis don’t consider this.  The computers VPN configuration has an option to “send all traffic over VPN connection.”  Your OS might phrase it slightly different, but this is a critical setting.  If you want to obscure your digital traffic to the greatest possible extent, this option must be engaged.  If it is not, only some traffic will route over the VPN.  The rest of the traffic will flow out through your internet connection in a traditional manner and it is neither wrapped in encryption nor routed through the the international network.
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The Curse of One-Eyed Jack by J. Kent Holloway

one-eye-jack-iconWhat happens when Boone Creek Kentucky suffers a rash of unexplained disappearances and murders?  The superstitious town folk believe it’s The Curse of One-Eyed Jack.  Suspicion and dark secrets come easy to people with more than a little experience with the magic of the Appalachian foothills.  But none of it matters to Kili Brennan when her brother goes missing while leading an archeological dig in the nearby hollows.  Has he become a victim of One-Eyed Jack?

While Kili tries to solve the mystery of her brothers disappearance, the towns people are more concerned with protecting themselves from One-Eyed Jack.  And when Kili enlists the help of local mountain man, Ezekiel Crane, it’s impossible to tell if the odds of finding her brother have gotten better or worse.

From beginning to end, The Curse of One-Eyed Jack is a great mystery with supernatural undertones and twists that keep us guessing.  The story has a fantastic ”grown up’s version of Scooby Doo” vibe to it.  The plot takes a series of fantastic turns, each leading closer to something ominous.  The stakes continue to rise and the mystery builds.  And, the entire time, there is a sense as if there’s something in the distant bushes watching, pulling strings and orchestrating events…  Maybe something supernatural, maybe not.
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Google Reader to Shutdown, Feedly a Real Contender

feedly_logo_iconLast nights announcement that Google Reader would be shutdown as of July 1st, 2013 was a crushing blow to some.  The web-based RSS reader app was a vital part of the daily work flow for many.  For many— though, apparently, not enough.  Google is pulling the plug.

This marks the first major public facing project Google is disbanding after investing significant time and resources over the course of several years.  Certainly some Reader users would ague that Reader’s development has been largely nonexistent for some time.  Several UI bugs were left to bother users for far too long.  All the same, the core functionality remained and allowed us all to rely on the service.  But no more.

The death of Google Reader will create a vacuum.  Though the demise of Reader was only announced last night, some are already calling it the deathblow for RSS.  Personally I think that’s sensationalistic and inaccurate   RSS has become a vital part of the web.  It’s become a core facility for the dissemination of information across the internet.   Perhaps not in a public facing fashion as the average internet user still doesn’t understand what RSS is or what it does, but it’s functionality is still critical to behind the scenes operations.  The most obvious of which is podcasting.  Right now, RSS cannot dry up entirely because podcasting is 100% reliant on it for subscription based distribution.
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Bad Apple: The iPhone No Longer Has the Advantage

It pains me, truly, but Apple has a real problem on its hands.  That problem is called Android.  Apple’s iPhone has essentially become the same 800 pound gorilla that Microsoft was in the 1990′s: it achieved critical mass and has become slow to adapt as a result.  While Google iterate quickly with every release of the Android operating system, Apple’s iPhone is now evolving slowly in comparison.  And that inability to evolve is costing Apple.

Software is only half of the what it takes to win.  Apple still has a great thing going with the iOS.  It remains the gold standard.  It’s the mobile operating system one can hand to a novice with confidence that they can find their way alone.  People who are not accustomed or comfortable with traditional computers can grok the iOS because it has a uniform user interface and controls which remain consistent from one app to the next.  This is an area where Android is, and always has been, lacking.  But every version of Android improves dramatically.  Apple needs to pay more attention to that threat.

The significant threat to Apple’s dominance, at the moment, is the hardware running the Android operating system.  Because, to put it plainly, some of the latest Android phones are down right sexy.  They have large, high quality screens and very fast, multi-core processors.  Hardware development is advancing quickly— far faster than Apple can counter.  And, for whatever reason, Apple seems strangely reluctant to make even the most obvious hardware updates to offset their deficiency.
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Book Review: Sick, By Brett Battles

sickSick is book one in the Project Eden series, and after reading it I can’t wait to dig into book #2.  Though this book is a lunching point for a series that currently features four novels, thankfully it’s a fully fleshed out and complete story in its own right.  Packed with action and unending suspense, the book starts with a scare and the wild ride only continues from there.

The book centers around the character of Daniel Ash, an officer in the Army who has recently taken his family and transferred to a base that has just been taken out of mothballs.  As the story opens, he wakes in the middle of the night to tragedy and finds himself in the center of a fantastic conspiracy.  As the story unfolds, Ash fights for his life and the lives of those he cares for.
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