Category: Site News

Thomas Holbrook | The *Nixed Report

Show notes are available here. We’re ahead of schedule on the Patreon page, which can be found here. You can also stream the episode directly from this page below:

One of the things that has become apparent in the last several months is that we live in interesting times. The things that we thought weren’t possible have become the inevitable.

It feels like we’re living in a real life Twilight Zone.

As we continue the new year, new challenges arise. In order to better cover the topics that fascinate us and hold our passion, we need to be able to step it up. That requires money.

The first goal is to make sure the web hosting can handle the files and traffic we throw at it. The reason why we host each episode ourselves is because we also want our site to get more traffic.

That won’t happen if the podcast is hosted off the site.

If we reach $100 a month, hosting will be upgraded. With better hosting, we’ll be able to have more traffic. From there, further goals will include upgrading our recording equipment and even investing in a dedicated studio.

The studio is a long term goal and won’t be reached for a while.

In the meantime, feel free to share our Patreon page, and become a patron today.

Thomas Holbrook II | The *Nixed Report

There will be a slight delay of the latest episode of the podcast. The original plan was to have it published on Friday. Due to a second part time job and the current work schedule, I will be pushing it back to Tuesday.

I will be having the podcast published on Tuesday from here on out.

At some point, Friday will have a video show that summarizes the week. Mondays will also have regular posts that are more Unix and tech related. For tgose who are in the midwest, please have a safe and wonderful weekend.

Icy weather is never fun.

Thomas Holbrook II | The *Nixed Report

Last year, a used system was purchased from the local Salvation Army store in Warrensburg, Missouri. For several months it sat inside of our world headquarters.

It was either a system that could be salvaged for parts or something that could be put to good use.

Early Tuesday morning, it was plugged into a TV via VGA and powered on. It turned out that spending approximately $5 USD was going to yield a pleasant surprise. Preliminary specs are as follows:

• AMD Phenom quad core CPU
• 7 GB of RAM
• AMD Readon HD 5340 with 1 GB of RAM
• 500 GB Hard Drive

The system itself currently has Windows Vista Home Premium. It seems it was set up for World of Warcraft. Whether it can handle a Linux distribution at this point with the precarious situation regarding AMD graphics will remain to be seen.

Though it’s not the most that has ever been had, this desktop has the most memory out of all the desktop systems in a long time.

Further research will be needed to see if it can hold more memory. Depending on what it can handle, it may very well replace the main desktop.

Thomas Holbrook II | The *Nixed Report

In the past few months, it’s become obvious how important the mission of the site has become. The unfortunate, inevitable truth is that major news and media networks are trying to figure out how they could have gotten the election year so wrong while not actually coming upon the correct answer.

In reality, they blame so called “fake news” outlets for their own failings.

In light of this, and revelations over the years, it’s still important to have operational security in mind no matter what any given website is about. For that reason, we have enabled SSL encryption.

In the coming days, the about page will be updated so that anybody who wants to e-mail any of us will not only have an available e-mail address but an encryption key as well. I will also remove my personal site and set up a new one to free up resources for this site.

My Libertarian Conscience will simply be set up in a new home, and the podcast will be converted to a YouTube show instead.

In light of media incompetence, civil liberties concerns, and the revelations from Edward Snowden, I knew that it was time to make things a bit more secure. What he did was not without controversy, and there were unintended consequences.

With that said, the cat is already out of the bag and everybody should be thinking about their privacy.

Even if one has nothing to fear from their own government, there are still identity thieves and others with less than honorable intentions. Protecting your identity and privacy is generally a good idea.

It’s like wearing a helmet when getting on a bike or safety goggles when you’re doing a job that requires eye protection.

That’s also why I don’t begrudge those who use ad blocking. I don’t blame any readers who have no desire to be tracked and traced.

I’ve only begun to keep things updated here. Stay tuned for more articles and more podcasts.

Thomas Holbrook II | The *Nixed Report

For the past several months, I haven’t been as active on the website as I should have been. I was trying to avoid intermixing politics with this very venue, and I shouldn’t have done so.

After all, Overlooked Pop Culture does contain subject matter that is in fact political in nature.

I also wasn’t motivated enough to keep going. That held true until last week. Now I have a reason to get started again. I apologize for being away for so long.

Sometimes, current events are needed to wake me back up.

In the coming days, more activity will occur on the site, and the podcast will resume next week. Thank you for your patience and sorry for leaving everyone hanging.

In the meantime, here’s a video elaborating the situation:

Needless to say we live in interesting times.

By Thomas Holbrook II

The first tablet that I’ve ever owned was a Viewsonic gtablet.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t Google certified, so the official app store was not accessible.  I eventually gave it up and wouldn’t own another one for about four years.

I now am the proud owner of an RCA 10 Pro Edition Tablet, and it has the following specs:

• 1.5 GHz Quad Core Cortex A9 processor
• Android 4.4 KitKat
• 1 GB DDR3 RAM
• 16 GB of internal storage
• 32 GB microSD card (upgrade)
• 0.3 Megapixel front-facing camera and 2.0 Megapixel rear camera
• Micro USB
• Keyboard folio case
• Battery life of up to six hours
• 10″ diagonal screen (1024×600 resoltuion)
• The usual features of a multi-touch capacitive screen (with auto-rotate)
• 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi
• Headphone jack
• Mini HDMI port

The best part is that I have access to the Google Play store.  Although some apps are incompatible with this tablet, I am looking forward to putting it to good use.  With that said, I would also like to take the time to explain what’s been going on with the website.

I’ve been meaning to convert the existing PDF magazines to a web-based format.  In the middle of that, life happened.  Some things come to an end so that others can begin.

A door on one chapter of my life has closed and thus another opens.  The world headquarters for this media venue has been moved back to Warrensburg, Missouri.  This means that Shaggy and I will have an easier time getting together for podcast episodes and other potential projects.

This also means that converting the remainder of the PDF’s to a web-based format will take a bit more time.  More than copying and pasting is involved.  I have to place images in the correct order and add bonus content to entice readers to subscribe to the magazine.

Yes, you read correctly.

Though the online version will remain free for all, there will be a few extras for those who subscribe:

• Exclusive content, such as video episodes embedded via HTML 5
• No insertion of Google Ads
• Other bonuses and incentives as they become available (think exclusive copies of independent films, music albums, and more)

Those who subscribe will get a CD-ROM in the mail with the digital magazine on it.  It’s a throwback to what was once done in the late 1990’s.

Having specific printing equipment for glossy looking magazines would be very cost prohibitive, while having each issue as an individual PDF would only work well as long as the file size remains relatively small.

A web-based format that’s published on CD-ROM would be the best of both worlds as individuals can easily make copies to give away to all their friends.  Yes, I want you to make copies and give them away so that others know we exist!

Once all the existing issues are converted over, I will begin working on the newest issue.  It won’t be perfect as it will be a work in progress.  In fact, it will always be as such.

Still, I am looking forward to this endeavor.  With that said, I shall now conclude this post and begin to celebrate my 32nd birthday.  Have a wonderful afternoon, everybody.

Recently, Thomas received this mobile card reader in the mail. He has a bit of trouble taking it out of the box due to over-analyzing, but once he gets it out, he likes what he sees. Unfortunately, he may have to acquire a tablet instead of relying om his phone due to the thickness of his phone case (an Otterbox) making it virtually impossible to insert the gadget into the headphone jack.

The podcast has had hosts come and go over the last several months.  With each new episode, it became clear that more perspectives were needed.

Fortunately, it seems the right people come along at the right time.  We’re proud to announce that Curtis Warren will be joining the team.

Science has been an important factor throughout his life, and this background will help the show tremendously.

He also likes video games and has recently resumed playing Magic the Gathering after a lengthy hiatus.  He’s excited about the opportunity to bring his unique perspective to the podcast and had this to say:

I would like to share my compassion and passion for Nature, for gaming, and for Education. I’m a huge advocate for making use of the natural world and caring for others and I think that Gaming, Science, and Art are ways we can accomplish that and make the world a better place.

He makes his debut on tonight’s live recording session.

There hasn’t been very much activity on the site as of late, but we have still been active.  Initially we started looking for regular writers to this site, but that fell short.

It’s amazing what can happen in the course of life and the lessons that can be learned by looking into the past and learning from it.

We’re still looking for contributors, but we want to do this the right way and most importantly, the right reasons.  There are those who make millions at a job that they absolutely despised, so what’s the point of doing this if we’re not having fun and opening minds at the same time?

We had to delete the false usernames that were created on this website.  Thanks to spam filtering, no bogus posts were published.

The big issue has been spam bots registering, so a better method for screening candidates has to be put into place.

In the meantime, we’re still doing our podcasts, and some of them are available on YouTube.

As for the magazine, the plan is to either:

• Switch to a publishing solution such as Scribus or…
• Switch to HTML and use HTML 5 for multimedia enhancement.

Either way, it will have to be a solution that can be easily distributed to multiple people at once, and therein lies the key.

If not enough people are looking at this, how do we know if we have an audience to begin with?  Have the audience’s attention first.  The next step is to keep it.

From there, everything will fall into place.

Entertain yourself, educate yourself, and empower yourself.

I haven’t forgotten about you.

Thomas Holbrook II,

Editor and Chief and Founder of The *Nixed Report.