Technology - Liberty - Hunting and How To's

A question that I get quite often from people is to which router should they get and do they need one. Computer networking is not my big subject, but I can manage to some extent.

My usual answer is it depends on what you want.

Normally, I would suggest a router as they usually have some sort of safeguards built into it from preventing someone from snooping around in your computer, but having a router alone will not prevent this.

A router will have a few main functions, and the more you spend the more features you will get just like with everything else. The basic thing that it does is take a network of computers and have the ability to "link" them up so that they can have the ability to talk to each other. Most people will get the router so that they can expand the internet capabilities of their incoming internet connection so you are not bound by the old "dial up" days where one computer was connected to the internet only.

They can also provide WiFi capabilities, which is a way for wireless devices to connect to the router and gain access to the internal network that you have setup and get access to the same internet connection that you have setup.

Routers will usally have at least 4 connections on the back for the possibility of having 4 computers hooked up to it, but you can always expand the number of computers that are hard wired using what is called a switch, but that is another topic.

As for what kind of router to get if you want to get a router that is really up to what you want to do, what brands you like and what features a router has that you like. I like the cisco brand routers, but this tends to come down to the Ford vs Chevy discussion.

Then it comes down to what do you expect to do. I like to plan for the future, so I will usually get more power than I really need as bandwidth use gets higher the impact on the router get to be higher.

Some of the newer high end routers do look more like space ships than a router.

If you plan on connecting via WiFi and streaming video over it, I would suggest getting a dual or a tri-band router (here is a good writeup regarding single band, vs dual band WiFi and here is a good writeup on the difference between dual band and tri-band WiFi )and I will usually get a gigabit router. The gigabit refers to how much data the router can send and receive, but if you do not have a computer card that can handle gigabit and cables that cannot handle gibabit then it might not be worht the investment, unless you plan on upgrading your equipment at some point. Some may disagree with that and may say that getting a gigabit router is a good thing or some may say that it is just overkill.

Some other features that may be nice to have.

• Guest access (this creates a guest network so that you can create a temporary guest WiFi network without having to give out your WiFi password)
• Config from anywhere. I know that newer Linksys routers provide this via mobile app that allows you to configure your router from where ever you are, even if you are not connected to your network.
• Network Map - This lets you see what all devices are connected to your network. Some routers will provide this and some dont. Others will show it in hard to find places. I have a Linksys router and it shows
• Parental Controls - This allows you to block certain websites on all or certain devices only, and allows you to set internet blocks on certain or all devices for specified times.
• External Storage - Some routers allow you to hook up an external hard drive to it so that you can use it for a network attached storage devices (NAS). This can allow all the members of your network to share files in a central location.

Which routers do I suggest?

That one is up to you. I like Linksys (which Cisco bought out Linksys). I have heard of others having good luck with Belkin , Asus and TP-Link

If you have any sugestions or comments, let me know.

This entry was posted on January 24, 2017 at 12:49 PM and has received 1431 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

A cellphone external battery pack is something that is very nice to have as when your cellphone gets low on battery power and you do not have a easy access to a power source, these come in very handy. I have a few of them and I will take 1 or 2 of them with me when I am out hunting. For hunting these can be a life saver as if you get stranded somewhere what are you going to do when your battery gets low? If you have an external battery pack, you can charge your phone (as long as you have a cord with you, to which I bring at least 2 with me)

There are a lot of different external battery packs out there that you can get. Some are great and some really suck. I have bought a few that were nothing but paper weights as they failed to charge anything, but they boasted to be great battery packs.

The ones that I like to use are the solar charging ones and they weight about 1lb or so. You cannot fully charge the battery pack on solar, but it can get to about 50% charge via solar and it is a nice way to get some more power when the battery pack runs out of power as well.

I have bought a few off of Amazon, and they were good they did the job. I found a few off of Wish, to which were very inexpensive but they take a long time to get to your house. The ones that I had bought were Lithium Battery Solar Power Bank 100000mAh

The one that I had bought from Amazon is no longer sold but it was similar to the one above (I did find one at amazon similar Battery Pack

They have 2 outlets for charging phones, so you could charge 2 phones off of this. I have the Samsung Galaxy Note 5, so it has a pretty big battery and I have charged my phone to 100% from 20% with one of these and I still had some power to spare. If I am in a deer stand and I have something to set them on or a way to hang them from by backpack, I will usually hang them on the outside of my backpack so that while I am charging my phone (if I need to) that the battery pack is also slowly getting some more power as well.

Once I return to camp, I am able to charge the battery pack(s) back up all the way again. I will also use these when going out and about if we are going to be gone for the whole day such as at a fair or something.

This entry was posted on January 13, 2017 at 12:09 PM and has received 1047 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

If anyone buys one of the Samsung Gear Live smart watch (they are the android smart watch) off of Amazon or other retailer and you find that some apps do not work on it, such as changing the watch face or that WiFi does not work, or anything does not work on it. The reason that I found at least with mine is that the ones that were sold were "developer" editions of the watch
Since these were in developer mode, this prevented from most apps working correctly and it also prevented the Android OS from updating to the latest version of the Android OS that Samsung released for this watch (mine has Android 6.01 on it), it is not just your watch and it is not you.
There are some steps that you need to do to remove the developer edition of the watch. If you are used to "rooting" an android phone, this should be no issue for you. I have rooted a few so far, so I was able to go thru the steps quite easily. I had found all the steps on a Reddit page, after some searching as to why nothing worked for it.
Head over to this reddit post https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidWear/comments/2rgx1p/no_update_on_gear_live/

After I was able to remove the "developer" edition of Android from the watch and then update it, the watch has worked perfectly fine for me. In another post I will do some tricks that I will use my watch for.

This entry was posted on January 10, 2017 at 9:52 PM and has received 1239 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Have you ever wanted to record your driving?
Some may ask to why anyone would ever want to do that. Well, a few reasons to why it is a good idea

• If you get into a car accident and it was not your fault, there is your proof
• If you witness a car accident and the person that caused the accident says it was not their fault, you have proof
• If you have ever been accused of trying to run someone over, this is your proof that they are lying and have issues (yes, this happened to me)
• If you have ever been in a situation where you said that you wish you would have been video recording something while driving, now you can
• If you witness some sort of illegal activity, now you have video proof of it

There are many, many other uses besides the ones above
Well, you dont have to spend a ton of money on a dash camera. If you have a cellphone with a decent camera, or even a backup cellphone with a decent camera and it is running Android you have all that you need to have a dash camera.
I bought a inexpensive windshield mount for my phone ( I have the Samsung Galaxy Note 5, so it is a big phone) and the holder works for it, with some room to spare (not to mention that I have a otterbox on it, so it is even thicker. The windshield mount that I bought can be purched for around $2.00 at wish. Note that it can take a few weeks for it to arrive at your house.
After you have that, all you need to do is head over to the Google Play store and download and possibly purchase Auto Guard. I think I paid under $20.00 for this, to which it may even be cheaper than that. This app not only does a video recording, but it also records your GPS location and your speed. When you play back a recording it will show a map under the video of where you were and the speed you were going, to which it will also record the audio. Some have wondered about the storage on their phone filling up, well this app can automatically back up all the videos to Youtube if you want it to. For the backup, you can specify if it should backup on Cellular or on Wi-Fi only, and you can specify if it should backup when charging only, or at any time.
I have found this little app to be quite useful in recording some almost accidents that I have gotten into due to people pulling out directly in front of me when driving.

here are some screen shots from the app on the Google Play Store





Here is some info regarding the app from the Google Play store
Your smart phone can be clever as you with AutoGuard, the best Blackbox application, will give you wonderful experiences. Key Features - (Pro) Background recording: Multitasking with other apps (like navigation) - Upload videos on YouTube.com with captions for location and time information - Capture photos at important situation automatically - Show the video and map information on one screen - Automatically starts video recording when put into car dock or connect with bluetooth devices - Records driving video, speed, GPS, and nearest address - Supports high resolutions (1080p, 720p) - Traces path driven on 3D Google maps - Snapshot (supports auto focus, flash & gallery) - Send recorded information via E-mail AutoGuard records various lengths of video, acceleration, latitude, longitude, and speed. The video recorded can be limited to save space on your phone. After the space is filled it will automatically delete the oldest videos, unless marked to be saved. AutoGuard Pro can be set to automatically start when placed in a car dock and run in the background. You can adjust video resolution, bitrates, the sensitivity of the accelerator, and GPS update time. With Pro Version(AutoGrard Pro Unlocker), you are ad free, can sync your videos on Youtube.com & Multitask AutoGuard with other apps such as Navigation or Mp3. Visit AutoGuard's home and get more valuable information! https://plus.google.com/communities/109441776333405866373 -------------------- Why AutoGuard needs the contact permission? - List up Gmail accounts for uploading videos to Youtube. - Referral check. AutoGuard doesn't need any other information rather than your gmail address. Anyone who wants to help translating will be welcome. Thanks. =:) Support languages : English, German, French, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Taiwanese, Lithuanian, Polish, Turkish, Romanian, Hungarian, Czech & Slovak.

This entry was posted on January 6, 2017 at 7:54 PM and has received 1342 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

This is something that I have been doing for quite a long time now, even when I had my Palm Treo, and it is extremely easy to do on your computer.
What I use to make my ringtones with, is I download a program called Audacity, and when you use Audacity it may require you to download a plugin or install a plugin called Lame encoder

Basically, with this program you can import a MP3 file from your collection of music that you have paid for, and you can extract a certain part of the MP3 and turn that into a ringtone or a notification tone on your cellphone or tablet.
After you install Audacity, you can either import a MP3 or "drag" into into the stage.

Once you do that, you can play and select the part of the MP3 that you want to keep.

What I do once I select the part that I want to keep, is I go to Edit then Copy or [CTRL + C] for a keyboard shortcut, then in Audacity go to File - New and then paste the audio into a new audacity window. From here I can finely tune what I want to keep as a ringtone and then once I have it the way that I want it I can save it as a MP3, as File - Export Audio (this is where the Lame encoder comes into place).

I can save it directly to my phone if I have my phone plugged into my PC or I can save it to my Google Drive folder on my PC and then use the Drive AutoSync post that I made earlier to automatically download the ringtone to either one device or multiple devices that I have Drive Autosync installed on. I will usually have to reboot my phone for the new ringtone to show up to select (For Android there is a folder in the root that is called Ringtones. There is usually another folder called Notifications or it may be under Audio - Notifications for the notification tones). This will allow you to make your own ringtones for one or multiple devices without having to pay for ringtones or try to find the exact ones that you want.

This entry was posted on January 6, 2017 at 4:09 PM and has received 1307 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

There is a app that I have on my Android phone that allows me to backup certain folders to Google Drive and keep the folder structure intact which has many benefits.
The app that I use is called DriveSync
One of the benefits of using this versus using some sort of built in backup is that not only can this backup stuff from your phone / tablet, but you can also push stuff to your phone and or tablet with this.
By this, I mean that the application has a few different sync methods.

You can upload to Google Drive, you can download from Google Drive or you can 2 way sync. The 2 way sync will look at your device and then look at Google Drive and make sure that they both have the same files. Download any that need to be downloaded, delete the ones that should be deleted and then upload the ones that need to be uploaded.
If you do not have easy access to plug your phone into a computer to transfer files to your phone, you can upload them to your Google drive folder, then when you have the conditions correct to sync (The app lets you dictate when it will or will not sync, such as either connected to WiFi, plugged into a power source, etc.. ) then your files will be downloaded to your device.
I will use this to keep my media files (ringtones, notifications, downloads, etc.. ) in sync between my cellphone and my tablet. I also have it installed on my brothers cellphone so that we can share downloaded pictures and what not.

I did pay for this application, and I think it is worth the price.
Per the description of this app:
"Autosync Google Drive lets you automatically sync and share unlimited files and folders with Google Drive cloud storage and with your other devices. It is an ideal tool for photo sync, photo upload, music download, document and file backup, automatic file transfer, automatic file sharing between devices,... New files in your device are instantly uploaded to Google Drive. New files in Google Drive are automatically downloaded onto your device. If you delete a file on one side, it will be deleted on the other side. It works across multiple devices (your phone and your tablet). If their folders are synced with the same Google Drive account, they will be kept in sync with each other. This is how Google Drive desktop client works but it's not the same with the official Google Drive Android app. The Google Drive app is all manual. Autosync Google Drive is all about automation."

This entry was posted on January 4, 2017 at 7:39 PM and has received 1403 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

This is a software tool that I use quite frequently to provide remote computer support. It is free as long as it is non-commercial use. This works with Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8 & Windows 10. It also works for Android devices.

Watch this video on Dailymotion - http://dai.ly/x6ij5wo

Watch this video on DTube - https://d.tube/v/jmrados/w2kilqf5

Watch this video on YouTube - https://youtu.be/FhpoqgmqnSI

This entry was posted on December 30, 2016 at 5:15 PM and has received 907 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I have a friend who asked me how it would be possible to have an application that they use accessible to their other computer inside of their house. The application that they need is in their shop, but they want to be able to do some of the grunt work inside of their house, which is understandable.

My suggestions were: 1. Buy a new computer or find a computer that you really do not use or even a used one on craigslist. Install the application that you need on that computer, and then install some free remote control applications (you can use Windows RDP if the host computer is running a professional version of Windows 7) and have this computer running all the time. You can then remote into this computer and do your work.

2. Install a VMWare on any of your computers and have it always running, and configure the VMWare to have a bridged connection so it is accessible to your network. Install Windows and your application on this VMWare instance and then you can RDP into this Widnows instance and use your application.

3. Install your application on a laptop and take it with you.

I am sure that there are a few other options, but these were the one that readily came off my head.

This entry was posted on November 20, 2016 at 9:24 PM and has received 966 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.