There's a DNA PCR lab-in-a-box on Kickstarter. It's expensive, but the science geek in me wants this so badly.

I've always been kinda bitter that the AP Bio crowd got to do a DNA electrophoresis lab in high school, and I missed out on that. :P

I need a new router for my parents' place. The SkyDog router I have now is apparently acting as an open DNS resolver, and the company's been bought out and no longer producing new firmware.

What do folks recommend? I need something that (a) has good remote management, for family tech support, (b) I can easily walk my mom through setup over the phone with, and (c) runs reliably -- ideally never needing a manual reset due to flakey firmware.

OnHub is one option, but I've heard mixed reviews. Somebody else was suggesting Almond+. Any others, or first-hand experience?

Outside of work, how do folks do word processing? Does anybody still bother with LaTeX, or has everyone just moved to Google Docs (esp. for things that don't involve math)?

Just a random question out of curiosity. I posted the same thing at the office to compare responses.

Last night’s networking projects: rate limiting my guest VLAN and applying a traffic shaping policy to tame bandwidth hungry computers.

I love my Mikrotik router, but definitely need a manual to figure out how to use it. More switches than an airplane!

It's starting! Looking forward to Google I/O tomorrow!

Dear #LazyPlus... I need to get a new pair of headphones for gaming at home. Do I go with the (wired) Astro A40s which include a cool desktop knob-thingy, or the (wireless) A50s and avoid extra cables?

On one hand, the A50 is dependent on an internal battery, which needs to be recharged and will eventually fail.

On the other hand, the A40 requires an optical connection for surround sound, whereas the A50 can do surround sound with a self-contained USB dongle.

Decisions...

I'm almost tempted to get a +Ubiquiti Networks VoIP phone (which runs Android), load Hangouts Dialer on it, and just use it as a desktop extension for Google Voice. I wonder how well it'd work?

(Bonus points if I could figure out how to wire it up to my doorbell so it rings and gives me a video feed when the pizza delivery guy comes by.)

Hello from Fukushima prefecture, Japan. The current radiation weather is 0.185 µSv/h.

Taken at the Koriyama train station earlier today. Kinda a unique sight to see a Geiger counter on public display, so I figured I'd share it.

Purchased a Japanese SIM card for my phone. It came with a free origami paper crane. (I'm totally serious.)

On a related note, its exciting that you can use an ordinary LTE phone in Japan now. Refreshing change of pace compared to the old W-CDMA network that's used nowhere else in the world.