Carbon paper for your PDA

Submitted by Jon Acheson

Jon, this post’s for you. 

As mentioned in the PDA comments, Blue Nomad’s Backupbuddy is software that you can install on your PDA to create a data backup in the event your data becomes corrupted or you experience a system failure.  In addition, BB will also create restore checkpoints which can used when you make changes to your handheld that may be risky, automatically create checkpoints during each HotSync, or as frequently as you want, retrieve previous files individually that have been deleted or overwritten, including ALL previous versions backed up by BackupBuddy.  Lastly, you can also exclude specific files, file types, and card directories from being backed up.

In looking over their product information, it seems that BB only works with the Palm line of PDAs, and is available for purchase on-line.

Get Backupbuddy here.

Body armor for your "brain"

Submitted by Eric Daniel

Remember that PDA I mentioned a while back?  The one I use so I don’t have to haul a filing cabinet of information around with me?  Well, good as it is, it isn’t perfect.

For starters, it’s not very flexible; sometimes it doesn’t bend when you do, and the resulting “flexing” can wreak havoc on your PDA.  More importantly, it’s an electrical system, not a paper “analog” one, which means that it is correspondingly more fragile than that little green memorandum notebook.  Dropping it is bad, so is stepping on it, kicking it, crushing it, or submerging it in water.

Solution?  Up armor your brain.  The option I went for was the Rhino skin aluminum carrier.  While not titanium (and yes there are titanium carriers out there) the Rhino skin does the job for me.  Made of aluminum, the Rhino skin locks the PDA in along the left hand edge of the PDA (using the devices original cover hinges) so it doesn’t rattle around in the case.  Furthermore, the skin has a black foam rubber liner to protect the PDA.  The construction of the Rhino skin carrier allows you to plug in the charger, data cable, audio headphones, access all the peripheral ports, with the case closed, so you don’t need to expose the PDA while doing maintenance.  Finally, the skin also has pockets for a couple of memory chips, in the event you need to juggle cards and don’t want to have your spares floating around.

The only thing the skin won’t do is keep your PDA dry.  For that I use a Ziploc freezer bag (or, for you high speed active duty types you can use the newly developed re-sealable pouch the Army’s putting in MREs now for drinking your beverage base powder with.)

Get the Rhino Skin here

Notetaking in the 21st century

Submitted by Eric Daniel

Back in the day I never went anywhere without a 3x5 green “Memoranda” book and pen in my uniform pocket (NSN 7530-00-222-0078 by the way.)  In fact, I still have all my old ones collecting dust in a box in my closet somewhere, waiting for that day that I have nothing better to do than go through them all to decide what phone numbers to keep and which to burn.

Well, just recently, a couple of things happened, which caused me to rethink my little green notebook and upgrade to something different.  First, the ACUs came out, and as fortune would have it, the breast pockets are just large enough to accommodate the notebook if I stuff nothing in it, which is certainly not the case with mine (“pregnant” would probably be the best description I could give my current notebook) so squeezing that sucker in and out of that dinky pocket has rapidly become a chore.  Second, my wife came home one day sporting a shiny new Palm E2 PDA.  Now I’ve never been into organizers, day planners, or portable filing cabinets in general (this is probably due to the mental scaring I received while being pushed, kicking and screaming, through all those SGT Morales boards in Germany) but I had to admit, with the advent of micro processors and portable memory chips, a device like that E2 would certainly make my life easier.

So I am officially now a PDA convert.  I have no idea if the Palm E2 is the best out there or the cheapest (at $199.00 I can guarantee that it isn’t the cheapest, and it most definitely does not have all the bells and whistles) but it does everything I ask of it.  Roster information, classroom PPT presentations, photos, you name it, I can load it up on that thing.  The E2 has an internal lithium-ion battery that can be charged either through an AC wall unit or by plugging into your computer.  The memory chip is also removable, so you can swap them out with other chip using devices such as digital cameras or cell phones, or use a data cable to link the two devices and transfer data that way.

If only they came in green…

Get the Palm E2 here

I'm from the Government and I'm here to help

Submitted by Jay Schulz

If you are like me, you like to know what people are saying around you. The 'smart book' that was issued to me by my unit that told me how to say things like "Put down your weapon or I'll shoot." Don't usually come up in my everyday conversations with the Iraqi Police that we are currently working with. So, I went to the PX and bought a book on Arabic. This was a disappointment as our interpreter told me that it was "Egyptian Arabic". Although they could understand what I was saying, I wouldn't be able to understand what they were saying. So, I sent my wife an e-mail requesting that she find me a book that had "Iraqi Arabic".

This is the book she came up with: Beginner's Iraqi Arabic with 2 audio CD's.

It has 12 lessons that start out with pronunciations and work through verb conjugation and many other forms of words while building up one's vocabulary. In the back of the book is a decent English-Arabic and Arabic-English dictionary. It also comes with two audio CD's that keep one's pronunciation on track. I think the lessons are easy, and if you are going to interact with the local populace daily, as most soldiers do, this book can help tremendously.

Buy the book here

To write or not to write, that is the question

Submitted by Eric Daniel

The Army is fixated on two things, paperwork, and ink pens. Everything must be in ink; if it’s not, then it’s not official. Yet over the years I have come to fear the government-issue Skilcraft pen. I cannot count the number of times I've had one of those little black demons vomit all over my uniform pocket. Moreover, ink doesn’t work worth a flip in the rain, even if you’re using storm-proof or treated paper. One way to get around that issue though is to use pencil, and in that arena, the best tool for the job that I've found it the carpenter's pencil. In the event you don't know, carpenter pencils are those big, flat, pencils with a large lead you see construction folks using. They are easy to grip with gloves on, they don't tear wet paper when you use them, and they are easy to sharpen. Most importantly, they're something like 50 cents apiece, which makes them cheaper than mechanical pencils and the tube of replacement leads they require.

Another nifty writing implement, again courtesy of the construction jobsite is the lumber crayon. Basically a grease pencil (or china marker for you old timers) writ large, lumber crayons come in a variety of colors, are cheap as hell, and will write on just about any surface, wet or dry. This makes them useful for marking up structures or vehicles to communicate status or contents, rather than trying to do so with spray paint or a sharpie.

Both of these are available at just about any hardware store, home improvement store, or construction materials supply store.

Submitted by Joe Brett

The grease pencil was used in Vietnam by us 0-1 Bird dog pilots in three ways: 1. to make a mark on the front window that was became gun site for shooting our WP rockets; 2. A marker to write on the window the coordinates, call signs, frequencies and other data for running air strikes and adjusting artillery; and 3. to mark the cylinders on the engine. The mag with the cold grease was the one with a magneto drop.

Buy the Irwin Carpenter Pencil