Kevin Riggs' blog

I’m a fan of Anker products and this small, Ultra Thin USB 3.0 hub fits well with the other Anker items I use.  The price of this hub has been reduced (at the time of this writing) to $9.99.

This is the “everyday carry” (EDC) USB hub for my Microsoft Surface Pro 4.  This is not an externally powered hub but it expands the single-USB connection of the Surface Pro 4 into four.  If you are looking for a hub that can power low-consumption USB devices, albeit slightly larger than Anker’s, check the Sabrent UM-43, also for $9.99 as of this writing.

QQ-Tech Mini Bluetooth keyboard with touchpad

I’ve been trying the QQ-Tech mini Bluetooth keyboard for a few months and it’s turned out to be a handy device.

The keyboard is powered by a rechargeable, internal LI battery.  The keyboard takes a mini-USB cable for charging.

mini-USB power

The touchpad works well on connected devices.  I’ve tried it with my Android devices and my Windows Surface Pro 4 tablet.  The device provides several special character/feature capabilities that are difficult or unavailable using the Swype virtual keyboard I normally use on the Samsung Galaxy Note 5.

Audio Technica AT2020

I recently began podcasting after years of blogging and social media engagement via multiple Twitter (primarily @0bytes, @ADubiousDude), Instagram and other accounts.

Why

This venture arose, like several of my information security peers, out of a desire to promote my career through social engagements.  A partner and I agreed to invest in this venture at professional information security strategists.  My decision to stand up a podcast about my faith followed as a way to re-purpose the equipment and practices into which I invest for podcasting, extending my stewardship of these tools and skills.

I’ve often been able to use one of my company’s presentation devices but ran into a scheduling issue where their Logitech R400 device was assigned to someone for a presentation when I needed to use it.

I decided to double down on Logitech and purchase my own R400.

Logitech R400 and R800
Side-by-side

I am very happy with the R400 I bought.  It works from > 35′ (~ 10 meters) away even working through walls.  The R800 I had wouldn’t even work from 5′ (< 2 meters).

After a lightning strike across the street blew out a transformer we’ve noticed erratic behavior on both the Linksys WRT310 wifi-enabled router and the Netgear gigabit switch used for the wired connections in the home office.  I awoke the other day to find that all wifi access was dead and no matter how I worked with the wifi I couldn’t restore it.  I quickly realized the switch had died silently some days before and the laptops had switched over to the wifi.