12.02.02

Zoom Zoom Book

Posted in Apple, Tech at 2 pm

I normally wouldn’t post in the middle ofthe day like this, but i’ve just got to note for the record that adding 512MB to my 128MB makes my iBook very snappy, and me very happy.

Now I’m able to switch back and forth between programs at a normal rate rather than the glacial speed I was at. Switching to Mail or IE when they did not have an exisiting window on the screen was excruciating. Now it’s slightly noticable. Swithcing to the Finder when there are no windows open actually has the default window open so quick I didn’t know it wasn’t already open until I experimented with it.

Finally I feel like I can breathe deeply and work in my digital space. Till now I felt like I was shoe-horned into this. Now it feels much better.

The only “easy” upgrade I could possibly make to this machine internally now would be a faster hard drive, moving from 4200rpm to 5400rpm. But at $250 for the 40GB IBM drive, I think I can wait.

My next upgrade will be Mac OS X.2, aka Jaguar, which I can get with my teacher discount at PSU for just $85.

12.01.02

French Screen Shots

Posted in General at 1 pm

I never really expected to see a terminal session in French that intrigued me: escale.jpg However this one does.

Notice the main Terminal window and the line that says, “Choix de la connexion”.

This is the line that lets you know that the you are to choose which method of connection you would like to your Netwon.

OS X to the Newton via IrDA, TCP/IP, Serial, AppleTalk, or BSD Sockets. This is great.

If only it: A) was GUI based, 2) had an Engilsh option, III) Finished, Omega) Released.

11.28.02

SolidState Internal HardDrive

Posted in General at 9 pm

Holy Coolness, Batman! Talk about an interesting hack. I hope this bodes well for more solid state storage.

cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg/hardware/pb150/

The guy has replaced the internal hard drive of a PowerBook 150 with a Compact Flash card and just a 32 megger!

I really hope we eventually see the end of spinning hard drives. Why make something mechanical when you can go fully solid state?

I hear the other day that 1, 2 and 3 Gigabyte Compact Flash cards were going to be made available, but hell, in the space of a PCMCIA hard drive, you could easily drop in a set of 4 Compact Flash cards which you could upgrade quite easily. And then if you were to RAID the compact Flash cards you could get some rockin’ speed and reliability *plus* the durability of the solid state.

In fact there’s really very little reason why tomorrow’s computer, be it laptop or desktop couldn’t be a shell with a dozen PC Card slots + Compact Flash and SD/MC. Each would handle anything from memory, to networking to video display. Of course the only thing missing is the processor…

Tog on Tornados

Posted in General at 9 am

Wow, Tog, one of the father gods of Human/Computer Interface design missed a tornado by *this* much. He details it in is sadly rarely updated personal pages.

11.26.02

Pr0n Architecture

Posted in General at 11 pm

Giggle. Geeky Humor. That is much more fun than this.

11.25.02

Broken In Ghia

Posted in General at 8 am

My ’73 Karmann-Ghia is now fully broken in. Literally.

Last night, someone attempted to remove my CD player from the dash of Viva and ended up just messing it up. The stereo no longer works when I attach the faceplate that I took inside with me last night.

This is the second time some one has gotten into her. The first time, the person took my mileage book. This time this person just messed with the stereo.

Damn it.

11.23.02

Titanium Newton

Posted in Apple, Tech at 10 pm

Finally! Apple has come to their senses and are going to release the Titanium Newton G4! Yay! Looks like it will even have a replaceable skin!

EDIT 2007: The old link to www.lindkvist.com/titanium_newton/ now redirects to somewhere else. Damn you changing content!

11.17.02

Thank You Zeldman

Posted in General at 12 pm

In web design, if you create something that looks good in conformant browsers and is usable in less capable browsers, you’ve done your job. – Jeffery Zeldman, http://www.zeldman.com/daily/1102b.shtml#brokenheart

11.13.02

Mixed Metaphors

Posted in General at 12 pm

I heard a caller to a radio show say that the previous caller was “way out in left base.”

I love good mixed metaphors and I found a pageful of ’em, some better than others, but it sounds like they all came from the same person. They’re funny as all kneeslappers

“They’ve got us wrapped over a barrel!”

11.10.02

A WiFi Sandwich

Posted in General at 11 am

Strange things are afoot: http://news.com.com/2100-1033-965070.html?tag=fd_top.

Hoping people will drop by for free Web access and stay for a sandwich, Schlotzsky’s Deli is offering no-cost wireless access at some of its eateries.

The company on Saturday will officially launch its Schlotzsky’s Deli Cool Cloud network, which will allow people with Wi-Fi wireless setups on their computers or handhelds to get online for free. Wi-Fi, also known as 802.11b, is a technology that allows the creation of wireless networks with a radius of around 300 feet.

“Free Internet access just makes sense to us,” said John Wooley, Schlotzsky’s CEO. “Now that we have the signal in our restaurants, we’d like to share it with the neighborhood and communities where we operate.”