Farsong Blog-o-Matic

So, I've been planning to get an eeePC 901, right? It's a tiny computer, its form dictated by the 8.9" display. It's small and light, using a Solid State Disk made of flash memory instead of an HHD with a spinning disk platter. The SSD is less susceptible to shocks, and the read times are higher.

Of course, with a computer this small (and it is a full computer — don't let anyone tell you otherwise!), some compromises are made. One of these is that the computer lacks an internal optical drive. This doesn't worry me, as (like most of the most powerful features of my MacBook) I don't use the optical drive more than 10% of the time, and would just as soon remove it to save weight (I liked being able to remove the optical drive to reduce weight and power draw on my old G3 PowerBook).

The eee PC doesn't ship with an optical drive at all. All I really need is a CD-ROM drive, and that's for installing things like Ubuntu, backing up photos I've taken when I'm away from my main machine (though with the 8gb CF card, that's somewhat rare), and doing a little bit on the go — let's get this straight: the eee is not for video editing. Maybe watching some DVDs, but that's it. Fortunately, I have an external one of those. Unfortunately, it's a PCMCIA-based thing, meaning that it won't work on most laptops now. And booting from it is out of the question.

Meaning that I was intending to purchase one of these, as Apple's MacBook Air Superdrive*, while affordable and awesome, would only work with MacBook Airs. The LG model was the only one that was actually legitimately Bus-powered, besides the Apple drive.

Today while reading my feeds, I found an article about hacking a MacBook Air External SuperDrive to run on anything. I went into the article with the idea that I could do this instead of buying a drive from Newegg. Not that something like the LG drive was bad, but slot-load drives are both cooler and less prone to breakage as the pop-out-tray drives. Plus, they have a more satisfying disk-loading sound.

Then I saw how the hack was done: it used a $9 USB adapter for laptop drives. Swap that out for the PCB in the MacBook Air Superdrive (and with a little soldering, retain the original cable and casing). It's just a regular laptop drive with a little IDE-to-USB interface, and all the plugs of laptop drives are the same. A Mac drive will work in a PC just fine.



And then it all clicked.


I don't need the MacBook Air SuperDrive. I don't need a new $90 DVD drive from Newegg. I already have a DL Slot-load SuperDrive. It's from my old G3 PowerBook, and it works natively with OSX** (it was an up-grade for the G3 PowerBook — the system actually shipped with a tray-load DVD-ROM drive, 12gb HDD, and 128mb RAM). The G3 died, but I kept the drive. It's a nice little drive, and it has a wonderful sound when it "eats" the discs.

So, except for the IDE-USB bridge, I already have all the things i need for an external drive. Why pay more money when I already have a drive. Plus, it can be a dual-layer drive for my G5 as well (the machine has only a single-layer burner). And it has a glowing amber light. What's not to love?

Now, the only thing left to do would be to make a proper external case. Which sounds suspiciously like fun, especially considering the old laptop parts I have hanging around. And now to apply the $10.11 I got back from Idaho to this little USB device.



--
* "Superdrive" is Apple's term for a DVD-Burner, these days being a DL DVD±RW. Originally the term was for the Double-sided high-density 1.4mb 2.5"

** And it's either OSX or Linux for me. If it works in OSX, chances are that I can get it to work in Linux, too. And those drives have pretty standard, known, and documented interfaces. Heck, the PCMCIA drive that's 12 years old still works great with Ubuntu, and I used to use that on a 486 with Win 95.

So, I like the Pidgin (formerly GAIM) status icons well enough that I installed a set of them into my Adium.

But I'm using the icons and I get the nagging suspicion that something is terribly wrong in my menu bar*.

( Something Dire This Way Comes )


But it's a little bizarre because I never realised that things could extend beyond the framework of the menu bar. Frankly, I'm glad that most menu items don't, just for the consistency of the OS.


--
* Yes, I actually like the transparent menu bar.

Found here

Of course it's going to give me an error; I'm not even using a Gecko-based browser!


• And speaking of the webkit base, “Firefox seems to think they've built a better browser than Safari.”


I didn't download Firefox to-day. Mostly, this was due to the fact that everyone kept telling me to do it, and that made me not want to do it. When someone tells me to do something, I immediately don't want to do it.

Well, that, and the fact that the actual execution of Firefox's GUI on OSX, while better than 2.5's, is still sub-par. In fact, it's downright ugly and doesn't even use Cocoa! That's on top of the odd behaviour of the address bar, which also doesn't follow OSX's normal GUI standards.

Opera is no better, either — they both have pseudo-aqua interfaces that don't conform closely to OSX; while that's fine on systems like Windows where every application has a different GUI, and nothing conforms or looks like it belongs together — but OSX is well-designed in the fact that it actually tries to be uniform throughout both the OS's own windows and third-party applications. While I do bemoan the loss of both the pinstripes and the brushed metal, OSX has outgrown its pinstripes, and the system that had three different interfaces (Pinstripes, Brushed Metal, and Unified) in 10.4 has become unified into one standard visual interface in 10.5.

The third reason is because Safari is faster, both when loading and when rendering both pages and Javascript. Webkit is simply a far smaller engine. And I'm beginning to find that every processor cycle is valuable, with a slowly-aging computer, and Safari is simply lighter on its feet than Firefox. Plus, it has break-away tabs.


Though, I did hear that Internet Explorer baked Firefox a nice cake.

I just got my MacBook's keyboard replaced this afternoon. I had ordered a new keyboard/topcase (it's all one piece, including power button, keyboard, and trackpad) when I went to replace my power supply (after it had died in an epic, sparking death), but somehow the repair shop forgot to call me to let me know the topcase had come in. There had been some reorganisation on their end, so the phonecall had been lost in the shuffle, and then I had gotten busy with finals on my end, so it took until now that I actually followed up on it.

But I have a new keyboard on my MacBook now (with no squeaky keys or cracks); it's got a new matte finish, is clean, and the keys feel fine. They're not as snappy as the old ones — feel a little mushier (but I do have a heavy hand when typing on this machine), but it's sill very new and I haven't used it much. If anything, the keyboard is a little more like the new Aluminium Apple keyboard that I detest, but it still feels different on the MacBook than on a desktop. Also of note is the fact that none of the keys are shiny, yet.

The matte finish of the unworn keys is almost sticky — it feels that way perhaps because it's hot to-day, and my fingers stick lightly to the keys. The trackpad is also somewhat granular, also not yet worn smooth, and the mouse key is slightly “clickier” than before and will take a little getting used to.

Regardless of how the keys feel, the keyboard is accurate, smooth, and new. Moreover, the new keyboard still has the num-lock, the open-apple key, and the function keys in the right place on the keyboard. The machine looks fine, and the keyboard is of Apple's usual high quality.

All the software works fine, too; no modifications necessary in software because it was simply a hardware replacement. I was very pleased with the service at Computer Business Solutions just east of Downtown (by the old Costco, and just before the Office Depot) on the south side of Third. They were friendly, quick, smart^*, and even remembered my name. I'll take my Macs to be repaired there when need be.


--
* The repair tech thought that it was amusing that I had my Mac set to boot in Verbose mode. He also liked my shirt.

I've pointed to it a lot recently, but there's a great deal of moving and shaking happening in the realms of Mobile Computing. Namely, the eeePC and its ilk — this new group of “netbooks” or “sub-notebooks” that's taken the mobile market by storm.

Last year, the eeePC felt rather like a toy, with 2gb of SSD and a tiny screen. All that's changed, and the machines are powerful and efficient, not running 1.6ghz processors (designed by Intel for this purpose) and getting 5, 6, or 7.5 hours, easily. They're tiny, light, free of optical drives and moving parts, and are super-connected. They're smaller and lighter than the MacBook Air, significantly cheaper (even for the large-capacity, high-powered, feature-rich ones), and bristle with USB ports, card slots, connectors, and features. If you ask me, the Air sort of missed the mark; the Air feels like a luxury computer, while the eee and other netbooks feel more like true workhorses.

( It's not just the hardware that's revolutionary, but the entire small-computing paradigm shift — thoughts on OSes and netbooks )

I was expecting it, but this is still exciting: the eeePC 901.

It's got better specs than I anticipated, too — things like 802.11n, bluetooth, and a 1.6ghz Atom processor. I'm pretty excited about it, and it should have pretty awesome battery life.

It's exciting stuff.

There's also a little eeePC desktop that is about the same size as an AirPort hub (that's a little smaller than a Wii), and tricked out at 1.6ghz with 4x USB, DVI-out, n, and Gigabit. For $300.

A .pdf does seem strange, but should be fine.
Liz

On 5/19/08, Steve Johnson wrote:
Professor,

Attached is the properly-formatted version of my annotated bibliography, with coversheet.

Again, thank you for being accommodating with this assignment. Please let me know if you have any issues with the PDF file.

--
Steve

She let me know she had issues with it. I’m guessing most students send Microsoft Office Word files.

I had this conversation with @nicolerae yesterday: I put things in PDF because they’re easier to open.

Back in the day (up until Office 2000/Office X, really), it was a point of fact that even files between different versions would always be formatted wrong, and sometimes would not even work.

It was even worse switching files between Macs and PCs. Classic (OS 7.6+) didn’t play well with PC-format diskettes, and the translation between a Word document and a Clarusworks Document most formatting went “poof.” And good luck if you had any font formatting.

Enter the PDF. Portable Document Format. It preserves not only formatting, but the fonts as well. Plus, the files are super-tiny, and super-fast (as long as you don’t use the Adobe Acrobat Reader — it’s bloated and slow, even on a fast multi-core system).

I was super-pleased when I switched to OSX because it offered the option of printing and saving directly to a PDF file from anywhere in the system — Safari, Word, Finder, Photoshop. Anything that hooked into the modified CUPS system implemented in OSX.

I can send a PDF to anyone, and they can open it and see it and print it, regardless of the OS they’re using. On OSX, Linux, or even Windows, my documents display properly in the right font with the right formatting. Plus, the files are light and easy to email.

I should probably note the font as well. I’ve been bouncing around between different serifed fonts, lately — between Hoefler Text and Adobe’s Pro setting of the classic Caslon — both of which are great classic serifed text fonts (ie, body text), and neither of which are available on most machines, and certainally not public computers. Now, most won’t notice the differences between Hoefler Text and Adobe Caslon Pro, let alone their difference from the default Times New Roman. It’s not a bad font, but I like the original Times better — Times New Roman being too tall and thin for my tastes. I don’t think I’ve ever liked it — and yet, everyone uses it without thinking.

I generally save the usage of sans-serifed fonts for my design and titles, using the serifed fonts for body text. I just don’t think sans-serifed text looks as good in print, though that’s more opinion than anything, and there are certainly instances where sans would be preferred to serifed. I think that serifed letters read better, though; Schliebe can attest to that, and how I agonisingly hand-serifed the letters on the signs we made for the concert. It looked good.

As serifed fonts go, though, I do love Helvetica and its whole family. Yes, the font is utterly ubiquitous in today’s world, but it’s a clean, crisp font. It reads well, and it prints well (though, it’s not a good screen font, and its leakage into interfaces needs to be stemmed — we have well-made screen fonts for that already, including Lucidia Grande and Arial, both Helvitica look-alikes that look good on the last 15 years’ displays).


Edit: I forgot the entire reason why I started rambling about this: I sent the professor a PDF because I formatted the paper in InDesign, because Word was bothering me. Since it’s in InDesign, I can't exactly send the professor a simple text file.

And it reminds me: the current state of files these days is like that 15 years ago: just after we thought that Word Document files would work everywhere, Office goes and makes a new version with their “open document format” that only MS Office reads, and only the newest version. It makes life hard again, because unless you have the latest version of the software to read and write, the files are extremely hard to parse for their content.

And now Windows users with old versions of Office know what it was like to be a Mac user a decade ago.

Here are the haps, my friends:

Monday:
• Left my cell phone on the bus. Freak out for about ten minutes, then fret for another twenty before meeting the bus on its way back and claiming said phone from the driver.
• Noted that the laptop-end of the AC/DC adapter/power supply was unusually warm, and more kinked than remembered. Also: kind of melty.

Tuesday:
• Noted that the kink in the wire, where it enters the laptop plug, was not just warm, but more hot and melty. Predicted failure the next day.
• Noted that the topcase (keyboard, trackpad, and palmrest) has cracked more. Decide to look into repair, Friday, after presentation for which laptop is needed.

Wednesday:
• Woke up to find that the laptop-side plug was behaving erratically, 12h ahead of schedule at least. Decide to wait until Thursday afternoon to see about replacing it, and steal borrow father's MacBook Pro's power supply if needed. Disconnect laptop and take it with.
• Return with a 30% charge, plug in the laptop, dick around on the internet for a few minutes before noting "OH SHIT IT'S SPARKING AND SMOKING!" Quickly unplug it, grab a MacBook Pro adapter, and inspect the plug. Large holes in the plastic sheath. Welp, looks like it's time to replace it.
• Go find local apple-care place. Get replacement power supply, get topcase ordered, chat about how the topcase replacement will take 30 min tops, and about how it's a pain to open iBooks. Will return Friday to replace the topcase when it comes in. Leave with shiny, new power supply which should not have the design flaws of the Rev b Magsafe power adapters.


Basically, that's as bad as it gets for me + tech. I mention it not because I'm complaining, but because I find life really amusing. If it's software, I can usually fix it.

I have finally put words to a flaw of the iPod that I found hard to vocalise until now — a thing I think is probably also a flaw of the iPhone and iPod touch, and something that's apparent only to a few.

It's nothing so simple as a bad menu or a poor design — it's about usability on the go. In fact, it's all about how syncing is flawed, fundamentally.

Now, I browse and sync my RSS feed reader between my two computers — a G5 desktop tower and a Core2 duo MacBook Pro — because of NetNewsWire, a thing which has streamlined the processes of reading articles and blogs with its syncing feature*. I can read something from my laptop and have it marked as read when I get back to my desktop. When I've read the feeds for the day on my desktop, my laptop echoes this and shows that there are no new feeds to read.

Basically, the previous paragraph means that I read things on the go; I have decentralised my computing. It's only becoming more decentralised with web-based synchronisation. My laptop is not my main computer (it is a laptop that just happens to belong to me); I don't have more than my text-documents and project files on it — the desktop is the machine with my photo and music archives (mostly because the laptop does not have enough HDD storage for that function, but way more than enough room for usage as a mobile terminal). This is an important point.

See, I sync my iPod with the desktop. It keeps my music with me on the go in a way that's easier to use than listening to it on the laptop (plus, it frees my processor to do other things; I can bring my music with me and not be tied to a computer**).

However, almost every day, I find cool audio I want to listen to on the blogs I read. This is not always music, and as I said before, the laptop very cumbersome for listening. I want to listen to these things on my iPod.

But I can't.

I can't update the iPod. Syncing takes several minutes and the iPod is down for the count during the interim while. Moreover, I don't have cables for this with me. I don't even bring the laptop's power brick with me most days (the MacBook is heavy enough as it is).

I can't sync my iPod with more than one computer. I can't sync it on the go.

What I want to do is to be able to connect to the device from my laptop — preferably over a wireless network, but I'd be fine with bluetooth. The idea that I have to go back to a single terminal/workstation/computer to synchronise my files is a fundamentally flawed idea. It's inefficient. The iPod Touch/iPhone don't even sync wirelessly with the standard Apple hardware and software. It can be done via SSH, but that's hardly transparent.

Plus, the iPod goes down for the count while iTunes updates the iTunesDB. That's not necessary. In fact, the current iPods have more than enough processing power to support live updating — but for some reason, the newest iPods lag more on commands and menus than my five-year-old iPod.

Basically, my point is that the idea of syncing to one computer is flawed and I'd like some way to update my iPod wirelessly, quickly, from more than just one computer.


--
* This syncing is one of the several things that has more-or-less stalled my switch to the eeePC or linux in general — but point me to a news aggregator that syncs with NewsGator and I'll be happy. That will be the clincher.
** Like the above comment, having a decentralised computing system like (ie, an iPod with my music on it, instead of a laptop with music) this allows me to switch to a much smaller subcompact notebook like the eeePC which has a small storage capacity in terms of music and media, but more than enough for internet, text, and terminal usage.

I'm excited. Pleased. Thrilled. Want to know why?

I'm getting a new laptop. I have it all picked out and I'm already picturing myself using it and hauling it all over the place. I've even decided on a bus-powered optical drive for it, for the little I'll actually need it. I have already mentally moved from the MacBook and am biding my time.

It's an Asus eeePC, and it's perfect.

There's only one problem: I'm not getting it yet. In fact, I'll probably have my MacBook for the rest of the term. I'm going to get rid of it, though — I already have a capable desktop, and I don't need more computers (despite the fact that I seem to collect them).

In the past week, I've pretty much convinced myself that the eee is the machine I need. I've talked about it. I've spent hours reading reviews of it and talking excitedly about it at people. I've written and rewritten this entry at least three times from scratch (including once on a cell phone) and have sat on it for the better part of a week.

I might be one of few people in this world who would trade a large, fast laptop (one that is actually more powerful than my desktop) for a tiny, slow one.

This is because it's not about the power of the machine, though — it's about the functionality. Most of the time, the MacBook is more computer than I need. I do most of my big projects on my desktop, keeping the laptop around for portability — as a console I can grab and go. I have it for writing and taking with me.

In fact, that's why I got the laptop: so I'd have a machine to take with me whenever I wanted to go. It was smallish and lightish and portable. However, about a month and a half after getting it, I realised that it was too large. It's wide and heavy, and unlike my old PowerBook G3, I can't remove the optical drive (I also can't put in two batteries at a time for extra battery life). I'm stuck with the configuration, and it's a huge, heavy laptop, weighing in at about 6 pounds. It's great, and has always worked well, easily doing all the tasks I throw at it, but I would have been happier with a 12" PowerBook. The MacBook is just too wide.

I was disappointed when the 12" line was cancelled, as the computer was the right, portable size — but the MacBook was far more powerful than a used 12" PowerBook. I was doubly disappointed when the MacBook Air was released. It was thin, yes, but it was still the same length and depth as my MacBook, and the Solid State Disk (flash memory) version was an outrageous price.

Enter the eeePC. Barely 2 pounds and the size of a hardback book, replete with a SSD, 3 USB ports, a VGA-out, a 10/100 ethernet port, and a webcam. More ports than the Air. Even better, it's a fraction of the price of even the MacBook. It's tiny. It's light. It's cheap. With the flash-based SSD, it's almost instantly on. And the processor is more than powerful enough for web-based things (even in the age of YouTube, no one needs more than a 533mhz machine, especially when using linux. More RAM only makes these things faster) What's not to love?

When if first came out last November, the eeePC was cool, but didn't really have enough space or screen size for me (2gb and 4gb built-in SSD and a 7" 800x400 screen). It still seemed like a toy to me. But this past week, Asus released a new model, now with a larger screen (8.9" 1024x600) and more storage (12gb or 20gb, for the same price).

In fact, it's exactly what I wanted when I got the MacBook: no more computer than I really need on the go. I have a desktop for the heavy-duty work; all I need is a small, light computer for text-input, web-browsing, e-mail, and chat. Plus, being so small, I wouldn't think twice about sliding it in my bag before heading off to class.

Classnotes:

• Oh, hai. Now we’re talking about Euclid
o Also, Greatest Common Divisor (denominator?)
o I CAN HAS DENOMINATOR
• PROMPT "Enter two integers greater that zero: "
• remainder = 0
• GET num1, num2
• While num2 > 0
o remainder = num1 % num2
o num1 = num2
o num2 = remainder
• end while
• PUT "The GCF is " +num1
• I CAN HAS GCF


“I weep, I cry, I shed a single glorious tear that contains the sum total of my linux music frustrations. I listen to The Pillows in linux after downloading an album from my media box at home. SongBird is awesome.”

So says my friend Chris — a fellow CS major (more advanced than I) and friend from back in high school. We'd gotten to chatting about GUIs and how it's hard to switch from a familiar one to a new one, and how he'd just forced himself to learn Ubuntu linux (first KDE then Gnome), but was still having a hard time switching completely away from Windows (and somewhat dreaded switching to OSX*).

Anyway, my friend Chris expressed his dissatisfaction to me at the state of Linux media players and libraries — the last reason that he still had XP as the main OS on his desktop, and the last hurdle in his switch to Linux. He'd tried Amarok and several others, but none did what he needed. He vastly preferred iTunes to anything else out there, and there was nothing he was aware of that did the job adequately — he used iTunes for everything except syncing his MP3-player, which required Windows Media Player to snyc.

So I mentioned Songbird (it also works with OSX and Windows, though it's still a beta). It was precisely what we were both looking for. One of the last hurdles for Linux as Main Machine for him has been taken down; taken away. And from what I understand, he's elated.


--
* As an aside, my dad switched from a klunky old HP to a svelte MacBook Pro this past Christmas. He deserved a new machine. I helped him propagate his files from Windows to OSX 10.5 seamlessly as part of my Christmas gift to him. (For reference, I used a 2.5" IDE-to-Firewire/USB 2.0 external drive enclosure to transfer files, and a Gmail account to transfer e-mails from Outlook, archiving them in the process).

I've been especially impressed by how easily he grasps the functioning of OSX — actually understanding the underlying paradigm of the OS, rather than simply a blind set of procedural steps. This is essential, as OSX doesn't do things in the same series of steps that Windows does, though one can achieve the same end result (arguably in a more-elegant way on a Mac). He switched and hasn't looked back; he hasn't needed to.

It's been at nagging me for a while.

August 2003 I got my first iPod. Zeitgeist: Most people had not heard of iPods. For HDD players, it was either Apple's or Creative's offering. One player from each, and Apple had just introduced support for the iPod on Windows — though this involved MusicMatch Jukebox and a plugin, as hell hadn't yet frozen over. The Rio was still big, and 256mb was a lot of Flash; 512mb was unheard of.

( iPod Ramblings )

At the moment, Adobe's at work on a 64-bit version of their Photoshop program.
Sounds great, right?

Well, it's not shipping for Mac. At least not with CS4. (Daring Fireball details the reasons why, here. In detail)
Sounds sad, right?

What if I told you everything you needed to know about 64-bit? What if I told you that everything you'd ever learned about it were a lie? That, except for certain cases, 64-bit is not made adequate use of even by power users.

( 64-bit is Explained )



So, totally don't worry about 64-bit right now. Seriously, your computer runs fine. Don't worry about it.

Also, a few more links on the subject:
Regarding Windows 64-bit Market Share

John Siracusa on Adobe’s “Photoshop CS4 will be 64-bit only for Windows” news



--
Steve is a reformed English major who is finally learning to code and has been watching too much “You Suck at Photoshop.”

I swear, tech is trying to rickroll me to-day.

First, it was the 45 minutes I spent trying to make Flash Player work (I finally repaired permissions, rm'd a few things, and re-installed. I think it finally worked, because videos play on my Brother's G4 MacMini, and I am not going to mess further).

Now, it's the sketchy scratchdrive. It's probably the USB chipset on the case, not the drive its self, but the thing is buggy and disconnects randomly. Then again, it's USB, so what do I expect? I've replaced it with a 500 Gb Firewire (400, not 800, unfortunately, and my G5 lacks eSATA) Western Digital MyBook, and it shall serve as storage of DV footage, photos, and such. The price for the new one was too good to pass up: $71, with a coupon and gift card. Plus, it has good power management, has Firewire (and eSATA), and is virtually silent. I should also add that it's a smashing matte black color, and fairly nice looking, for an external drive.

Of course, I've been arguing with the one sketchy drive for over a year now. It's failed catastrophically twice on me, thus far, and I've reformatted. I really ought to give up on it. The only thing of value on it is some DV footage, and I keep all my source tapes. The footage still needed to be edited, anyway, so it's no great loss. I stopped caring about the files on it last year.

To get for desktop in the next 6 months:

1) External FireWire (IEEE 1394) storage, 1⁄2 Tb or greater.
2) 4 Gb RAM (4x1Gb DIMM); maxing out system
3) 10.5 Leopard (Family volume license)
4) 6x11" Wacom Intuos tablet

5) Second laptop, which doesn't sound like a jet engine, for Linux and computer science


In the next 2-4 Years:

1) 64-128 Gb SSD for Laptop
2) Multi-core, multi-processor Xenon PowerMac MacPro (A simple drop-in where the G5 is now)
3) More SATA HDDs to setup G5 as highly-capable, quiet server
4) iPhone with 128 Gb Flashmemory*
5) AirPort Hub, with Gigabit Ethernet
6) Smaller, lighter laptop with SSD (eeePC? 12" MacBook Air? — laptops are and always will be secondary computers in most cases)

Naturally, this new hardware also requires that I have a job to pay for it, too. I'm working on that.


--
*Five years ago, in 2003, the 30 Gb iPod cost the same as the 32Gb iPod Touch does to-day. It's speculation, but with the increasing capacities and the decreasing prices for SSDs and Flash memory, I'm expecting the capacities to rival the size of to-day's HDDs in a couple years, by the time I'm in the market for a new phone to replace my BlackBerry. Hopefully, by that time, the iPhone will no longer be locked to a cingular network. Yes, that was also a terrible pun.

So I got a new old calculator to-day. I don't have any need for it, but I have use of it. Specifically, for math tests and the like, because for some reason, the 89 I have is not allowed. The one I received is a TI-82, which is a calculator from 1991. It does everything the TI-83 does, and if it can't be done on an 82, it probably can't be done on an 83, mathematically. If I can't do it there, I could do it on an 89, which is what I'd use anyway.

But here's what I find interesting: I got the thing on e-bay. It's like finding things at a garage sale. Upon receipt of the calculator, I found that it had the name "Nathaniel" described in permanent ink, on the inside of the cover. This calculator was someone else's at some point. I hold the small, boxy grey device in my hand, hefting it. It's sold, even though it's old and worn. I imagine it being used by its first owner, sitting on a desk during a test. In the pocket of a backpack. Underneath a lamp at a desk where a math text is cracked.

I can imagine the owner eventually moving on, leaving this calculator at home as part of a series of things that are not needed any longer. Someone left for college. Did they upgrade to a newer, faster, better device and continue on in the sciences? Did they abandon the calculator and forget about math? Where are they now? I wonder about the story of this calculator, even though I have no reason.

And while I can imagine all these things, I can't really know any of them. I can feel the small machine, like a nexus, gathering threads of stories and lives around it. That's what things are: the threads of stories are bound to and wrapped around them; they are conduits and vertices. I know these things are inanimate, but I can't help but to be moved, thinking of how they once were used. Loved, or at least appreciated.

Think about all the things you think about when you heft your phone in your hand. Grab that mouse. Pick up your iPod? There's a story there, of that thing, of how it was gotten and how it was used. The thing can't tell the story, but never the less, the thread of a story is wound tightly into the clockwork gears of the thing its self (not all things have clockwork these days, and in this case, it's metaphorical--as metaphorical as the "strings"; also, this has absolutely nothing to do with string theory).

My only hope is that I can use and appreciate it enough myself. Everyone thinks I do amazing things with technology, but I'm really only trying to utilise it to its full potential. If I didn't use a computer to its full potential, I should be using something much older and more fitted to the use: a PII would do fine for internet, e-mail, writing, music-playing, and watching videos. No more computer is needed. Any computer these days is overkill unless you use it for rendering and video editing and graphic design.

Computer Science Major, Philosophy Minor? Perhaps.

This seems to happen every eight-to-twelve months: I compile a list of Mac software I use. Usually this is because a friend has switched to Mac.

We'll start with specs:
Right now I have one G5 PowerPC tower @1.8GHz, with 2Gb of RAM, and a MacBook Core2 Duo @2.0GHz with 1Gb RAM. The former runs Tiger (10.4.11 final) and is named Kirkegaard, and the latter runs Leopard (10.5.2 is the current version, as of this writing) and is named Lobo. I use them both. I have not taken the laptop with me to University yet this quarter, though I probably will.

I also use Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, and Adobe CS3, but there is open-source software to fill the gap. I can't in good conscience recommend The GIMP for image editing, though.


OSX is all well and good, and Leopard has a number of great new features that have replaced old software I used to use (Leopard came with tabbed Terminal and Screen Sharing, so out go iTerm and Chicken of the VNC). But sometimes, the built-in things in Mac OSX don't act in quite the way I want, or there is functionality missing. Ergo, third-party apps. All work on Leopard, based upon my usage. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and if I've missed something or don't list something useful I should, comment! All links go to the developers' pages.


( Software for OSX--now with 120% more snarky commentary )

And that's that software I use in my everyday life on the Mac!

In a move of remarkably shocking brilliance [or ineptitude] I ordered a thing online. Several things, actually--a book that's not here yet as well as two random tee-shirts from shirt.woot. ( There were other things, too )


In other news, Spokane's DOT fails catastrophically at snow removal. It's almost as if they think we live in Florida or some such place that doesn't get snow. Ever. There is no other reason that it takes 3-5 days to clear the snowfall from our street (which then becomes icy and compacted). Also, there's no excuse for the sorry state of the roads, now, which have the texture of a washboard (lots of fun on a bus, travelling at close to 15mph. Also, said bus was a sweltering 85° or 90°, enabling me to walk outside, sans jacket, in the 20° weather for at least ten minutes). There's no excuse, because we live in an area that gets snow each and every winter, and it's always terrible every time it snows. I'm hesitant to drive anything that's not a 4x4 on my street, and since it's a hill, to park, I would need to come down from above. There is seriously only one carwidth of clearance between the snowy burms.

They are completely incompetent, which is the reason that my former public school district has been closed for three days in a row the entire week, after having no snow days for at least 12 years. And we're expecting more snow, perhaps through the end of the week (and into the next). Let's watch as Spokane fails again.

Edited: 1/31/08-8:35--added a statement to reflect the fact that SD81 has been closed the entire week.