Random Musings of a Random Geek
So I just got done booking my flight for my trip back to Phoenix for my 21st birthday. I leave October 13th at 2:30pm and arrive in Phoenix at 7:00pm. I will spend about 5 days in Phoenix and leave on October 18th at 11:15am and get back to Boston at 8:30pm. The party starts friday night, October 14th at midnight at Counter Culture Cafe, 2330 E McDowell Rd Phoenix, AZ. Feel free to stop by if you are in the neighborhood.
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So I am at work with no work to do. Bored out of my skull, I remember that I emailed myself sol.exe a few days ago! So I have been playing solitaire off and on for about 3 hours in the “Draw Three” mode because as my mom pointed out the other day, “Draw One” is for n00bs … keep in mind she didn’t actually say ‘n00bs.’ Well, after about 3 hours of playing and not winning once because Draw Three sucks ass, I finally am about to win a game, or so I think!
I’m to the point where I am pulling stuff down from the top so I can clear out the deck, almost finished with that and *BAM* …
After about 20 minutes of sulking I realized how retarded I am and won the game! Move the 3 of hearts and the 2 of clubs over to the 4 of clubs, move the 4 of spades up to its pile and move the 5 of spades from the deck. And it only took me 20 minutes to figure out!
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I just found this via Googles new blogsearch feature. It’s a site dedicated to coordinating events for nerds(read: geeks). I am thinking of attending Boston’s dinner this month since Nerds:// sold out on the only day I could go see it before I could even get tickets =/ If anyone reads this and has an extra ticket for the September 24th showing of Nerds:// I will buy it from you, just name your price :)
I guess I just need to pray that unlike most events, this one is not 21+ as that has pretty much kept me from having a life here in Boston. Only 28 more days though!
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Had some downtime there this afternoon. My host apparently had to give up a range of IP’s I happened to be on and had to update everything to run off that IP, if you notice anything broken or pointing to the wrong place let me know and I will get it fixed ASAP.
On another note I went out today after work to The Other Side Cafe in Boston at Newbury at Mass Ave in Boston. I got to say I think this is the closest I will find to a replacement for “The Cafe” here in Boston. One bonus is this place has a beer and wine license and serve all sorts of eccentric beers. That will come in handy once I turn 21 for sure :) They also have some of the best sandwhiches in town in addition to some very good caffeinated beverages. I had an Ice Blended Mocha Espresso Tripple Shot, and it was only $4.00! Anyone else from boston been to this place? It’s definately more a place for young people(18-30 or so) but i’ms ure anyone would be more than welcome if you don’t mind a bunch of kids :P
I’m really hapy I found that place as I have been very bored thus far and need a place to go and meet some people! We shall see how that goes, but for now … I’m still bored as hell!
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No, this is not about the nano, although that is a very cool new little gadget :) This is basically what I *WANT* Apple to release next, or at least sometime in the near future. Honestly anyone could come out with a device like this, but I think Apple would do the best job. So here it goes …
Processor: Appoximately a 1ghz g4 or the intel equivalent, whatever generates less heat
RAM: 512-1024MB of DDR2 uber fast RAM
Storage: 40-100GB 2.5″ HD
Dimensions: About the size of a paperback book
Screen Size: 7″ 16×9 aspect ratio LCD/OLED/Whatever Touchscreen
Resolution: 800×500
Optical Drive: 16x DVD reader
Other: 802.11 b/g wireless
Bluetooth 2.0
Multi-Format Memory Card Reader
Price: Less than $1000
As you might be able to tell from the specs, this gadget is basically a convergence of a PDA, Laptop, and PVP(Portable Vidio Player). It will run a new, scaled down, pen-driven version of OSX, and I stress pen-driven. This device will have nothing but a power button, and an eject button for the DVD-ROM and Media Card reader. The OS will be fairly seemless to applications, allowing you to run any standard OSX application using hand writing recognition which is done by the OS in a layer between input and the application. The device would have a small section dedicated to stylus input that mimic’d the texture and feel of writing on a piece of paper. The huge problems I have had with hand recognition stuff is that the surface you write on, usually an LCD touchscreen, is to slippery and makes for jagged, hard to read hand writing. The price is something thats difficult to determine I think. Its obviously going to be more than your standard PDA of today, but it has to be less than the low end laptops of today as well, seeing that the specs on it just don’t compare.
Now alot of you might be saying “What?! No miniaturized and hard to use QWERTY keyboard?!” I think in this day and age we should be beyond something like that. And honestly, think about what you would use a device like this for ..
None of those functions really requires a keyboard. Keeping an address book and schedule? We have been doing this on pen and paper for the longest time until only a few years ago. We can write a whole lot faster than we can type on a mini keyboard. A few things you would want to use this device for you would generally have a keyboard for, but thats where the handwriting recognition software comes in. Writing E-Mail for example. This would *NOT* be a device for word processing, or making phone calls, or any of that jazz.
I have also left off a CD Burner because lets face it, your average person to use this device won’t be carrying around extra CD-R’s with him. It’s also really not needed I don’t think and produces unwanted extra heat. Ideally we would completely do away with the CD-ROM and just use solid state memory, but we aren’t to that point yet and I want this now! LOL
My goal is to have 2 lightweight devices in my pockets. One would be a cell phone which made phone calls and was good at it … that is all a phone needs to do! The other would be an MP3 player, that only played music. Then there would be this device which rolls the other 3 devices needed to complete a portable computing arsenal into one fairly lightweight, managably sized, easy to use device.
Obviously the technology is a little ways off on something like this, but I don’t doubt that something along these lines will come out eventually. Until then, I shall daydream of such a device that will solve all of my portable computing problems.
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