my new computer

shocked arn't you?

Some awesome friends snagged one for me from a university that was restructuring. a 20" aluminum Imac, 2.00ghz due core duo, 2Gig-ram, 128meg ati, 250gig HD, usb, FW400, FW800, gig-ethernet, HDMI, 802.11N, bluetooth, webcam and mic. (and integrated speakers that arn't half bad). S/PDIF that I'll have to convert from optical back to coax to run my old speakers.

They felt sorry for me upgrading the old P4 to win7. For the record, I did get it running, sound, video --64-meg Geforce2-MX (a miracle). As I was finishing my upgrade the friends stopped by and drop this monster on my desk. dual booting win7 and leopard. a sight to behold.

ohh, by the way, if you install win7, goto C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT to see the rest of the wallpaper for different regions. the elephant for (ZA = South Africa) is particularly impressive!

shockingly, the MSDN blog has nice primer on windows 7 secrets.

An Interesting Read

keith and i routinely have odd conversations...

one recent conversation was regarding how much the banking system isn't designed for the modern methods... or well pretty much anything.  

i was clicking around cleaning up my amazon wish list for not good reason other than adding a vacuum attachment to clean my keyboard and was reminded of a book that i want (i should just get it on my next amazon order instead of wishing for it... yes, i shall) anyways the author (have you totally forgotten how i started this post yet?) is a really smart guy that i admire and so i went looking at his web page. the web page is ugly, but has a lot of good stuff. including this rant about the modern banking system and also how he rewards people for finding errors in his book. 

Joule Thief

I've been looking for an ultra low forward voltage drop diode to use for a little project I've been working on (in my head) and so far, the best candidate is probably a mosfet-- DS junction. doing design work in your head eventually needs practical (working) designs to give motivation, check out this Joule Thief circuit to steal the last bit of juice from your battery, down to about 0.35V to power an LED. pretty snazzy huh? you can see if hooked up to a Peltier (called a seebeck when used as a source) at instructables. I miss the days of having the time to actually do fun stuff. we have alot of these TEC (thermo electric cooler) junctions at work, so I'm going to start harvesting out of scrap units for projects at home.

climbing

work update

I was reading over at postsecret.com and this post from them inspired me to NOT say anything about a possible change at work until its complete. I'll give everyone an update when the smoke clears. not that I would bad-mouth anyone at work, but other changes...

April Fools

Google has another new feature for gmail... autopilot.... hahahah i could really use this for students =)

randsinrepose

I do a little reading for my lunch hour time. I read the usual gadget blogs and tech news. I want to share with you my latest finding, http://www.randsinrepose.com. This software developer is a superb writer! for starters, check out an old article The Larry Test which talks about the underpinnings of an engineers mentality to never ever really be done. its well thought out, and straight forward, but when you get to the end I was left with a realization about myself that I had truly never considered. Randsinrepose may just be so good as to get a permanent link from nerdy.

check it out, I bet ALL of you will like it.

the icing on the cake? a nice little review of cloud computing and dropbox

better off ted

Have any of you guys seen better off ted? a new show over on ABC. the show is pretty hilarious and I had major flashbacks of my time with General Electric. ABC is TOTALLY making fun of NBC with this one. I particularly enjoyed the part of the into that makes fun of pretty much ever business arm of GE (you can almost see the Enron wind in one shot), and made reference to the very thing I had hanging on my wall for a while while employed there. for a time I had the slogan 'we bring good things to life' next a picture of the 1946 vulcan gun. for all my old friends still employed by the collective... check out better off ted.

gave in to a deal

after eyeing dad's 10" acer aspire one netbook over christmas and not thinking too much of it I saw an MSI wind this past weekend and was quite impressed.

Then I saw a craiglist spokane ad for a 'new in box acer aspire one 8.9" with 8gb sshd, 1GB ram' for $200.

Turns out it was a model about 3 months newer without linux, but with a 160gb HD and XP HOME

It was not only in the box, it had never been opened.  the ~1" smaller screen is noticible, but does not detrack too much from the functionality.  cheapest I think I could get this elsewhere would be before tax referbished at tiger direct for $240 or costco $300

I beleive the touchpad is aware of multiple fingers, as you use two fingers spreading or joining to zoom in and out (webbrowser) - pretty cool.  and draw a spiral from top right to middle of pad to activate scrolling from the pad.  I actually with is was more like a mac (GASP!) and it just had two finger scroll - mayber there is a hack.

long term, 20$ to boost the ram to 1.5 gb (max MB supports) and to a 32GB SS HD wiht 90MB read and 55MB write a second may be intersting.  I'm not in too big of a rush.  Really only thing it's missing is bluetooth and a tv tuner.  I've even got wireless mice and keyboard sets already that work just great (usb) and the tiny usb mouse that came with it works great.

specs AOA150-1555 black chasis

mechanical > chemical

I love having guests, it forces you to get the place in order and presentable! it really is a good thing, or i'd revert to my slobish ways like a college student.

I was put on bathroom detail.. i'm sure it was so I would be forced to come up with a solution to the hardwater ring. they sell all kinds of junk for this in the store. wimpy little things, and harsh chemicals that NEVER EVER work. I believe the only intent is to poison the family cat, and to challenge you to surviving chlorine fumes while cleaning.

I devised my own solution - the electrical engineers toilet brush. ok.. it really is more a mechanical solution, but since i'm an electrical engineer i get to take a little credit. I gave my wife a hard time (a chemist) that today... mechanical is greater than chemical.

sci fi = syfy

yeah, I didn't make that up.

the press release announcing the change confirms that SyFy is "phonetically identical" to Sci-Fi. Honestly, that was actually pointed out.

nerd name

head on over to the nerd name generator my favorite is so far from my bro - k1h = Guido, the Wii Collector

recession central

My employer let 25% of the workforce go today in the classical way. take the management team send them out to the effected employees at 9am on a friday, tell them to put their crap in a box and walk them to their car. very few in the business had any advanced warning, and those in the know were guessing a few people, maybe 5 tops. but almost 20 employees?!!!!! nice..

it happened so fast I only got to say good by to a few.

welcome to the recession.

I'm glad to say I was not effected and thats the scary part. maybe my number is up next friday? I waited for my boss to say something reassuring to me, and give me some hope about my continued employeement, but his reply was a little weak.

bottom line, i'm glad to have a job, and so should all of you.

VR6

kevs little post on the OPOC engine (from the 50's look it up) got me to again wonder why VW keeps lying about their W engines. turns out I just misunderstood how they were put together. not quite as cool as the OPOC, but really nice writeup of how the VR6 technology was developed.

see a straight 4, and how it results in an offset 6 in a single block. genius. www.autozine.org

tire fire

We went and watched a fire burn a few blocks from the house for our saturday night activity. We presume it was a tire shop, cause the fire was so black. the fire got way huge, probably 30-40 foot flames but by then the battery was dead in the camera, so these shots from earlier in the fire will have to hold you 'all over until some better ones come out in the paper.

Big Buck Bunny

I know I need a new video card when my Geforce2-MX-64meg just can't render streaming HD. now thats so sad. you to can test your video card with this entertaining little short animation... its funny, you'll like it.


Big Buck Bunny from Blender Foundation on Vimeo.

magic / more magic switch

This is a nice little tale about a magic switch. the EE side of me really enjoyed it.

Jonah

you can watch the 'traveling buddy' worm on hulu jonah

civics

how many of you would have passed your 8th grade civics exam in 1954 if it had looked like this? I know I wouldn't have.

euro coin

read about its creation here