March 2004 Archives
« February 2004 | Main | April 2004 »
March 31, 2004
Brand new portable computer runs for 20 hours on 4 AA batteries!
Radio Shack TRS-80 Portable Computer Review
Alright, so it's not brand new. But this is one machine I remember literally always wanting.
What I ended up with was a calculator that I could program in BASIC. I forget exactly what model it was -- it's probably laying around somewhere still.
What I find very amusing about this is that it was designed by Kyocera. I think the most interesting design aspect is the fac that it has what appears to be a full keyboard. It's not quite a normal keyboard layout, if you look closely.
It's also interesting to note that it has a cassette adapter.
I wonder how fast the serial connection is? This could potentially be used for a fairly fast [text] connection via a cell phone. ;)
Gadget Comedy
Feel The World's Pain With WiFi-SM
(Direct link.)
Now this is seriously funny. It's basically a patch, like the kind one uses for slow medication. But instead of medication it uses WiFi to scan news sources for key words. When it finds these words, which are all pain related, it zaps you. So, you get to "feel the worlds pain."
Maybe next someone will think of a gadget like that but that you can communicate two-way with. And maybe they'll shape it like a mole so it doesn't look like you're addicted to nicotine.
Oh wait...
March 30, 2004
Chernobyl Pics and Journal
This is an amazing tale of a couple of people on a motorcycle going into Chernobyl and taking pictures of the now silent and completely deserted town.
My first impression was one of a single word:
Wow.
March 29, 2004
Ely, NV to Home
We had a long drive today. We got up at 530am and started our trek across Nevada an hour later on 50, the loneliest road in America (or hiway, or something). In any case, it really was quite lonely. After about an hour we ran across a town where a Chevron was just about the only thing open (it was around 7am). Luckily they had a mart and we could get some snacks for breakfast. This was also one of the first smalls towns we'd come across that didn't have cell coverage for us.
Another hour or two and we saw a turn off for Petroglyphs recreation area. Down the dirt road we went. It turned out to include a campground, picnic area, and short hike. No fees for anything. We took the short hike (just under a mile) which included a brochure to go along with the walk. The petroglyphs were interesting and different.
Off we went, heading further across Nevada on 50. We finally stopped at Boomtown on 80 just inside the Nevada border for lunch. Some fairly decent Mexican food later, I took over the wheel and we headed for home. Because of the timing, we decided to take 5 South to 205/580. This turned out to be very smooth with no traffic (the other direction had all the traffic). We got home at about 630pm, or 12 hours after we'd left having driven just about 600 miles. That's not a bad average given the hiking stop and the lunch stop.
We figure we can return to the Great Basin for a weekend trip sometime during the summer to actually see that park. After all, it'd only be about 1400 miles on a weekend and we've done 2200. ;)
All told, this trip was about 2500 miles -- and we didn't drive at all on Saturday in Vegas. ;)
March 28, 2004
Vegas to Zion to where were we going?
Alright, so we left Vegas nice and early this morning... sometime before 8am.
We zoomed off to Zion. That didn't take too terribly long. We hung out there, did a short few mile walk, and decided to go to Bryce Canyon. What happened to Death Valley? Well, it was too direct. ;)
Bryce Canyon was very cool. Such a spectacular view. Add to that 1x coverage while viewing and you can see the result on my phlog (see sidebar).
After Bryce, we started off towards Nevada where there's the Great Basin National Park, the only one in the state. However, we discovered on our way that it doesn't open until May.
That didn't stop us. We decided to go across the middle of Nevada anyway. When we got into Nevada after having driven a long way in the dark on straight roads. This particular border casino was amazingly pathetic. Heh.
We're now in Ely, Nevada in some hotel. Naturally, we have 1x coverage. In fact, we seem to have 1x coverage just about everywhere, even in the national parks. It's been nice for photo blogging and getting online. But it's also a big change from when getting even analog coverage in remote areas was hard.
With over 500 miles of driving and over 4 miles of hiking today I'm exhausted. And we still have to get home all in one day. The quick route home goes 50 through Reno to 80 and back. Mapquest lists that at 600 miles. But we're going to go east to 395 at around Mono Lake and then north to South Lake Tahoe and over. We'll see... ;)
Up early, back posting.
Well, we wok up early this morning. Both of us thought it was 8-something again. But no, we got up at about 640am. Again, we slept with the curtains open. The view from our room at the Westin is quite nice, really. It looks up towards the Sands and the Stratosphere.
We're about ready to zoom off towards Zion and then on the Death Valley. Yes, those are not in the same direction. We have to start heading back for home at some time. ;)
So, I've been sitting in the bathroom while Laurie relaxes in the tub we don't have in our room down at the very end of the hallway on the 13th floor (well, it's labelled 14th -- but they skipped 13) which has it's own hallway when you open the door entering blog entries for the last few days. It's all fun, really. ;)
Well, it's time to start packing up. Phlog entries have been common. I'll have to add some links to them on the previous posts, but I don't have time currently.
I also need to bounce them through a script that will strip the Verizon string. Blarf. Carriers are obnoxious...
March 27, 2004
Day in Vegas!
As I mentioned before we woke up fairly early with the curtains open. I think the first time I woke up was at around 5am. Some lights were still on others were off and the sky was just beginning to lighten up. It was very cool looking. We didn't roll out of bed until 830am. While I got ready Laurie went to get us Starbucks. Of course our hotel had a Starbucks. But, no T-mobile wifi there. Heh.
We'd actually decided to save the daily charge of the high speed net access and use 1x. That was fine as we didn't use it much anyway.
We then headed out with cameras and Laurie's laptop on my back. We walked south, towards Luxor. We walked through a couple of casinos, but doing so is dangerous: it's much easier to get in than get out. We took a tram to Mandalay Bay, which happened to be where Border Grill was that we'd decided on for lunch. It wasn't quite lunch time but we were thirsty. Once in Mandaly Bay, though, we started seeing signs for the Shark Reef. Of course, Laurie absolutely loves sharks so we started heading towards that.
Nothing is small in Vegas. We walked for quite a long time before finding it. Oddly enough, it was right next to the Border Grill! We decided to do it first, so we got something to drink. While sitting here in a vacant lunch area with only one place open we saw a bird. A normal out door bird. We'd actually seen others and throughout the day we'd eventually see a whole bunch of birds flying around inside Mandalay Bay. It was kind of cool.
After this, the line for the Shark Reef was actually too long so we decided to go eat. We had a wonderful lunch at the Border Grill. I had a mango margarita. We split the rest of the food which included chips, tamales, Chile Rellanos, and a salad. It was far too much food.
After this, we headed for the Shark Reef. The line was long again, but we went for it. We got a double pass that included an IMAX film over at Luxor for only a few bucks more. The Shark's Reef was basically a fairly good sized aquarium with lots of aquatic animals. This was very enjoyable.
When then headed over to watch the IMAX film Adrenaline Rush: The Science of Risk. It was basically about extreme sports and was mildly entertaining and a good rest from the walking.
After this, we headed off to the Aladdin where dinner was going to be. We got there about an hour early but discovered they, too, had a large indoor mall. This one was a mile long, so we had plenty to do. Not long before the reservations we learned that our friends were going to be a little bit late as they'd been out until late morning.
We decided to hang out at Commander's Palace and have a some drinks before they arrived. We relaxed and drank a little. This was pleasant and our bar tender was quite good, although not fancy.
We had dinner which included yummy food, only one bottle of wine for 6 people, about 10 bottles of water, and a small dessert. After this, we headed out with a couple of friends and walked up the strip a little ways to Treasure Island to check the show times. The last one was at 9pm and it was already after 10pm. They headed out towards Caesar's Palace while we went back to our room. We were exhausted. We'd been walking almost all day.
So we didn't set an alarm again. We woke up, got up, and though it was late since it was sunny. Not so. It was 630am. This allowed us to get out at a wonderful time. Later I would find out that we actually forgot to check out and leave the keys behind. Whoops. ;)
March 26, 2004
Needles to Grand Canyon to Vegas
We got up fairly early with an alarm that went off at around 6am. The cheap hotel had a key drop, so we used that and headed out.
The morning drive out to Grand Canyon was quite nice. At some point, we ran across a 200 mile sign and set one of the odometers. It hit 200 miles at around one of the intersections near south rim. All of the signs up until then were quite accurate.
Along this drive we saw plenty of cactus and Joshua Trees. We didn't stop much as our original target was 9am. But we learned on the way that sunrise was at 6:15am, so 9am would not have been early enough.
We arrived at the Grand Canyon at around 11am local time (10am Pacific -- so we were only really an hour late). The sun was high already. We stopped at the visitor center and got stamped. After that we drove a little way down to park closer to where we wanted to go.
Traffic and parking was pretty bad so I dropped Laurie and went off to find parking. I think I found the farthest spot away as I had to walk through the area where the mules where and across the train tracks. I got to where I left Laurie but she wasn't there. I saw a trail heading down and wondered if she'd decided to go down a bit. Then I realized she probably headed down the rim trail like we had planned.
After a little bit I saw what looked like Laurie standing way out on a ledge that had nothing under it! It was her as she waved at me first. I snapped a couple of pics and went off towards her. The ledge was bigger than it looked and she wasn't that close, but it was still well off the trail. Silly Laurie. ;)
We then continued on down the trail taking a bunch of pictures. We filled all of her memory cards before returning. I took a bunch with the Casio as well, knowing that they couldn't possibly be as good as the DSLRs especially with the 100-300mm zoom lens (providing about 160mm to 480mm on this camera).
We saw a couple of gorups of mules coming up from below. They were cool watching. At the top we hung out near them taking more pictures. It was a cool day but these mules were absolutely drenched with sweat. Poor mules...
When done, we took the trek back to the car and sped off towards the Hoover Dam. It was mid afternoon by now and Laurie was hoping to get to Hoover Dam with some light left. By 530pm it was starting to look dark. That's about when I remembered that not only was sundown at 645pm but that we were in Arizona still and it was actually 630pm.
We got there with only a little light left. We both had fun doing exposure in the few second range, with Laurie taking many more and hers turning out better, of course. A couple of nice shots came from the Casio, though.
We then headed out towards Vegas. It's only about 30 miles away and 10 miles in we had a specacular view when dropping down in to Henderson. From there you could see nearly the entire Vegas metro area, including the strip which was about 20 miles away. This city is absolutely massive.
We arrived at the Westin at a decent time. We were fairly tired, though, so we decided to stay in. The room, we'd been told, didn't have a bath tub -- only a shower. Except that it did have a bath tub -- and a cool dual shower head thing ("heavenly" branded like everything else Westin). We got room service, which was quite good, and watched a movie. We decided not to set an alarm but instead left the curtains open. The view was up towards the Stratosphere and was quite nice without a whole lot of light.
This woke us up fairly early, with sufficient sleep.
(Yes, this was back posted. Maybe Laurie will correct my memory flaws. ;))
March 25, 2004
Drive Down to Needles
Laurie picked me up early from work today so we could get down to Needles as early as possible. The target was for 11pm. Well, that didn't quite happen. We didn't leave until 3:30pm. We arrived at Needles at about 11:40pm.
We found a place, Budget Inn or something like that, that was $30 something a night. Very cheap. But it was clean and the bed wasn't even that bad. No bugs seen here. ;)
The drive itself went fairly well. We traded off a little bit, had the standard McDonald's salad fare, and chatted a lot.
Moblogging everywhere... but where?
Reiter's Camera Phone Report: Picostation launches two-way moblogging software for camera phones
Yet another moblog app. Which is interesting, given my company's CTIA press release as well as knowing the other to this other one, called KABLOG. Of course, ours is the only BREW one. And the only one that has GPS support.
The GPS part is actually pretty cool. The particular handset that was being used for this demo was the Koi (see Reiter's entry). After the first fix, the handset would begin to get fixes at a very high rate (half a second or less) and it didn't even need to make a network call at this point. Most current handsets need to make a network call every time.
Hopefully these phones will ship with camera access, like we have now, and developer accessible GPS will ship so we can launch an application like this. I'd personally use it. Well, I do already, but not to a public site. Heck, I don't even have this site ready for moblog use with photos... *sigh* so little time... ;)
March 24, 2004
Platter density increases continue...
Laser Heating Technique To Increase Drive Storage
... as they should, of course. Who can settle with mere gigabytes?
At 6.25terabytes per square inch we should be able to see terabyte microdrives someday in the not too distance future. And to think we only recently got passed the 1GB mark to 4GB and higher.
I'd predict we'll have them in about 10 years. Whether or not the microdrive format itself is still around will be a different question. Given how long standard hard drive formats stick around, I think it just might be. After all, there haven't been that many in recent history -- and most of these are still around: 5.25", 3.5", 2.5", 1", and most recently 0.85" hard drive mount sizes. I still remember the super thin drive I had once in a 5.25" format. I think it was a Quantum Bigfoot. Such a change...
March 23, 2004
Blinking Jewelry
Cellular Jewelry, A Real Life Blink Tag
So, it'll go off when you're on the phone. Your neighbor. Someone walking by you on the street. Probably when any other sort of transmitting radio is in use.
Heck, it might even go off after a cop nails you with a radar gun.
Now all it needs, though, is some direction finding ability and a slightly better antenna and you can see just how many people really do use a cell phone in a car (a lot more than just hold up a phone to their ear...) ;)
Auto ID3 writing?
Apparently this software uses the acoustics of the song to make a match and then it fills out all of the ID3 tags. If this actually works, this could be a huge time saver for many people. In part it would also make tags consistent.
Sadly, it appears to only be available for Macs.
Doh.
But then again, the source code has been provided, too...
Then again, the brainz of this can be found at musicbrainz.org. And as it turns out, they provide a standard Windows client for this.
And it would also appear that the guys at MusicBrainz need to be told abotu the Mac tagger because they claim to want one.
Ok, so that means I can try it. Something like this seems like it could have good potential. And it sounds useful even if you rip from your own CDs.
How To: Remove the 4GB drive from the muvo2
studio2f: Hitachi MicroDrive removal: Creative Nomad Muvo2
(From Gizmodo.)
I'll need to keep this around in the even that I have any trouble. One other site I saw had something to say about making sure the latest firmware was flashed so a new card or drive would be able to be used in the muvo2 After all, it's a perfectly capable mp3 player. I wonder, though, how hard it would be to cut a slot in the plastics to make it even easier to add and remove CF cards. Just add a tab to the CF card to pull it back out (piece of ribbo or something). Hmmmm...
March 22, 2004
533MHz Typewriter
mini-itx.com - projects - underwood no. 5
Now really, just what good is a 533Mhz typewriter?
The project is cool, though. I mean, it certainly would look interesting sitting in a Victorian and running a household server OS so you didn't need a head for it. It could play typing noises at times, too, to make things sound "busy." ;)
Poison Oak
Well, it looks like I may have gotten a small patch of poison oak. Crap.
It's on the back of my hand near the lowest thumb knuckle. This is one of those cases where you don't realize how often a certain part of your body is touched until it's sensitive.
I've had poison oak plenty of times but I'm always concerned about whether or not it can spread, etc. It seems that, in general, it definitely can't. I've been hearing that for years. But it's not something you really want to test on your own. Especially when it's on your hand and your entire body starts itching as is always the case when you've been around something that could make you itch, even if it doesn't.
The last couple of times I've had it I've solved it in what can only be described as a bad way. Bleach. Yes, bleach. Take a paper towel, dump bleach on it, and wipe it away. Now, this only really solves the itching part -- for a while. See, basically what happens is the bleach melts the skin away. This means you're left with a scab once it starts healing. Naturally, scabs eventually start itching, too. But it's a much different itch. And you don't feel like you're going to spread it even though it doesn't spread. But, it basically replaces itching with pain. I'm sure it's quite unhealthy, too. ;)
This particular case, if more of it doesn't develop, it won't be a problem. What concerns me, though, is our boots. Somehow, we'll need to wash them because I may very well have gotten it from them seeing as how I moved them last night. And seeing as how the urushiol can stay active for upwards of 5 years, I'm not going to wait it out.
This page has a couple of interesting warnings about using bleach. I'm curious, though. What would have spread? The bleach? It's clear the urushiol can't spread...
Oh well, I can only hope it stays small. ;)
Even Europe is Ahead
picturephoning.com: Samsung zooms in on camera phones
So, Samsung is going to ship 2 megapixel camphones in Europe now. I'm sure that means LG, among others, will be shipping them, too.
But truly when? I mean, camphones still to come out in the US are only VGA. Hopefully soon some of the 1 megapixel camphones still start to ship here. Even the recently scooped is only VGA. Just because phones are announced doesn't mean they're shipping -- this country or any other. Perhaps phones are just announced sooner every where else than here. I know, doubtful, but we can hope we'll get 2MP camphones soon. With good lenses, covers, and optical zoom. ;)
TypeKey -- Spam Solution?
Joi Ito's Web: Six Apart announced TypeKey
Given my recent bad luck with spam comments, TypeKey sounds like a wonderful thing. In fact, it seems to be to blogs what passport is to higher security web sites (such as eBay).
It'll be out with Movable Type 3.0. That'll be a while yet, I think -- they're still in early beta.
We'll see how well it works. ;)
Rugged Laptops
The Humvee of Laptops
Talks about this Business Week article.
The part that I'm particularly interested in is this:
A 1 pound ruggedized model, eh? That's quite interesting.
Also interesting is:
They use 4 pound notebooks, huh? That's really quite light.
I wonder how much the fully ruggedized models (the ones that can be driven over and live) actually weigh? A rugged 4 pound notebook would be great for taking on hiking trips and such. Granted, the cost is a bit much for most of the models, and who knows about the battery life, but not having to worry about dropping one on rocks or in water would be nice. ;)
March 21, 2004
New iRiver products
Player Blog: New Stuff from iRiver
The new iRiver that looks like my 390T is actually pretty cool with it's tiny color screen and camera feature. The other ones are more like what I want, though.
The USB On The Go stuff, though, is very interesting. I don't think I've heard of this yet. It basically allows for two USB devices to talk to each other and copy stuff. But do both sides have to support it? Or just one? I'll have to see what I can find out about this...
Finally, a good use for the Virtual Keyboard
Siemens SX1 With Virtual Keyboard
This is exactly the type of use a lot of us at work have been looking to see the Virtual Keyboard used with.
This sort of thing could also be done with a tablet computer or PDA. The key part, of course, is building it in so there isn't an extra component to carry around.
Something like this on a BREW phone would be great for things like email or IM or even blog posting. ;)
Moto MPx -- missing features
No US GSM support? Odd. And bad.
But the worst part is the $930. There's just no way. That's far too expensive. I don't know anyone that would spend that much on a phone or even a PDA these days. Especially since they won't sell and next year you'll be able to get them on eBay for a few hundred, at the most...
Doh. At least it's progress, of a sort...
More Blog Spam
Damn. After installing MT-Blacklist I still got some spam over the weekend. And both comments were missed by the current blacklist. I updated my own blacklist. I hope this doesn't continue, though. It's really quite annoying.
It's also odd that it keeps happening to the same entry. The person commenting strangely keeps putting the same email address. It's probably bogus and I'm certainly not sending any email that way. However, MT-Blacklist doesn't block based on that field, which is interesting.
Oh well... We'll see what happens...
Fry's Run -- In the Miata
After the hike, we went off towards Fry's. I wanted to go to the Fremont Fry's because they always seem to have a better selection than anyone else.
After looking around for a while and enjoying some refreshments and the cafe in the middle we decided on a specific Brother fax machine that also had a flatbad scanner for photocopying and making color scans, an enclosed paper tray good for keeping dust out of the system, a 600x600dpi laser printer for use with all of it's functions, and a decent price with a rebate.
Off we went to the really long line. Well, we thought it was going to be slow so Laurie went to get me a couple of magazines to read. Before I even figured out what I wanted to read I was at the front of the line and calling her on the cell phone to tell her I was ready. Most of their 60 cashier positions were actually open, so the line went very fast.
Just as we finished paying I made a simple realization. How would we ever get this huge box into the Miata?! Oh crap....
Well, luckily I had stuffed rope into the spare wheel area (there's actually a lot of room down there for small emergency stuff). We got the box tied down using the hard top holds and pieces of the top. It just set right behind us on top of the folded down top. It stuck way up out of the car. And we had to drive from Fremont to Santa Cruz like this.
Well, it made it just fine, of couse. ;)
Here's a crappy image I took with a Samsung A610:
