prog | Entries tagged with technology

Today installed a 320 GB HD on Brie, the creamy white MacBook that's been my primary all-purpose computing device for going-on two years ago. (I bought Brie when I decided that I really was going to go indie, though it'd be nearly a year before I got my act together enough to found Appleseed.) Including shipping and the cost of a new Torx screwdriver, the drive cost less than $100. Thank you, Newegg.com.

This is nice, coz I plan on creating at least a couple more Lenny (Debian 5) and Windows VMs in the near future, for both business and pleasure, and Brie's stock 80 GB disk just didn't have the room for them. Since being shown the light around the end of 2007, I have really grown to appreciate the work-pattern of starting a new project by bamfing up a new VM instance, especially when said project is ultimately going to be a deliverable for a client. So much cleaner than starting out on the shall-we-say baggage-laden environment that is my Mac.

The installation was relatively painless, if slow, since there was so much to back up and then restore again. Glad I found this Gizmodo article by Wilson Rothman first, about a stupid little dance you (sometimes?) need to do before the Leopard install DVD will let you restore from a Time Machine disk to a brand-new HD.

From the this is what it's all about files:

While standing in line, I wanted to talk to

classicaljunkie, but she wasn't in a position to take phone calls, and I wanted more interactivity (and less cost) than SMS. So I hopped onto the iTunes App Store, downloaded and installed Google Mobile, and a moment later was yakking at her over GTalk. I did all this before shuffling forward a place in line.

I note this less as praise for Google and more as astonishment that I have a mobile device whose functionality I can alter on the fly, through the air, to fit an immediate need. Kuh-crazy.

I am totally in-line for a new iPhone when Apple lifts the expected veil on the device's second generation next month. My little Sony Ericsson brick is four years old, covered in interfaces that nobody supports any more, and works so spottily that I've been asking clients who wish to have a voice meeting if we could use Skype instead. I tell them that I'm holding out for the new iPhones, rather than just picking up a replacement. They understand.

Hm... I actually told myself (and anyone in earshot) from the start that I'd be in as soon as it hit its first major revision, so in that way I'm kind of pleased with myself for holding out so long.

Any of you know stuff about RFID - specifically, how it is popularly implemented in key-card form - and be willing to talk to me offline about it?

Why yes this has to do with my latest crazy invention idea.

Just ordered a 250 GB hard disk for $99. I believe that that translates to around 20 hours of uncompressed DV storage capacity, so it should work excellently as a workspace for my video-production fun, with lots room to spare.

It's an oft-repeated story but I can't resist: the last time I bought a hard drive for my Mac woulda been around 1997, when I splurged on a 2GB drive -- less than one percent of the capacity of this one -- and probably paid twice as much for it. A real bargain, at the time. (This was a different Mac than the one I'm using now, of course, but still.)

Day got off on the wrong foot, but became fun anyway. Discovered that I seem to have lost my bank card, so instead of going to the ATM machine on my way to the T, I lugged my box of coins to the CoinStar machine in the Porter Square Shaw's. (I can't just sidle into my bank for a withdrawal because my bank is NetBank, and does not have any of your primitive hoo-man tellers.) This little box has sat on my fridge for the last eight months, accepting a mouthful of change from me whenever my coat or pants pocket grew too heavy with coin. And today was its day, at last! So it gave forth something over $130, all told, 8.5% of which went to the fine CoinStar folks. It's worth it, I think, and I'm relieved to have this unexpected safety net appear until I can get a new bank card.

(Only surprise: the machine has a rotten UI. I'm not sure how else they could have designed it while keeping the process jam-free, but inserting coins involves dumping them into a tray and then manually pushing them a few at a time into a long, thin slot at one end. It takes a long time (if you have $130 worth of change, anyway) and is actually kind of gross; the fingers of my right hand were black with grime when it was done.)

Bonus: had a few T tokens spat back at me. Relics from the past, worth 25 cents more than I paid for them! Will gladly use them today.

Today is hunt day! Soon I will leave. Before that, I will try to find to find my gloves. But I wanted to note something pleasantly random first. Insomaniacal last night, was reminded of Information Society's 1988 hit "What's on Your Mind" by someone else's blog, and made a beeline for the iTunes store because I wanted to spend a dollar on it. And, lo: I could, for that whole album is there. Then I felt wistful, as tends to happen easily with me, because: look at the happy people on the album's cover! Doesn't it make you wonder where they are now?

Then I felt wistful, because I remembered how I discovered this group: through a sampler disc packaged with the Sega CD system I bought 11 years ago. It included a couple of tracks from this album, in CD+G format, and I bet I'm one of only a relative handful of people who bothered to watch the video tracks. They were delightful: cartoony depictions of the band and their house, with running commentaries about their history, their musical techniques, and their favorite recipes. But because I was a broke undergrad (and also as lazy as I ever was) I didn't go buy the album, so didn't see the other "videos", and some years later sold the disc (with the rest of my Sega), and indeed have never encountered any CD+G anything since then. (You probably haven't, either.)

So after a few moments of Googling, I found this. It's not really the same experience -- the actual art was vaguely animated, and had the current audio track's lyrics scrolling along the bottom of the screen, in time. But I was pretty stoked to find it, nonetheless.

Also found references to http://www.insoc.org, allegedly housing a website maintained by Kurt (the vocalist with labcoat and Edward Scissorhands hair, at least back then), but it doesn't seem to be awake right now.

I am too stupid to locate the actual animated content on Purple Pussy, except for the music video, and it implies there's more than that, but, again, I am dumb, so.

The comic is sometimes very funny. ("And that is how I defeated the sea.") Even today, where I haven't drawn what you could legally call a cartoon in two years or so, seeing a regular webcomic of any quality makes a long-forgotten part of me seethe with jealousy. I trust myself that if I'm meant to get back into that field someday, I will do so, and I will do so to conquer. Neener.

It has occurred to me that I might like to commission an artist to fashion an icon for "BrainDump". I have a good idea for an icon: a book or notebook that's lying open and looks horrible, with dog-eared pages, text underlined and highlighted, margins scrawled and doodled in, and bookmarks of all colors and materials sticking out every which way.

The thing about Mac OS X is that little, cartoony icons look out of place, now; you're expected to have big ol' things that look like real objects. I can't do this by myself. Googling for Mac OS X icon artists who take commissions gave me only one solid hit (which I can't find now and apparently didn't bookmark... foo.) Then again, any Photoshop-savvy arteest should be able to produce an attractive icon image, once said arteest knows what other Mac OS X icons look like. So maybe my search is too narrow.

There's also things like The Icon Factory, which I haven't browsed through yet. I like the idea of hiring an artist, though; I'd feel all self-important n stuff. I'M A PATRON

Cute Slashdot quote OTD (from an article noting that some cheapo hard drives now sell for one dollar per gigabyte):

1957, the first hard drive was introduced as a component of IBM's RAMAC 350. It required 50 24-inch disks to store five megabytes (million bytes, abbreviated MB) of data and cost roughly $35,000 a year to lease - or $7,000 per megabyte per year.

Man, I knew I should have waited a little while longer before buying one of these.

It always happens. You buy the hottest/fastest toy out, and just 46 years later they're releasing something seven million times better.

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A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

That's awful high, Jason. That's awful high.

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