Recent Activity

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  Photographic Art Gallery Invites

  Sure, I'd love to.  I guess some of my photos are "pretty nice".

  Posted 24 Nov 08 in Beta Testers

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  My next lappie

  Just so -- no touchpad.  When I travel for work, I put a small mouse in my checked luggage.  Some people, my daughter for example, are perfectly comfortable using the nubbin in the middle of the keyboard.  When I don't have a mouse, I tend to use a combination of the nubbin, the stylus, and keyboard commands.

  It IS a compromise.

  Posted 21 Apr 08 in Gadget Freaks

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  OLPC

  The browser is a stripped down version of Firefox:  no menus, no options, no tabs and no right-click menu.

  The screen is a wonder.  I knew they'd done something so that it works in bright sunlight, but I was amazed when I actually saw it.  The screen *transmits* in color, but *reflects* in grey-scale.  When you're inside (or at night,I suppose), it looks like a more or less ordinary color screen, perhaps a little less intense than some.  When you're outside in the sun, the colors wash out but the screen reflects a perfectly clear grey-scale image.  You can even shade part of the screen with your hand and see part in color and part grey-scale.

  It's also a great machine for wardriving.  Last weekend I happened to have the system with me when we drove along the Charles River past Boston University, and it displayed more than 100 wifi nodes on its wifi "map" almost all the time.  It's not a true map, but it does display the nodes with their signal intensity and a lock icon if they are locked.

  The system immediately recognized a standard USB mouse.

  It has a webcam built in, but no support for Skype video.  It being Unix, some people have hacked it to work -- I'll wait until it gets into the standard product.

  My sweetie (who has delicate sweetie hands) reports that she is completely comfortable with the size of the keys on the keyboard.
  
  

  Posted 25 Mar 08 in Gadget Freaks

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  Search - how can we make it better?

  One of my favorite Google features is being able to put.words.in.a.phrase.using.point (aka full stop in Strine) "instead of having to find the shift key and use double quotes".

  Posted 12 Feb 08 in Tangler Feedback

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  Help Me Test Tangler Embedding

  Well, I did a minimalist embedding at Tangler Test.  Let me know what else you'd like tested in bare HTML.

  What are colours?

  Posted 12 Feb 08 in Tangler Feedback

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  Show own number on Nokia?

  I change the desktop greeting -- I'm not sure what it's really called -- so it shows the number of the phone rather than whatever dopey thing the phone company sets it to.

  Posted 06 Aug 07 in Gadget Freaks

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  Best and Worst things about your day

  Best:  For lunch I had leftovers from my sweetie.  Today was Chicken Cacciatore.  Mmmmm

  Worst:  The sweetie leaves at around 6:20am, when I'm barely awake, and I have to get out of bed right then or I'll fall asleep again.  This morning I had a webex with a customer at 10am when I was NOT awake.

  Posted 30 Jul 07 in General Conversation

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  How do you spell Jarmies?

  I'm pretty sure I called them jarmies, although if you put a gun to my head I guess I would've spelled that 'jammies'.  I think jim jams is a recent invention.

  And kids in the USA call them pj's.

  Posted 30 Jul 07 in General Conversation

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  Wii or Xbox360 or PS3 ?

  I bought the Brain Academy game for the Wii a few weeks ago, and it's a lot of fun for the sweetie and me.  Although, as usual, our 19-year-old son gets multiples of our scores, making us feel old and slow.

  We've also been visited by younger kids, around 10 or 12 I think, who immediately take to the Wii games as well.  Loudly.

  Posted 30 Jul 07 in General Conversation

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  Calling all canadians

  Well, I'm in not in Canada, but Boston is very, very close ...

  As far as I know, all the cars in the world have the same outlet with the same voltage (12v), so a gadget that works in a car in one country will work in a car in another.  The US and Canada are the same when it comes to this kind of thing, and the ones in the US look  exactly like your picture.

  Posted 26 Jul 07 in Q and A Section