MacBigot Cached Glances

(This in response to the ZDNet article, ‘Report: Apple prepping 11.6-in. MacBook Air, new iPod touch‘…)

I’ve been on this rampage for a while now (http://macbigot.com/?p=911 – to catch you up, I believe the market wanted smaller not thinner — or, I’d rather have something that is easily carried vs. one that is easily mailed).

For those who have seen HP’s mini 210 HD (10.1″ display at 1366×768), it’s clear the notion of all netbooks being too much compromise and too little value is fading fast. On HP’s build-to-order site, I got mine with the upgraded video card, added bluetooth, and left everything else standard — and now carry a $409 netbook (sporting an Apple sticker) that I wish had come not from HP, but the company known for leading industrial design and refining ideas left to wither due to poor quality. Netbooks would have been a perfect area for Apple to say, “HERE — THIS is what all those other companies would have created if they’d had Jonathan Ives…”

Instead, they created a whole new space in the market (which Microsoft had failed at, though they’d tried) with the iPad — and I think that’s great, for consumers. But for Creators, it would be much more of a tool if it ran Adobe Illustrator, and could connect to FTP sites, and standardized ports, and (you get the idea).

The Air getting ‘downsized’ may be a step in the right direction for people like me — so it would increase my optimism in the platform. But with only one USB port and no ethernet, it might still be seen as an executive toy.

What about those of us ‘in the trenches’? The netbook format has many features stripped already (horsepower, optical drives, screen real estate); Apple should be looking to improve upon that — not simple remove MORE. To me, the whole concept of the Air was a lame attempt at getting maybe two people in the enterprise to notice the Apple brand. Now that we’ve done that (or not), let’s move on…

What is the biggest thing you worry about when you’ve just recently acquired some new technology?

Perhaps it’s a power surge?

Accidental baptism?

Food poisoning?

Succumb to the effects of poor workmanship?

I’ll bet you never worried about the perils engendered by leaky glow sticks!

My daughter brought home some of those dollar-store toys that you bend to activate, with little plastic joiners to fashion bracelets and necklaces that glow in the dark (some for several days, if you’re lucky), and found that one of the rods was a dud, and another was leaking when she opened the package. I had her take the leaking one immediately to the trash can and warned her to wash her hands thoroughly — but in our haste I never considered that the ‘dud’ might be leaking too, and it lay near the hinge of my brand-new laptop for about five minutes before I threw it away as well.

Not seeing any residue at the time, I put the notebook away and was surprised the next morning to fine a large, gooey streak of chemical nastiness across what used to be gloriously clean and sparkling HP-branded plastic. It took me half and hour and a bottle of Goo-Gone (Mommy keeps it in the house for just such emergencies) to completely remove the slime trail that persisted; and when I was done the gouge was deep, and permanent.

Rather than worrying only about strong magnetic fields and open containers of liquid, I will now also be paranoid about chemical attacks.

Buy it durable, but treat it like it’s brittle.

My HP mini 210 HD arrived the other day, and I am slowly migrating my life onto it from backup disks, etc. I haven’t repartitioned it yet for multiple operating systems; but that can wait, since I now know how to do that with GParted which was included, gratis, on my Ubuntu-based bootable thumb drive.

I’ve also learned (the hard way, over the last few years) to keep important documents backed up by saving them ‘in the cloud’, or to multiple drives, before risking any change to my main system. [Get the t-shirt! Live The Agony!]

So for now, I’m starting out with just the basics — Skype, DropBox, OpenOffice, GIMPshop, ClamWin, PDFCreator, VLC, VNC, iTunes, Firefox (with TinEye, DownloadHelper, and other favorite plugins); all at a cost of… zero dollars.

Today was my last day, at what had been my ‘day job’ for the last nine years. Aside from the emotional shock of Change itself, I am starting to feel good about the options ahead of me. The shop is left in good hands, and I’m off to find a different place to leave little silver bullets behind and damsels in distress to rescue.

I didn’t even whine when it was time to unplug the laptop for the last time; but I did get a bit choked up handing over the Blackberry — which has been within arm’s reach (except when showering — we didn’t opt for the ‘deluxe’ model) day and night for many years. It was the last tech I touched every night before bed. I woke up to its alarm applet. I shamelessly set it to ‘vibrate’ when everyone else was turning their phones completely off during church (what if God sent me a text?). I found comfort in the fact that I could play ‘field medic’ for any crisis that could be resolved with a quick trip to Wikipedia or Google, and even learned to post quick web edits on it’s tiny screen. Inbound emails were responded to within minutes, and eventually I became quietly snobbish toward people who only checked their email ‘once or twice a day’.

It took about 45 minutes for the withdrawal symptoms to set in — I keep feeling my hip buzz and reach to find nothing there. At the kids’ swim practice this evening, I had to scrounge for a scrap of paper in my wallet to take notes (… with a PEN) for the brain-storming and list-making I’d become used to typing all through the day.

Now well into the evening, my breathing has normalized and I’m thinking about all the projects I will take on around the house and around the city — I’ve dutifully transcribed my chicken-scratch from that crumpled receipt to my Google Docs account (where it belongs), and my wife is verbally inserting honey-do’s wherever appropriate.

My resume is nearly polished, and my shingle ready to re-hang. With a deep breath, I am looking forward to finding new opportunities and challenges that will make me a better professional geek than I was yesterday. The enemy of hi-tech people is getting so comfortable with your current tools that you lose the flexibility to grow new and stronger skills.

But ‘comfortable’ is nice, when it’s the well-worn leather of a Blackberry holster.

(click above image to download 1024×768 wallpaper)

H/t to Engadget.com for this one:

I don’t know why I would ever need such a thing; but it just makes this particular geek feel more secure, knowing that this exists:

3M Nuclear Grade 8979N Performance Plus Duct Tape MMM-58185 Slate Blue 6 inch x 60 yards (Amazon.com)

It’s important to understand that what Apple has done with their iPad is more important for what computing will be like for everyone 8-10 years from now — than how it will impact the market between now and next Christmas. So this device is really a concept that competes with time and the slow-moving nature of consumers’ willingness to think outside the box.

But as revolutionary as it is, it also compares unfavorably this year with devices that are designed for the low-cost hi-tech market.

One example that I really like is the Mirus Classmate, an under-$500 netbook (available from WalMart.com and Amazon.com) that adds a touch-screen and stylus.

Even though this comes with the netbook-standard 1024×600-pixel screen (which I couldn’t live with for a personal laptop), the ergonomics look ideal to me for managing support tickets while roaming around a building. There is no need for special programming (you could even use Flash!) when developing for Windows XP — if Apple had used a scaled-down version of their own MacOS X (instead of their iPhone operating system), we wouldn’t be having this discussion. But to reach into enterprise markets, the iPad is going to have to add (by software update or otherwise) some rather banal features which Steve Jobs was OK with leaving out of the first-generation iPad.

No, honey, I’m not dumping you (my wife hardly ever reads my blog; with my luck today she’ll decide to skim the titles…).

I was a captive audience this week where the movie by the above title was playing on a nearby television — and though it didn’t seem like something I ever would have reached for at Family Video, it really was a keeper.

It’s a story about a comic-book geek that is afraid to grow up, afraid to commit, afraid to love, afraid to live. But his own comfort with his current lifestyle is what makes it so difficult to allow change… that scary change… to happen anywhere that might threaten the few things he has grown to depend on. And as no one lives in a vacuum, the friends and family who love him only serve to hold up the walls keeping him from being true to his heart.

In the end, it takes more than the right woman. A guy has to find the right man, as well — inside himself; and then decide that when that man stands up, he needs to plant his feet no matter how unnerving each day seems.

Lots of great characters, and a good story, well told in “I’m Through With White Girls” (Amazon.com).

Check the owner’s manual for whether your DTV box can receive and display analog signals; and then go to this web site to search for low-power stations near your zip code:

LPTVanswers.com:

“For the vast majority of viewers who watch TV using antennas, television goes all digital on June 12, 2009 – the date set by Congress for all full-power television stations to broadcast exclusively in a digital format.

But the law does not require “low-power” television (LPTV) stations to go digital. These smaller LPTV stations, and low-power “translator” stations that boost a signal’s strength at distances far from the station’s main transmitter, may continue broadcasting in analog after June 12, 2009. …”

Remember years ago, when a rainbow-colored Apple sticker on your car meant you liked the MacOS, instead of (today) being ‘really really really happy’?

From Wikipedia:

Nerd Pride Day, or Geek Pride Day, is an initiative which claims the right of every person to be a nerd or a geek.

This day is celebrated on May 25 since 2006, celebrating the premiere of the first Star Wars movie in 1977.

For those outside the circle:

A ‘geek’ and a ‘nerd’ may appear to others as much the same type of person. But for clarification, here is the difference:

A nerd is the way he/she is because they can’t help it. A geek, on the other hand, is someone who has made a life choice.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Day:

May 4 is called Star Wars Day because of a pun or play on words based on the similarity between “May the 4th be with you” and “May the force be with you”, a phrase often spoken in the Star Wars movies.

Despite efforts to start a Jedi Church with 4 May as its Star Wars Day, as of 4 May 2009 there is no religion-supporting organization that promotes 4 May as Star Wars Day.

From ThinkGeek.com:

“Pi Day Is March 14th – Humanity’s Favorite Irrational Number **

They call it an irrational number, but it’s very simple. When a circle’s diameter is 1, it’s circumference is Pi. It’s as easy as… err, we won’t go there. So, March 14th is International Pi Day (and coincidentally also the birthday of Albert Einstein), and we think you should show your love for your favorite transcendentally irrational mathematical constant by engaging in a little delicious Pi purchasing. We’ve got Pi-friendly shirts for the whole family now, and have even built our own silicone blueberry Pi ice cube symbol trays. Use those to make your own Pi-tinis to celebrate the occasion (recipe follows on our product page):
http://www.thinkgeek.com/brain/whereisit.cgi?t=314159&cpg=91T “

[Note that we had pointed out another 'book on tape' version of the Bible years ago -- by none other than Darth Vader...]

Set includes 24 hours of audio drama on 20 audio CDs (or 3 MP3 disks) and a bonus 75 minute Behind-the-Scenes DVD featuring interviews with the actors.

The Word of Promise: Next Generation is much more than just a word-for-word reading: it’s an all-star cast performing audio drama with a rich original score and Hollywood special effects. When Jesus walks on the water, kids will feel like they’re in the boat. When Peter waits in the courtyard during the Lord’s trial, the fire will crackle. The ambient sounds of the Holy land, the breath-taking musical score, the world-class young actors and the timeless Word of Promise all combine to deliver an unparalleled achievement.

Starring a Hollywood-level cast of young talent including Cody Linley (Hanna Montana, Dancing with the Stars) as Jesus, AnnaSophia Robb (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) as Mary Magdalene, Jordin Sparks (American Idol Winner) as Elizabeth, Cobin Bleu (High School Musical) as Peter, Alyson Stoner (Cheaper by the Dozen) as Martha, and narrated by Sean Astin (Lord of the Rings). The project includes informative book introductions by author Max Lucado and his daughter, Jenna Lucado, who is a speaker on the Revolve Tour.

‘Internet searches may strengthen the aging brain’ (ArsTechnica.com):

“…A new study of older individuals has now looked at brain activity as subjects undertake Internet searches and it concludes that, for regular Internet users, far more of the brain gets engaged when searching …”