Tag: tech

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Handwriting Recognition

No, not the sauce.
This should work out well.

Friends,

HP, the former Hewlett-Packard, has just announced their purchase of beleaguered cellphone manufacturer Palm. Some might say that this billion and a half dollar purchase is likely to go as smoothly as the Compaq merger. Others seem to think that it’s merely a patent grab so HP can build a tablet that can compete with Apple’s iPad. Personally, I think the stars have truly aligned to bless this marriage. How do I know?

Well, today is rapper Master P’s birthday. And in “H” news, it’s also the birthday of Swedish death metal band Amon Amarth’s lead singer Johann Hegg. These are signs, people.

Everything is going to be just fine.

– bob

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Facialtome Diaries: Today’s Young Youth Edition

What do we want? Our beautiful lives handed to us on a platter! When do we want it? C'mon, really? Friends,

Remember when you were a college freshman? When you had stars in your eyes? When you were going to take the world by the horns unconcerned about getting gored? Sometimes I see that people on the Facebook need some help, especially in my area of expertise. One of those people is my Facebook friend who is the daughter of my friends who has embarked on taking herself way too seriously at a liberal arts college back East.

Eventually the reality of this world will surely catch up to her and deal her the soul-crushing blow it dealt the rest of us. In the meanwhile, this exchange happened today…

Liberal Arts College Freshman: Does anyone have an old school Polaroid camera that they would love to give me? If so, I will be forever and eternally grateful.
Friend Of Freshman: ebay has some nice one for under 5 bucks. Mine was .99 cents
Your Humble Author: You can have my Polaroid 800, but this might make more sense. Just download Polardroid on your Mac and use it to modify your digital photos for totally blown-out, over-saturated pics…
http://www.poladroid.net/

Liberal Arts College Freshman: 1) I don’t have a Mac. I don’t really think Mac is an ethical company so I try not to buy from them.
2) I don’t have a digital camera because I don’t personally think digital photography is the best artist art form when it comes to photos.
3) I want a Polaroid camera because they are history and after that scare awhile back when they said they were going to stop making Polaroid film, I decided to invest.
Thanks for the suggestion though!

Apple isn’t an ethical company. Not as ethical as, say, Microsoft or HP. There’s that. But digital photography isn’t an art form compared to a Polaroid?

Ah, youth. You kids are so screwed.

– bob

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World Goes Round In Circles

Ladies and gentlemen, that's the joy of pure, life-like video quality...
Nothing tape-delayed about her excitement!

Friends,

On this day in 1956, Ampex demonstrated the first videotape recorder at the NAB show in Chicago (what? not in Vegas? -ed Las Vegas hadn’t been invented yet.). Immediately following this development, people on the west coast started losing a lot of sleep. Soon after that, Apple released the iPad so people could watch movies and television shows anywhere. (um, there were some important developments in between those two inventions, weren’t there? -ed I think so, but mostly pet rocks and fuel injection. It’s all a blur.)

– bob

P.S. Yes, I know the picture isn’t of a VXR-1000. I only found one good one and I didn’t think it’d scale very easily.

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Sympathy for Microsoft Office

Why do girls love Atari computer camp?
Why? In the name of all that’s right, why? click to embiggen.

Friends,

I decided a little while ago to hold hold office hours for staff here at the Festival of Dirt, just like your professors at the Universidad de Monos Chillando did to help you out with your coursework way back when. The first session yesterday was lightly attended, even though I billed it as “the most fun you’re likely to have today.” Maybe next time I should bring treats.

– bob

P.S. Any tips on how to make Powerpoint interesting? Or, more to the point, any tips on how to discuss Powerpoint without a flaming pentagram spontaneously forming on the floor and a gaping hole to the darkest reaches of damnation opening up? Thanks in advance for your help!

UPDATE: Why do girls like any sort of computer camp? Because of this:

Your bling got blung.

Sigh.

from The Daily What via BoingBoing. Thanks!

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Planet? No, It Just Kinda Happened.

Actual artist's interpretation of a similar event before either of them occurred.
Friends,

Yesterday, NASA and JPL announced that the Kepler space telescope had discovered five planets outside of our solar system. This is good news if you took JPL in your Fantasy Number of Planets league and good news for folks already tired of this year’s cold weather. According to astronomers, the planets range in temperature between 2,200 and 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. No more shoveling the driveway!

Scientists at JPL have documented their assumptions...
Sure, the telescope’s mission is to find planets that we can move to when things get too dicey here (I’m moving to the planet where playing Hip Hop or rap is a capital crime), and the announcement seems a bit apologetic for finding screaming hot planets Kepler 4b through 8b first, but I’m thrilled by the news. It’s the first step in the “too hot, too cold, just right” triumvirate, and at the rate they’re going, we’ll be moving off this rock by 2012.

Well, you’ll be moving off this rock. Right?

– bob

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It’s Related!

I'm terrified, frankly.
Friends,

I know that the story about the future conspiring to break the Large Hadron Collider so that we don’t, you know, DESTROY THE UNIVERSE has been floating around. People have mostly dismissed it as either geekery or fantasy. I’ve asked Doctor Morgan to comment on Facebook, but he’s been eerily silent on the subject. Maybe he’s getting paid off with future Euros to keep his mouth shut, but that’s just a rumor.

The future, ladies and gentlemen; it’s not to be trifled with.

Your pal,

bob

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Old Things

Technology killed the radio star...
Friends,

Yes, the Jeep Grand Livingroom is kaput at the moment, but that’s not the only piece of high technology that had surrendered over the last month. My old 4th generation iPod got cooked in the glovebox of the tiny racecar. When a hard drive says “whirr-click-whirr-click-whirr-click” you know it’s a goner. After my failed attempts at repairs on the Jeep, I broke in to the iPod, which should have been a terrible idea, but I threw a new hard drive and battery in the thing and it actually works now.

By the way, be really careful with the headphone connector. Time taken ruining the tiny wires on the motherboard while straightening them will ruin your day.

– bob

P.S. Why not get another iPod instead of shell out 2/3 of that price for parts? Easy. The old one is the last iPod model that syncs over Firewire and it works with my old notebook.

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Two Big Birthdays

I'm going mad just thinking about it.

Friends,

On this day in 1981, International Business Machines introduced their first PC, the IBM Model 5150. Information technology professionals may recognize the number 5150 to stand for involuntary psychiatric hold, which allows qualified clinicians to involuntarily confine techs who have gone mad while working on IBM PCs.

I'm dizzy.
This is also the 100th anniversary of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. A place where people have been known to go around the bend.

Stay sane, people.

– bob

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Images From The Life Magazine Archives

Now this is pretty swell. Google is hosting the Life Magazine photo archives for all to see. Do a search for Idyllwild and you get a series of Alfred Eisenstaedt (!) shots from 1959 (!!) taken in and around the former Isomata (which you may know as Idyllwild Arts) including this one of Ansel Adams (!!!).

Photographer Ansel Adams teaching students in summer class at Idyllwild. 1959- Alfred Eisenstaedt from Life Magazine collection.
I have two favorites though. First this one that must be shot on the shores of Lake Hemet (does anybody know for sure?).

Summer culture. (Isomata cellists at Lake Hemet, CA?) 1959- Alfred Eisenstaedt from Life Magazine collection.
But this one may be the best of the bunch (as far as I’m concerned). After all, it’s what we do in the mountains, isn’t it? We drag out the typewriter, and have a smoke while reading a book in the weed patch surrounding the cabin. What, as they say, could possibly go wrong?
Oh, right…

Summer culture. (Idyllwild?) 1959- Alfred Eisenstaedt from Life Magazine collection.

But anyway, click on either of the photos here to go back to the archive. Do it when you have a lot of time to spare though. It’s real easy to lose a day spelunking around in there.

– bob

(Thanks, Daring Fireball!)

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Misheard Quotations About Technology!

Some sort of lovely picture...

The Little Jaunty Players
– Present With Glee –
– A Brand New Feature –
– That Will Certainly Become An Internet Meme –
– Started Here On This Blog –
– Called –

Misheard Quotations From The World Of Technology!

“Rearranging malfunctioning PCI cards into different slots is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

– Gordon Moore
Co-Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Intel Corporation

I agree.

Some sort of lovely picture...

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Kindle – A Wireless Reading Device

Pals,

How long has the Amazon Kindle been out? A year? The Riverside Press-Enterprise takes their first look today…

Barbara Roberts, director of library services/city librarian in Palm Springs and soon to be sworn in president of the California Library Association, saw a Kindle at a conference. It’s another in a generation of hand-held reading devices introduced since the late 1990s, she said.

The Kindle is very useful for travelers who don’t want to tote lots of books, she said.

But Roberts added, “Those who enjoy reading an actual book may not find this as pleasing because it’s an electronic device. It doesn’t have the same feel.

“You don’t turn the pages; a machine does that.”

Ladies and gentlemen, this woman’s gonna be the president of the California Library Association and she’s convinced that a machine is turning pages inside a Kindle. What she fails to mention is which slot one shovels the coal into so that the steam engine robots might continue their endless, unrewarding page-turning duties uninterrupted.

One also has to worry though, that these electronical reader thingys will mean the end of books. Here are some reassuring words from our resident tech analyst…

But hardbound and paperback books will always be around, she said.

“In my opinion, I don’t believe it’s a threat to books,” Roberts said. “Not at all. The hand-held book will always be the method of choice for the majority of readers.”

Whew! What a relief.

– bob

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Revenge Of Ted Stevens

Friends,

I may have expressed a little too much glee in the previous post regarding Alaska Senator Ted Stevens’ legal trouble. Now it seems that he’s been able to bring the whole Internet (which is a series of tubes) to its knees (if tubes had knees. – ed Work with me here.) over the last couple days. Even my rock-solid, ultra-reliable DSL provider acknowledged a total system failure on their part last evening.

I guess that’ll teach us snot-nosed whippersnappers to go spouting off, won’t it?

– bob

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Jaunty Dumptruck O’ News! Ted Stevens Indicted!

Friends,

This just warms my heart…

Now who's tubes are clogged?

(CBS/AP) Government sources tell CBS News Republican Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens has been indicted on seven charges related to a corruption probe.

A federal grand jury in Washington has handed up the indictment against Stevens — which the Justice Department is set to announce very shortly.

Stevens, 84, faces seven counts of false statements involving VECO, the oil services company in Alaska, and the renovations done on his home.

They should’ve indicted him for the fine work he did on the Commerce Committee, but we’ll take what we can get.

– bob

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No iPhone 3G Activation Problems Reported In Idyllwild

Makes sense, really.

The nearest Apple store is 100 miles away. AT&T stores are requiring in-store activation that isn’t working this morning for the new iPhone. Meanwhile, our piney paradise remains tranquil and serene with just a hint of damp from last night’s rain showers. Not even a whisper of trouble or technical issues, though.

Now that’s something I can get excited about.

Your pal,

bob

UPDATE: No reports of iPhone problems, but updating the iPod Touch to version 2.0 was a pain in the tush. For those of you who don’t care, there are reasons why you might. For one, Apple’s servers simply collapsed. I read a rumor yesterday that iPhone activation lived on the same servers as the update. Neat theory, but dotMac switched over to MobleMe at the same time. More servers down.

By the way, the killer app for iPhone and iPod Touch is Remote. You can use the thing to control iTunes on a Mac anywhere on your local network. Change albums! Change volume! Control remote speakers! It’s really worth the installation headaches. I love it.