I’ve been using the Casio Data Bank watches since they first came out when I was a teenager, but I have to admit that since I got my first Palm PDA, the only thing I really use it for is to see the time, and occasionally for the countdown timer. Data-watches, never overly popular in …
Continue reading ‘“UK start-up pitches touch-to-sync tech for watches”’ »
As I’ve gotten older and learned more about what’s going on in the world, I’ve been shocked and dismayed at the problems that I see. To the point that I’ve had serious thoughts about avoiding having kids, much as I want them, because bringing them into this kind of world seems to be a disservice …
Continue reading ‘“The story of history is of more for less”’ »
VMware Fusion 3 is a great piece of software, but it has some very annoying quirks. My Linux virtual machine was getting some very annoying delays at times that it shouldn’t have. Compiling a fairly small project resulted in a ridiculous amount of “iowait” time. Even switching folders in my current e-mail program could take …
I’ll believe this when I see it. I’ve been hearing such claims for at least the last decade. But it’ll happen some day, we’ll see if this is it or not.
I’m busy, so I shouldn’t be writing this, but it’s so funny I can’t avoid it. I got a call about an hour ago. The caller ID said “Unknown Name, Unknown Number.” Background noise of a busy call center, so I’m thinking a survey or a telemarketer. A survey I’ll just politely decline to take. …
Technology marches on — and leaves laggards behind. One of my three remaining external monitors only has a VGA port; two others that I only got rid of earlier this year1 predated any kind of digital connector. Fortunately there are adapters. 🙂 1 I got rid of them only under protest. They were old desk-hogging …
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The odds are that you’ve heard about the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient (2000+ years old) mechanical device that was dredged up off of Greece more than a century ago. Four years ago, scientists finally figured out what it was for, calculating solar eclipses and other celestial events. It was really big news at the time, …
Continue reading ‘Antikythera Mechanism Duplicated — in Lego!’ »
I was a little shocked (pun not intended) to see this article on LifeHacker. Doesn’t everybody know about Uninterruptible Power Supplies already? Then reality asserted itself, as I remembered that to most people, computers are just magic boxes. When I was running a desktop system, the UPS was a must-have item. Now that I’ve only …
Continue reading ‘“Set Up a UPS for Crash-Free Shutdowns During Power Outages”’ »
Un-freakin-believable. What’s the saying, that people always underestimate technological progress in the short term, and overestimate it in the long term? It’s true… ten years ago I’d have said this couldn’t happen in less than twenty years. (Oddly enough, I’ve never read any SF stories that incorporated credit cards at all, even technologically advanced ones …
The hardest thing about time is doing it. — Lord Corwin of Amber This is a ridiculously low-tech solution to the high-tech problem of keeping your computer from going to sleep while it’s working on something for you. The incongruity somehow appeals to me.