Archive for June, 2007
Buy An Apple IIe
Posted by Joe on June 30, 2007 · Comments Off
If you need a retro computer fix without the eBay hassle, check out the selection of old Apple II and Mac computers at TopMicroUSA.com. Get an Apple IIe for $20 plus shipping. They’ve also got a selection of disk drives and cables. Of course, you may still need to hit eBay for software and other accessories to get it running.
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SunRocket Layoff Rumors
Posted by Joe on June 30, 2007 · Comments Off
SunRocket, the voip I was considering dropping local phone service for, may be having some financial problems. Maybe it was good I chickened out last week and settled on a stripped down plan from our local phone company (around $20 a month after taxes and fees are added).
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Blog Love At PC World
Posted by Joe on June 29, 2007 · Comments Off
From PC World, 100 Blogs We Love.
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Sci Fi Bloggers From Space
Posted by Joe on June 29, 2007 · Comments Off
OK, not from space — just going for a sensational post title. But cool nonetheless. From SFSignal.com, a list of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers with Blogs.
I notice Jerry Pournelle is listed. Some say he is the first blogger, although he dislikes the term “blog”. Pournelle has certainly been posting very blogish online entries (to the web, and before that to various online services) since before the average MySpace user was born.
I was an avid reader of his Computing at Chaos Manor column in Byte magazine back in the day, as I suspect most geeks my age were. His [...]
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Good Enough PC Goes To The Basement
Posted by Joe on June 28, 2007 · Comments Off
I just spent hours working on an old PC that once resided in my daughter’s room. It was badly infected with spyware and adware. Spybot took care of most of it, but I had a persistent NSIS Media infection. I finally think I beat it using a combination of manual and automatic techniques. The last traces seem to be gone now, thanks to NSIS Media Remover and several uninstalls and re-installs of Firefox to deal with an infected “chrome” folder.
The PC in question is an old emachines with an 800 mhz Celeron and 384 mb of ram. Still, it’s running well at the moment. It’s [...]
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High School Space Station Pic
Posted by Joe on June 28, 2007 · Comments Off
Wow:
Astronomers at a Boston-area high school snapped this stunning picture of the space shuttle Atlantis docking with the International Space Station, 190 nautical miles up.
Scaled version below. Visit the above link to see a bigger picture. The detail is impressive, to say the least.
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Alarm Clock Taunts, Runs Away
Posted by Joe on June 28, 2007 · Comments Off
Finally, an alarm clock for us slackers:
The alarm clock that runs away and hides when you don’t wake up. Clocky gives you one chance to get up. But if you snooze, Clocky will jump off of your nightstand and wheel around your room looking for a place to hide. Clocky is kind of like a misbehaving pet, only he will get up at the right time.
Only $50, check to see if it’s in stock here.
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MS Online Storage Beta
Posted by Joe on June 27, 2007 · Comments Off
Microsoft introduced an early beta service this week offering half a gig of online storage:
Microsoft Corp. is giving computer users up to 500 megabytes of online storage for their documents, music, photos and video.
Microsoft made an early, “beta” version of the Web-based file storage system available to 5,000 people Tuesday night in its latest effort to bulk up its online offerings and fend off challenges from Google Inc. The beta will be widely available later this summer.
Online storage is a crucial backup tool, and convenient as heck if you frequently use different computers on [...]
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Ebooks, Ereading and eReader
Posted by Joe on June 27, 2007 · Comments Off
In January of 2000, I bought my first ebook, the February edition of Analog Science Fiction and Fact ($3.50). That was from a site called Peanut Press. It’s changed hands — and names — a few times over the years. The current name is eReader.com, and it’s still an awesome place to buy books. Whether you want the latest bestseller, a classic backlist title, or something from an electronic-only publisher, eReader.com has a wide selection to choose from. They claim to be the world’s largest eBook store, and I believe it.
That first book, and many others since, [...]
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Wi-Max May Replace Most Wi-Fi Hotspots — Some Day
Posted by Joe on June 27, 2007 · Comments Off
Will Wi-Max kill the Wi-Fi hotspot?
Wireless Internet service works great – so long as you’re in a Wi-Fi hotspot. But what if you could have wireless Internet everywhere you go, available on your laptop and cell phone, at speeds that can leave both DSL and 3G data networks in the dust?
That’s what Sprint Nextel customers could get later this year, when the Reston, Va., carrier starts rolling out its $3 billion mobile Wi-Max network.
WiFi hot spots (with a 300 ft range) are an OK interim solution until Wi-Max (a few towers can cover an entire city) or something similar gets [...]
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Pogue’s iPhone Adventure
Posted by Joe on June 26, 2007 · Comments Off
David Pogue has the best — and funniest — review of the iPhone you’re likely to see.
I like Pogue, and I enjoyed his short-lived tv series on the Science Channel.
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Microwaves Convert Plastic Back To Oil
Posted by Joe on June 26, 2007 · 2 Comments
A company is marketing a microwave device that extracts oil and combustible gas from waste plastic and rubber, according to NewScientist:
All that is needed, claims Global Resource Corporation (GRC), is a finely tuned microwave and – hey presto! – a mix of materials that were made from oil can be reduced back to oil and combustible gas (and a few leftovers).
A new device using the process, the Hawk-10, seems to ouput more energy than it uses, according to the company:
Gershow Recycling, a scrap metal company based in New York, US, has just said it will be the first to buy a Hawk-10.
/snip/
GRC [...]
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LOGO Learning
Kids and adults have been learning to program in LOGO for about four decades. My first computer was a VIC 20, and I was stuck with the built in BASIC language, but I did steal as much time as I could in the school library playing with LOGO on an Apple II.
Now that my son is expressing an interest in computer programming, I decided LOGO might be a good place to start. I found FMSLogo on SourceForge, and it seem to be a clean and simple implementation for Windows. It comes with a number of demo programs (download the “Extras”) would-be programmers can dig into and pick apart. I’ll [...]
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Shaq Attacks Childhood Obesity
Posted by Joe on June 26, 2007 · 4 Comments
Shaq’s Big Challenge premiered on ABC tonight. The uber-athlete takes on childhood obesity, challenging 6 morbidly obese kids to get into shape over six months. He gets off to a rough start, turning the kids loose with fitness plans and no supervision, but quickly learns that isn’t going to cut it. Next week, a fitness trainer is brought in. It looks like it’s going to be a great, heartwarming show.
Even better is the companion website, shaq.abc.com, complete with healthy recipes, advice for eating out, and fitness tips for kids and parents. There’s even an online weight-loss [...]
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DIY Game Console
Posted by Joe on June 25, 2007 · Comments Off
Get your own DIY game console kit from ThinkGeek for just $200.
Written by best-selling game development author Andre’ LaMothe, the included book is your complete guide to developing games, graphics, and media applications for the Propeller Powered Hydra Game console. The book assumes you have only basic programming experience. It covers all aspects of the Propeller chip from its architecture to using the Propeller Tool IDE for programming in both Spin and assembly language, with numerous demo programs to use as starting points for your own games. Included on the CD is all the source code [...]
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Word Processor Review
Posted by Joe on June 25, 2007 · Comments Off
14 word processors reviewed and compared by Zaine Ridling on DonationCoder.com.
I’m happy enough with various versions of Word installed on my Windows computers, including Word 2003 on my laptop. However, if I didn’t have access to Word, I would probably be using the capable and free OpenOffice.org. I’ve played with the open source program off and on over the years, and the latest version is installed on my Linux box. Like most word processors I’ve used, it does everything I need and quite a lot more.
[via LH]
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Blade Runner Still Has Legs
Posted by Joe on June 25, 2007 · Comments Off
Special Effects guru Adam Savage (now on Discovery Channel’s MythBusters) looks at why Blade Runner’s special effects are unsurpassed 25 years after the film was made. This is one of my favorite movies, and it has at least a little to do with the darkly futuristic cityscape that perfectly sets the film’s dystopian mood. But mostly, it’s the flying cars!
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Discover The Digital Deli
Posted by Joe on June 23, 2007 · Comments Off
I checked the 1984 book Digital Deli out of the library three or four times in the late eighties and early nineties. It was a funny and eccentric look at the emerging computer culture, and I loved reading and re-reading it. Eventually, it went missing from the library, and I had no luck tracking down a copy in used book stores or on eBay. Now the book has turned up online, at the Atari Archives site. It’s still oddly entertaining to read about those early days of phone phreaks, CP/M, and the online service known as “the Source”. Each chapter is written by a different person [...]
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Robots Rising
Posted by Joe on June 21, 2007 · Comments Off
I may pick up a copy of How To Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion, just in case this guy and his friends ever gets too big for their britches.
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Digital Da Vinci Docs
Posted by Joe on June 20, 2007 · Comments Off
From Wired: “The Leonardian Library in Vinci, Tuscany, is making the Madrid Codices and the Codex Atlanticus — two collections of scientific and technical drawings — available as a free digital archive called e-Leo.” Cool resource — I guess. I don’t speak Italian, 15th century or otherwise. English translations are supposed to be on the way, though.
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The Logic Of Murray
Posted by Joe on June 20, 2007 · Comments Off
Imagine a world where interconnected computers could stream news and video on request, help kids with homework, deliver stock quotes, allow instant and effortless communications (including video conferencing), and where most of mankind’s collected knowledge is a few keystrokes away. OK, that’s all old news in 2007, more than a decade into the information revolution brought about by the ubiquitous Internet and $350 computers. But it would have been a truly astounding idea in 1946, when Murray Leinster wrote the prophetic short story, A Logic Named Joe.
In the story (1946!), Leinster [...]
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Fly Away – Briefly
Posted by Joe on June 19, 2007 · Comments Off
Jet packs for sale from two different companies. Not quite ready for the morning commute, though. You get just 33 seconds of flight time, and prices start at $155,000.
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Black Holes vs. Dark Stars
Posted by Joe on June 18, 2007 · Comments Off
Scientists propose a controversial new theory: black holes can never form. From New Scientist:
Tanmay Vachaspati and his colleagues at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, US, have tried to calculate what happens as a black hole is forming. Using an unusual mathematical approach called the functional Schrodinger equation, they follow a sphere of stuff as it collapses inwards, and predict what a distant observer would see.
They find that the gravity of the collapsing mass starts to disrupt the quantum vacuum, generating what they call “pre-Hawking” radiation. Losing that [...]
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Max Headroom Back Online
Posted by Joe on June 18, 2007 · Comments Off
I just noticed that Max Headroom episodes (from the American series, 1987-1988) are available for free viewing on AOL’s In2TV. This black comedy was way ahead of it’s time, exploring artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and citizen journalism in prime time long before it was even on most people’s radar. And it was darned entertaining while it lasted.
There’s actually lots of good stuff on In2TV, including Briscoe County Junior (full of steampunk-esque technology) and Babylon 5.
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Virtual Worlds Collide With Meatspace
Posted by Joe on June 18, 2007 · Comments Off
In the New York Times, a slide show displaying gamers and their online avatars. It’s an amazingly cool series of photos.
[Via BoingBoing]
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