Abodes.org

It’s called a new lappy. I bought a refurbished (don’t laugh, the last place I worked we bought a lot of new and refurb Dells and the refurbs had a much lower failure rate) Dell Inspiron 1720. 17″ screen, pretty good graphics card, a moderate amount of RAM that I already upgraded (cheap cheap on Newegg).

So that parts good. But then I had to buy a laptop case. You see, my laptop bag that I held my 12″ PowerBook in was not nearly big enough for the beast that is this lappy (it has a full numeric keypad!). While shopping for lappy bags, I thought to myself, “Self, this lappy is so big that if you carry it in a soft bag you will bash it into everything. Maybe you should look into a hard sided lappy case.”

Thus I purchased a Solo Attachè on Newegg. (God typing the grave mark over a vowel is way more of a pain in Windows). It’s sweet. It’s big. It’s heavy. It’s sweet.

Closed case on my stove.
Case with lappy and accessories
Case with objects to give relative size

Now, before you say “Wait sloth, that looks really bulky for a lappy. Why did you buy that?” let me point out that there is nothing light or easily portable about a 17″ laptop. I bought it for three reasons: 1) my desktop sucks by modern standards, 2) I wanted a new machine to game on, and 3) I wanted a new machine to code on. A big portable desktop that happens to have a battery included was the perfect solution. This case is basically an armored shell to make sure it survives from point A to point B. If point B happens to be on the other side of point IRAQ it had better well make it unscathed.

Also, if you ever need a large amount of money carried somewhere I have the perfect case for it. I only charge 5%.

My friends know that I’m always on the bleeding edge of technology (which is like the cutting edge only more so). So I just bought an Xbox 360. So far I like the following things:

a) it’s been out for so long games are cheap
b) it has a real gamepad which I prefer to the wiimote
c) theoretically I’ll be able to get free demos and games and stuff from the live thinga

I say theoretically because I have to get it on the tubes first. My wireless router is downstairs so I either have to a) shell out $100 for the xbox wireless, b) finagle a wire up there somehow or c) rig up some other wireless setup. Last night I played with the connection sharing in leopard and all it did was make my internet not work at all. I’m pondering putting my router in the living room and putting a wireless card in a pc in the basement.

The wii came with wireless. That’s one thing in its favor. That and Zack and Wiki. I mean, you shake your friggin monkey to beat monsters. And you are a pirate.

A monkey shaking pirate!

Today’s awesome headline:

Israelis Sue Government For Laser Cannons

Honestly, there are very few projects that we actually want the government to do that it is capable of doing. And it doesn’t.

A few years ago one of the Abodesians (or former Abodesians at least, dunno if he still reads) Drako and another friend built an automatic etch-a-sketch that took scanned images and drew them pretty well in gray scale. I have no images to prove this but I remember it being true.

Now somebody has built an etch-a-sketch clock. It clears itself and draws the time.

Now, I’d imagine you could do a really crude form of flip book style video using this technique. Like .01 fps video

Good idea: A cute little robot vacuum that runs (well really drives) around your home picking up pet hair and lint and stuff. It even makes cute noises sometimes. Like it’s little “doo doo doo” noise that sounds like “Victory!” when it finishes cleaning.

Bad idea: A cute little robot* that freaks out and kills people with high-explosive 0.5kg 35mm cannon shells. It even makes cute noises sometimes. Like it’s little “boom boom boom” noise that sounds like “Oh Shit!” when it is blowing you apart.

*Yes, I realize that a Oerlikon 35 mm twin cannon is not actually cute and little. It is big and ugly and gets pulled around by a truck. “Cute and little” just sounds better.

The History Channel is running a “Hardcore Kinky Tech” show or something along those lines. It is entertaining. The reason I bring it up though is for one particular item.

Condoms

Yeah, they suck. But back in WWII they were funny. The one they showed was called the “Anti-Baby Condom”. As a rule I’m pro-Anti-Baby anything. I support this condom.

So the elf wants some T.V. and I get to shopping. No matter where you go around here T.V. runs you quite a bit of money. With Dish or DirectTV right now it seems I have to spend at least $35/month to get basic cable-ish channels and the local channels. With Comcast I can get a promotion for 6 months and then the price jumps to $350/month plus the sacrifice of one child plus an installation fee of three kidneys. And I only have two and need at least one.

On the bright side though, I called Comcast and spoke with a rep and she was able to waive the installation fee. I will keep this discounted service for 6 months and at that point either cancel or see if they will waive the payment of my T.V.’s weight in gold and the human sacrifice. If I can pull off back to back discount periods then I can justify the silly expense.

More fun and mathy-geeky-nerdiness after the link.

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Check out this shirt from the Mozilla store and tell me you don’t want it:

…and will probably be until like 1AM tomorrow morning.

Luckily, someone loaned us a generator so we can surf the tubes and keep the beer cold.

Life goes on.

So I was surfing the tubes today and came to a site that forwarded me to this stupid website. First I was pissed because I wasn’t able to immediately access the site I wanted, then I was even more pissed by the amazing load of B.S. on the site. “FireFox users a somewhat small percentage of the internet” they say? Well, this and this at the very least Firefox users are 10% of the web surfing community. 10% of a community is not a “somewhat small percentage” in business terms. If you go by the w3schools estimate we are talking 1/3 of the community (of geeks that visit w3schools granted).

Personally, I think the acceptance of ad blocking signifies a failed business model on the part of website designers, not an evil badness on the part of users. Nobody was clicking your damn links anyway.