All those late nights reading computer books and using the Internet seem to have paid off. I am a professional programmer these days with volunteer duties in Internet studies with some of the world's well known scholars of the Net.
I have not been able to write here since moving this site off Yahoo. I can now blog again because my new hosting provider fixed the Moving Type blog for me today.
I was able to buy a Dell Mini 9 netbook and enjoy carrying it around all the time. I do not use it for email or money stuff but enjoy social networking with it and reading online documents. I also use a Dell Inspiron Laptop with 15 inch screen and use this for Eve Online. The Mini 9 runs Ubuntu and the Inspiron runs Vista 64 bit and also Debian 5.0. I did have the Dell Inspiron running Kubuntu for a while which is a KDE version of Unbuntu but I found it very limited so switched back to Debian.
I have now sold the 1 U clone server. I got 40$ so I am about 50$ short of breaking even on the computer swap now.
I am just formating the first hard drive as I install Windows XP 64 bit on my homebuilt PC. I used an Asus motherboard, 8 GB of RAM, and an Intel Wolfdale power efficient processor. It has an e-GeForce 8500 video card with 1 GB of RAM. I have a new LG 19" widescreen monitor for this system. The monitor uses 36 watts for power. I also used a Seasonic 500 watt 80+ power efficient power supply. It seems to be working and is fairly quiet. This new homebuilt PC is fairly green in its power efficiency.
I decided to use a Blackberry phone. I use it to listen to music so far. I also use the facebook application. I am also using MobiPocket to read a Gutenberg free book. I am reading Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure. I donated 10 dollars to Project Gutenberg this month.
I was able to study on the Sun web site how to change the boot device in Solaris and then logged into this government surplus machine and started to install Solaris 10 on my 40$ Sun Ultra 5 machine. It has a Sun Sparc 400 Mhz processor with 256 MB RAM. But I am going to install another 256 MB of RAM so brought up the swap to 1024 MB in size. The machine has a 20 GB hard drive. It is my first Sun Solaris Machine.
These are not really cyber tech per say but I am buying some panniers today for my hybrid/road bike bike.
After some struggles to afford to purchase this pair of shoes and devices, I am now wearing a pair of Nike + Morie ST winter running shoes designed to hold an Nike +iPod remote sensor in the sole of the shoe under my left foot. I also have the sensor in the shoe now but still need to purchase the proper iPod Nano model for it all to work. This does remind me of the movie called My Left Foot which was a tear jerker in my humble opinion. But no more random editorials here I am now wearing what I am reading about in the book Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold. I am reading this book in both French and English at the same time as I attempt to improve my French reading skills.
I did in the end purchase a ScotteVest jacket which is a product connected to Xybernaut and is a sort of cyborg like item of clothing. It allows me to hold electronics in pockets and run wires through the lining which was something I had made before with an Afghan jacket and a guitar cable in 1988. Now Scottevest have a patent on this idea.
I think this Xybernaut Mav unit and 8 inch screen will cost 340 US$. I just don't have the money yet.
I have been web shopping and found some Xybernaut wearable computers for sale on ebay. I have a bid in on one now but don't think I can afford this computer if the bidding goes to high.
My iPod broke as soon as I went in the door to the anarchist shop. There must be radio warfare happening there.
Actually I will only have two different OS's running Mac OSX and Windows XP but I will run a KDE desktop on the Mac OS X if my tinkering is successful with Fink.
I purchased some cheap pannier racks from the local camping coop. I want to be able to do some touring with my bike and also move around the city with my computer, with data projector and printer all on my bike. This is my moobile cyborg system.
Perhaps my first piece of computer hardware that is wearable...I now own a Garmin Foretrex 101 model GPS unit. I wear it on the bus and am feeling slghtly embarassed. Someone in my law enforcement volunteering said her dad got one for Christmas and said what I was doing with it was the fun to be had with these devices. The thing I was doing with it was entering the locations of places I go to in our city often and adding these to routes in the wearable units computer. I was on the bus ride with this GPS attached to my wrist and pointing out the window holding an assertive mood to overcome the embarassment; as I am now also in an assertive mood as I write this post.
I spend long hours on the Internet. These days some of this time spent shopping some is time spent interactive blogging and a smaller part email and exploring.
I did finally find a wearable Xybernaut computer for sale on ebay. I started to negotiate a sale but then backed out. I did sell my old server finally. I also bought a portable "road warrior" projector screen and an LCD TV which is great for a monitor. I also got a new DVD player that plays more formats and have now paid the credit card back for it. The TV will take a full year to pay for. There are about twenty of so cables now coming out of the back of this TV or going in depending on your perspective. Although I guess actually most of the cables are sending in video and audio signals and only a few are bringing signals out to the audio amplifier and the VCR. Speaking of audio amplifier now I must have a digital audio amplifer it is no longer good enough to just have a surround sound 5.1 system. Today I am buying portable phones to replace the ones we have that are breaking down. The ones we have were about 160$ for the pair and they were refurbished. The ones I am buying today are new and are only 60$ in price on sale and have more features and include an answering machine.
I am buying a student copy of DreamWeaver soon. I am also looking to buy some older Desktop publishing software for a publisher I know.
I got some new tools, including power tools. I got a circular saw, a small angle grinder, a small cordless screw driver, and had gotten a jig saw in the winter. I also got a tool belt with suspenders and lot of tool pockets. I also got some new pliers, dust masks, ear plugs but still need an extra set of safety googles in terms of safety equipment. I am building a frame which will be covered in plastic netting to keep pigeons off our balcony. I have the wood and fittings I need for this project. I need to charge up my cordless drill for this work still.
It is a fun to have new things. but really this is farily embarrassing materialism. This computer was probably made by underpaid labour in China. I do know that it was shipped from China.
I listened to a business week podcast earlier on Wednesday. It was about Second Life and money making in on-line gaming. I tried Second life for about 15 minutes just now. I made one friend who was logged on for the first time. She had cool clothes and some fast athletic moves. We chatted a little and then added each other as friends. It was my second time logging in. It was sort of uplifting. But am I really to be defined as a second life player?
I have been working on this laptop for about 6 months now. I first installed Debian 3.0 and got that working but on that install the terminal program, in other words the command line could not do edit menu functions. So I had to install a more recent version of Debian. For this I needed a larger hard drive. I spent about 40 dollars buying a used 6 GB drive which turned out to be a bit wonky so I used a 3.2 GB drive I had taken out of an original iBook. In the last two days I finally installed Debian 3.1 and just last night installed R and tested it out with some R code from a school assignment from last winter 2005. After changing some directory paths to fit linux directory structures, and where I had copied the school course folder too, I was successful running R and getting one graphic. So now I am ready to write my code for my talk on R and can run it in Linux on this pentium 1 laptop and even then project this at a meeting. I am my code.
I was fixing up this old clamshell iBook macintosh computer and went broke doing it. I offered to give it to my partner who has never owned a computer and does not really use computers. She has accepted and this is a first step in digital divide work with my partner. Her friend has just taken a job at an Internet café.
The iBook I bought actually works I just need a new power adapter for it. I bought one on ebay and just need to wait for it to be shipped to me.
I tried to buy an iBook on ebay and it is broken. It took seven months to get here too. I was robbed on ebay. It may only be the power adapter as it came with the wrong power adapter.