I’ve ordered an Asus EEE PC – or rather I’ve asked my boss who’s currently in the US to buy me one and he assures me it has been ordered. Not sure exactly which model he has ordered, but the white 4G surf model seems to be the only one in stock, so it’s probably that one. Which is fine. Anything by the 2G model…
I intend to use it as a couch computer. Something to do a bit of surfing on while the wife is watching TV. I’ll tell you more when I get it…
I have been fighting with ActiveSync (on my home XP box) and SyncCenter (on my work vista box) for the last couple of week. Couldn’t sync my Dell x51v PDA with any of them. Was driving me nuts. Tried all kinds of … crap.
So I decided to try a home brewed Windows Mobile 6 rom. And it works! No wifi problems. I tried to do a back up and restore, but that soon got to messy, and I’ve decided re-install everything from the top. Only thing is that, most of my programs where registered so long ago, that it may be hard to find a version to download. On the other hand, maybe it’s time to upgrade to a new (WM6 compatible) version.
Anyway. I’ll try to report back when I’ve tried it a few more days. And a big thank you to “football” and the people at xda-developers. And a big F… you to Dell for not providing this.
I’ve been trying out the last few Ubuntu releases. Ubuntu 7.10 looks even better and the installation was really easy.
Observations:
All in all, it looks good. I’m sure the minor issues could be solved. To bad about the “deal breaker” with Lightroom.
I’ve been thinking about the, much ignored and rather unglamorous, state software ends in, when it’s about to be replaced by a newly developed version. It may be an old maintained branch, or it may have been or be about to be replaced, with a new version that’s based on a new code base.
While thinking about this I heard the song The Bare Necessities from Disneys The Jungle Book. Here Baloo sings:
Look for the bare necessities
The simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife
I mean the bare necessities
That’s why a bear can rest at ease
With just the bare necessities of life
The Bare Necessities, by Phil Harris, Bruce Reitherman
I decided to name the method used for this kind of development after Baloo.
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I’m trying to find a worthy replacement for my current pda + mobile phone combo.
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I’ve been thinking about complexity vs. simplicity, and I’ve decide that the general issue can be described with these two statements:
1. No issue is so complex, that it can’t be reduced to a meaningless yes/no question
2. No issue is so simple, that it can’t be made to complex to decide on.
Not totally happy with the phrasing, so suggestions are welcome….
I’ve finally gotten around to building a new box.
My old was an AMD Athlon 2200+, with 512MB ram and a couple of 120Gb Drive. Still up to most tasks, but getting a bit hard driven in some cases.
New one is build around an Intel Duo 2 Core E6320 (running 1.86Ghz), with 2Gb ram and a 400Gb Samsung hard drive. I’ve mainly build it to be silent, but it can be over clocked if I so choose (an Asus P5B motherboard helps with that). I tried running it at nearly 3Ghz for at bit, but haven’t tested it extensively.
One benchmark
LightRoom 1.0: Export 16, Dng files to Jpeg. 10MP.
New: 47 seconds (33 seconds overclocked)
Old:Â 345 seconds
Yes, the SSE2 instruction set is really important for LightRoom and makes all the difference.
Inspired by a much ruder site, I’ve created a homepage with the simple address of:
Just something to send to people who are bugging you, explaining the nature of being busy.
(if you can’t seen the page, it’s because the Domain Name Servers need to be refreshed – try again in an hour or two)
I’ve started to use google sync, to syncronize my bookmarks between my machines (Desktop XP, Desktop Ubuntu, Notebook, Work XP, Work Vista). When I installed GSync on the new Ubuntu installation it … crapped all over my bookmarks and everything from my “bar”, where I keep the most important things, was gone.
Luckily Firefox keeps series of backups of the bookmarks in a sub-directory below your profile directory. Look for around for c:\documents and settings\yourusername\application data\mozilla\firefox\profile\default.xyz\bookmarkbackups – note that the “Application data” directory is hidden, so you have to have “show hidden files” turned on, in the explorer settings.
Just open the bookmark organizer in Firefox, and import an old file. Find the old “ToolBar” root and select “edit->Set as bookmarks toolbar folder” in the menu.
My first round with Ubuntu Linux didn’t go to well, I really couldn’t get anything to work. And ended up calling it a piece of crap. I’ll stand by my conclusion that it’s not ready as “Normal Joes” desktop OS, but … well, here’s what happened.