every word of it.

And Don’t Buy a HP Jornada 680e

The Ultimate Dream, being able to surf the web from the bed/toilet/couch. It’s a dream that I’m sure everyone shares.

I bought the HP 680e in an attempt to fufill said dream on the cheap. I got it off eBay for $50. That’s including a wireless card!

I was excited to install Linux on it, but the Linux distribution, JLime, has broken wireless support. Thus I was boned.

Not giving up and not settling for crappy Windows, I installed NetBSD through much pain and suffering. It was a glorious moment when I got wireless working.

With that out of the way, the next challenge was getting X to work. After getting some help, I got X working.

But you cant really expect someone to use TWM (the default window manager). So I’ve been trying to compile IceWM for the past 3 days and it’s been brutal. If it’s not kernel panics, it’s been the wireless card dropping the connection. It’s amazing how slow the 680e is. It may take weeks, possibly months, maybe years? But I’m so close to realizing the dream.

If only JLime wireless was working, I’d probably be typing this from bed.

So, my suggestion, pass on the 680e for now.

Exactly how you need to tape your IR Blaster from the Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150 to your Dish 322. Don’t even think of putting it horizontally.

Long lent me his Wacom Graphire tablet and for that kind gesture, he’s off notice.

I have really bad handwriting. Also, it’s really hard to get used to the fact that the tiny 4×5 screen represents my monstrous 2005fpw. I keep on wanting it to behave sort of like a mouse. Where the center of the tablet is where my pointer is, and it tracks my movements away from the center. You know.

I’m making use of Inkwell in that screenshot. It’s MacOS’s built-in tablet utility. It’s very fancy. But the handwriting recognition isn’t that great. And I can’t seem to find a training utility so I can get it to recognize my chicken scratch.

Why you should mod your XBox, Reason #245:

You can watch your Web Courses, which are Real Video streams, on your TV using XBox Media Center. You are untethered from your computer. Think of it as a really boring episode of 24.

It’s the future of E-Learning really.

If you ever need need a small set of screwdrivers for opening up the memory compartment in a Powerbook, Radio Shack is the place to go.

I ordered a 1GB PC2700 SODIMM to replace the 512MB SODIMM I have in my notebook mainly because 1) MacOS X loves memory 2) the price of DDR is going up while DDR2 is coming down. So it was probably the right time to buy, before DDR got crazy expensive.

So I’m going to drop in the memory. I got 3 screws out, but the 4th was proving difficult. Seems when I originally pu the 512MB in there, I sorta stripped the screw. And I didn’t want to try and force it, since I didn’t want to completely strip the screw and have to use one of those “screw-getter-outers” on such a delicate piece of equipment. See, I didn’t really have the proper tool for the job, I was using a big screwdriver. I put a screw in a plastic baggie and made my way to Home Depot. Surprisingly, they had nothing. All they had were big screwdrivers, nothing for a 2.5mm screw. Then I headed over to Sears, figuring they’ll have a bigger selection. You know, Craftsman and all that. But nothing. Undefeated, I headed upstairs to the jewelry section, but the guy said to check downstairs, where I just was.

I figured a jewelry store would be the place to go, since they deal with small screws all the time. I found a jewelry repair place by Mervyn’s, and the guy said to head over to Radio Shack. I was like Radio Shack?, that store was useless. But I was running out of time, I had to leave for work soon. But you know, Radio Shack was the store to go. They had a Kronus Precision Phillips Screwdriver Set with really tiny screwdrivers. The 2.4mm screwdriver in the set worked perfectly. Apparently, He-man himself had screwed in that last screw before. I had to call upon the Power of Grey Skull to get it out.

And now,

Who needs an intel Core Duo now?

I present to you, The Greatest Keyboard Ever, the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000

I bought this keyboard because I needed a USB keyboard, and I love ergonomic keyboards. My first one I had was a Microsoft Natural Elite that I got with my K6-2 400. I used that until the it started sending garbage to the screen and replaced it with a Dell OEM ergonomic keyboard, which I used until just a few weeks ago when I got the Natural 4000.

This keyboard is a dream to use. I don’t know if you can tell in the picture, but the keys are at an angle, so it’s not like regular ergonomic keyboards. The keys are oriented so they’re facing your hand, if that makes sense. My only complaint is that the 6 is on the left half (on the Dell it was on the right half). So I’m constantly hitting ‘7′ when I mean ‘6′. Also, the “Zoom” is sorta useless, unless you use Word a lot. It’d be nice if you could remap it to “Magnify” or “Scroll”. And a USB hub would’ve been nice. But other than those small things, it’s a pleasure to use. You don’t want to stop typing. And props to Microsoft for providing very nice keyboard drivers for MacOS X. You can configure most everything.

I got it from ZipZoomFly for $41.99 with Free Shipping and a Comfort Optical Mouse 3000 thrown in. It’s the OEM version, so be sure to buy a cable or something.

The Nokia 770

I want one so bad.

Sure there may be problems with the software, but it’ll only get better. It’s the perfect device. Rather than stuffing the kitchen sink into a 5in x 3in rectangle, Nokia decided to focus on making one thing really excellent. Notice there’s no camera, hard drive, or phone attached to this. Nokia were after building an “Internet Tablet”, and they succeeded. Nokia finally got the memo that convergence devices don’t work. There’s a balance between size, usability, durability, and battery life.

So why do I want one? To surf the internet while I’m on the toilet. And when I’m in bed. And when I’m watching tv. And when I’m outside. And basically, wherever. The fact that it’s running Debian Linux is wonderful as well. I imagine there is going to be a lot of community support for this device. Nokia is making the effort, maemo.org. I can’t wait to ssh into a server with this. Plus it’ll make a cracking good eBook reader.

And you know what I really love about the 770, it uses standard cell phone batteries, Nokia B5-PL.

Brilliant.

Today is Laptop Day. Why? I got my laptop back. Surren got his new laptop, a Dell 600m. And Jenny got her Toshiba Monstrosity. So how did I celebrate? By getting my laptop back to the default “Raishad” state.

What is the default “Raishad” state? Glad you asked.

<li><a href="http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/">Quicksilver</a> - I can't live without this program. I use it as an application launcher, but Quicksilver is the swiss army of MacOS X Utility programs. It can do <em>anything</em>. It can control iTunes, send emails, do sums, and probably the most useful



<li>Bash Prompt - I need a colorful prompt, and I need colorful directory listings. Without these things, I'm useless.

Here’s the relevant section from my .bashrc

export CLICOLOR=1
export HISTCONTROL='ignoredups'
export PS1 = '[\033[00;36m]\u@\h[\033[00m]:[\033[00;35m]\w[\033[00m]\$ '

• lftp - There are no good ftp clients for MacOS X. Cyberduck is passable, but it’s no Flashfxp. In fact, you can take any MacOS X ftp client and apply it to that sentence, ______ is passable, but it’s no Flashfxp. To install lftp, you need Darwinports/Fink.

<li><a href="http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/">Firefox</a>/<a href="http://www.caminobrowser.org/">Camino</a> - Safari is a great browser, but it's missing a few things that I can't do without. You can get plugins to enable these things in Safari, but in my experience they are awfully clumsy. These "things" are:

• Quicksearches - You know the ability to type ‘artist cardigans’ in the Location bar and have it take you to the appropriate allmusicguide page. It’s such a great feature that you don’t miss until you can’t use it anymore.

<li>Find-As-You-Type - Only suckers type Command+F.</li>

<li>Automatic Image Resizing - No one likes to scroll those huge pictures from NOAA/NASA. </li>

• Adium - It’s only the best chat client ever.
• Growl - This goes along with Adium. I like having notifications from Adium, so that way I can continue what I’m doing and still read the incoming message.
• SubEthaEdit - For when you need a good light text editor. It also has a nifty command line tool, see. see let’s you open SubEthaEdit from the command line.
• SideTrack - My laptop was released before the 2 Finger Scrolling trackpad, so I need this to be able to use my laptop without a mouse.
• NetNewsWire - I’ve tried a bunch of different news readers, and this is my favorite.

Those are the essentials, all that is required to make me a happy camper.