Category Archives: Uncategorized

No wireless. Worse controller than a Wii. $500. Lame !

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So, I don't want my place in prognostication history like CmdrTaco did with
his famous predicament, but I still
get the feeling that the PS3 isn't all it's hyped up to be. Or maybe the
trouble is something else… it tries to be too many things to too many
people and this has sent the cost soaring through the roof.

Next-gen console +
WiFi +
BluRay player +
HDMI output +
Accelerometric-cum-gyroscopic controller +
60 GB hard drive +
On-line gaming +
Marketplace =
———————
$600.00 + tax + games + subscription

Hmmm… guess where I won't be the night of November 17th…Best Buy,
Bellevue.

More coverage at http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/08/sony-playstation-3-launch-details

Early ‘Computers’

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Fosfor gadgets has a short but interesting article that compares gadgets from the ’70s & ’80s to today’s versions.

While they talk about mobile phones, stereos and storage devices, they’ve missed out on comparing yesterday’s computers to today’s.

So, here’s a 2006 Macbook Pro:

Compare that to the NACA human computers at work from 1949!

http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/People/Small/E49-0053.jpg

Wiring my home

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I spent a Sunday a couple of weeks back rewiring a couple of rooms at home with Cat 5 cabling. Mostly just moving the cables from one outlet to another.

Some things I learned…

1. Making ethernet patch cables is easy: Get bulk cable and use the wiring schema from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_5e and some of these linked sites:

* http://www.incentre.net/incentre/frame/ethernet.html

* http://www.ertyu.org/steven_nikkel/ethernetcables.html

2. Radio shack has cheap pushdown tools and RJ45 Ends. (less than $5 each)

3. Of all the places I looked at, Home Depot has the cheapest crimping tool – a $20 tool that includes a wire stripper.

How to spend $500,000 in 24 hours…

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Saturday 1545: D & me drive over to 85th Street to meet Dale at the first house we were looking at this weekend.

Saturday 1755: 2 hours and 30 miles later, we’re on E Lake Sammamish – at our 6th house for the day and our 9th one this week.

Saturday 1805: We’re impressed by the sweeping views of the Lake and the warm colors at this recently constructed 1910 sqft townhouse.

Saturday 1830: We’re back at home and decide to make an offer.

Sunday 1005: I drive over to Dale’s office to sign the paperwork and write a check for the EMD. Dale tells us he’ll be faxing the documents in an hour or so…

Sunday 1530: Dale calls us to let us know that our offer’s been accepted!

Sunday 1545: As the realization sinks in, I wonder whether we’re poorer by half-a-million dollars or whether we’re just about to be enriched by the joy of home-ownership!

So, we should be closing on the 25th and moving early April.

Flickr Photos + Target Prints

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I’ve raved about Flickr to anyone who cares to listen in the past, but it was only this holiday season that I realized how much it really rocked!!

You can not upload photos to Flickr to share them with the world, but order prints online and collect the prints at your local Target store!! This was super convenient since I had a bunch of pics (around 300) that I wanted to take along with me to India and all I had to do was to select them in Flickr to get prints the next time I went to Target.

My chief complaint about MSN spaces is the weird photo gallery thingie that doesn’t do much. I wish they’d add support for flickr sometime.

Besides, isn’t re-mixing the web what Web 2.0 is all about?

Back2Blogging…

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Wow – it’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog. I realized that when I saw that my last entry is all about XboX 2 rumors while it’s been 2 months since the XboX 360 release!

 

So, what’s happened in the world in the 7 months since I last wrote an entry?

 

1.     The XboX 360 shipped! And 1.5 million people around the world have one. Ullas & I stood in line for 12 hours outside our local Bestbuy in the freezing cold to pick ours up. More on the 360 experience later…

2.     Apple switched to Intel! This one didn’t impact me directly, but I think this marks a turning point in the history of computing. 10 years from now – we’ll all look back and say ‘I was there when Apple switched to Intel’ or something to that effect.

3.     GOOG doubled: From ~$200 a share to $434 today! In the same period MSFT rose 8% from $25 to $27… with 4 of those percentage points coming today!!

4.     Home prices in King County rose 14%: and I’m still renting 🙁

5.     3 of my undergrad classmates got married: doubling the number of married men in our batch.

6.     MSN spaces added support for ads: Write a blog and get paid for it?? Wow – this rocks! I should convince a few million other people to switch to MSN spaces as well 🙂

7.     Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Global warming, violence in the Middle East and other mundane incidents which will probably drive us to extinction but doesn’t directly impact me in any way…

 

So, that’s my narrow view of the world in 7 bullet points. If you’re reading this on a Friday, have a good weekend…