What you get when my brain crashes…

I WANT an Eee PC

Let’s get one thing straight: I am not a laptop person. I like my full-sized keyboard, mouse, and screen, thank-you-very-much, and for me, there’s just very little incentive to go with a laptop. I much prefer to be able to swap out pretty much anything (new hard drive, new video card, etc.) rather than be stuck with what the manufacturer gave me.

However, with that said - I still want an Eee PC. If you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t heard of this before, click the link to see one. Basically, the Eee PC is a “sub-notebook,” or “ultraportable” - or maybe even a whole new category of small laptops. Instead of trying to be as powerful as a desktop computer (but portable), it instead tries to be as small, lightweight, and energy-efficient as possible.

It uses a low-power CPU (think: 900 MHz Pentium-M) and instead of having a hard drive (with moving parts, which suck power) it has a solid-state hard drive - basically, a large capacity USB thumb drive. So no moving parts. It’s a bit like having a RAM-drive (for those of you not old enough to remember what that is, go look in Wikipedia) for your OS.

Of course, solid-state memory is still expensive, so it does not have much capacity, but solid-state memory is very fast, so it boots up quickly. And it runs a special version of Linux, so it doesn’t require much space anyway.

Having said all that, you might ask, why I would want such a thing? And what could you reasonably do with so little storage space?

The trick is to not think of it as a replacement for your desktop PC. I would never get rid of my desktop, even if I did get the Eee PC - instead, the Eee PC would supplement my regular desktop PC.

The Eee PC is basically an ultra-light interface to the web - and with all the stuff you can do on the web these days (WordPress, Google Docs, Gmail, etc.) why would you need any apps on your computer other than a browser? So in that sense, the Eee PC would be perfect for me as a mobile web platform. I could look up stuff in Wikipedia while watching specials on the Discovery, History, or Science channels (as I often do), I could write blog posts (such as this one) while sitting on the couch or on the porch, I could stream music from my desktop PC - the possibilities are endless. And since it’s so small and lightweight, I could take it just about anywhere. (And since it’s Linux, it’s capable of doing quite a bit once you get there!)

And did I mention it’s also quite cheap (as in, “inexpensive”)?

All in all, the Eee PC would make a great extension to my “digital life,” if you will… and that’s why I want one!

Oh Firefox 3, How Do I Love Thee?

I wasn’t sure I would like all the changes - some of them are a bit radical. But still, I love it.

Let me count the ways:

1. Love the new look of the toolbars. When I first saw them, I said: “sweeeeeeet!”
2. The new bookmark system (now a database not just a flat file) is soooo nice. I love new ways to organize my stuff!
3. Holy crap the new version is FAST! Gmail, Google Docs, and other Javascript-heavy pages load like they never did before. Even the WordPress “Write Post” page loads faster (in retrospect I guess it uses Javascript, too)
4. The location bar (a.k.a. address bar, a.k.a. “awesome bar”) is very nice. I wasn’t sure if I would like it - it will take some getting used to - but I think it and I are going to be best friends!
5. That new “zoom” feature is unreal. That’s the way zoom should have always worked!
6. Starts up soooo much faster - not that I close Firefox very often during my day, but still…

That’s just a small sample of what I love about Firefox 3. Why don’t you download it yourself today and find out what you love about it? Trust me - it’s worth it!

“Little Brother”

Go here and download this free e-book and read it as soon as you can. Be sure to set aside a lot of time for it; if you’re anything like me, you won’t be able to put it down. You may not even want to break to go to the bathroom - that’s how good this is.

Once you’ve done that, get someone else to read it. Or talk about it with people who won’t read it or can’t read it. Anything.

This book is just so fantastically important I can’t even put it into words. But I can say that 10 years ago, it would have been science fiction. In another 10 years, it might be true - or it might have been prevented.

This book will open your eyes about a lot of things, about security, about politics, about terrorism, about databases, about privacy, about liberty, and all that sort of stuff that, frankly, we take for granted far too often.

It’s a free e-book, but if you really like it - as I did - feel free to buy it from the author, or buy some of his other books, or just send him a donation.

Peace out, yo.

Priorities

Some very good points were made in response to my previous post that I didn’t think of - basically, that things like “copyright cops” and so forth are wasting our limited energies. That things like “copyright cops” and other useless endeavors (I’d argue for “war on drugs” and probably the “war on terror” to be added to the category of “useless endeavors” too, but that’s just me). We’re taking resources (read: money) away from things that are IMPORTANT… like, oh, I don’t know:

• Climate change
• Our decaying highway infrastructure (think: bridges collapsing? Major traffic problems around big cities?)
• Our poor educational system
• Major diseases (cancer, AIDS, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, etc.)
• Space exploration

The list goes on and on.

So what sort of things would YOU add to the list of “useless endeavors?” And what would be on YOUR list of important things?

Vote

The next time you get upset about the state of the world, or the next time you cringe at the gas pump at how much it costs to fill up, or when you can’t pay your bills because the economy is going down the tubes - make yourself a promise.

Promise that in this upcoming election, you will vote. If you were already going to vote, then promise that you’ll vote for someone different. Maybe it’ll be the “other party” from the one you normally vote for. Or maybe it’ll be a 3rd party candidate (may I recommend voting Libertarian?). Whatever it is, just do it.

Whatever excuse you’re coming up with right now to justify why your vote doesn’t matter, or how you don’t have time - well, you can take your excuse and stuff it, because it isn’t good enough. And it’s still not good enough - you can keep trying all you want, I’m not going to let up. You made a promise to yourself!

Once you’ve made this promise, you can try passing on this advice to someone else, the next time you hear them complain about things in the world (gas prices, economy, war, security, politics, etc.).

Just make sure you don’t go back on your promise - you may regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.

After all - the biggest changes in the world can still be started by just one person.