December 31st, 2004
Chorus
And for auld lang syne, my jo,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne,
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o’ auld lang syne.
And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp!
And surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
We twa hae run about the braes
And pu’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary foot
Sin auld lang syne.
We twa hae paidl’d i’ the burn,
Frae mornin’ sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin auld lang syne.
And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!
And gie’s a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak a right guid willy waught,
For auld lang syne.
(Don’t worry, when you’re out there watching the ball drop, three sheets to the wind, no one’s going to care if you get the words right…)
Happy New Year
December 31st, 2004
Just in - PC Magazine’s 21st Annual Technichal Excellence Awards list. It starts with the OQO Model 01 with its Transmeta Processor and 5-inch screen as a winner, leaves the iMac G5 as a finalist, moves over to Intel’s 915/925 chipset as a winner, and DDR2 memory as well as nVidia’s GEForce 66 series chipset as finalists. Sony’s ProData Disc recorder looks very interesting, as does the Sharp LL-151-3D 15-inch LCD panel. (Hint: “3D” -got it?) They go deeper over at PC Mag, including, naturally, the iPod mini. It’s great reading and may bring to mind some things you hadn’t thought of before..
(BTW: If you think I’ve misspelled “Technichal” just ask Bill Machrone.)
December 31st, 2004
What, you say? You have no more desire to walk a mower across your lawn than you did a vacuum across your floor? Fear not! Here comes RoboMower RL850-04!!
* Cuts up to 10,800 square feet on a single 24-hour charge
* Onboard sensor/bumper avoids obstacles and navigates slopes
* Built-in child safety lock; 5,800 rpm blade speed
What? You blew that spare $1,700 on senseless stuff like a new laptop? For shame, for shame…. (For a little less, you can get a 5-speed riding mower. Sure, you can’t sit back in your hammock, but you can sure scare the heck out of the squirrels…)
December 31st, 2004
Hitachi has co-developed a prototype direct methanol fuel cell for use in mobile electronics products and plans to launch the product with a compatible PDA in 2005, the company says. (Methanol in a PDA? Beans, beans, they power my machines….) Direct methanol fuel cells mix methanol with air and water to produce electrical power.
The prototype fuel cell is a cartridge about .4 inches in diameter and between 1.9 inches and 2.4 inches in length, said Nemoto. Hitachi considers this size, which is similar to that of a AA battery, as about the right size for commercial use and so won’t be working on changing the dimensions by a large amount. (And you really, really, really, don’t want to dispose of these in fire…)
December 31st, 2004
Just to put this in perspective, 2500kbps is the minimum I’ll accept in terms of video quality. DVDs run 5000 - 8000+kbps. So when IO Data (or anyone else) says it will get your 7MB video files down to 1MB using XVD technology, understand what the quality issues are, despite their claim that you won’t lose any. Oh, BTW, XVD files (.VG2) can’t be played back through DVD players. Sort of limits your options, doesn’t it?
December 30th, 2004
Today’s Circuits in the NY Times has a piece on a new product called the CableCard that does away with your cable box. Sounds great at first until you realize a few things. First, you need a TV with a PC Card slot. Then, you lose the onscreen cable guide and the ability to order Pay Per view movies or video on demand if you have that option. The last three are no biggies in my book since TiVo provides its own guide and I never user pay per view or have access to VOD, but I think they are missing the point.
Why doesn’t this plug into your laptop?? Why can’t I take along my cable subscription when I travel, or add a card to my desktop PC and record shows to my hard drive? Am I missing something?
December 30th, 2004
Richard Gross, a geophysicist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, theorized that a shift of mass toward the Earth’s center during the quake Sunday caused the planet to spin 3 microseconds, or millionths of a second, faster and to tilt about an inch on its axis.
Don’t worry, though, it shouldn’t affect that wonderful GPS you got for Christmas but, hopefully, you were kissing someone important at the moment.
On a related note, the seismic computers in Geneva, primarily used to snoop for underground nuclear tests, picked up the pre-tsunami earthquake that caused the whole mess. Unfortunately, the folk there were all gone for the holidays.
December 30th, 2004
Reach back into your short term memory and wrench out your favorite vaporware of the past year. The folk at Wired want you “to nominate whatever games, gadgets and miracle cures you most looked forward to, but were cruelly denied.”
How? It’s easy. Send your suggestions (that’s a “mailto:” e-mail link) for the “best” vaporware products or technologies of 2004, and they’ll publish the results early next year. Put the name of the company and product in the subject line of your e-mail as well as in the message body. And, in great Alice and Bill tradition (everybody seems to be borrowing from that lately, don’t they?), don’t forget to include some acerbic comments that the Wired guys can quote in the write-up. (Acerbic: A taste fault in the coffee brew giving an acrid and sour sensation on the tongue. I’m not sure what you do if you don’t drink coffee…)
