Nov 7, 2004

Goodbye, little iPaq! I sold my iPaq h3850 today, after two years of faithful service. When I bought it in August 2002, it was the top of the line - and had the >$1k price tag to match. I could have had one of the 3950s, with that weird Bluetooth thingy that everyone was talking about; at the time, though, I was sure that Bluetooth would be just another weird fad like that peer-to-peer thingy - and besides, it was $300 more for Bluetooth.

Oct 23, 2004

And it’s not Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. NASA’s Learning Technologies division have written an application that takes Landsat and other satellite photos, overlays them on height data from the Space Shuttle’s radar height mapping mission, and turns it into a fully interactive 3D world globe. Pan, zoom, tilt, you name it, WorldWind does it. Warning: the application itself is a 250MB download. Also, you need at least a DSL-speed internet connection - because the high-resolution data is stored on NASA’s servers, rather than downloaded with the program.

Oct 13, 2004

Three weeks ago, I bought a 1GB USB flash drive. It’s an Astone, which is a respectable if little-known brand. (They also make very nice laptops.) I paid $210 three weeks ago. One week later, I saw the same flash drive advertised for $190. Today, I saw the same flash drive advertised at iStore for $165, with $10 off if you spend more than $100 on other items. To put that in perspective, when I bought the 1GB drive, half-gigabyte drives were $140.

Oct 11, 2004

The corollary to Clarke’s Law (“any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”) is that any technology distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced. Bluetooth is not sufficiently advanced. Yet. I came home tonight with a relatively simple task - get a Sony Ericsson Bluetooth headset working with my laptop, and hopefully get Skype up and running. Bluetooth sounds simple in theory, right? Your headset and your laptop talk to each other, the laptop (which should have all the brains) discovers that the headset provides the Headset service, and pairs with it to use that Headset service.

Sep 26, 2004

We (the flatmates) picked this recipe up from The Age’s Epicure section a few weeks ago. It was probably created on the grounds that “chocolate is good, coffee is good, therefore chocolate plus coffee is double-plus-good”. Makes approximately 24 brownies, or about three once I get to them. Ingredients 200g bitter dark chocolate, chopped. If you’re in Melbourne or Adelaide, Haigh’s make great dark chocolate with 59% cocoa, in convenient 200-gram blocks;