12 or 15 inches?

December 29, 2003

The 12-inch powerbook stayed at home this trip. Instead I brought the 15-inch machine. All around it is a great machine. It is obviously not as compact. Since I recently recovered the drive from a client's Ti-Book that had suffered from a glass of water on the keyboard I am more sensitive to liquids around the computers these days. This brings me to the observation that one of the advantages of the 12-inch is that it fits on the tray in an aircraft with room for drinks and snacks beside it. With the 15-incher you're left to hand hold your cup and can of soda or bottle of beer while the machine is out. Read more about 12 or 15 inches?

Internet Explorer and img align tags

December 22, 2003

Anybody know why the <img align="right" (or left for that matter) causes images to not show up in this page? I'm thinking it must be something to do with a quirk in CSS but don't know for sure. It is making a "hole" in the text the right size for the image, but not displaying the image.

Heads Up

December 8, 2003

New York Times:Heads-Up Displays Move From Cockpits to Cyclists' Helmets - Soon recreational motorcyclists and bicyclists will be able to take advantage of data projected into their line of sight.

This is quite similar to a device I was pondering while driving back yesterday. I want to combine GPS and a simple display with a wireless connection for updating road conditions and highway speeds dynamically. If the technology was used to track vehicle speeds like the fleet tracking or reporting from the ever more common roadside speed indicators.

CDOT has a pretty good site but it only does most people good while they are not in their cars but are at their computers. Read more about Heads Up

Don't do it

November 21, 2003

- Andrew's looking for a new laptop too. [Scripting News] - I have to agree with Andrew. Don't get the Think Pad. They are simply awful. The Viao is a much better choice. Of course a Powerbook is the best choice but Sony makes a fine machine.

Cell Phone Post

November 21, 2003

I've been looking for the best solution for posting from the road. The Aircard Page has some good info on using the Sierra Wireless 555 card. The downside is that it disables the normal serial interface for the PCMCIA card so it would mean switching back and forth to download images from the cameras. However the page at the bottom tells how to configure PPP for OS X to use National Access (formerly Express Network).

The next problem is the lack of a Motorola v.120e on the list of modems in 10.3. A few tries without success. Finally used the "Sprint PCS Vision" choice. Read more about Cell Phone Post

Sourceforge outage

November 9, 2003

There seems to be a sourceforge outage today. Problematic for those of us who are attempting to get new sites up today. It does bring to light some concerns about having so many great projects in the open source realm hosted by a closed-source company.

Computing