Friday, April 30, 2004
| So I though I'd publish a page listing the books I'm reading right now. It was really an exercise in helping me: a) finish some of them off b) stop buying more! Here's the list. |  |
# posted 4/30/2004 11:35:08 PM |
Thursday, April 22, 2004
So, my Mrs was getting more and more annoyed with her Infiniti FX45... mostly because she doesn't consider it "kid friendly". I tried to tell her it wasn't trying to be some boxy old SUV... but it didn't help.
Finally I caved in and got her a minivan... and traded my G35 Coupe to do it
I take delivery of the minivan and I'm on my way to our State Farm agent to get it on our policy when she calls me. Seems she had a run-in with an 18-wheeler. She was ok (albeit a little shaken), and our almost-two-year-old was very shocked by the whole thing... but the only thing damaged was the wife's confidence. Oh, and the car was a little the worse for it.
Anyway, State Farm have been great. The car went into the shop the same afternoon. Hopefully it'll be back and 100% ship-shape again in 2-3 weeks time. That day can't come too soon, as I have a Chevy Trailblazer and that thing is horrible to drive. When I was driving it off the rental lot onto the highway, it lurched so much going down the short driveway and turning into traffic that I thought it was going to roll over before I'd driven it 20 feet. Brrrr.
After 3 weeks in a Trailblazer, I think the FX45 will definitely be getting a hug when I get it back, as that will be my daily-driver until I get the new Infiniti M45 that I'm holding out for.
The irony is, this all comes only a couple of weeks after seeing my mate Rich's car get totalled (sandwiched between SUVs), and a few days later seeing both his wife's car and his rental both get pounded by golfball hail. For those that aren't familiar with Texas weather, yes - thats hail the size of golfballs. In the same storm, another part of Texas got softball-sized hail (a softball is about 4" across - nearly the size of a tennis ball!).
If there is a positive side to all this, I got the minivan for $500 under invoice! It had a few miles on it, but it was the exact color and spec I was looking for, and it was a steal when all said and done.
What kind of minivan did we get? A Mazda MPV in Titanium Grey... just like the one below. We like the MPV over all other minivans because it is so compact on the outside, yet really roomy inside. And even fully loaded it was only slightly more than my trade-in value on the G35. For the Honda, Nissan and Toyota minivans we would have had to find up to $10,000 extra to pay for it, so it worked out well.
Finally I caved in and got her a minivan... and traded my G35 Coupe to do it
I take delivery of the minivan and I'm on my way to our State Farm agent to get it on our policy when she calls me. Seems she had a run-in with an 18-wheeler. She was ok (albeit a little shaken), and our almost-two-year-old was very shocked by the whole thing... but the only thing damaged was the wife's confidence. Oh, and the car was a little the worse for it.
Anyway, State Farm have been great. The car went into the shop the same afternoon. Hopefully it'll be back and 100% ship-shape again in 2-3 weeks time. That day can't come too soon, as I have a Chevy Trailblazer and that thing is horrible to drive. When I was driving it off the rental lot onto the highway, it lurched so much going down the short driveway and turning into traffic that I thought it was going to roll over before I'd driven it 20 feet. Brrrr.
After 3 weeks in a Trailblazer, I think the FX45 will definitely be getting a hug when I get it back, as that will be my daily-driver until I get the new Infiniti M45 that I'm holding out for.
The irony is, this all comes only a couple of weeks after seeing my mate Rich's car get totalled (sandwiched between SUVs), and a few days later seeing both his wife's car and his rental both get pounded by golfball hail. For those that aren't familiar with Texas weather, yes - thats hail the size of golfballs. In the same storm, another part of Texas got softball-sized hail (a softball is about 4" across - nearly the size of a tennis ball!).
If there is a positive side to all this, I got the minivan for $500 under invoice! It had a few miles on it, but it was the exact color and spec I was looking for, and it was a steal when all said and done.
What kind of minivan did we get? A Mazda MPV in Titanium Grey... just like the one below. We like the MPV over all other minivans because it is so compact on the outside, yet really roomy inside. And even fully loaded it was only slightly more than my trade-in value on the G35. For the Honda, Nissan and Toyota minivans we would have had to find up to $10,000 extra to pay for it, so it worked out well.
# posted 4/22/2004 08:25:24 PM |
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Got on the waiting list for the next gen Infiniti M...
So, I got myself on the waiting list for the new Infiniti M45 ... Now I just need to wait for a year until it gets here.
If you've never seen it, you can find out more at:http://www.infiniti.com/mconcept
I've included some photos below... just roll over the thumbnail to see it in detail...
If you've never seen it, you can find out more at:http://www.infiniti.com/mconcept
I've included some photos below... just roll over the thumbnail to see it in detail...
# posted 4/21/2004 12:05:10 PM |
Sunday, April 18, 2004
Now that I'm getting the hang of the D70, I'm thinking to add a gallery to the site. I'll probably end up using GDI+ to automatically make thumbnails and watermark the images... stuff like that.
Won't be today though. Today my zany colleague Thom is getting married to an equally zany girl. I almost expect Elvis to jump out of the wedding cake.
Won't be today though. Today my zany colleague Thom is getting married to an equally zany girl. I almost expect Elvis to jump out of the wedding cake.
# posted 4/18/2004 05:39:34 AM |
Thursday, April 08, 2004
This is cool... but I'd be soooo dead
Check this out...
There's a big picture of it here...
Its very silly, very superfluous... and I want one
If I need to justify to myself a reason not to get it (apart from "the wife would kill me"), according to the really long FAQ, its not possible to set the watch to half-hour timezone offsets... And Dell's facility in India is in one of those. I guess I could get the watch, then use that as the reason why I can't go to India... but I don't think I'd get too far with that
|
Its very silly, very superfluous... and I want one
If I need to justify to myself a reason not to get it (apart from "the wife would kill me"), according to the really long FAQ, its not possible to set the watch to half-hour timezone offsets... And Dell's facility in India is in one of those. I guess I could get the watch, then use that as the reason why I can't go to India... but I don't think I'd get too far with that
# posted 4/08/2004 10:06:37 PM |
Don Box just posted on RSS, saying how he had one of the few CDF feeds on the net.
So, the gauntlet being down, I thought it might be neat to make a CDF "builder" script that would read in my site's atom.xml file and convert it to CDF.
The link below will give you my CDF feed:
Being a generous sort, I also let you put any atom.xml url in, so if you have a Blogger blog, or some other ATOM-format XML file, you can now use it to build a CDF. To do this, just call my script and pass in the url to your atom.xml ...
For example, the url for the CDF for my site is:
(the %3A is a MIME-escaped colon character)
Just put in your atom url after the atom= and off you go.
So, the gauntlet being down, I thought it might be neat to make a CDF "builder" script that would read in my site's atom.xml file and convert it to CDF.
The link below will give you my CDF feed:
Being a generous sort, I also let you put any atom.xml url in, so if you have a Blogger blog, or some other ATOM-format XML file, you can now use it to build a CDF. To do this, just call my script and pass in the url to your atom.xml ...
For example, the url for the CDF for my site is:
http://www.ruxp.net/cdf.aspx?atom=http%3A//www.ruxp.net/atom.xml(the %3A is a MIME-escaped colon character)
Just put in your atom url after the atom= and off you go.
# posted 4/08/2004 09:30:26 PM |
David Berlind on the Sun/MS deal
David Berlind posted his take on the Sun/Microsoft deal... I emailed him the post below, and while I only got a potted response, it seems I wasn't the only one to notice the Apple similarities...
Here is an extract...
Here is an extract...
# posted 4/08/2004 02:30:53 PM |
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Sun and Microsoft - deja vú all over again
The recent pact between Sun and Microsoft came out of the blue last Friday... yet sounded vaguely familiar...
Remember how Bill Gates "came to Apple's rescue" a few years ago when Apple was in a hole. Of course, Apple then bounced back (though Apple's market share hasn't recovered so perhaps "survived" would be a better term) first with the iMac, then MacOS X, and the rest as they say is history...
That deal seemed kind of odd at the time, unless you put it in the perspective of the subsequent DoJ shenanigans... Sure, Apple had a patent infringement suite against Microsoft at the time citing Windows as a MacOS ripoff (which was in turn a ripoff of the old Xerox Star system, but anyway...). However, what Microsoft really got out of it was a visible competitor... someone Microsoft could point to and say "what? a monopoly? us?". Though by then Linux was certainly a more viable threat than Apple... I wonder if MS would have even bother investing in Apple if they'd known Linux was on the horizon...
Now again, Microsoft has saved a company from the brink of bankruptcy. Arguably Sun deserved to go under because of the horrible way they mismanaged Java - probably the greatest of all non-Microsoft software assets at least before Linux came along, and went through hoops to protect their hardware market (much like Apple... is there a lesson there?).
I'm not sure how things go from here, but the wording around the protection from litigation here pretty means Sun is a spent force in terms of really limiting Microsoft in the development world, and much like Apple, is now destined to be nothing more than a bit player in the broader play being written Windows and Linux.
Taking another tack, I personally think the OS wars are a little past their sell by date, and what I'd far rather see Microsoft do is to port .NET to Linux themselves. On the desktop, I can see Longhorn having enough selling points to still move inventory (plus we'll all need to buy new PCs to be able to run it), but in the back office Windows 2003 Server and Linux are both equally viable... so why shouldn't I be able to write an ASP.NET app that runs on either platform.
That would make the Java investment a moot point, and be a direct threat to Novell and BEA. Back it up with an "investment" in some Linux providers such as Red Hat (to "support this new platform for Microsoft products", etc.), and most of the threats to your world domination will be 0wn3d.
Some MS folks I spoke to thought I was nuts suggesting MS ports to Linux. Being under a single vendor's control would allow .NET to meet Java's original promise. And being seen to have lost a single battle would help keep the government lawyers off their backs until they can consolidate things enough to win the war.
 Am I the only one who gets the creeps from this photo? |
Remember how Bill Gates "came to Apple's rescue" a few years ago when Apple was in a hole. Of course, Apple then bounced back (though Apple's market share hasn't recovered so perhaps "survived" would be a better term) first with the iMac, then MacOS X, and the rest as they say is history...
That deal seemed kind of odd at the time, unless you put it in the perspective of the subsequent DoJ shenanigans... Sure, Apple had a patent infringement suite against Microsoft at the time citing Windows as a MacOS ripoff (which was in turn a ripoff of the old Xerox Star system, but anyway...). However, what Microsoft really got out of it was a visible competitor... someone Microsoft could point to and say "what? a monopoly? us?". Though by then Linux was certainly a more viable threat than Apple... I wonder if MS would have even bother investing in Apple if they'd known Linux was on the horizon...
Now again, Microsoft has saved a company from the brink of bankruptcy. Arguably Sun deserved to go under because of the horrible way they mismanaged Java - probably the greatest of all non-Microsoft software assets at least before Linux came along, and went through hoops to protect their hardware market (much like Apple... is there a lesson there?).
I'm not sure how things go from here, but the wording around the protection from litigation here pretty means Sun is a spent force in terms of really limiting Microsoft in the development world, and much like Apple, is now destined to be nothing more than a bit player in the broader play being written Windows and Linux.
Taking another tack, I personally think the OS wars are a little past their sell by date, and what I'd far rather see Microsoft do is to port .NET to Linux themselves. On the desktop, I can see Longhorn having enough selling points to still move inventory (plus we'll all need to buy new PCs to be able to run it), but in the back office Windows 2003 Server and Linux are both equally viable... so why shouldn't I be able to write an ASP.NET app that runs on either platform.
That would make the Java investment a moot point, and be a direct threat to Novell and BEA. Back it up with an "investment" in some Linux providers such as Red Hat (to "support this new platform for Microsoft products", etc.), and most of the threats to your world domination will be 0wn3d.
Some MS folks I spoke to thought I was nuts suggesting MS ports to Linux. Being under a single vendor's control would allow .NET to meet Java's original promise. And being seen to have lost a single battle would help keep the government lawyers off their backs until they can consolidate things enough to win the war.
# posted 4/07/2004 02:39:59 PM |
Saturday, April 03, 2004
So I've recently found myself with lots of flash memory cards and USB flash drives. It all started with my Palm Tungsten T3 that I got a 256MB SimpleTech ProX secure digital card (very fast if you copy to it using a USB 2.0 reader/writer).
I then found myself starting to use USB flash drives to move stuff from home to work, and to bring work home with me too. It started with a 32MB one I got for free at a Microsoft seminar, then up to a 64MB one I got from AMD for completing a tutorial at last years PDC... then finally a 256MB Lexar JumpDrive Pro which is permanently on my keychain. That thing rocks.
Anyhoo, the latest is compact flash cards because of the camera. I found myself getting three cards so I would have enough capacity for my upcoming vacation (and something to back the pictures up on too). In order to know the difference when I have them attached to the PC, I created Macintosh icons for them in Iconographer. Then I thought "why not share them with the world". Then I thought "better make a proper collection then...". So here they are.
There are three collections, for Sandisk, Lexar and SimpleTech compact flash cards. Just click on the icons below to download...
If you're looking for icons for other types of flash drive, you might be interested in the Real Disks collection at Xicons.com.
And if you've no idea how to set the icon your Mac shows for your flash drive, Xicons.com has a good tutorial on Setting Custom Icons in Mac OS X. Enjoy.
I then found myself starting to use USB flash drives to move stuff from home to work, and to bring work home with me too. It started with a 32MB one I got for free at a Microsoft seminar, then up to a 64MB one I got from AMD for completing a tutorial at last years PDC... then finally a 256MB Lexar JumpDrive Pro which is permanently on my keychain. That thing rocks.
Anyhoo, the latest is compact flash cards because of the camera. I found myself getting three cards so I would have enough capacity for my upcoming vacation (and something to back the pictures up on too). In order to know the difference when I have them attached to the PC, I created Macintosh icons for them in Iconographer. Then I thought "why not share them with the world". Then I thought "better make a proper collection then...". So here they are.
There are three collections, for Sandisk, Lexar and SimpleTech compact flash cards. Just click on the icons below to download...
 Sandisk (Extreme, Ultra II) (8 icons) |  Lexar (40x, 80x) (11 icons) |  SimpleTech (normal, ProX) (9 icons) |
If you're looking for icons for other types of flash drive, you might be interested in the Real Disks collection at Xicons.com.
And if you've no idea how to set the icon your Mac shows for your flash drive, Xicons.com has a good tutorial on Setting Custom Icons in Mac OS X. Enjoy.
# posted 4/03/2004 07:59:52 PM |
Thursday, April 01, 2004
Its not out until Q3, but the Sony Ericsson Z500a looks like a worthy successor to my T610.
I used to have a Samsung Q105 which has a cover over the keys. Since I got the T610 I often forget to lock it and end up making "butt calls" (a colorful way to say calling folks by mistake when the phone is in your pocket). Plus the screen is all scratched to hell.
So I've been looking for a decent clamshell design phone, and the Z500a's display just looks gorgeous. Whats not to love?
Only downside is it supports a 3G technology called EDGE that is 3x faster than GPRS, but which T-Mobile (my carrier) has no stated plan to support. Still, now I can transfer to another carrier and take my number with me, so perhaps there is no downside.
# posted 4/01/2004 06:17:25 AM |
