Category: Technology

This is really cool. Google is going maps now. Check it out at http://maps.google.com/. You can click and drag the mouse on the map to move it around and use the slider to zoom in and out. You can also use the cursor keys to move around and use the + and – keys to zoom in and out.

The driving directions are still a little crazy sometimes, but that’s to be expected from any online mapping service. I just use them as a guide and look around for better roads.

Another nice feature is the built in searching. Here’s a search for restaurants near our house. The results are not too bad. Most of those places are still there. Wing N It is closed and so is El Mexicano, but the other restaurants look good. I wonder what that Quizno’s Regional Office is? It seems like I’ve been there before, but I didn’t get a sandwich…

My iPod shuffle showed up the other day as promised. This thing is so much better than the Rio. The sound quality is amazing, especially when you consider that it’s about the size of a stick of gum and weighs less than an ounce. It’s hard to really understand just how small it is until you hold it.

Matthew couldn’t wait to get his hands on it:

So far, 1 GB is plenty of space. Apple says that’s 240 songs with is probably pretty close. I usually estimate 1 MB per minute of music so 1 GB would be 1,000 minutes, or almost 17 hours. Filling it with music only takes a few minutes. Sunday I uploaded about 4 hours of music and it only took 2 minutes.

I just love new toys…

My Rio Nitrus sold to a nice guy from Pennsylvania for almost $90. Not too bad. I hope he enjoys it.

According to Fedex, my iPod shuffle should be here tomorrow. Not quite perfect timing, but pretty close. I’ll post pictures plus a little comparison of features once it gets here.

I haven’t posted very much here because I’ve been so busy at work lately. The combination of spyware and viruses is really starting to get to me. Like I’ve been saying for a while now – if you’re still using Internet Explorer, it’s time to switch to Firefox. You’ll thank me for it later.

Looking for a good deal on a nice MP3 player?

I’m selling my Rio Nitrus on eBay. It’s going for only $9.99 right now. The auction doesn’t end until Sunday evening, so you still have plenty of time to bid.

This player is selling for around $150 right now, I sure hope I don’t have to let mine go for only $10. Of course, I’m sure I’ll forget all about it when my iPod Shuffle gets here next week…

I’ve been saying for a while now that what Apple really needs to do is take the display off of an iMac and sell just the computer. Well, they’ve finally done it. Take a look at what will probably be my next computer, the Mac mini. This is a thing of beauty. It’s a real Macintosh with Mac OS X for only $499. You supply the monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

Not only that, but they’ve also released a new iPod, the iPod shuffle. 512MB of music for $99 or 1GB for $149. I will have one of these very soon. Anybody want to buy my Rio Nitrus? It’s got a 1.5GB hard drive and it’s as good as new. It’s a steal at $99…

I have a few problems with bookmarks (or favorites for you Internet Explorer users). On any given day I use at least three different computers. Not only that, I sometimes use more than one web browser on the same computer. Obviously when I bookmark an interesting web site at work, I have a hard time getting to it from home.

Also, I’m really picky about organizing my bookmarks. I have folders set up for lots of different categories. This is great until I run into a site that fits into more than one folder. For example: I read lots of weblogs so I have a “Blogs” folder for all of these, I also visit lots of sites about design so I have a “Web Design” folder for these. Now, where should I put a weblog about design? In both folders?

I had actually started working on a program to solve these problems. An online bookmark manager that I can log in to from anywhere and see my bookmarks. As with most things, this has already been done. I’ve seen several of the other bookmark programs out there, but I wasn’t really happy with any of them. That is, until I took another look at del.icio.us the other day.

del.icio.us solves both of my problems above in a very elegant, easy-to-use way. Not only can I get to my bookmarks from any computer, I can also assign multiple categories to each one. Best of all, it’s free.

There’s another benefit to using del.icio.us. They describe their site as “Social Bookmarks”. You can see everyone else’s bookmarks and the categories that they’re using. For example, to see my bookmarks go to http://del.icio.us/AnthonyLewis/. Under all tags, click on python. This will show you only the 5 links that I’ve classified as python sites. Now click where it says python from all users. This will show you every site that anyone has classified as python (a lot more than 5).

Basically what I’m trying to say is if you’re a geek looking for a way to manage your bookmarks, check out del.icio.us. It’s pretty cool.

It’s official, SpaceShipOne has won the $10 million Ansari X Prize. They succeeded in making two manned flights to the edge of space within two weeks. This is an amazing accomplishment for a private company.

There are a few more details in the CNN story. The most interesting part to me is the fuel – nitrous oxide and rubber.

A fuel tank about six feet in diameter at the center of the craft holds liquid nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas. A hollow tube leading from the tank to the engine nozzle is filled with solid rubber. The combustive combination produces thousands of pounds of thrust…

I’m a little sad that John Carmack’s team, Armadillo Aerospace, didn’t win the prize, but I’m sure they’ll keep working on their ship. I don’t think any of the teams were doing it for the prize money anyway, since most of them have invested over $10 million.

Now that we’ve gotten pretty good and getting from the ground to space, I’m ready for someone to start working on the warp drive. How many years until the Vulcans show up?

The demo of Doom 3 is finally available. It’s a giant download at 462 MB. It is available via BitTorrent which is nice. I’m sure I helped out a lot of people today since I started the download last night and then forgot all about it and left it running until I got home from work today.

The Linux version is still not ready, but the Windows version works fine on Linux using Cedega from TransGaming. I don’t think my computer even meets the official specs, but it seemed OK to me. I have an Athlon XP 2000+ with 256 MB DDR RAM and a GeForce 3 with 64 MB. The gameplay was sometimes a little choppy and the load time between levels seemed to take forever, but otherwise it seemed fine.

As for the game itself, it’s scary. Very scary. I’m glad I didn’t go out and spend $50 on it because I probably won’t play much more of it. I’m sure the guys in my class will laugh at me, but this game is just not my idea of fun anymore. Visually it’s very impressive, but it’s just not my style.

Once the zombies come out, you’re basically walking around in the dark the whole time. You have a flashlight, but you can’t use it at the same time as your pistol. The gameplay was pretty much like this – shine the flashlight on the zombie, switch to the pistol and shoot until the groaning stops, then switch back to the flashlight.

After playing for a while, I walked out of my office to go to the living room. I actually turned around and looked down the hall to make sure nothing was sneaking up behind me. I’m definitely too old for this game. Ben, don’t even attempt this one.

If you’re wondering why I haven’t updated this site in a while, it’s because I’ve been working on the PHS Robotics weblog. You can see it at http://www.parisisd.net/robotics/.

One of the students is updating that site now, so everything should get back to normal around here.

If you haven’t seen any pictures of Apple’s new iMac G5 yet, I recommend you go check it out right now: http://www.apple.com/imac/

That’s not just the display, that’s the whole computer. Very impressive.