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An interesting update from the Google blog about their Google Book Search program. They’ve settled a law suit with the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers (AAP) and are moving forward on their plan to scan a vast number of books. Access to the books comes in a couple of different, confusing flavors but the key point is that Google will have full text of millions of books. This is worth keeping an eye on.
Wow, Dell has come out with a small desktop computer that looks pretty decent! It’s called the Dell Studio Hybrid, though I’m not sure what it is a hybrid of, it’s still got some respectable features.
I should say that we’ve been using the Apple Mac Mini in our Deli offices, where space it extremely tight, and everyone has been really impressed by them. We bootcamp them into an OEM licensed version of Windows XP and they crank away.
So it’s in this light that this Dell looks good. It’s about the same size profile and costs only 5% more at $629. Similar to the Mini we’d need to get an OEM license for XP separately. CPU, memory, and harddrive are better in the Dell. Warranty, like the Mini, would need to be extended to 3 years.
The only area that the Dell falls short compared to the Apple Mini is that it can’t run Mac OS. I know, that’s perhaps a strange take on it, but we’re not sure that we couldn’t reach a point in the next year or so where we could switch desktops over from XP to Mac OS X without undue pain. The Mac OS machines that we have now tend to be dramatically different in terms of trouble - they tend to not need much support. So, something to think about. We’ll probably give one of these a try in a situation that’s tight on space, like our Bakeshop.
Newegg.com, our favorite vendor for OEM harddrives, has finally started to sell the new 500 GB laptop drives. A couple of days ago they posted the new SAMSUNG Spinpoint M6 HM500LI 500GB 5400 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s and today appeared the Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD5000BEVT 500GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s both for $149.99.
I have not run a screensaver in years. Usually I just set my LCD to go off after 30 minutes of inactivity. But that’s changed. I’m hooked on a really cool screensaver that makes beautiful ever-changing images
Electric Sheep is a free, open source screen saver created by Scott Draves. It’s run by thousands of people all over the world, and can be installed on any ordinary PC or Mac. When these computers “sleep”, the screen saver comes on and the computers communicate with each other by the internet to share the work of creating morphing abstract animations known as “sheep”. The result is a collective “android dream”, an homage to Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.
The software is available for download for PC or Mac or Linux.
We use Microsoft’s Terminal Services to bring windows-only software to our Apple laptops. Works great. Even works great to bring apps to Windows machines.
Recently we heard about the opposite - terminal services for Mac from aquaconnect.net. At first we tried to wrap our brains around how to use it but I think we’re going to give it a demo run and just try it.
The BBC covered this “slow art” project called Real Snail Mail at Bournemouth University in the UK which will be showcased in Los Angeles in August.
Basically, a tank of snails with RFID tags in their shells slide past one of two RFID transmitters. One delivers the email to the snail and then eventually when the snail makes it to the other side of the tank the email gets picked up and sent to the ‘net.
From the ‘not a good idea’ department, the Zing! Spoon.
I was reading about Polenta in Marcella Hazan’s book, “Essentials of Italian Cooking” (available at the Deli) because I’ve always enjoyed grits, and polenta is like yellow grits. She has an extensive write-up on Polenta and admonishes that the best way to cook it is by stirring in an open pot for 45 minutes. I was aghast. I’d never spent that long on polenta or grits and they tasted fine! Besides my limp geek wrists would give out long before the end. Then I saw that she had a cheater recipe that called for stirring for a minute every ten minutes of cooking - that I could do! So this morning I put 3 1/8 Cups of water, 3/4 Cups coarse italian polenta, and 1/2 Tablespoon salt in a pot and brought it to a boil. Her ratio for polenta to water is 1 x 4.2 which I honored and it worked great. I set the heat and my timer and walked away. First ten revealed soupy lava. Ouch, it’s amazing how hot polenta is when it splashes on you! Second ten pretty much what I’m used to seeing. Third ten same thing. Then something happened between 30 and 40 minutes - the polenta went from grainy to creamy and soft. I did another 10 minutes with an open pot stirring every few minutes and it thickened up a bit more. Though it did NOT pull away cleanly (!) from the sides of the pot, as she writes, it seemed ready to my hungry self. I added some butter, grated Parm, and half a tin of warmed Ortiz spanish tuna. Wow. Unlike any polenta I have ever made - there is something definitely magic that happens around 45 minutes in to the cooking and it is so much better I don’t think I can ever go back. The yield was a bit greater than 2 Cups which is perfect for me.
Until recently I would end up in travel situations, that were otherwise going along swimmingly, sitting in frustration in a hotel room, or a friend’s guest room, trying to figure out where to plug in my various electronic gear to charge. Then I spotted one of these mini power strips from Monster called Outlets To Go. The first one I ran across had four outlets but they make them in 3 and 6 outlets as well. My favorite is the 3 - it is the smallest and lightest and I rarely have more than three items to plug in. I was so happy with it that I bought one for both Jillian and for my Mom. They run around $12 at Amazon. I think we may carry a few in the IT “store” with our USB flash drives and extra power supplies that staff can pick up from us.Oh, and I’m not sure whether to share this last part or leave it as a surprise, but the connector that goes into the wall has a soft blue nightlight built-in.
