Interesting Things

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A Hideous Mess, As Viewed From The Inside

Tonight it was not the 12:30am Saturday night closing, or the ritual humiliation of minimum-wage work, or the wait for a train that never came, or the hour-long search for a taxi, or the freezing cold. It was the hammering realisation of my own powerlessness in the world.
My life is a hollowed-out shell, unlived and unpopulated, lonely and characterised by escapism and cowardice. My intelligence has not resulted in success, or my education in wealth. I have run away from all the things that make life valuable and good, leaving a string of half-completed satisfactions and conversations which trail off into silence. I have no skill in making life, of building a foundation for gladness or for continuity of any kind.
My hit-and-run existence has lead me to a bleak and desolate place, and my punishment is to be alone with my thoughts.


I am monarch of all I survey;
My right there is none to dispute;
From the centre all round to the sea
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
O Solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better to dwell in the midst of alarms,
Than reign in this horrible place.

The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk
William Cowper (1731–1800)

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New Yorker cartoons

Things I Learned This Week

When a hippo in heat spots a female, he stands in the open and voids his bowels while spinning his tail. This may be where 'the shit hits the fan' came from.

One of my co-workers used to work the carnival circuit for five years with her family. A bunch of carnies, mucking out elephant stalls and shilling hoop toss to gullible country folk. Then last year she got hit by a mail truck. Her cat likes pot and she has a magnesium walking stick.

Platypi are poisonous. Really, really poisonous.

Edison was an asshole who stole a boatload of ideas from other people, notably Tesla. He also publicly electrocuted dogs trying to demonstrate the dangers of AC current compared to his favored DC current (even though AC is actually safer).

All of the computer games I played as a kid turn out to suck. Except Taipan.

Hemingway novels and short stories make for bad films.

Nicholas Cage's worst film of all time is The Wicker Man. Best scene: punches a woman in the face while dressed as a bear. This and other clips here.

HD-DVD is dead.

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i Has A EeePC

After not spending any money on anything cool for six months, I finally caved and bought an Asus EeePC, a subnotebook with a 7" screen and a weight of a little under 1kg.
It feels satisfyingly weighty for its size, and is finished to feel cool to the touch, like metal. It doesn't fit in even the largest of my coat pockets, and it seems way too small for a satchel-style bag. A lot of the time I just carry it in my hand like a hardcover book.
I've been using it mainly to watch TV shows on the train and when I'm waiting for stuff. The 800x480 screen is slightly taller than widescreen movies.
I installed Windows XP on it as soon as I could, via a 1Gb USB stick, then the drivers which activated the audio, graphics and WiFi capabilities. I bought the model with a 4Gb SSD, and the system takes up about 1.4Gb. The battery lasts more than three hours. It boots from cold in about 40 seconds, and comes out of standby in about three.

Is it a stupid toy? Yes, I suppose that because I have a Core Duo 15" already it's not 100% necessary, but it is insanely portable and I use it in ways that other devices don't really let you do -- I can check my email via WiFi and listen to mp3's while standing at a street corner waiting for a crossing light. Maybe with a $900 cellphone you could do that. A regular laptop: you could, but you'd look like an idiot.

It cost $350, which is the most important thing, considering that Apple and other companies are pushing $2000 machines. It signals inevitable directions for the market: affordability and portability. When technology gets better and cheaper like this, it never goes backwards again. There will be dozens of devices like this by 2009. They will do 90% of what people use computers for.

Here's a graph [scroll down] of the uptake of new technologies in the 20th century: what % of people had what products (TV, VCR, washer, etc). As soon as prices go down, ownership explodes. (Notice that only three-quarters currently have computers, and only two-thirds are online.)

Future plans to make it cooler: 8Gb memory card; GPS receiver; 2Gb RAM card (from 512Mb); protective case.