Just one more thing...

Clearly gesture based touch screen interfaces for widescreen media playing devices are so revolutionary that no-one has ever-thought of that before apple...

 

If it one thing that the 770 has taught me about UI design, it's that onscreen keyboards are easy to implement and use. Even so, little chicklet plastic keys are faster to type on. For gross gestures and modal interface controls, the touch screen is great (better than alternatives like the joystick and mousing). The UI can respond accordingly, when control are grabbed or manipulated.

Typing is a different activity than UI navigation. For me, I mostly touch types. I'd rather be focusing on the output while my fingers are busy with the input, so tactile rather than visual feedback is important and the area under my fingers is not the target of visual attention. Maybe there are interfaces that are better (faster requiring less attention) than typing, but for now a competent typist is still faster with a crap chicklet keyboard then someone typing on a screen keyboard that's obscuring half the display, area. 

Not something you see very often.

  

So long old friend...

  

Guess the Nokia 770 is dead...

Unless things change it won't see another official OS release now that the n800 has been released.

http://www.nokiausa.com/N800

http://jaaksi.blogspot.com/2007/01/were-getting-some-feedback-and-weve-got.html

I'm cool with that sort of approach I guess, it's a consumer appliance after all, and the 770 was more of a prototype than an actual product.

Nonetheless the sinking feeling when I got the message that the 770 wouldn't see another software release was sort of like having a pet die. I relate to Linux machines differently than I do to say phones, they're more extensible, they expose more of the inner workings, you negotiate with the operating system rather than being held hostage by it like on a normal embedded communications device.

I have gotten a lot of value out of device since I ordered it in November of 2005 certainly it was $350 well spent. I should order the n800 right now I guess but I haven't quite worked up to it.

There's some question in my mind here about how people relate to objects of varying levels of sophistication and interactivity. I don't really get all that concerned when my toaster gets discontinued by sunbeam, that my 30 year old Beosystem is obsolete or that next year Honda will release a newer slightly restyled version of my car. I didn't get that upset when I bricked my n91 by flashing the firmware (it's just a phone after all), but when something that like many open-source products has a built-in assumption of routine software releases to enhance it's functionality gets discontinued, a little part of it dies. Some pieces of hardware take on a life of their own long after they're technically obsolete and abandoned by their manufacturers (the Newton and the Amiga come to mind) but that's by no means guaranteed, classic electronic devices aren't really that numerous.

People rice the funniest cars (yes that's a camry hybrid)

 

Spotted at the Los Altos whole foods.

No huge muffler tip which is sort of disapointing. ;) 

Spotted in downtown Mountain View sunday morning

  

The new car sitting in the new driveway...

  

brief house tour

 
 
 
  

1800 pair cat-3 cable

 

Cut (planned not accidental) as part of a construction project on the U of O campus. Looks like some kind of psychedelic clown hair. Weighs several pounds per foot... This is the legacy pstn infrastructure, that's a lot of 2 wire analog phones... Really easy to expand that thing when you run out of pairs. 

Coconuts...

 
 

Adapted a means of propagation where the package is sufficiently rugged that it can survive long trips by sea with external propulsion (wind waves). Oddly enough with the advent of humans beings the coconuts have adapted and are now propagating via postal mail. 

first road-trip in the civic hybrid

 

44.3MPG in 243 miles of mized highway secondary and city driving... Still have a quarter of my first tank of gas left. 

interesting blogger

http://www.janchipchase.com/

and even moreso:

http://www.janchipchase.com/mobiletv

Wow this place looks cool for cheap ass cables!

http://www.monoprice.com/home/?CartID=&style=

Ok I want a refund dammit!

http://grandformat.blogspot.com/2006/09/serie-voyage-interplantaire.html

The future I live in sucks...

Well...

Nintendo goes up on the list of console vendors that wants their product to be an anticonsumer walled garden...

http://wesfx.net/?p=17

basically the aqbility to meddle with the software on your own box... yeah sure exploits are bad, but that just demonstrates the intentions of the vendor when you have to resort to the them in order to extend the functionality of the platform.

Don't bother...

Attempting to dissasemble a sony vaio u3.... While most sony products are pretty obtuse, this thing is nuts...

Needless to say, when the disk conked out in the thing a year ago I ordered another one. I stalled out trying to get the thing apart about about the stage where if I went any further I'd break it...

Well I revisited the issue this morning and I've pretty much broken it for sure... The fact that I have a dead laptop isn't so galling (lots of dead laptops after all) as the fact that it's special (8 hour battery) which I went out of my way to purchase on a separate trip to japan is totally useless... That just blows. While the laptop was about $1000 used at the time, the battery was nearly $400.

I suppose the remainer of the usable parts could be ebayed (like the new harddisk) the jumbo battery and the power supply but it hard seems worth it.

It's a Ficus!

 

The Prado, Balboa park, San Diego CA 

The Devices!

 

pile of Cisco 12xx ap's 

The net-disco topology...

  

Dell Dell and more Dell (xps m1210)

Running Linux on the beast with either the nvidia or intel chipset seems moderately successful.

http://www.serpentine.com/blog/software/linux-on-m1210.html

http://toufeeq.blogspot.com/2006/07/linux-on-dell-xps-m1210.html

http://g33k.wordpress.com/2006/07/20/the-dell-xps-m1210-a-mini-review/

http://wiki.gacq.com/index.php/Installing_Debian_on_Dell_M1210