By anders pearson 14 Oct 2000
the pen i bought came with the following ‘helpful hint’ on the back: “when using any brand of liquid ink pen on an airplane, be sure to remove the cap with the point upward to avoid problems that could occur due to cabin pressure.”
pens explode on airplanes? cool. that is a helpful hint. next time i have to fly somewhere, i’m bringing about a dozen with me.
By anders pearson 14 Oct 2000
By anders pearson 13 Oct 2000
By anders pearson 12 Oct 2000
By anders pearson 11 Oct 2000
i thought i’d try to be cool like mimi and do a ‘sketchblog’ type thing. so i took all my notes from my classes this semester and scanned in all the little doodles that i draw in the margins while i’m bored out of my mind and trying not to fall asleep. now i figure that i can dole them out one a day for the next few weeks. and if i keep scanning in new doodles, this can continue indefinately. none of these are works of art; most are done with a ball-point or felt-tip pen and are about 2 or 3 cm in size. don’t ask me what they are. damned if i know. i just figure they’re a good way to keep people entertained and fill the dead air on here when no one really has much to say for a few days at a time. so without further ado, here’s the first; drawn during operating systems today:
By anders pearson 07 Oct 2000
Consolization
a follow-up to ander’s post #126…
there are growing numbers of embedded linux appliances already. an investing-savvy friend of mine has asked that i keep him informed and, not that they are well hidden, these are the major companies i keep running in to:
because i am a game-console follower: “Indrema’s revolutionary high-end game console will capitalize on embedded Linux and open-source software development.”
what will Indrema’s product be? “The Indrema Entertainment System (IES) is packaged in a sleek enclosure with the look and feel of a top-of-the-line VCR. ‘You don’t know that it has Linux in it,’ said Gildred [Indrema’s CEO] ‘You turn it on and it runs like a consumer electronics device. You can watch TV as you normally would. But you can also pull up a screen and start playing your MP3s. Or start the web browser and begin browsing on the Internet.” although primarily a high-end gaming system, because it allows lots of additional audio/video capability, some likely other uses include “providing enhanced HDTV and downloading and playing music video, and TV from partner sites.” Also, “Personal TV” where users will be able to download and play specific TV programs on demand.
the first company to get behind the “home music network” concept was S3 which owns the Rio line of portable MP3 players. The Rio Receiver uses embedded linux, which provides “out-of-the-box networking and enough power to handle downloading, ripping, streaming and listening at the same time.”
the Kerbango Radio (now owned by 3com- thanks to $80 million)“looks like a cross between an old Wurlizer jukebox and the dashboard of a ’54 Buick.” “Right now, the Kerbango has three unique properties, the radio, its tuning system and its website, which give computer users direct access to thousands of stream sources- the ‘stations’ the Kerbango radio will tune when it sits on your kitchen counter plugged into the household network…” The operating system for the Kerbango is linux.
for all other home appliances, check out Adomo who “wants to fill your home with a network of low-cost, easy-to-use information appliances.” All of which have linux inside. It’ll use voice commands mostly and can run just about everything you’d want it to… microwaves, lights, heaters, radios, dishwashers… the true “intelligent home” that Gates spent millions building for himself, soon available for all of us at a decent price.
there are more- but you all probably know of most of these anyway.
By anders pearson 06 Oct 2000
someone who knows emacs lisp really really well and is looking for something to do:
i would be much more productive if emacs had completion like bash for variables and functions in code. eg, if i’m writing a program and i have:
int a_very_long_variable_name = 0;
and later on, i’m typing
a_very_long_variable_name = (a_very_long_variable_name < 0) ? 0 : a_very_long_variable_name;
i would love to, instead, be able to type:
a_very[tab] = (a_very[tab] < 0) ? a_very[tab];
and have it just complete the variable names for me when i hit tab. i realize that this it would probably take a pretty significant amount of programming to get this to work, but i think it’s far from impossible, and anyone who programs could see that this would save an enormous amount of work and prevent numerous errors from mistyping a variable name in the same sort of way that syntax coloring helps prevent errors from missing ‘}‘s and such.
the various modes for different programming languages are already smart enough to know what is a variable, what is a function, what is a string, etc, in order to implement syntax coloring. it seems like it shouldn’t be that hard to have it autocomplete say, just variables that have already been declared/defined earlier in the same source document. i think Word even has a feature similar to this in that it allows you to define some commonly used words and if you type the first few letters, it will let you hit enter and complete it.
i may have to learn elisp myself if only to make sure that there is never a worthwhile function that Word has that emacs doesn’t. i should probably learn elisp anyway…
By anders pearson 01 Oct 2000
By anders pearson 30 Sep 2000
notice anything different?
a new design and a few changes. first of all, i got rid of the skins because i don’t think anyone was really using them and they weren’t terribly useful without some sort of cookie mechanism for persistence. cookies are a pain in the ass so i’m not bothering with that anymore.
haven’t tested this out in multiple browsers yet so let me know if you have any problems. and since i’ll probably be tweaking things in the next few days, now is a good time to make suggestions for things that could/should change.
and anyone who knows the identity of the karate chick on the left is officially the king or queen of obscure counter-culture references.
By anders pearson 29 Sep 2000
Brian Froud, the artist who brought us all the kick-ass creatures in Labyrinth and the Dark Crystal, (along with Giger of course) probably had the most significant impact on my own development as an artist with his book on faeries, which i spent a good part of my high school career painstakingly copying. turns out he has a surprisingly entertaining website too.