08.23.03

Better than Google News

Posted in General at 10 am

Imagine the Washington Post, but all the content of the front page was taken from LiveJournal entries.

http://stevenf.com/ljtimes/

Hillarity Ensues!

08.14.03

Blaster Virus

Posted in General at 9 am

The best remedy I’ve seen for getting rid of the Blaster virus: http://17.254.3.183

It’s a very easy to install upgrade…

08.12.03

Indirect Quoting

Posted in General at 9 am

From: “Nigel Ballard”
To: “‘Personal Telco Project'”
Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2003 11:04:42 -0700
Subject: [ptp-general] PGE Park PTP Story now in print

bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2003/08/11/

Cheers,
Nigel

The quote at the top of the second page or half way through the article was a comment that I made on the Personal Telco list…
Read the rest of this entry »

08.04.03

Google Fun

Posted in General at 9 am

GoogleNewsBot, you make me laugh.

Gay Bishiop's final hurdle: Kiss by a woman.

I had no idea what a strenuous test they would put him through! Imagine! A gay man having to be kissed by a woman!

A funnyhaha for Monday morning.

08.02.03

Flash Mob in Portland

Posted in General at 10 am

July 30, 2003 : : 7:24-7:34 pm : : First Portland Flash Mob

About 20 people showed up. The word needs to go out to other Portland area Lists such as:

Portland Bloggers
Portland Stories
Daily PDX

It hit the Personal Telco list this morning and I ended up seeing it 3 different ways:

The Personal Telco List
Forwarded from an office mate
a Friends List

Twenty participants aren’t enough, we need at least 40 people to make it a real impactful Mob. Perhaps next time we will have those numbers. This is kind of like a public art display and is a nice change of pace.

Authored and Sent Via Newton via 802.11b

07.28.03

Doctors

Posted in General at 10 pm

At least they have a name for it and a treatment. Knowing a cause would be nice, and having a fix for it would be even better.

But right now I just wish I could get rid of the ‘idiopathic’ part of the name.

07.11.03

An iBook Upgrade

Posted in Apple, Tech at 8 am

I took my iBook in to have its hard drive replaced. It wasn’t acting up at the moment, but I had seen two espisodes of clicking/not mounting and didn’t want to leave it with that ongoing problem. So with 7 days left on the 1 yr warranty, I took it in.

I got it back about 5 days later, and lo and behold, my 15GB HD had morphed into a 20GB HD! So the next order of business was obviously to repartition the extra 5GB into a scratch disc.

And by scratch disc I mean a single place for my MP3s…

07.06.03

Our Friends The Saudis

Posted in General at 11 am

Our Allies, those who have the same ideals for world as ourselves. Wonderful government they’ve got there. Just look at the openess of Saudi Internet cafés.
Read the rest of this entry »

06.29.03

Tandy Talk

Posted in General at 11 am

Today’s letter comes from New York, where Keith writes:

Hi, I purchased a tandy 102 at a rummage sale yesterday. I have a ibook and a imac. I was wondering if you have been able to make your 102 talk with osX? I do have a cable that has a hook up that has a modem end that fits into the 102 and a regular phone line on the other end.
Thanks, Keith

I haven’t had my Tandy out for a couple of years, ever since I switched to my Newton and my iBook as my primary travel companions. But the name of the game here is “Serial”.

Hardware

1) You’ll need to get a “usb to serial” adapter. They come in a number of flavors, depending on where you want to go with this. The most straight forward would be to to get a “USB to RS-232” serial port adapter like the one that Keyspan sells:

www.keyspan.com/products/usb/pdaadapter/

Then you would just need a serial cable that will fit into the USB adapter on one end and the T102 on the other.

2) A small variation would be to get a “USB to RS-422 miniDin8” adapter. (I’m noting this simply because I already have one.)

www.keyspan.com/products/usb/USA28x/

Then you’ll need to get an “ImageWriter I Cable” which has a standard RS-232 port at one end and an RS-422 on the other.

Software

So once you’ve got either:

Mac -> USB-to-RS-232 adapter -> Serial cable -> Tandy
or
Mac -> USB-to-RS-422 adapter -> ImageWriter I cable -> Tandy

you’ve got the hardware ready to go. Now you should use a term program like zTerm (although in OS X you might be able to get Terminal to do this. Try typing “man tip”) to get a data connection between the two. Check out more info at:

www.ordersomewherechaos.com/rosso/fetish/m102/howto.shtml

06.27.03

Localized Suckage

Posted in General at 10 pm

Some things suck. They suck even more when you really can’t talk about them out loud.

Some people suck. They suck even though you want to tell them that they in the hopes that they would stop sucking.

Some computer industrial designs suck. It happens.

All this suckage is localized in either time, space, or economic impact.

Tomorrow will not suck, as I will be in a parade.