I had to take the kittens’ mother to the local animal shelter :( She and Baby were not making any progress, and having her continually meowing 24/7 (even between mouthfuls of food) and efforts to mask baby’s scent with her own (by peeing everywhre) was just too much. Shame – she’s a really, really nice cat, otherwise :(
Archive for October, 2009
Touchy feely (10gui)
October 22, 200910 gui is an attempt to rethink the GUI, particularly mouse operation, based on a touch-based input device. Instead of touch screens, they use a separate touch-pad (like an artist’s tablet).
Their GUI makes me squirm a little: it’s not what I’m used to, but I can just about see it. The Amiga user in me wishes they used vertical panning instead of horizontal…
I just don’t think it goes far enough. The paradigm shift we need is a two-way, touch-based input device. “Touch” is a two way interaction. It is both an application and a sensing.
What the tablet needs is tactile output: the ability to raise pixels on its surface — like a Haptic Reader.
Microsoft hate
October 22, 2009When they released Vista, I thought it was sucky and advised people not to buy it. Clearly the only possibility is that I hate Microsoft. Anything Microsoft does I’m going to spout bile about – and then probably pirate it anyway. It’s not like you’ll find me loving the free Win7 releases so much that I pre-ordered the release 3 months ago.
Doh!
My biggest hopes for Windows 7 are that (a) I’m not going to have to reinstall everything over my RC1 :), (b) it drives down the cost of touch screens… :) And that short list is brought to you by RC1 meeting my needs and expectations and making me one very happy customer.
(Note: That is my own, personal, pre-ordered copy of Win7 arrived today from Amazon)
Online harassment: illegal
October 16, 2009So who do I thank?
October 16, 2009A fairly heavy box arrived for me at the office the other day but with no note or meaningful shipping info. So I’ve no idea who sent it, but it was an incredibly nice gesture which I will be appreciating deeply this weekend :)
Ouchbox
October 13, 2009$85 for a 1000Gb drive from NewEgg.
$135 for a 120Gb drive from Microsoft.
If it was $150 for a 500Gb drive, that would make sense. But 120Gb?
What they don’t tell you is that it includes a transfer kit. Ok, so that adds maybe $20-$30.
But presumably the drives themselves are obsolete by today’s standards, hiking the price up. I mean, that has to be it? Cause Microsoft aren’t daft enough to sell a poxy hard drive upgrade for close to half the price of a PS3 complete with 120Gb drive – are they?
Update
October 11, 2009Last couple of weeks have been fairly brutal for me. Last week in particular, I had to switch timezones – more-or-less – to provide our Chinese partner with some support for stress tests. First impression was scary, but it was quickly resolved as a data issue and we got them up and running. Then there was the fire and stuff. And somewhere over last weekend I got a bug or something that had me running a mild fever, which kept me from sleeping because every place I tried to get comfortable became unbearably hot after a few seconds.
So, not the best time for me to take in kittens. Especially since mommy started meowing back-to-back, non-stop, apart from when she’s asleep or I was petting her.
The TV arriving should have been a nice little injection of quality of life, but I didn’t even get chance to use it. And when I did, TWC was only sending my SD channels. Sigh.
I finally managed to take an actual day off on Friday. Chilled with the kittens, found out that I had a cable deal that specifically omitted HD (oops), got that sorted and swapped Showtime for HBO: I’m never watched ShowTime – I’d even forgotten I had it.
So I managed to record some HD shows on my TiVo and watch them on my Sony Aquos 46in. The kittens came and napped on me while I watched Dino shows from NGC and Apollo 13. God that was awesome :)
Played some games and demos on the 360 – Brutal Legend was fun, but I can’t stand first person shooters on consoles and fight night 4 just didn’t do anything for me (surprising given how much I enjoyed 3). Gonna spend more time playing with the kittens I think.
Lil’ momma … Well, I’ve stopped letting her in. She meows inside and outside, whether the door is open or closed. So she can stay outside. She seems to be getting fed. And she’s spending longer and longer away. I let the kittens out to see her, but she and baby don’t get on. Baby is starting to show a tiny fraction of tolerance for the kitties. All 3 ate some ham out of the same bowl for a while, but after a minute or two Baby retreated. She’s stopped swiping at them now.
She’s been pretty ill the last few days, I was getting ready to take her to the vet tomorrow afternoon. But she started eating again yesterday. I think it may have been having lil’ momma around stressing her out. Still, I need to get the kitties to the vet some time this week, have ‘em checked and spayed.
Frosty is full of energy while Sooty tends to get tired faster. Gonna get them some more toys this week too. And I’m gonna get an automatic litter tray for them. Baby won’t have anything to do with it but I could use a little less kitty-poop smell ;)
I told you your RAM was bad…
October 7, 2009Thank you for less than nothing, TWC…
October 7, 2009The TimeWarner Cable guy arrived around mid-day. Nice guy, we chatted amicably. One of the early things he told me was “I’ve never installed Cable Cards before”. Apparently he had no training on them either. In the back of my mind I couldn’t help thinking “boy, I’m glad they charged me $40 to have him install them instead of me”.
