The Betacantrips Travelogue

File under: quality Apple hardware. The post on Slashdot.

An exclusive KIRO 7 Investigation reveals an alarming number of Apple brand iPod MP3 players have suddenly burst into flames and smoke, injuring people and damaging property. It’s an investigation that Apple has apparently been trying to keep out of the public eye. It took more than 7 months for KIRO 7 Consumer Investigator Amy Clancy to get her hands on documents concerning Apple’s iPods from the Consumer Product Safety Commission because Apple’s lawyers filed exemption after exemption.

OK, so it’s a pop culture reference. But.. yes! From Dresden Codak.

Check out this guest comic I just did for good old Kate Beaton!

With regard to: frivolously buying exactly the things I want. The original post.

Like anyone else, I try to find the best deal on things. Sometimes the best deal isn’t the thing that’s cheapest up front. I work for a company that makes some of the world’s best lawn mowers, for instance, but they aren’t the cheapest.

Anyhow: after a series of cheap $20-$50 Walmart fans failing in various ways (buttons falling off, motors starting to take a minute to get up to half speed, etc.), I bought my first Vornado fan back in 1997. They’re expensive, but I think worth it in the long run.

I would have bought this for sure. The post on Engadget Mobile. (Edit: the post is now long gone, of course.)

Is it a piece of jewellery, a watch phone, or a resurrected and re-imagined Nokia 3650? The Wigitel W3 wants you to believe it’s all of the above, and contrary to popular belief, it’s available to own now. 4,799 Czech Koruna, or $260 in real cash money, buys you a ticket to the hottest show in somebody’s town: a 128 x 128 pixel internal screen, infinitesimally small external OLED display, Bluetooth, microSD expandability and a wildly unintuitive keyboard. It might not necessarily make supermodels swoon, but there’s a fair chance the wearer of this gem will draw much envy at his next MMORPG convention appearance. And seriously, who can’t dig a perk like that?

More pictures from another source.

Note to self: one day, give a tech talk. The original post.

A certain species of tech talk goes like: “Here’s a product/methodology/tool I hack on, here’s what it’s good for and how/why you should add it to your toolkit.” It’s an honorable and useful presentation topic. As you prepare your talk, think about the questions your audience will have in the back of its head. If you can address them in the talk itself, great. If not, prepare answers for use in the questions-and-answers session.

Going to be reading this for sure. The original post.

“Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs,” by Leonard Richardson, Strange Horizons, 13 July 2009.

“I want to buy a gun,” said the Thymomenoraptor. He moved his foreclaw along the glass case of pistols, counting them off: one, two, three, four. “That one.” He tapped the case; the glass squeaked.

“Why would a dinosaur need a gun?” asked the shop owner.

“Self-defense.”

The owner’s gaze dropped to the three-inch claw that had chipped his display case.

“These are killing claws,” said the dinosaur, whose name was Tark. “For sheep, or cows. I merely want to disable an attacker with a precision shot to the leg or other uh, limbal region.”

Edit: Definitely a story worth reading.

Use of “un-fuck” in the wild. The original post.

I think in terms of features that I’m done. I just need to wire up creation of accounts, and the submission of tasks via email. Then un-fuck my actual code.

Today’s AppleGeeks Lite is pretty humorous.

Hot! But.. what? The post on JWZ’s livejournal

An early peek at Robert Rodriguez’s next dangerous overscraping of the bottom of the cultural barrel:.

Neat links from Planet Debian. The original post.

It gives me a framework for thinking about:

• How I lived, rent-free, for years on land I didn’t own.
• Why I don’t think about asking for money when I fix someone’s computer or help them get something working or host something for them on the web.
• Why I’ve not bought land to put my yurt on, and keep being unsure it’s a good idea.