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Technology’s Infestation of my Life

Examples of how technology has permeated every single bit of my life.

Toshiba’s New Tablet PC

Toshiba recently released the next generation of their award-winning Tablet PC. Engadget said that it is called the Toshiba Tecra M4. It follows on the heels of the Satellite R10/15 Tablet PC and Protege M200 (which is the one I have). The specs on this make me oogle a lot:

  • 14-inch, 1400 x 1050 display
  • 1.73GHz Pentium M processor
  • either a 64MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 6200 TE or 128MB 6600 TE graphics card
  • 512MB of DDR2 RAM
  • a 60GB hard drive
  • built-in 802.11b/g WiFi
  • a DVD+R drive

I would considering getting this laptop, except that I don’t have the money, so I can’t. It’s also significantly bigger than my current laptop. However, I would probably be able to play games such as Counter-Strike: Source on it. I would also want to beef up the RAM to a gig and the hard drive to 80GB, however it appears that Toshiba isn’t taking custom orders yet.

UPC Podcast Developed/Released

For those not in the know, a Podcast is an RSS-based feed that is monitored by a program, such as iPodder. The program then downloads the audio files whenever they are updated. This is particularly handy if you use an iPod, as is my case. Whenever I sync my ‘Pod, it automatically downloads any new podcasts I have.

So, UPC posts the an audio file of the Sunday sermon sometime on Monday. I want to listen to these sermons, but often forget to download them. However, UPC doesn’t have a podcast feed setup…yet. So I crafted one. It’s actually pretty cool. Every Tuesday, at 12:00AM Pacific Time the server runs script that creates an entry for the previous Sunday. The file is then downloaded and the ID3 data is extracted and saved in a text file. The RSS file is built and saved, free for anyone, but primarily for me, to use. Enjoy another wonder, and perhaps even useful service from Andrew Ferguson dot NET and the folks (i.e. Me) at Fergcorp!

UPC Sunday Sermon Feed: http://www.andrewferguson.net/upc_podcast.xml

Nikon D50

Engadget has some pictures of it, via PhotographyBlog via DPhoto. I’m blogging about the D50 because I want it (wink wink mom and dad). However, it is also an afordable camera. In short, the D50 is designed to fit between the “point and shoot” digitals and the entry level SLR digitals. I suppose you might call the D50 the entry entry level camera.

However, Costco is now listing their Canon EOS Digital Rebel 6.3MP camera at $769.99. Seeing as the EOS is an entry level digital SLR, and pretty good digital point and shoot runs around $300, the D50 should hopefully fall in somewhere around the $500 mark. Hopefully. The D50 is rumored to have a 6MP CCD, 2-inch LCD monitor, and, interestingly enough, store images on SD cards, rather than CompactFlash. My Toshiba has a built-in SD reader and my current Nikon P-and-S uses SD, so that is sort of a big selling point. However, color reproduction is really the final say…for the most part. I also hope that the D50 supports Adobe’s Digital Negative format.

Everything should be made clear when Nikon offically announces the D70 on the 20th of April…only a few days left!

New Phone: 11.6438562

Ok. That number is a joke. I got the LG 3200 and if you type that into Google, it will return the log of 3200.

Anyways, my old 4400 broke a few weeks ago while I was skiing. This is really sort of begining to be funny because I can’t seem to keep the same cell phone for more than a year. So a few days, I was the winning bidder on eBay. The phone came today and it was a simple matter to activate it. Although, after I was done with the Verizon rep, he told me I could just have done it online…I’ll remember that for next time.

Now begins the tedious task of transfering all the numbers from my old phone to my new phone. This should take some time.

Jackson Hole is Go For Launch

The trip to Jackson Hole was in doubt up to just about 10 minutes ago. Even as late as this morning, I talked Cassy in my NHV class who works at the Outdoor Rec Center and she said that they still need 8 more people by 6pm tonight. Anyways, Rob Thompson, Director of the ORC sent out an email that sayiung, “I have great news. Despite our low numbers we are heading to Jackson as planned.” He didn’t specify if they were able to aquire 8 more people, but we are going none-the-less. I’m taking my digital camera, a 128 MB SD Card, 64 MB SD Card, and my latest toy (which I got a few weeks ago), the Belkin iPod Media Reader. It allows me to transfer photos from my camera to my iPod. I was able to purchase it when I won some items at an RHA Casino night a few weeks back. I took them to the CSM Book Store and exchanged them, and some money, for the device. Belkin also makes a version that uses the cameras USB cable, but that is just one more thing to lose and it also wastes the cameras batteries.

Lights, Sound, Action!

A battle of the bands is going on right now. I’m not much of a hard rock/punk enthusiast, but I did happen to wondering in to the Ballrooms while they were setting up and lent them a hand while they setup the audio and lighting. The event, like many other activities on campus, is put on by the Mines Activity Council (MAC). Unfortunatly, they don’t have the appreciation of sound, and light for that matter, that I do. So I’ve been thinking about joinging them so I can make the world a better place.

Well, It’s Done!

Just got off the phone with Dell and the server it’s on its way. I’m actually really excitied about this. Having and running my own web site for the past (pause while counting years on finger) 5 years or so has been one of my favorite things to do and really is my hobby, so I don’t mind throwing this kind of money into it. This pretty much does lock me into hosting my site for the next 5 years (average lifetime of a computer), so I won’t have to upgrade again until I at least get out of college, which is a good thing. This server marks a couple high points for Fergcorp and AFdN. It’s the most expensive thing I’ve ever purchased, it’s one of the newest things I’ve ever purchased in terms of hardware, and it will substantially increase storage and computing power (about 40 fold for storage and about 8 fold for power).

So here are some things to look very forward to in the next 2 weeks and the coming 5 years. First, the email and web server will be recombined to form one server. The name of the server will be blackhawk (I just came up with that name). The new server will run Windows Server 2003. Why? First becuase I know how to use Windows and second because I have a copy that I’ve been wanting to use for some time now. Because I’m using WS2K3, all video files will FINALLY be streaming. I will also be hosting a SharePoint Server for some Office 2K3 integration I’ve been wanting to try. Email may or may not be upgraded, I haven’t decided yet. However, I will be accepting from friends to host web sites for a small fee on my server (remember, this thing costs a bundle). Current users will see no manditory cost imposed on them. Perhaps the coolest thing will be faster access times. 2 80GB SATA RAID 1 drives will be providing content to the latest build of Apache, mySQL, Active Perl, and everything else. I expect to see dynamic creation times drop SIGNIFICANTLY. The “Going Live” is set for March 25th at 12PM PST (not MST). Just like Bungie, I will probably not make this deadline. 18 Days and counting!