Did I mention I bought a laptop? A nice HP Pavilion dv6500 w/ an AMD 64 Athlon X2 processor. I’ve got it running Ubuntu and Windows XP, but mostly I’m using Ubuntu. I had to hack around and compile/configure the correct driver for my wifi and sound card, but I’ve got the hardware all sorted out now. I’m working on getting the system setup to be a good development machine for me.

So far I’ve installed Perl, Python, and Ruby on Rails. Over the weekend I’ll get PHP installed and also set up an Apache webserver and MySQL for testing purposes. Oh, the fun I’ll have!

I’m staying busy lately aside from work. The English-language practice on Mondays is dying off because nobody comes, but I’m still going to Bible study/potluck on Wednesday nights. Friday nights I’ve had assorted activities; a couple weekends ago I hung out w/ a couple of guys from SaturdayHouse. Tomorrow I’ll be heading to a gathering of “Seattle Tweeters” — Seattle users of Twitter — because a girl I met last Saturday (at SaturdayHouse/Six Hour Startup) invited me to come since I’ve been using Twitter a lot and messaging her and some other SH people on there.

Plus, coming up in March… a party for Battlestar Galactica. Oh yeah!

I’ve found community. I love it.

Categories: Life, Tech
Tags: laptop, programming

According to my current iteration of my blog, this is my one-thousandth post.

I never thought I’d see the New England Patriots lose Super Bowl XLII to the New York Giants. I gotta say, that was the best Super Bowl I’ve ever seen. Down-to-the-wire drama and a huge upset — perhaps the biggest in Super Bowl History. Plus, I’ll get to tells kids in twenty years that I saw the greatest team in NFL history lose the only game that matters.

I saw the game with a couple of friends from church (Aaron & Jessica) — two of the few people my own age. They have a lot of friends there age which was nice. Also, I will not complain when I’m invited to social gatherings that include even one available female my age. It’s probably the first time that’s happened since I moved here.

HDTVs rock. I want one, but then I think about starving children in Africa. But I don’t think starving children anywhere are able to consume HDTVs so I feel a little less bad about wanting one.

So FLAC files sound awesome. I decided to rip Radiohead’s new album In Rainbows to FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) to see if the sound quality is really that much better. It does sound a bit better. At some point I want to repartition my hard drives and perhaps slap a fat 1TB (Terabyte, baby, Terabyte = one thousand gigabytes) drive in my computer so I can go crazy on backing up all my albums and DVDs in the best quality possible.

The only problem with FLAC is that it’s complicated if not impossible to get iTunes to play FLAC. So what I’ve done is I’m using Winamp is the player/library for my FLAC files and storing them all on one of my other drive partitions to keep it all sorted and simple. Of course, I also created MP3 copies of the files for use w/ the iPod. With the demise of DRM though, I’m more open to considering other portable media players, but I can’t say I’ve seen anything more impressive than the iPod.

I’m considering purchasing a laptop I can load up w/ Linux. Partially to be nerdy and indie and open source, but I’ve become a lot more familiar w/ the command line over the years and it’d also be a much better machine for doing web development. Anyway, this also feeds into the desire to find alternatives to iTunes/iPod because Apple isn’t exactly friendly w/ Linux.

Of course, I’d take a Macbook if I could get one, but cost remains prohibitive. It’d cost me twice as much to get the Apple as it would for a comparatively powerful Dell w/ dual-core Athlon chips, 2GB RAM, DVD-burner, 120gb hard drive, wifi.

I’m impressed w/ how busy I’ve stayed this weekend. I spent 15 hours out on Friday, 9 hours out on Saturday, and 9 hours out today.

Social Life FTW!!!

Categories: Friends, Life, Tech
Tags: Aaron & Jessica, FLAC, football, iPod, iTunes, laptop, Super Bowl, Winamp

I’m going to buy Isaac’s Apple iBook G4 1.4ghz 14″ laptop w/ 512MB RAM, 80GB hard-drive, and Superdrive (CD/DVD burner). Not the freshest machine on the face of the planet, but it’s the cheapest way to get into an Apple laptop without spending $1000+. Plus, I’m planning to upgrade the RAM to 1.5ghz and upgrade it to Leopard to give it a bit of a life-expectancy boost.

This isn’t the first time I’ve bought used Apple products from Isaac. Previously, I bought his iPod Mini 4GB when he got an iPod Color 20GB, and then later bought his iPod Color 20GB when he got tired of iPods. I’ve saved quite a bit by chewing on used Apples.

I’m excited about getting a laptop because it will enable me to take documents portable and work on them wherever I happen to be. Recently, I started hanging out with a technology community on Saturdays. People sit around coding on their laptops, tossing out ideas for things, asking questions, working on projects, eating food, playing games, and doing just about anything.

Yesterday, for example, some of the guys there started talking about an idea for a new website to post random thoughts, secrets, and ideas anonymously. It’s going to run on this complicated backend of dozens of variables to help decide what content to show, narrow down the sort of content you’re interested in seeing (or not), and attempt to build a sense of community. We came up with a name for the site right there, one of the guys registered it, and then the coding began. Not sure how much long-term involvement I’ll have in the project, but I’m hoping to help with testing and maybe some coding.

But yeah. Can’t wait to get it.

Categories: Life
Tags: Apple, Isaac, laptop