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September 30, 2003
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How cool is this?
This site explains how this dude, Trevor Blackwell, built his own Segway scooter (he is a professor who works on robots not just a kid who stuck two wheels on a board).
The results are quite good and ended up costing him much less than the $5000 that a real Segway costs.
Quite impressive!
Posted by Guy at 12:38 AM
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Warning: geek alert!
A professor offered extra credit to anybody in his class who would replace the lowest layer in the OSI networking model with a set of bongo drums (in order to show that the lower layers of the OSI model can be replaced with any form of media without affecting the layers above it).
After eight weeks a group of his students had implemented TCP/IP using bongo drums as the lowest layer!
It works at the "amazing" speed of 2bps and as one of their classmates put it: "dial-up has never looked so good!".
Posted by Guy at 09:50 AM
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The Recruit could have been an excellent movie but they made it too complicated and didn't bother to explain everything at the end.
I'm all for making the plot interesting by keeping everything mysterious to the degree that you aren't sure who's who and what's going on, but only if by the end everything is clear and you understand exactly what happened.
This movie was very complicated (in a good way) but when it was over you weren't sure exactly what happened.
I need closure damn it!
 
Posted by Guy at 08:45 AM
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September 28, 2003
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This dude's wife suffers from repetitive stress problems in her fingers and wrists.
She mentioned that she finds old-fashioned mechanical typewriters much easier on her fingers because they offer gradual resistance rather than the feeling of moving through air then hitting a wall, like most computer keyboards.
So the dude bought an old typewriter and converted it into a working keyboard.
The pictures of it look really cool and the thing is is still fully functional as a typewriter!
Posted by Guy at 11:14 AM
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September 27, 2003
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Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse and Keyboard
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Actually the full name of this is Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse and Wireless Multimedia Keyboard.
I ordered this set online from Netaction.co.il and it arrived pretty quick (in less than a week I think).
It did come in an OEM box (instead of a nice fancy retail package) but I did know that before I ordered.
The box contained the optical wireless mouse, wireless keyboard, keyboard armrest (a long strip of black plastic that attaches to the bottom of the keyboard), one receiver (that works for both the keyboard and the mouse), four AA Energizer batteries, and a getting started booklet (with four readable pages).
A drivers CD and maybe a manual would have been nice.
Out of the box I popped in the batteries (2 for the keyboard and 2 for the mouse), attached the receiver to the PC, and what do you know: it works!
Both the mouse and the keyboard worked without needing to reboot (this is Windows 2000 you know) and seemed to work perfectly.
I walked around the room a bit and discovered that the range for both the keyboard and the mouse are about 2 meters (about 6 feet) from the receiver.
Then I started playing with the extra keyboard buttons (the ones at the top) and noticed that other than the web and email buttons nothing worked.
A quick Google pointed me to the Microsoft keyboard download page where I was able to download "Microsoft IntelliType Pro"(the software for the keyboard) and "Microsoft IntelliPoint"(the software for the mouse).
Both are about 10MB each so as long as they are on the Microsoft site I guess you don't really need the CD (but who knows when they'll disappear from there).
I installed the keyboard software (IntelliType Pro) and even without a reboot all the extra keyboard buttons started working.
The only button that didn't work for some reason was the Messenger button.
But when you press it a IntelliType Pro screen opens and you can easily fix the problem by manually assigning the button to the MSN Messenger executable (or any other command or program, for that matter).
Installing IntelliPoint wasn't as easy.
I started the installation and everything seemed ok but suddenly (out of the blue) I get a blue screen of death!
After my computer started up I tried to install again and the installation told me that I already have IntelliPoint installed and that if I want to reinstall it I need to remove the previous version.
So I uninstalled IntelliPoint and started the installation again (hoping not to see the BSOD again).
Luckily the installation was completed successfully this time and when finished it announced that it needed to reboot my computer in order to finish the installation.
Ok, I rebooted the system again and when it loaded I noticed a little mouse icon in the system tray.
Other than that I couldn't see any other difference in the way that the mouse worked (it was working perfectly well before I installed the software but I thought that, like with the keyboard's software, I would get some added value from installing it).
Oh well, at least everything was working properly.
As for using the keyboard:
overall it's pretty handy not having a wire tying you to the computer but with the keyboard it doesn't really matter (I plan on using the wireless keyboard and mouse for controlling a multi-media PC from the couch so I will be using the keyboard from pretty far).
The top buttons are very useful, especially the media related ones (play, volume, mute, pause...) and you can assign any command or program to any extra button that you want.
They'll be even more useful once I get my multi-media PC hooked up.
As for the downsides of the keyboard:
In order to make some space for the extra buttons at the top, they needed to move some buttons around a bit (which can never be a good idea on a keyboard that you are used to using on a daily basis).
Check out what they did with the DEL key:
I don't really mind that the DEL key is huge it's just that they also changed around the normal order of the Home, Del, Ins... keys, which makes finding the End key horrible.
You have to look down in order to get your finger near it otherwise you hit the huge DEL key (why the hell did Microsoft feel the need to make the DEL key so big?) and since the order of the keys is different it will take a while to remember them by heart.
Since this isn't the only keyboard that I use I'm probably going to have a hard time getting used to that.
Another keyboard "feature" that is quite the contrary is the dual functionality of the F keys.
What they did was give each F key dual functionality: the standard and extra functionality like "New", "Copy", "Paste"...
The added functionality would come in quite useful if they weren't using the F keys but were added as extra buttons on the keyboard (like the multimedia extra buttons).
Then they would come in very useful since these are common operations that just about every program today uses.
But since they added these operations to the F key you have to choose whether you want to use the standard F functionality or the extra operations.
You select whether to use the standard F keys or not by using the "F-lock" button. The F-lock is a dual mode key (like the caps lock key).
When it's on then the F keys are the regular F functions and when the F-lock is off then the F keys are the extra copy/paste/.... operations.
This may sound pretty simple but it's a real pain to use.
The whole idea behind these extra function keys like copy, paste, undo, etc is to have quick, easy access to these functions.
Therefor to make it quick you have the F-lock off most of the time (which means that the F keys are the extra functions).
While I was testing out the keyboard I hit ALT+F4 in order to close a window but since the F-lock was off it did a "New" instead.
Then I tried to hit the escape key but got the "My Documents" instead.
So instead of closing one window I ended up with three open windows that I didn't want!
I'm going to have to get used to working with the F-lock and these extra buttons at the top.
Another disappointment from the keyboard is the low quality plastic.
I'm not saying that the plastic is a disgrace it's just that I had expected high quality plastic (like the Microsoft Force Feedback Steering Wheel) and was quite disappointed when the keyboard's plastic was a bit cheap.
One last rant I have about the keyboard is that the caps lock, num lock, and F-lock lights are on the receiver not on the keyboard itself.
I understand that they did this in order to save the battery power of the keyboard but it's still an annoyance, especially if you plan to sit far from the computer (which is what I plan to do).
As for the mouse:
It's a pretty standard optical mouse, nothing special.
It is pretty great that it doesn't have a wire since the wire on the mouse always has a tendency to tug on the mouse.
This is a major improvement (unlike the keyboard where loosing the wire didn't make much of a difference).
Since the mouse itself is pretty standard there isn't much to say about it other than two downsides:
- I would have enjoyed a few more extra buttons on the mouse. Nice to have but not a deal breaker.
- The mouse jumps around a bit every once in a while but it's not too annoying.
The one fear I had about getting a wireless keyboard and mouse system was the battery life.
I don't know how long the batteries will hold but I do hope that they will last a while.
The last thing I need is that my keyboard and mouse stop working because of old batteries.
I also hope there is some sort of visible indication that the batteries are running low before they run out (I can't see any sort of indicator on either the keyboard or the mouse so I can only hope that the software will alert me when the time is up).
Overall the keyboard and mouse are of pretty decent quality and seem quite good.
All I need is to get used to the extra keyboard keys and the different key placement.
If I can and the battery lifespan is decent then this set will be an excellent buy.
For now I give it
Posted by Guy at 02:28 AM
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The Dyson telescope game (yea the same Dyson from the vacuum cleaners) is basically a way for Dyson to promote their telescope (whatever that is).
The game is an online puzzle game where you have to use these telescopes to push and pull a ball into a hole on the board (it's much less complicated than it sounds, just give it a look).
I played up to level 20 and got pretty bored with it.
There's also a version that you can download to your computer but I didn't check it out.
Posted by Guy at 12:12 AM
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September 26, 2003
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When it's my to time to be flushed down the toilet you could have a motorcycle sidecar hearse drag my rotting corpse around for a while.
Too bad it's only in Britain.
Posted by Guy at 11:03 PM
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Just a shout out to all 'em Jews:
Shana Tova!
(ok for all the gentiles in the house, also have a great year ;-)
Posted by Guy at 11:50 AM
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September 25, 2003
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Check out the pictures of these cool contact lenses.
I'm sure these would come in very handy in a job interview ;-)
(those fire lenses really go with my red dress :o)
Posted by Guy at 09:35 PM
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This dude created an auto car cover for his Corvette.
Basically he hooked up some sheets to his electric garage door in a way that when the garage door closes it automatically covers his car.
Pretty neat.
Posted by Guy at 09:21 PM
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Joel Spolsky's company (Fog Creek) just moved into their new offices and to quote Joel: "Most software managers know what good office space would be like, and they know they don't have it, and can't have it. Office space seems to be the one thing that nobody can get right and nobody can do anything about...Well, it's my own damn company and I can do something about it, so I did."
Check out what went into the design of the bionic office.
Posted by Guy at 02:23 PM
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Google has added another new tool to its Google Labs: Search by Location.
Basically all you do is enter your search terms and a location (street address, city, or zip code) and Google will spit out a results in that area and show them on a map.
BTW: there are lots of innovative search tools at Google Labs.
Posted by Guy at 07:36 AM
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September 24, 2003
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This short spelling quiz has 15 commonly misspelled words (with two choices for each word).
You'll be surprised by how you aren't sure how to spell these common words.
Posted by Guy at 08:45 PM
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Eliyon Networking has created a search engine for finding past employees and employees' history.
They gather all their information automatically by scraping the web and collecting and matching information about people from different web sites.
The results are pretty amazing for an automatic system.
Posted by Guy at 02:47 PM
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And here's yet another game!
I played Trial Bike Pro (or a similar version) a while ago and found it very addictive (at least until you are able to complete the course).
Today I ran into this version and checked it out.
I can tell you that it's much harder than the previous version that I played (and that version was pretty hard too).
Give it a trial (pun intended :o).
Posted by Guy at 12:38 AM
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