An interesting modification you can make to your wifi external attenna that is supposed to improve reception directionally.
Speed Climbing Timing - Part 1 Sensors | IR Sensors, Speed timing | sawdust.see-do.org
A build diary for putting together a solid state Speed Climbing timer by a Dad for his kids events.
I picked up a new toy over the weekend. It's the first tech toy I've purchased in over a year. I think the last thing prior to this was when we replaced the broken TV. I don't count cell phones since they are pretty much ubiquitous now.
I got a netbook.
Yep. One of those little mini laptops with the tiny everything; screen, harddrive, keyboard (especially keyboard). It's all teeny tiny.
But it's so cool!
I had been thinking about getting a laptop for a while now. I couldn't really justify spending the kind of money I would need to spend unless I also used it to replace my current desktop. I figured that if I made my new laptop my primary PC gaming platform I could justify spending more on it but that would mean no new desktop box. And I am kinda old-school about that. I've always had a desktop machine and, except for work machines, never owned a new laptop. I've messed around with a couple of hand-me-down laptops but they were always so underpowered by the time I got them that I really couldn't do much with them. And I'm one of those people that doesn't like to put any personal stuff on my work laptop. So I've been getting by with smart phones and palm PDAs for years. But I recently realized that the majority of non-work computer time I spend nowadays is all cloud computing. You know, facebook, google docs, gmail. It's all online on the Internet. I also really haven't been using my PC for gaming since I got my Xbox 360. Now that they have the multiplayer on the 360 worked out so well I really haven't been buying or playing anything on the PC. That's when I realized that I could cheaply fix my tech jones by picking up a netbook.
So I spent the better part of a week researching the options out there. I originally was going to go with a Dell. A Inspiron Mini 9 or 10. I was even considering a model with no hard drive, just an SSD (Solid Stae Device). I was figuring that it would be a lot more rugged that way. Also, I get a discount through work. But when I actually put it together on the Dell site the cost had jumped to over $500 and the delivery date was sometime in May. No thank you. So, having received an email from my local CompUSA/Tiger Direct with info about their in-stock netbooks I decided to see what one was like before I considered ordering one. The only other place in town that carried netbooks in stock was Fry's which luckily is about a quarter mile from the CompUSA. So I decide to do a little comparison shopping. Turned out that both places had the same model I was considering; the Acer Aspire One 10.2. And they both had it at the same price. So I went to CompUSA first and then travelled over to Fry's. Fry's not only had the netbook but they were running discounts on accessories if you put them on the same ticket as the laptop. So I was able to get a cool MS folding wireless USB mouse for $10 off too. Also since I was at Fry's I figured it was a good time to check out what it would cost to max out the memory in the netbook. No sense running it underpowered. Turns out, it was only another 20 bucks to double the RAM to 2 GB. So I picked that up (and a RAM upgrade for my wife's big old Inspiron 1720) and ran for my life, escaping to the tune of around $400 for the netbook memory and mouse. I plan on going back next paycheck and getting a case and a USB external DVD RW drive for it.
So I spent the rest of the weekend loading it up with all kinds of lightweight applications and cleaning off the useless programms. Made it run like a top. Now the Missus wants one. She loves how small it is and once I told her that you could hack Mac OSX onto it she started drooling. So it probably wont be long before we end up with another one. Heh. A matched set.
Now maybe I can start posting to here on a regular basis again.