A Stupid View

I was watching BBC News 24’s ‘Click’ technology program (Or BBC World depending on where you are) and caught an interesting review of Light or Ultra-Portable laptops. The premise really was to show off the MacBook Air, and quite frankly it looked good but would not be very practical at all. It has only one USB port, no Ethernet port, no Optical Drive and only an 80GB hard-drive. So if I wanted to use a wired-network, I need to use up my only USB drive on a Ethernet-Adapter… Which is nice so long as you don’t need the port for anything else. You get what you pay for really I suppose, all £1100 of it! I think that this is over-priced, but with most things Apple, you pay for the name.

The other tease I saw in the same feature was the Asus eee PC, or as it is being branded in the UK, the RM Asus eee PC. It runs a specialised Linux OS, which means it isn’t Windows and it doesn’t come with Windows faults OR more importantly it’s price-tag! It comes with a couple of USB ports, an Ethernet adapter and even wireless and a webcam on some models. Prices start from a jaw-dropping £169 as well; it is simply the most sought after piece of technology by Mums and Dads up and down the land as it is small (only has a 7″ screen, which means it isn’t exactly good for surfing the net, but hey, its no bigger than a textbook!), cheap and practically impossible to truly break unless you throw it at a wall. This is because the laptop has no hard-drive. What it comes with is a Solid-State Drive similar to your little USB data keys that you carry round in your pocket. These however are much more reliable and can be written to far more I am led to believe, so outlasting your USB key quite a bit! Trouble is is that sizes start from 2GB and go up to 8GB, not including the OS I don’t believe. So not one for big files! The media slot on the side though can support flash media up to 32GB however. Or just use that trusty data key

I am tempted to buy one, but for £200 I could buy some of my new PC… Or an Xbox! Ah, a Dilemma.

Like most people, I like to laugh. The strange and wonderful thing about laughing is that it makes you feel good. So on that basis, lets all laugh at some funny stuff!

I have to visit a couple of sites daily to keep up with the ever-present torrent of material they produce. By this I mean visiting the people’s favourite sites like YouTube or Break; but you already know these because you too visit them on a daily basis. So instead of mentioning them (Oh Sh*t, I just did), I’ll show you some stuff you probably didn’t know already!

My first site is a site you may have heard of, or at least you may have seen one of their creations floating around on some forum or in your favourite social networking website. I am talking about the dark and cynical world of the web-comic Cyanide and Happiness.

Cyanide and Happiness can be found at http://www.explosm.net which hosts not only the web-comic itself, but also a series of short flash-movies in the same genre and a forum. Cyanide and Happiness can be quite offensive if you’re a bit uptight and preachy as it deals with controversial subject matter, including frequent references to sex, death, race, disease, religion and violence. The characters rarely have names simply because for the most part they don’t need to. The humour in the comics would not pass on television or in a print-form, but online it seems to have achieved an almost viral status.

British-folk may have come across the style of drawing before in the adverts for Orange Wednesdays. These were done by the creators of Cyanide and Happiness, but, quite clearly, do not have the same level of offence attached to them!

A new comic comes out every day, so take five minutes and visit Explosm!

The first post of a blog is always a messy affair. It always feels like it is born out of necessity and it feels forced. Unfortunately, this one is no different.

I did some research before posting this and got some ideas about what to write; goals, about yourself and why you are blogging came up again and again, so based on that…

My name is in the domain people. If you can’t figure that out then I suggest you don’t read anymore as some of these posts will be a bit technical and require a bit of brain function; the type beyond scratching your nuts atleast. The main reason I started blogging years ago was the idea to keep people up-to-date on what I was doing and how I was. It was personal and really quite unnecessary as I could simply tell the audience in person what I did last Thursday. I gave up posting new entries once I realised this and I’ve since taken the blog down as I feel like I don’t want the whole world to see what I got up to in my late teens!

The intended goals of starting this blog are to get my point across on current affairs, to share my experiences in the world of Computer Science and other guff on technology as well as linking to and commenting on some of the brave and funny stuff out in the ether that is the interweb.

The global aim here is to share experiences and views, so feel free to comment and share your views and don’t be shy! You can always use a pseudonym!

And here ends the force-fed first post. I hope you enjoy the rest!