I took this picture on my run yesterday. The dark clouds over Mt Diablo just requested a picture.
Apparently, you don't even have to be driving in Palo Alto to get stopped by the police if you happen to be colored. I can't do anything but laugh.
Because I'm insanely excited that HP is making a computer that I actually want, here's even more coverage. Linux Devices has some impressive pictures of the Linux version, and hints that the Linux one may even have higher specs than the Windows one. Imagine that. Even better, Laptop Mag has a video of the Linux one in action. Apparently, the Linux thing is based on Ubuntu, which is promising. Here's the weird thing: No one on HP's internal Linux mailing list seems to know anything about the Linux software on this thing (or they're not allowed to tell the rest of us), which is really odd. Anyways, hopefully I'll find out more as January approaches.
I just had flash cause Opera to have a conniption fit. And you know
what? The only thing that crashed was that one tab. The entire rest of
the browser went on working just fine.
they sure have injected a lot of awesome into it in the meantime. (And try using ctrl-tab and ctrl-shift-tab in Opera sometime. It sure
seems like Opera has beaten Google to the punch with the whole "you've
got some of your OS in my browser" thing)
HP has released the new Mini Note 1000. It actually looks pretty nice, and has an Intel Atom in there as well as an Intel graphics card, so it should be pretty easy to get running with Linux. They also made it available with a 10" screen, which is a big improvement. Yes, it's still only 1024x600, but that's not all that bad, especially in something that weighs 2 pounds. I'd like to see what reviewers say about its battery life, and how it stacks up against the Dell offering. (Though it probably makes more sense for me to snag the HP one, since I actually get a discount on that. =)
According to a couple of news sources, they will be releasing a version with some HP custom Linux on it. That's pretty cool, but I'd still have to pave it and put Ubuntu on it. Which means that the one that comes with a Windows license might end up being a better deal, especially if the Linux one is only available with low end hardware.
For all you Linux and Mac heads out there, you should go snag a free copy of Crossover. It's normally $40, but it's free today because of a rather interesting bet made by their CEO.
Apparently, pictures of the new Mini Note 1000 accidentally ended up on the HP shopping site. I'm still intrigued by the possibilities of getting a nice tiny laptop, and if this one uses the Nano as rumored, it'll make it higher up on my wishlist than the 2133 did. Hopefully it will also have better Linux compatibility, my coworker spent a good amount of time searching and recompiling before he got X working in Ubuntu. (And if I can't run Ubuntu, I don't want it. ;)
Firefox on Linux has never felt quite right to me, and I've recently
discovered what it was. There's something different about the way
Firefox renders fonts for webpages and the way all my other (GTK+ and
Qt) applications render fonts. It's especially strange, since the
buttons and other form widgets render fonts like the rest of the GUI,
but the web page text is different somehow, and thus seems a bit
off. I actually discovered this because the laptop that I've been provided by
work has an insane native resolution of 1920x1200 on a 15" screen. Thus,
in order to actually be able to read all my fonts, I've raised the DPI
to 120. This works great in everything, except Firefox, which
stubbornly refuses to use the systemwide DPI setting for anything other
than UI elements. This wouldn't be too bad, because I could just zoom
the pages or raise the font size for webpages, but since form elements
use the system fonts/dpi, they are a completely different size font than
the rest of the webpages, causing no end of rendering weirdness.
Searching for ways to solve this problem was fruitless, since it seems
that there is no way to set the DPI for the web page text, and trying to
customize fontsizes to match everything else via CSS seems to be an
exercise in futility (and pain). In desperation, I installed Konqueror, and found that it properly
respected my DPI settings, but didn't quite feel enough like a dedicated
web browser for my tastes. So I remembered that Opera exists, and I've
installed that. So far, it's as polished and fast as I remember, and it
seems to work on more sites than it used to. They also removed all the
ads, so I'm a happy camper so far. It's amazing what consistent text
rendering across the entire UI can do for a person. (As an aside, I
think this may be why Evolution feels better than Thunderbird for
reading mail, despite Evolution's somewhat fragile network layer and
lack of proxy support) Anyways, we'll see how this Opera experiment holds out. We'll see how
long it is until I miss the del.icio.us plugin and Firebug.
discovered what it was. There's something different about the way
Firefox renders fonts for webpages and the way all my other (GTK+ and
Qt) applications render fonts. It's especially strange, since the
buttons and other form widgets render fonts like the rest of the GUI,
but the web page text is different somehow, and thus seems a bit
off. I actually discovered this because the laptop that I've been provided by
work has an insane native resolution of 1920x1200 on a 15" screen. Thus,
in order to actually be able to read all my fonts, I've raised the DPI
to 120. This works great in everything, except Firefox, which
stubbornly refuses to use the systemwide DPI setting for anything other
than UI elements. This wouldn't be too bad, because I could just zoom
the pages or raise the font size for webpages, but since form elements
use the system fonts/dpi, they are a completely different size font than
the rest of the webpages, causing no end of rendering weirdness.
Searching for ways to solve this problem was fruitless, since it seems
that there is no way to set the DPI for the web page text, and trying to
customize fontsizes to match everything else via CSS seems to be an
exercise in futility (and pain). In desperation, I installed Konqueror, and found that it properly
respected my DPI settings, but didn't quite feel enough like a dedicated
web browser for my tastes. So I remembered that Opera exists, and I've
installed that. So far, it's as polished and fast as I remember, and it
seems to work on more sites than it used to. They also removed all the
ads, so I'm a happy camper so far. It's amazing what consistent text
rendering across the entire UI can do for a person. (As an aside, I
think this may be why Evolution feels better than Thunderbird for
reading mail, despite Evolution's somewhat fragile network layer and
lack of proxy support) Anyways, we'll see how this Opera experiment holds out. We'll see how
long it is until I miss the del.icio.us plugin and Firebug.
This morning, my sister and I ran the 10k in the Lafayette
Reservoir Run. This has to be the fastest I've ever seen official
results posted, but my time has been posted. Not as fast as two weeks ago, but I think I had a better overall run. I definitely had a much better finish, as I had plenty of energy left to sprint to the finish line. And when these guys say that it's a hilly course, they don't joke. The path around the reservoir was pretty, but had some gnarly hills. I'll post pictures if/when they get posted to the interwebs. I'm pretty
sure they got me in the official pics this time. Oh, yeah one random note: the shirt design for the race looks pretty
crappy on the website, but it actually looks pretty good on the shirt.
I'm happily surprised.
results posted, but my time has been posted. Not as fast as two weeks ago, but I think I had a better overall run. I definitely had a much better finish, as I had plenty of energy left to sprint to the finish line. And when these guys say that it's a hilly course, they don't joke. The path around the reservoir was pretty, but had some gnarly hills. I'll post pictures if/when they get posted to the interwebs. I'm pretty
sure they got me in the official pics this time. Oh, yeah one random note: the shirt design for the race looks pretty
crappy on the website, but it actually looks pretty good on the shirt.
I'm happily surprised.