Sturgeon’s Law #089
3 May, 2008
http://www.sturgeonslaw.com/
RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SturgeonsLaw
Email: sturgeonslaw, gmail, you know the drill
Music from PMN, Jim Fidler
Promo - comedy4cast
Segment 1:
Where I’ve been and what I’m doing, right? I mean, there’s got to be a reason for this phenomenal show output of… once a month and falling. I know, answering this is breaking the rules about not talking about yourself, but I promise, some of it’s actually interesting. The part where I haven’t felt well in quite some time, not so much interesting. I’m headed for the doctor’s office – yet another doctor’s office – on Wednesday. So enough said about that. Otherwise, a lot of it has to do with audio dramas, and in particular, Pendant Audio. Yes, the Pendant Audio I talked about some time back and said that I hoped my comments wouldn’t keep them from ever letting me get involved with their shows. Ha ha. Well, funny story about that.
To make a long story short, the current director of Pendant’s Wonder Woman: Champion of Themyscira show, Fiona Thraille, is stepping down so they asked for volunteers that might wish to replace her. I figured, what the heck, right? I’ve been editing podcasts for a few years now. I took the director’s class, all went very well I think, and I was offered the job, so to speak. Volunteer job. You know. So, there’s three episodes that the two of us both worked or are working on, the first of which will go live in a couple of weeks or so, and then starting with Issue #31 in August it’s all me doing the directing, which means I take the script and the actor-recorded lines and, well, do all the rest. It’s lots of fun! But it does consume some time and some of my precious energy – precious because of scarcity, you understand – and so, yeah, show delays.
Also, I realized that using the podcast for those little news snippets just got in my way and a podcast is no good place for tons of links anyway. So, they’re out. You want news snippets? Follow the tumblelog at sturgeonslaw.tumblr.com. I promise you, I keep it full of awesome these days. Consider it all part of the Sturgeon’s Law franchise. As for the rest, will this show become all about Pendant Audio? No, definitely not. That doesn’t mean I won’t point out Pendant stuff when I feel like it, because it is, after all, my show, and it’s about cool stuff. For example, if you don’t listen to Superman #40, which just came out, you are, my friends, seriously missing out. I had to sit in my car and regain my composure after it ended. Not exaggerating. Go. Listen. Of course, you’ll want to listen to the earlier shows for context. That means back through show #30. Look, just listen to all of it. Batman, Wonder Woman, and Supergirl, too, and you’ll be ready for the big summer crossover, Vindicatum, which starts in June. Be there.
Segment 2:
Have you encountered the Asus Eee, or E E E, or as I like to call it, the Tripoli, yet? I’ve got one from work, and in case you haven’t seen one, I’ll fill you in. It’s sort of a small laptop. Or a really large PDA. Does that clear everything up? No? Okay, let’s go with the small laptop viewpoint. I’ll be talking about the 700 series, which is what I have. The Eee – so named allegedly for the three Es of Easy to learn, Easy to work, Easy to play, which is insipid, but never mind – has a 7 inch LCD screen, which sadly is not a touch screen, capable of 800x480 resolution. It has an underclocked Celeron-M processor and 512M of RAM, and no, repeat, no hard drive. That’s right; its storage is entirely flash; mine has 2GB, most of which is used by the operating system, which, by default, is a special Linux dist. Accordingly you can install XP on it, but I haven’t; another fellow has instructions on installing straight up Debian, which I may yet try. Maybe.
Its keyboard is small, as you might imagine, and sadly a bit arcane. I find it painful to type very much on it, but then, I have fat fingers. It does have three USB ports, as well as audio in and out, so you’re hardly stranded with what you’ve got. It also has an ethernet controller as well as built-in wifi, and this is where it’s really meant to shine. Indeed, it’s an early contender in a developing category that some are calling netbooks – notebook computing stripped down and intended for Internet use primarily, although not so tiny as to be an Internet Tablet like the Nokia 800 series. This job it does quite well; it comes with Firefox and a PDA-like interfaces of tabs and icons that includes direct links to many fine web mail and Google services. I use it primarily for Gmail and, well, to read web comics, but occasionally to view videos which I have stored on my SDHC card, and oh yes, it has a slot for SD and SDHC cards, which is pretty important with the small internal flash storage.
So, is it worth using? Well, before I can answer that, you need to know the cost – the one I’ve been describing ran a smooth 300 bucks. For that, you get a credible tool for some jobs (including, if you work in a job like I do, something for testing network connections and sshing into other machines at need) and notso hotso at other stuff. For me, at work, the selling point was its size and weight – just shy of a mere two pounds! – and it doing the things I really needed, as described above. My personal uses, also described above, are obviously pretty limited so far. We’ve talked about whether it might be a good kid machine and the jury is decidedly out on that one, but it’s an interesting thought. Any listeners an Asus Eee jockey? Give us a shout and let us know what you think of yours.
Mail: Doug Rapson
Podsafe Music: “Tom Cruise Crazy” by Jonathan Coulton off the Podsafe Music Network