Author: Topslakr

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My OLPC Laptop

I’ve spoken about the OLPC laptop before, Twice, in fact. Mine has finally arrived after much wasted time on Fedex’s part. I still prefer UPS. Fedex was supposed to deliver the OLPC on Dec 20th, I didn’t receive it until the 26th. Whoops!

Within the box you find the laptop, a power adapter, the battery, a quickstart guide and a letter from Nicholas Negroponte.

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The first thing I noticed was just how small it is. For whatever reason I was expecting it to be about 50% larger. The keyboard is very small and I cannot touch type, I can only hunt and peck with my index fingers.… Click here to read more!

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Leave Your Jacket in the Car!

First off, I live in New Hampshire. We have more then 12″ of snow on the ground and the high today is expected to be 25 degrees Fahrenheit. My recommendation to you is to leave you jacket in the car. Always.

Lets look at the facts. Your home is warm, you car is warm (or will be in a minute) and your destination is likely to be warm. So why are you wearing a jacket? How long does it take you to get from the door to the car? Lets be generous and call it 30 seconds. So, when you are ready to leave you put on a jacket, hat, gloves, and boots and dash outside and jump into your car.… Click here to read more!

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Blog Downtime

Had a bit of downtime this past week. It was totally my fault. As you may know from reading the Server Configuration Page, I run this webserver as a VM using VMWare‘s VMWare Server. Long story short, they released a beta of the next version of VMWare Server, VMWare Server 2.0, and I just had the try it out.

As of right now the software is working great. I screwed up the uninstall/install process of the software which caused me some unneeded headache but once I sorted out my mistake and got things rolling I’ve been pretty happy with it.… Click here to read more!

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‘Tis the Christmas Season

Thats right, I said it. I celebrate Christmas and I’m not afraid to say it! It doesn’t bother me that you might celebrate something else or nothing at all. If you are Jewish then please wish me a happy Hanukkah, I promise not to be offended. This current atmosphere or being insanely politically correct is, in fact, crazy.

I consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent person, even if I do say so myself, and I am able to cope with the notion that you might have a different set of beliefs then I do. What is the goal of these people who get so worked up over Christian or Jewish or whatever else references?… Click here to read more!

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Using all that you can

Well, the greatest holiday of the year has come and gone and what do we have to show for it? Heaps and heaps of food. Sure, we all know how to make the turkey last, making all manner of turkey recipes for weeks to come but what about the bones? The carcass. You make stock of course!

I’m a meat eater and I have no problem with that. I have a lot of problems with they way meat is produced, hence my on going effort to try to produce at least some of it on my own, but eating meat is not something I find offensive or wrong.… Click here to read more!

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Give 1 Get 1 – Today!

I just wanted to a take a moment and post a reminder about the OLPC Give 1 Get 1 program. From today until November 26th you can buy one of these great machines. Basically, for $400 plus shipping, which was about $25 for me, you by two laptops. One is mailed to you and the other one is donated. I’ve posted about this program before but since today is the first day anyone in the US or Canada can just buy one I thought it worth repeating.

I have already ordered mine which they said should arrive in time for the holidays.… Click here to read more!

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Waiting in Line for Leopard

For the first time I went to the Apple store to wait in on of their much publicized lines. It was the release of Leopard and I wanted to be there to a get a T-shirt. To be sure I got the software as soon as I legally could I had already pre-ordered online and by the time the store release rolled around at 6 PM I had already installed my copy of leopard on my laptop and my iMac but, as an email Apple sent out mentioned, they were giving away limited edition T-Shirts to the first 500 people at each store….… Click here to read more!

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Book Review: The River Cottage Year

As mentioned in a previous post, I bought two of Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall’s books, The River Cottage Year and The River Cottage Meat Book. While I finish reading about raising my own meat I thought I ought to post some of my thoughts about The River Cottage year.

The book is pretty good, it’s well written quite concise. It’s a bit more of a cook book then I was expecting though. Basically it’s broken up into 12 chapters, once for each month and Hugh talks a little bit at the beginning of each chapter about what he is doing at this time of year for his farm, usually about 2 pages worth.… Click here to read more!

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Server Woes: Part Two

So, the site has been down a lot lately. Pretty crappy. I’m a cheap guy and have been putting off replacing my UPS for a while now. Basically, even though it’s batteries are old it has always had enough juice in it to smooth over the quick power glitches that happen from time to time. Recently it has failed at that task. I should also add that it was never designed to be used for servers as I’m using it. It was designed for desktop use, a single tower maybe a monitor and a printer…Not three servers, a Raid array and a computer converted into a router.… Click here to read more!

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The Road to Mac OS X Leopard

AppleInsider has been posting a great series of articles about Apple’s upcoming operating system release. They posted one today talking about OS X Leopard Server that is really excellent. They go through the history of Apple’s servers and where they came from right up to present day and what to expect in this upcoming release. If you’d like to read more of their ‘Road to Leopard’ posts just scroll to the bottom of their article, they have links to their other posts there. I can’t find a good way to directly link to a full listing of all of the articles but a search on their site will bring them all up.… Click here to read more!