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From the virtual, to the real:

Actual snail mail from Google showed up at the post office yesterday!

I can’t believe it’s taken this long to put this up. Better late than never, I expect. The diminutive black Asus Eee 4G PC has become a constant companion. Here, I’ll quickly take you through a tour of its externals. Maybe in a few weeks time, I’ll show you what it can actually do…

My unit comes from far ashore, having been unboxed somewhere in an airport. Hence, I can’t give you any gratuitous unboxing images. The most important aspect is that the Eee is here. Local supplies are unsteady, and the price for the 4GB model quite a bit higher than what I paid for it. The package contains the Eee itself, a power supply with a UK plug (giving you some indication as to its country of origin), protective pouch, driver DVD for Windows and some manuals. The battery is replaceable and takes roughly 2 hours to complete a full charge. The moment you lift the Eee, the incredibly small size of this notebook becomes apparent. I’ll provide a size comparison sometime, but for now take a standard softcover novel. That’s a good approximation of the size, if the Eee is unopened.

The provided protective cover is a flimsy sponge material, eagerly sucking moisture from hands holding it. The pouch does the job of protecting the unit from scratches and closes with a small piece of velcro.

The photo of the Eee cannot illustrate more than the unit itself. This could be any notebook. Trust me: the longest edge is only 22cm long! The build quality is excellent, putting many expensive notebooks to shame. There’s not a rattle or loose panel. Overall, Asus have taken care to build a gadget that should survive the bumps inevitable in daily use. Even the plastic outer shell seems immune to light scratches and one of my pet hates, the ability to capture fingerprints. The hinge is solid, and there is absolutely no flapping of the screen section when opened.

On the left side, we find the 10/100 RJ45 port for LAN connections, one of the three USB ports, and the 3.5mm microphone and earphone jacks. The optional modem port is covered by a shield. In the standard edition of the unit, the modem is not installed. It’s also something I would never use now that USB HSDPA modems are cheap and readily available.

On the right, a VGA connector for an external monitor or projector, the two remaining USB ports and the SD card slot. The Eee‘s BIOS allows the machine to boot from a variety of connected or internal devices. Booting an OS from a USB flash disk or SD card is possible. For now, I’ve inserted a SanDisk 8GB SD card for additional storage for files and installation of programs.
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What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman and Ralph Leighton is certainly the Audible book with the longest title I’ve chosen so far. It’s perhaps also the one I’ve enjoyed least, not that that should be a reflection on the authors. In fact, Richard Feynman, or more precisely Professor Richard Phillips Feynman shared a Nobel Prize, served on the Manhattan Project and developed a pictorial way of representing mathematical expressions relating to the behaviour of subatomic particles. In between all that, he managed to find time to develop the idea of nanotechnology and serve on the investigative board for the Challenger disaster. Those are just some of the contributions he made to modern science and the world. Incredibly curious, with an ability to explain even the most complex phenomena, Feynman was a remarkable individual.

The book is a collection of stories and letters as recounted by Feynman to the author, and includes some additional texts provided by Feynman himself and others. Six hours and a bit long, the tidbits of Feynman‘s life are presented in an informal and unstructured fashion. Feynman seems to have had a propensity for writing many letters, thinking rather highly of himself and being very fond of the words “he says“. His dedication to his first wife, struck ill and having to spend much of her short life in a hospital close to the laboratory he worked at is touching. Feynman‘s ingenuity at trying to solve problems or to come up with suitable, if wacky, experiments highlights a persona that is ever curious and will go to any length to determine the right answer to a problem. Even so, the first half of the book is sometimes tedious to listen to. The second half of the book is more interesting, dealing with Feynman‘s inclusion in the presidential investigation into the Challenger disaster. For those interested in space flight, there is some technical detail of the space shuttle’s inner workings that is certainly worth listening to. The reading by Raymond Todd cannot live up to the narrative efforts of most of the other audio books I’ve heard, though. He’s reading, not telling the story.

On the whole, What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman and Ralph Leighton is a text you need to be in the mood for. It’s no substitute for a story as dynamic as Dune, and cannot live up to the story of Houdini‘s life, for example. But, it’s a portrait of a fascinating character, and recounts some of his life experiences. If that’s your cup of tea, you may enjoy it.

I don’t like to get medieval, unless I’m convinced that I’ve exhausted all avenues. My latest experience with Digital Planet has left me fuming, frustrated and certain that I’ll never purchase anything from them again.

This rant has nothing to do with the fact that the telephonic placing of an order for a Creative ZEN over the telephone was unpleasant. It has nothing to do with the fact that, even after explaining numerous times that the ZEN I wanted was the latest one, 4GB with SD card slot as featured in the February edition of SACM, they still got it wrong and presented a different unit upon collection. My rant also has little to do with the fact that they apologized for their mistake and immediately issued a credit voucher. Said credit voucher to be internally converted to a reversal of the charge for the unwanted item on my credit card. So, it has nothing to do with all these things. My rant has to do with the fact that it’s taken a month, and I’ve only now heard that the money will be refunded. That wouldn’t even be so bad if I had left them to their own devices. Instead, I followed-up telephonically at least four times, each time having to listen to their voice prompt indicating that phone calls are recorded for my protection. On at least one occasion I provided banking details and was assured that the refund would be completed immediately. Of course, nothing happened. One friendly reminder to the boss@digitalplanet.co.za seems never to have been read. My ALL UPPERCASE, SHOUTING AND RANTING email of 07:00 this morning still hasn’t returned a read receipt. And the assurance of a refund at 14:00 this afternoon has resulted in a call about fifteen minutes ago indicating their apology that there had been some miscommunication and that I would find a reversal of the charge on my credit card statement.

This leads me to a number of conclusions: the backoffice at this organization is severely disorganized. Even worse, they have a propensity to promise things, but never follow-up or deliver. Worse still, they lie. Contact details may as well not be provided on the website, as no one seems interested in reading, let alone responding to any correspondence. The net result is that I won’t utilize their service. I recommend you consider your choice of vendor carefully, too. We keep quiet far too often as consumers, letting shoddy service harm only ourselves and never the organization intent on providing it.

nx8220 is still in use. I’m waiting to get over my disgust with Dell and decide on which notebook to get to replace her. For the last week, the ordinarily snappy performance has degraded to the point where I could no longer use Firefox or Outlook whenever I had a LAN connection. Strangely, everything worked rather well untethered. The issue became so bad that Firefox would hang up for minutes every other minute. Untenable. Thankfully, Internet Explorer fared no better, laying my fears to rest that the issue must have resulted from my installing Firefox 3 Beta 3.

My initial idea was to check for malware and a virus infection, though I do have decent anti-virus software running at all times and maintain the virus database subscription. To provide some assurance, I ran a check, then uninstalled McAffee. Installed avast! and ran another virsus scan. Nothing found. A bit worried that I’d be forced to re-install XP (yet strangely excited by the fact that the replacement operating system would be Fedora), I decided to dig around a bit. I was rewarded almost immediately with the following output of the netstat command:

TCP nx8220:2408 STAPLESKW1.umeres.maine.edu:23057 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2409 S0106001731b08ff7.ed.shawcable.net:34574 SYN_SE NT 1976
TCP nx8220:2410 77.64.150.81:16079 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2411 91.67.5.109:38597 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2413 137.30.253.49:47124 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2414 STAPLESKW1.umeres.maine.edu:23057 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2415 S0106001731b08ff7.ed.shawcable.net:34574 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2416 77.64.150.81:16079 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2417 91.67.5.109:38597 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2418 56345577.rev.stofanet.dk:30044 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2419 137.30.253.49:47124 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2420 56345577.rev.stofanet.dk:30044 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2421 chello062178254100.3.12.vie.surfer.at:44028 SYN _SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2422 c-76-112-29-9.hsd1.mi.comcast.net:59453 SYN_SENT 1976

SYN_SENT indicates a waiting connection on a TCP/IP port. To find out what program is causing the request, use netstat -o to include the process ID:

TCP nx8220:2426 c-71-229-171-89.hsd1.co.comcast.net:6564 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2427 c-98-216-109-166.hsd1.ma.comcast.net:22956 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2428 c-71-229-171-89.hsd1.co.comcast.net:6564 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2430 dhcp-192-033-103-075.ethz.ch:36276 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2431 66-190-51-236.dhcp.mdsn.wi.charter.com:48457 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2432 207-181-244-212.lem-bsr1.chi-lem.il.cable.rcn.com:38505 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2433 cpc2-nthc2-0-0-cust590.nrth.cable.ntl.com:37336 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2434 cpe-74-79-148-242.twcny.res.rr.com:20419 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2435 dhcp-192-033-103-075.ethz.ch:36276 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2436 66-190-51-236.dhcp.mdsn.wi.charter.com:48457 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2437 207-181-244-212.lem-bsr1.chi-lem.il.cable.rcn.com:38505 SYN_SENT 1976
TCP nx8220:2438 cpc2-nthc2-0-0-cust590.nrth.cable.ntl.com:37336 SYN_SENT 1976

Cross-reference PID 1976 to the Windows Task Manager and find Skype.exe to be the cause of my woes. Quitting Skype has suddenly restored the expected speed to my everyday interaction with Firefox and Outlook, though I can’t explain why Skype has suddenly started behaving this way.

Welcome to the seed vault, not seedy vault. It looks like something from the ice planet Hoth, but is a lot closer to us than that.

No Imperial Walkers here, just a lot of ice and desolation. Dubbed the Doomsday vault by the popular media, the Svalbard Global Seed facility is a nuclear bomb-proof shelter situated somewhere in the Arctic wilderness. The cavern has been carved into the permafrost, just high enough to ensure rising sea levels don’t fill it up before too long, yet deep enough to protect the cavern and its precious contents from weaponry and bomb blasts. It’s unlikely to withstand a meteor shower, though. The seed vault’s purpose is to safely store a variety of seeds, soon to be extinct. A modern-day Noah’s ark, if you will. The vault has the capacity to hold roughly 4.5 million seed batches, or twice the number of crop varieties believed to exist at present. Whether there’ll be a world worth planting these into remains to be seen…

Shooting’s done, and the movie is in post-production. They’re almost ready to make their silver-screen appearance…

The Fedora team have made the first alpha of Fedora 9 available to the public. With the exception of the ridiculous name Sulphur the new release has been blessed with, there are numerous improvements and updates to make this another worthwhile upgrade once the final release is available.

The alpha features Firefox 3.0 beta and KDE 4.0, offering a glimpse of some newer software available on Fedora. Behind-the-scenes stuff includes better update and software management and support for various additional hardware components.

For those in ZA, one of the faster mirrors is here.

So you’ve visited here a couple of times but still haven’t nominated this blog in the SA Blog Awards. Only a couple of hours left for you to do so. Until midnight. Please go ahead and click the button. Of course, you’ll need to add something witty or profound. I leave that up to you.

Say what you want, but admit that a Porsche is the only sports car you could own that would be as convenient and exhilarating driven day-to-day as it would be on a special outing. There’s also only one real Porsche, namely the 911. And in its GT guise, this is a potent machine.

The new GT2:

329 km/h top speed, reaching 100 km/h from a standstill in less than 4 seconds. At a 105l, the volume of the luggage compartment is just bigger than the fuel tank. But in a car like this, who wouldn’t want to return home to retrieve yet another item that wouldn’t fit?