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Optical Block
For the past few months my TV has been having problems with a blue haze bleeding in from the lower right corner. At first it wasn’t really that noticeable but lately its been accompanied by these blue dots slowly appearing all over the screen. They look very much like hot pixels. Obviously this trend isn’t a good one, so today I did a quick search for “KDF-42WE655 blue dots” and was lead to a Web 2.0 site I hadn’t heard of before.
FixYa is a community site that answers your questions about your broken stuff, and tags both the questions an the answers. There has always been a wealth of information and vibrant communities of smart people on various forums for this type of thing but it has always taken me a long time to find the answer I was looking for. It was very refreshing to find that FixYa has a “blue dots” tag! Unfortunately, the problem with my TV sounds like something called an “optical block” which is a $1100 repair! Thankfully (sort of) I’m not the only one having this problem and Sony has extended the warranty for this problem only. Whew! Of course I have to use their service guys, but I really don’t care if it keeps me from having to buy a new TV.
Honeymoon day five pictures posted
IMG_0273.JPG
Originally uploaded by rharrison.
Thanks to the time I had on the plane traveling recently, I was able to get the pictures from our visit to the ancient Mayan city of Caracol organized. I’ve posted the pictures on flickr in the Honeymoon day five – Caracol set. It is really an amazing place you should check them out!
All I want for Christmas
Its starting to sound like sales of the OLPC might actually happen this year. Reuters is reporting that Mary Lou Jepsen, CTO for the OLPC project, is considering selling the XO to the general public starting in October! I’ll have to keep an eye on the retail wiki page to see if any details show up.
The options discussed for pricing include a one for two, or one for three plan. Basically it means that you would buy one laptop for the base costs required to produce two or three of the models intended for distribution. Basically, when you buy one in a developed nation you’re buying one for yourself and one for a child in a developing nation. Where else can you buy yourself a new toy and help educate a child at the same time!
The one for two pricing of around $350 is a slam dunk. I’ll pick one as soon as they become available at that price without looking back. The $525 one for three option is something I’d have to think about though. I probably would buy one at the higher price, but its quite a bit harder on the pocket book. I wonder if there would be a way to account for the overage charge as a tax deduction.
I believe this may be the most important charity project in the world right now. The ability to provide a child the resources of an entire library in a form they can carry with them will transform the nations where they are distributed.
Link, via BoingBoing, via One Laptop Per Child News
Technorati Tags: olpc
Useful bling
Desktop Cube
Originally uploaded by rharrison.
I was just reading cgwalters‘ post on his thoughts about the Pyro Desktop project. One of the comments got me to thinking about desktop “bling” and how useful it really is.
I actually wouldn’t have a agreed with him a few weeks ago. I thought the “bling” I had with compiz and beryl (now compiz-fusion) was great. I had everything turned on but really didn’t consider it incredibly useful. Mainly I was running it just to rub in what the OS X and Vista groupies couldn’t have, and I did think it was fun.
I started having some problems with my machine locking up running with compositing recently and had to turn off the fancy effects since I didn’t have time to figure out where the problem is. The last two weeks without bling I’ve found that all that “fluff” really did give me a great deal of helpful feed back in my daily work. I’m really having trouble adjusting to not having the bling any more, which is really surprising.
The scale plugin (expose) is the one I miss the most. Just being able to hit a button and see all my open windows is incredibly helpful. Especially on the laptop where I have limited screen real estate. Wobbling windows (which seemed like one of the most useless plugins) did give me a feel of how my windows were moving, and setting my system bell to simply wobble the window slightly is a very welcome change instead of having the entire screen blink for a visual bell, which is annoying, or just the title bar, which I never seem to notice. There are many other effects I really want back. Thumbnail previews, the cube, even the “light my window on fire when I close it” plugin. Actually that was my favorite.
Will it Blend?
Just the name of this post lets you know something incredibly absurd (and incredibly awesome at the same time) is just on the other side of these links. The premise for the site is simple. In order to show how “powerful” and “tough” their product is, the makers of the Total Blender ask a very simple question. Will it blend? They throw anything they can think of into their blender to answer that very question. The “unsafe” category is the one to watch, including things like, pens a golf club, a dozen glowsticks, and my personal favorite an iPhone.
I think it may be partially because my Mother has a blender that really reminds me of this one (insanely loud, incredibly obnoxious, and totally unstoppable) that this has to be one of my favorite sites on the Internet. I never have time to actually browse it, since it really is a total waste of time. Thankfully, there are many other dedicated surfers out there with more time on their hands than I. I sure appreciate them posting or blogging about the highlights so I get to enjoy them to!
Behind on posting pictures
Sunset Grill
Originally uploaded by rharrison.
I had meant to to write a post as soon as we got back from the honeymoon with the title “Change is good” to echo the post I made right before the wedding. Change is good so far but it hasn’t stopped me from being way to busy. At any rate I figured I should just work on getting some pictures up, and I’ll write up about what we did on our honeymoon later. Read more…
Everything changes tomorrow
Doracy’s calendar
Originally uploaded by rharrison.
Well maybe not everything. Doracy and I have been living together for nearly three years now, and everyone says we always act as if we’re married anyway.
Well tomorrow we make it official. Things are pretty much under control, at the moment. I’m sure things will get pretty hectic soon but I’m still looking forward to it. I’m more correctly looking forward to spending the rest of my life with her by my side.
I’ve been meaning to start blogging for a long time now. Somehow the start of my new life with Doracy seems like a suitable occasion to begin my story here.
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