Woodpress

I recently bought a Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. It was $220 from TigerDirect through Amazon. It runs a Debian-based Linux, and works remarkably well as both a web browser and pocket-sized mp3 player. I have paired it with my Verizon phone (LG Model VX8900) using Bluetooth, which is handy for browsing the web when I don’t have access to WiFi.

When I searched the web for information about using the N800 to browse the web through my Verizon phone, I found people spreading a rumor that Verizon would discontinue service or charge incredibly high rates if you did that. I contacted Verizon and explained exactly what I wanted to do, and they assured me that it was not a violation of my contract. Of course, my contract includes a $5/month per-minute data plan, and if I were to exceed my minutes, I’m sure Verizon would charge for overage. If I transferred massive amounts of data, they might also have an issue… but for simple on-demand web access anywhere (within Verizon’s coverage areas), I finally have a solution.

I sent my youngest daughter outside today with my pocket camera. Here are a few of the pictures she took.

This Easter the kids opened the egg dying kit and lost the instructions, so my wife just did what she remembered doing in the past, and put vinegar in the dyes.

That mostly worked out, but it seems that the magenta dye reacted badly and wouldn’t stick to the eggs. As a result, any eggs we put in the purple dye were almost indistinguishable from eggs we put in the blue dye, and the eggs we put in the magenta dye came out with light magenta speckling.

This egg was placed in the magenta dye, then incidentally got moved between a couple different drying plates. It ended up picking up some nice coloring completely by accident.

At lunch today, I ordered the vegetable side without asking what the vegetable was. I was delighted (seriously) to find that it was romanesco broccoli–the fractal vegetable.

It was like meeting an inanimate edible celebrity. Until today, I’d only ever seen romanesco broccoli in pictures (which I have used as my desktop wallpaper) and read about it.

Now I can personally support the claim that although it looks like broccoli, it tastes much more like cauliflower.

I also took a picture of tobiko today.

On Sunday I spent some time tweaking the font I usually use for programming (DejaVu Sans Mono) to make it work better for me. My version is called Amnesia Sans Mono (a reference to Stephen Wright‘s joke, “Right now I’m having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.”).

Here’s a sample at 24 point. Amnesia is on top, and DejaVu is on bottom.

Here they are at 8 point:

I made the top of the 1 more slanted, made the tails on the comma and semicolon more pronounced, and increased the size/readability of the asterisk, percent, less-than, and greater-than. These differences are subtle, but they help me.

Update (March 13, 2008): The images are slightly out of date. Since making them, I have restored some of the tail curve I had removed from the comma and semicolon, and I slightly tweaked the “1”.

Recently I’ve had a lot of opportunities to take pictures of oil and water, and I’ve managed to get some pictures I’m pretty happy with.

The vending machines at work are a source of frustration to me. KWIK Vending Service stocks them sub-optimally.

I’ve been boycotting Sony since their DRM Rootkit attack on consumers. Recently Sony/BMG opened their music to DRM-free sale in mp3 format on amazon.com, and I’ve since been CONSIDERING dropping my boycott.

If they were to start selling DRM-free downloadable movies or make a public statement denouncing the use of DRM in general, I would drop my boycott.

Eventually I think media companies are going to realize that they’ll make more money without DRM. I won’t be using Amazon’s Unbox until it’s DRM-free.

Update: I bought a DRM-free Sony/BMG MP3 album from amazon.com.