Live from Austin!

At the weekend I decided to give in and get a USB keyboard. I went to Fry’s, hoping to find something suitable, but fearing that all they’d have would be Microsoft keyboards.

I know Microsoft’s hardware quality is better than their software quality, and their keyboards are definitely much better than the trash you typically get with a new PC. They are also to be commended for providing a reasonable ergonomic layout at an affordable price. However, I just don’t like the key mechanism; there’s too much resistance, and it feels cheap.

The keyboard isle at Fry’s had a pretty good selection, including exotic gaming keyboards, glowing l337 h4×0r keyboards, and the extremely overpriced Logitech diNovo Edge.

After some hands-on testing, I settled on a Kensington SlimType keyboard. It’s basically the same mechanism as an IBM ThinkPad laptop, but as an external keyboard. It also manages to provide a full keyboard, with number pad, in a lot less space than my IBM Model M. I was frankly gobstruck to note that it was only $30. I may end up getting the Mac version for the other half of my desk.

My Linux keyboard problems went away immediately with the new device. No more unexpected screenshots or X locking up. I even managed to get all the fancy extra keys working; I can type Euro characters with the Windows key, and accented letters with the menu key, thanks to KDE. Getting the multimedia keys working was a bit harder, and required a ~/.Xmodmap file:

keycode 174 = XF86AudioLowerVolume
keycode 176 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume
keycode 160 = XF86AudioMute
keycode 162 = XF86AudioPlay
keycode 153 = XF86AudioNext
keycode 144 = XF86AudioPrev
keycode 223 = F14
keycode 161 = F13

These keycodes seem to be fairly standard for multimedia keyboards (they match what someone reports for a Dell keyboard), so they may be useful to other people. I made the moon key (161/F13) turn the laptop display on and off. The rightmost multimedia key is presumably supposed to be for firing up your MP3 player, as the icon looks like something rectangular with buttons. I decided to make it fire up Nonpareil, an HP calculator emulator, in HP-16C mode.

So far the new keyboard is working out well, apart from my hands having to get used to a new layout. So if you need a compact keyboard, the Kensington is recommended.

Q: What are some good but not the usual types of dates?

A: The Barhi date is superb in quality; the Deglet Noor is less sweet and somewhat dry in flavor.

Q: Is it wrong to use Crisco as a lubricant?

A: Yes, it’ll ruin your transmission.

Q: what to use for black man hair loss?

A: A Dustbuster?

Q: What are some good tips to stop procrastination? [...] Does anyone have any tips to help me buckle down and do some work?

A: I’ll post some in a couple of days.

Q: which ways can you tell if a guy has a big penis?

A: If your jaw gets sore, that’s a sure sign.

Q: any help on writing an apology letter on theft?

A: Don’t use the stationery you stole.

Q: my laptop has been intruded by thousands of ants. How to get rid of it?

A: If it’s a Dell, don’t worry… the ants will be driven out when it catches fire.

Q: what happens inside ur head or brain when u get dizzy from spinning around and around and around?

A: Sometimes your brain comes loose and keeps spinning after you stop. This is called dizziness. Usually the brain will slow down and settle back in its normal position after a minute or two. However, in some cases it ends up backwards. This can be bad, as your ears end up connected in reverse, with the left ear connected to the right side of the brain and vice versa. If you find that your iPod headphones sound better when they’re the other way around, this has probably happened to you. It can be fixed by spinning around fast in the opposite direction.

Q: What is your worst fear right now?

A: Answering questi… AAAAARGH!

Q: Guys have u ever actually dated anyone who looked like a playboy bunny?

A: No, but I dated someone with teeth like a rabbit.

Q: What is water polo like?

A: The hardest part is making sure the horses don’t drown.

$99 for a leather iPod case? And he wasn’t laughed off the stage?

That iPod Hi-Fi looks like it was stolen from the set of Space: 1999, doesn’t it? Come to think of it, a G5 would fit the decor of John Koenig’s desk perfectly. Perhaps the Apple iPhone will look like a commlock?

Then there’s the Intel Mac Mini. We all knew that was coming. However, while the MacBook Pro comes with a Mobility Radeon X1600, the Mini comes with a craptastic Intel GMA950 integrated graphics chip. The old Mini had a slothful Radeon 9200, but at least it had dedicated RAM, whereas the Intel shares its video RAM with the main CPU.

In addition, the CPU speed has dropped from the MacBook’s 1.83GHz dual cores, to 1.5GHz single core. If that wasn’t bad enough, the entry level price has quietly risen by 20%–the $500 PC is now a $600 PC, $800 if you want dual cores or a DVD burner. Price up comparable Dell machines, and that price looks pretty hard to defend.

There are a couple of problems leading to the high price and hardware nobbling. The first is that Intel are charging over $250 for a Core Duo processor, whereas a G4 was well under $200. The second issue is that Apple have to be careful not to make their new cheap Intel boxes embarassingly faster than the PowerPC systems they’re still selling. The Intel iMac was almost as fast as the top end quad G5 workstation, so making sure the Mini wouldn’t be too fast was probably a requirement. Hopefully by the end of the year the G5 will be history and we can have an improved Intel Mini.

“I would shut down Apple and give the shareholders their money back.”

—Michael Dell, October 1997.

“If Apple decides to open the Mac OS to others, we would be happy to offer it to our customers.”

—Michael Dell, June 2005.

Job losses over the last few weeks:

• Motorola: 4,000 jobs today, for a total of 22,000 since December.
• Lucent: 16,000.
• Verizon: 10,000.
• Nortel: 10,000.
• Compaq: 5,000.
• Intel: 5,000.
• Xerox: 4,000.
• Gateway: 3,000.
• Hewlett-Packard: 1,700.
• Dell: 1,700.
• Amazon: 1,300.
• 3com: 1,200.
• Oracle: 800

It’s also rumored that Sun are planning to ditch 10% of their employees, and Cisco are giving 5-10% of their staff unmatchable targets so they can force them to resign without calling it a layoff.

Conventional wisdom is to say that it’s just a “market correction” as technology stocks fall and overblown high-tech companies downsize. So how about:

• DaimlerChrysler: 26,000.
• Proctor Gamble: 9,600.
• Sara Lee: 7,000.
• Whirlpool: 6,000.
• J.C. Penney: 5,300.
• Compaq: 5,000.
• Xerox: 4,000.
• Schwab: 3,400.
• Time Warner AOL Turner: 2,400.
• Sears: 2,400.
• Electrolux: 2,000.

And don’t forget, the US balance of payments deficit is now the highest it’s been since the 1980s, and expected to get worse.