site-related techspeak, computer crap, other technical garble not of interest to the general populace.
[Posted on Flickr by Happy House of Hentai]
I used to be the person who stood way in the back of group pictures and was never seen. When did I become this person who declares, “OK, I’ll pretend to be a short person and get in the front!”
Left to right: Scott and Rym from the Geek Nights podcast; me; Andrew Corbin, con chair; Martin Leung, Video Game Pianist; Aaron (from the Weekly Anime Review Podcast, of course); and Hello Kitty and Lord Kaosu from the Happy House of Hentai.
I’m taking Friday off of work, so that Aaron and I can drive eight hours to Utica, NY for an anime convention.
Normally, we wouldn’t go to two out-of-state cons in a row like this — after all, we just did Otakon a couple months ago. We’re making an exception for SITACon, though, since they invited us as guests. They’re covering our hotel room, some of our travel expenses, and our admission to the con.
This is weird.
Aaron is going to be presenting a Meet-and-Greet panel about his podcast, and is going to be on a massive Podcasters Unite roundtable panel, with the hosts of half a dozen other podcasts. I told him I’d join him for his Weekly Anime Review Podcast panel, being that it’s just him and all, but I’m probably just going to be running Nikon recon during the roundtable discussion, taking photos of the panelists for posterity. Assuming none of them are camera-shy, which could conceivably happen. Podcasters can be like that sometimes.
It was very considerate of the con chair to invite me, too. I mean, he listens to Aaron’s podcast enough to know that a.) we’re married, and b.) we go to cons together, so he invited us both. Very cool.
I guess I’m still not sure what to think of this whole thing. I’m not sure if it’s going to be fun meeting other podcasters we haven’t met before, or if it’s going to be a thinly-veiled popularity contest, or what. I *think* it’ll be fun… I *hope* it’ll be fun…
And if it starts to go downhill… hell, I’ll *make* it fun. I’m a guest at an anime convention, dammit! ^_^
For anyone who hasn’t seen this yet…
Along the lines of All Things Japanese, this site was helpful for me in deciphering why it was amusing for an anime convention to be named Nan Desu Kan. I’d heard enough Japanese to recognize it (or, rather, “nan desu ka”) as a common turn of phrase, but the Learn Japanese website explained that it means, “What is it?”
I’d love to take a Japanese class. I don’t think there are any local evening classes taught by native speakers, though. I want to be able to do more than count to twenty badly, ask “what is it,” and other fun otaku tricks. If the Learn Japanese site had audio clips to confirm pronunciation, it would be even better. I’ll have to look into some of the podcasts on learning to speak Japanese.
Not like I’m ever going to make it to Japan any time soon, unlike *some* people I know. And, yes, I do know more than one person who either has been or is going to Japan. ^_^
I just made my own RSS feed for the Lakeshoremen website. Admittedly, not all by myself — with some help from a couple of websites that I’ve bookmarked for future reference. But now I know, and knowing’s half the battle.
Now I just need to see if I can schedule a cron job to output this file every day. Or… I could just have it regenerate every time someone posts a news item. Somebody pin a medal on me — I’m fucking brilliant. ^_^
*squee*
I walked into Goodwill this weekend, and what did I see?
A first-generation iMac. Bondi Blue. Tray-loading CD. No keyboard or mouse, a little discolored and worn, missing the door cover to hide all the cableage. Price: $60. Plugged it in at the store, saw that it was running OS 8.6.
I went for it. *shakes head* I figured, WTF. My old legacy Mac is running at 275MHz, this iMac had a sticker claiming it was a 333, and I was pretty positive that all iMacs were G3s. My 6500 was merely a PowerPC.
I brought it home, plugged in my PC’s USB mouse, and surfed around the Mac as best I could with no keyboard. I discovered that the OS had been a little lobotomized in the previous owner’s zeal to clear off the hard drive, so I pulled out my old OS 8.5 CD and performed a clean install of the operating system. After all, the iMac has built-in ethernet, so I’ll be able to download OS upgrades from the ‘net, no problem. I’m pretty sure that Mac operating systems through OS9 are free downloads… and I may be able to procure a copy of OSX for a reasonable price somewhere online.
After a little online research (from my PC, that is, after retreiving my USB mouse), and after some serial number decoding, I learned that this is actually a Revision D iMac, apparently in Blueberry. (Coulda *sworn* that was Bondi Blue…) Processor speed 333MHz, bus speed 66MHz, 6GB hard drive, 15″ screen, manufactured in August 1999 in Mexico.
Why, you ask, did I buy this relic? It’s unexpandable, un-upgradable, and obsolete.
The answer? I just can’t pass up a Mac at the thrift.
Really, the more reasonable explanation is that I haven’t used my 6500 in months, just because it’s so damn clunky. I can’t install any modern web browsers on it, Gmail didn’t work right in IE 5.5 last time I checked, and I have little reason to even power up the Mac anymore. I guess I thought that if I had a G3, I might be more inclined to at least check the layout of my websites on a Macintosh. Plus, I’m curious about OSX — the last time I used a Mac on a daily basis was right before the switchover from OS9 to OSX. Apparently, this iMac can run OS 10.3.9 with no problem, and maybe even OS 10.4 with a little tweaking. With its whopping however-many megs of RAM, though, I might be better off sticking with a “classic” OS.
I’ve gotten so used to Windows PCs now. I used to be a complete Mac-o-phile. Now, I don’t know if I could do without my right mouse button and scroll wheel on a regular basis*. If I had over $1000 to blow on a computer, I’d probably end up spending it on a new flat-panel display and/or a dual-processor Windows-based something-or-other, rather than a Mac mini or a new iMac.
I just purchased a keyboard, puck mouse, and cover door on eBay. Total cost with shipping: $25. So, I blew $85 overall on an obsolete computer. Did I get hosed? Sure.
At least it looks kitschy.
*Yes, I know the Mighty Mouse has those capabilities. The question is, would I really want to spend $70 on a mouse after dropping a grand on a computer?