Category: Pursuits

  • Easy BIOS upgrades? Who wudda thunk

    Every time I boot up my cheapie Windows PC running Windows Vista, I get the same annoying error message. The Asus T3-M2NC51 barebones box has a slight conflict with the AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ Brisbane processor at its heart. It’s something I knew when I paired them up last spring (See “Imperfectly building my…

  • It’s a heavy, heavy snow out there

    Wandered out today ’round my Needham, MA, home to give my Canon Rebel XT digital camera (complete with Canon’s wunderbar 50mm 1.4 EF lens) a cold weather work out in the umpty-umpth snow storm of the 2007-2008 winter class. If I had to categorize this dump of some 6 to 8 inches, I’d call it…

  • Reclaiming an ancient PocketPC as a web browser

    Cleaning out the attic closet recently, I came across an ancient Casio PocketPC that I must have bought six or seven years ago, the Cassiopeia E-115. It’s a cute little device featuring a smallish, color touch-screen and compact flash card slot. My son was immediately interested in reclaiming it but we couldn’t get it to…

  • Ignore that cranky Mossberg and his Kindle whine

    I kept meaning to predict that Wall Street Journal gadget reviewer Walt Mossberg was going to pan the Amazon Kindle e-book reader because he’s hyper-sensitive to minor flaws. But life intervened and I didn’t get the chance. And, of course, now he has. Sometimes Mossberg is right on, but unfortunately with the Kindle, he’s far…

  • Kindle reviews by folks who actually have seen one

    Amidst all the misinformation about Amazon’s new Kindle electronic book reader, particularly coming from people who have never touched or used it, here’s a list of reviews from the fact-based segment of techdom: Gizmodo checks Kindle in the bedroom, on an airplane and atop the porcelain throne. Not quite a home run, just a triple,…

  • Ignore the static: Kindle is great for reading

    Wow, the new electronic book reader from Amazon, Kindle, sure is getting a lot of absurdly misguided and factually incorrect criticism. My fingers are getting sore from responding to such a tide of disinformation in comment boxes scattered across a zillion web sites. Just this morning, I’ve been writing a lengthy comment to a Kindle…

  • Time for a seasonal photo update

    It’s been getting colder and colder up in here in the Boston burbs and the leaves are turning all sorts of excellent colors. Seemed like an excellent time to swap out the picture at the top of the blog for something a little more seasonal. If you’re an RSS devotee, stop by to see the…

  • Can the web solve the BOOK omnivore’s dilemma?

    Always looking for new things to read for those Internet-inclined among us means always looking at new web services that may offer help. Today I stumbled across GoodReads.com, which lets you list, rate and review books you’ve read. There’s obviously going to be some kind of behind-the-scenes suggestion engine voodoo but it seems I need…

  • Blaspheming in the temple of the Mac: Boot Camp

    Ah, the crazy things we do to play a silly computer game known as Civilization, or in this case Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Beyond The Sword expansion. Each and every version of Civ comes out first for Windows and some months later for Macs. And so, each and every time, I have to obtain, borrow…

  • Civ IV’s latest expansion piles on the complexity

    My long-ago pre-ordered copy of the Civilization IV expansion pack “Beyond the Sword” arrived today, and after a very busy work day, Friday family dinner and the usual bed time dawdling rituals from the kids, I found myself with a bit of free time (the wife is just back from a business trip to Europe…