Categories
Hardware Tech

Times they are a-changin’

I’m getting close to finishing my hard drive upgrade for my desktop at home (ran out of space for ripping CDs) and the amount of storage I now have made me start thinking back to the computers I’ve had over my lifetime and how the storage specs have progressed



  • Apple IIe – No hard drive, just a 360 kB floppy drive (…720 kB thanks to a hole punch)
  • Mac LC – 40 MB (I have picture files large than that)
  • Power Mac 8100 – 250 MB (The drive was huge!  For a while, at least)
  • Mac PPC G3 – 4 GB (OS X has a system requirement of 3 GB, I think I can upgrade)
  • Home-built dual Celeron – 40 GB (Now that’s huge… right?)
  • Home-built P3 server – 120 GB (That is huge, I’m never going to run out of room now)
  • Home-built MCE – .8 TB (Actually it’s 1.6 TB of drives mirrored for data protection)

It’s kind of wild, just a couple of years ago that amount of storage seemed obscene… now it’s just necessary.


Care to take any bets on how long it takes me to be cramped for space?

Categories
Web Weird

Ah, a trip down memory lane

Last night I pulled up some of the Internet humor files I used to have on my site and moved them into a directory on this site.  In the process I came across the All your base are belong to us flash movie I saved.  I reminisced a bit with coworkers and Steve pointed out that there is an excellent article on wikipedia about the phenom.


Ah… good times.

Categories
Hotmail

Some positive reaction to our team blog

Michael Bazeley of the San Jose Mercury News (the paper in Si Valley) picked up on our team blog and, from the tone of the short post, was happy with what he saw.  I know our beta testers are enthusiastic about the work we’ve done so far… here’s hoping the rest of the world will be too.

Categories
Hotmail Tech

Out of the closet

By Internet time-scale this is very old news: the Hotmail team is working on a new product, some people have already gotten a glimpse via the mail beta. 


“Mail beta,” you say, “what’s that?”


It’s quite simple… it’s a beta of a new mail product.  True to Microsoft form we’ve given our new baby a name that tells exactly what it is (think: “Word”, “Project” or “Streets & Trips”).  We leave it to those renegades on the Mac team to come up with names like “Entourage”.


A while ago (Imran can tell you just how big of a while) we decided we needed to start fresh.  Hotmail was built to scale to hundreds of millions of two megabyte e-mail accounts, and it does that very, very well.  Hotmail is also built to work with web browsers most geeks would consider dinosaurs.  We realized the landscape was changing and we decided to do something about it. 


For the past year my job has been primarily one of a project manager.  I attended meetings, tracked dependencies and watched documents grow and shrink.  While this is a simplification of what I did (and in no way a slam on the role) it wasn’t what I enjoy most: working on the application interface.  Starting in mid-July Omar took over the project management duties (working with dev and others he’s put together a pretty slick combination of SCRUM and traditional processes… he’s putting us into overdrive) and I got the chance to return to the customer-facing side of the world.


That brings me back to the start of this post: the mail beta.  To go along with this mail beta we created a team space to keep interested parties abreast of our goings-on.  Hop on over there and check it out. 


For those of you who came to my blog from the team space… perhaps you weren’t looking for my blog… you were looking for my space.

Categories
Software Useful

I kan’t spel

I rely on the red squigglies in word.  What happens when I author blog posts?  How about typing in gripes to web forms on web shopping sites?


The answer: I use IE Spell.  It’s a free add-in for Internet Explorer that will spell check any form entry on a web page… even the posts I write for my Space.


Now, I do have to remember to click the IE Spell button, but it beats copy-paste into Word, copy paste into notepad to remove all formatting, copy-paste into my Blog.


Get yourself a copy now (and don’t forget to donate if you use it… it keeps the author making new software).

Categories
Idle Music

More music

Put simply: Mercedes Benz Mixed Tape 8 is out.  Get your fix of free Euro-pop and Jazz.


Too tired to blog.  Me: TV.  You: Download.

Categories
Blog Sites Tech Useful

Hey, I can see my house from here!

On Sunday most people got their first glimpse of MSN Virtual Earth (well, the PR started Sunday at any rate) and frankly… it’s pretty damn cool.  Imagine the useful features of Google earth… but in a web page… no software installer needed (unless, of course, you’re not running a modern browser, but then you’re probably on a 200 baud modem as well). 


The site is cool for what it is, but it gets better, the Virtual Earth team thought ahead and built in some cool functionality to allow people to create custom maps… so one of our architects did.  To the see the fruits of his handiwork go to the start preview, click the down arrow next to the “start preview” logo and select “MSN Bloggers Map” from the Popular Feeds/Staff picks section.  Voila, a list of MSN bloggers showing their office locations on a satellite picture. 


Think about how fantastic this is; we’ve made stalking accessible to the insanely lazy and clinically agoraphobic.

Categories
Web Weird

Sadistic? Maybe. Hypnotic? Definitely.

I don’t understand exactly why… but I’m mesmerized by this: http://www.little-planet.net/fun/.


Try grabbing them by the feet.

Categories
Idle Life Sites Useful

Eye scream, you scream…

From high school biology I remember that blue eyes is recessive and brown eyes is dominant.  I have blue eyes… so I have two recessive blue eye genes… should I have children, that’s all I can pass on.  If my wife had brown eyes then I’d know that our children would likely have brown eyes but possibly blue.  My education was useful up to the point I married a green-eyed lady (who here is old enough to remember Sugarloaf? Raise your hand… but don’t pull anything, please).


The other day while discussing genetics and eugenics with Imran my curiosity got the better of my and I did a search for an eye color calculator.  My search turned up a very nice page which happens to be hosted by our local Tech Museum.  My question has finally been answered: 66% chance for green eyes, 33% chance for blue.  Want to know your chances?  Make sure you know your parents’ eye color, your mate’s parents’ eye color, your mate’s eye color and your eye color then go to the Tech’s eye color calculator.  Note, if you can’t remember your own eye color you’re in trouble… if you can’t remember your mate’s eye color you’re in really big trouble.


Now I now the odds for eye color… if I could just find out if they’ll inherit her good looks or my idiocy.


eyeColor.gif

Categories
Idle Toys Web Weird

W.W.J.A.F.D.?

When I was a kid… aw heck, I’m still a kid.


Let me start again, when I was 9 my G.I. Joes used to “hang out” with my sister’s Barbie dolls (hey, I was 9, give me a break).  I can’t imagine, however, a Jesus Action Figure doing the same thing. 


jesus.jpg


Perhaps I just need to wait for the Mary Magdalene doll.