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October 8, 2003

A Little Miscellany

Time to take a break from all the Palm-oriented stuff of the past few weeks and mention other tidbits that have been on my mind lately.

First off, it's been Indian Summer around here, which is very nice! It's a nice last gasp for summer temps before the cold hard blasts of Old Man Winter get us in his grip. It looks like upper 70s and sunny here through the weekend, so I aim to get out and enjoy it while it lasts.

Books -- picked up a copy of Michael Crichton's Prey for 7 day loan last week and read through the book relatively quickly. Crichton has a nice, fluid writing style that makes for quick reading as compared to say William Gibson's more lucid, snapshot style of writing. I enjoyed Prey, which had a pretty good story line, though I did feel bit as though Crichton may have leaned a bit too much on his Jurrasic Park formula. I also felt that some of his story was a bit of a stretch -- though that's OK in a sci-fi thriller, which I expect to be a little edgy. If you're interested in nanotechnology and a nice thriller, this is a good read that will also get you thinking.

Now I'm starting on a much older book by William Gibson called Neuromancer. Oddly enough, I'd heard a lot about Gibson and this book, which was the start of terms like cyberspace, the matrix and other terms. Guess I just never got a copy, which is probably sacrilege for a tech geek to not have read. So far so good -- a very interesting look at the future (written back in 1986) especially considering none of our current Internet or other technologies even existed when Gibson penned it.

Mac OS X 10.3 (code-named Panther) comes out October 24th, which is excellent news! From what I know, this upgrade will improve speeds on older hardware like the Titanium Powerbook G4 I use and looks to add several cool features. Probably the most interesting for me is the ability to log out of your user 'environment' without having to quit apps (which I understand is standard on Win XP). For me, the ability to have separate work and personal logins will work really well for the way I like to work. Still, I may just let others test Panther out for a few weeks before upgrading though, to make sure there are no serious problems -- though I suspect this release ought to be a solid one.

And that's all for today's installment of miscellany... :-)

October 8, 2003 2:09 PM | General | add to del.icio.us