The Insomniac Coder

\ This is so true that my curriculum actually included a course where they spent the semester showing us that medical doctors get to bury their mistakes one at a time, while us engineers had no limit on how many people we could kill due to gross stupidity. If you consider a career that involves public safety in any matter (in other words, if you will be working on something that can make a difference between somebody living and dying), the moment you are contemplating to cheat on a test is when you have to take a really hard look at your priorities and ask yourself why in the hell you are pursuing that career path.

My new monitor is a real monitor instead of an  HDTV  (amazing how a 24" HD screen without analog inputs or ATSC tuner is so much cheaper than a 23" HDTV of the same product series), so I just got a Logitech S220 2.1 Speaker System with Subwoofer , an impulse buy and at $23 I didn't think much of it. I didn't even finish reading the product page. The system arrived today, and it came with this little doodad: This little pod is a combination of: Power switch Headphone jack extension Microphone jack extension Volume knob I have been using it for maybe an hour, and I can't understand why every PC doesn't come with a pod like this.The two speakers sound like two tiny speakers, no surprise there. The sub-woofer actually sounds pretty cool, even better considering the whole thing cost $23 including free shipping. 

Image by pvera via Flickr If you follow the technology news you will notice that Apple has a certain schedule for releasing certain things. You can always count on Apple to release brand new hardware during the Mac World expo in San Francisco, which happens early in the year, and OS-related announcements during the World Wide Developers Conference during the Summer. Apart from these two, there is usually at least one "media" event that deals with things like iTunes , iPods , etc.  You can also count on people crying like little bitches because no matter how much Apple announces, they simply can't make everyone happy at the same time. This is what we call the "Apple Crying Game." Today we have some announcements, and the crying is already getting out of control: On the new iPod Touch : OMG why doesn't it look like the iPhone 4? This is BULLSHIT! Why the hell do I need to pay for this double camera nonsense? $400 for the 64 GB version? Apple thinks we...

Image via Wikipedia I am trying to find something with a 7" or so screen for PJ . It has to play digital video , plain DVD won't cut it. It has to be sturdy and hopefully it should cost less than an iPod Touch, wireless connectivity is optional. The iPod Touch is the perfect device, but PJ is not the perfect candidate for it, it needs to be bigger so it is easier to find when he misplaces it, and it has to be sturdy enough to survive accidental drops. Level of complexity of the UI is a non-issue, PJ has been navigating his Xbox 36 through 2 generations of the dashboard, plus OSX and iOS1-4. A 7" iPad would certainly fit the profile, even if it would cost more than an iPod touch since it would definitely be bigger, and PJ has been using iPhones since they came out, so to him it would be nothing more than a huge iPhone.  Anyone has obvious choices that I haven't figured out yet? Related articles by Zemanta More shots of the next-gen iPod Touch front LCD and bez...

Image by pvera via Flickr BBC - Newsbeat - MP3s 'to blame' for hearing loss : "Up to six and a half million teenagers in America struggle to hear whispered conversations or leaves rustling in the wind." I blame walkmans, Iron Maiden and working in loud NOCs with industrial-sized HVACs and no hearing protection. I know this because we were marked as high risk for hearing loss while I was a chairborne ranger in the Army , and we were forced to have hearing tests much more often than other soldiers. After the first few years they noticed gaps in my hearing frequency response charts, I bet those match the frequency for the dull roar of these air conditioner units. What makes that partial loss annoying is that it makes it difficult to hear dialog in movies unless using a multi-channel system that lets you separate a center voice channel that can be boosted without increasing the overall loudness of the movie. Related articles by Zemanta Are MP3 players behind teen h...