Posts from: March '08

A few good uses of a laptop

I must admit that my attitude towards laptops changed quite a lot recently (as I got one myself). It is quite hard to encompass all the uses of this technological gem. Here are a few:

* Mobile storage, that easily takes GBs of photos without any complaint (and the user interface is incredible);
* Mobile disc burner. The UI is, again, unrivalled;
* A great utility for presentations. Especially for the Topology lessons in Sofia University;
* (see previous point) Even a greater utility while other people are doing their Topology presentations. Especially if Quake3 runs smooth enough (well, in my case - not quite. It is only a decade-old game after all);
* A great webcam stand. It is not a problem even if the camera itself doesn't have good view controls - with the folding panel you have at least 4DOF;
* ... and many, many more, which I'm now too tired to write down.

Recently I came up with another, absolutely surprising and useful application of my laptop: a butter softener! You know what the cold butter looks like when you take it out of the fridge - yeah, you can cut it with a knife, but try to spread it on a loaf of bread that isn't harder than your teeth. It kinda sucks, right? Well, now that I have The Laptop, I just put the butter in front of the cooling outlet of the machine and wait for one minute. Voilà - now the butter spreads almost like margarine. For more effective cooling you need to run your favourite CPU stress program (e.g. my Fract Benchmark in "Loop forever" mode) - just do not forget to stop it after the butter melts, 'cause the fan starts to whine in agony. Actually, I now have an effective argument why laptops help for better digestion! Would you dare to challenge such an irrefutable argument? Brave you.

So, I've nothing more to add. Thank you, HP, for this multifunctional machine. I'm deeply impressed.

Posted in category Hardware -- 23 Mar 2008, 01:01, 1 comment

Blogy

So here it is finally - welcome to my blog in English!

Some bits of history: I started writing in the Bulgarian-only version of abs for some 1.5 years now, but I realized quickly that an open-source developer blog doesn't make much sense to be written in any language other than English, so a few months ago I had the idea to translate the blog posts and keep it in a bilingual form in the future.

On the other hand, it is kinda mixed personal/developer blog as well, so it might seem odd sometimes, but if you like it, keep reading. Also it is in a perpetual work-in-progress state. As you can notice, the design of the site sucks, but this is compensated by the fact it is probably insecure. See - you have all the neat things at hand :) So, I sincerely beg you: don't sign yourselves as Bobby Tables or other related heroes. If you do - I WILL find you (like, really!).

Posted in category Meta -- 23 Mar 2008, 00:05, 2 comments