The Board

Any thoughts on the new Verizon/Motorola/Google Droid? Played with the HTC Hero on Sprint a few days ago and thought that Android had come a long way. Definitely could see myself using it instead of a Pre, although I’d prefer a keyboard. I love the notification bar (similar to the notifications in WebOS) and the homescreen widgets (although the HTC ones are a LOT better than the stock Android ones).

Droid sports Android 2.0, which among other things, comes with free turn-by-turn navigation. Click over to AndroidCentral for some really cool screenshots. Seems like a pretty hefty phone, though. I haven’t minded having a small screen on my Pre since it allows a more pocket-friendly device, but the real estate of the Droid would definitely come in handy at times.

So what do you guys think? I know we have no Verizon users, so this is all hypothetical, but are you feeling any envy?

Had a impromptu portrait session this morning to take a suitable picture for Lucas’ preschool application. We printed out a 4×6, which cost me 5X more than it should have because I didn’t know about Wolf Camera’s $1 minimum. So, which of the 2 images do you prefer?

We took Lucas to the pumpkin patch over the weekend.

They had some of those huge bounce house slides, with one shaped like a giant sinking ship.

Lucas was intrigued, but he was a too scared to go up by himself (no adults were allowed). Luckily, we met Julian, a friendly 7-year old, who took little Lucas under his wing.

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Don’t want to steal Jake’s thunder by putting this in his thread, but have to put this somewhere for posterity.
I’m posting from my new netbook, a Dell Mini 10v running Mac OS 10.6.0. So far, so good — for the most part everything works, but there are a few minor rough edges, as far as I can tell.
If anybody wants to try to duplicate my work, head to the Dell Outlet, where you can search by individual machines, and look for a Dell Mini 10v with:

• Atom N270 processor (not sure whether the 280 works — the 270 is what’s in the Wind, the HP Mini 1000, and many of the other hackable netbooks.
• b/g/n card. Seems like fun. If you don’t care about n, you may be able to save a few bucks.

I got the refurbished (not “previously ordered new” to save a couple more bucks). Also found a coupon for 15% off. $254 all in. When you get the machine, check the BIOS version, and if it’s higher than A05, downgrade. Things don’t work well with A06.
The installation was about as easy as it could be, provided you have a Mac. Starting from here, I followed these instructions pretty much straight through. I installed Snow Leopard using the $30 upgrade disk I bought for my home machine.
Overall, it works well, and could totally be a day-to-day machine. There are a couple of little annoyances:

• Apple knows that they don’t make a machine with a display as short as netbooks, so their dialog boxes and pref panes sometimes extend below the bottom of the screen. I can see this being a problem in some cases, but so far, I’ve been able to work around it the couple of times it’s happened.
• Doesn’t wake from sleep if you just close the lid, but if you put it to sleep, then close the lid, it wakes up fine on lid opening.
• The sound works, but clearly is a hack. There are some weird clicks when UI sounds are initiated.

So, overall, I’m really happy with the machine. It’s so damn small and light that I can see taking it with me in a backpack or on a non-work trip. The built-in SD card reader is nice, and will work great. With an additional 1 GB of memory, it’s really gonna rock.

OK, here it goes. To get caught up. First bought the HP Mini 110-1020NR. Next, Kelvin supplied a Windows 7 RC disc. The next day, bought 2 8GB USB flash drives. Yesterday, used Win2Flash to put the Windows 7 installer onto one USB drive. Then, stopped at Fry’s and bought Snow Leopard for $24.99. Created an image of the Netbook and saved it to the ReadyNAS in case things get real messed up.
Today, created an image of the Snow Leopard Disk, and I’m currently restoring that image to the other USB Flash Drive.
I’ll update as things progress/ regress. Not sure I’ll be able to get a fully functioning OS X install today, as there are some bits that aren’t working just yet on the 110. So this may stretch out.

As you all know by now, Adam Morris DiMicco was born last a week ago, 6 October. It’s been a busy week — first, learning the basics of feeding, diaper changing, and swaddling, and over the last couple of days, getting Adam used to his new surroundings in our house. So far, so good ‚Äì he’s been pretty agreeable most of the time, sleeps pretty well (in 2 hour stretches), and has had no trouble eating.
Adam wants me to tell you all that he says hi, and if you’re interested in following his adventures day-to-day, he’s already twittering (amd378), and you can also check out the blog we set up for pictures and stories, at family dot dimicco dot net. If you don’t know the username and password, let me know and I’ll hook you up (just trying not to get him all Googled up yet!).
Here are a couple of pictures we took just before leaving the hospital, as Adam ponders life outside. Click for a larger version.

That’s me on the last full day of summer camp. Only 10.5 months away!

So between my work MacBook Pro being in the shop for repairs and the on-again off-again nature of the PowerMac dual G5, I was getting a little computer withdrawal. I’ve waited 6 months since they introduced the new Mac Pros, so there’s no way I’m upgrading now (with an update possibly around the corner). Been wanting a Netbook for a while, for Hackintoshing and general purposes, so the timing seemed right.

Of course, one quality I was looking for was Hackintoshability. The Lenovo S10 checked out good, according to the compatibility chart, and has robust community support. Small problem, I got the S10-2, which is sorely lacking in sleep support. For now, I’ll take it on faith that the community will find a solution, and I’ll give it a few weeks before I try anything too dramatic. And say that the HP Mini1000 might be the best option for state-of-the-art plus hackability (the MSI Wind is a little long in the tooth).
Besides all that, I like it. The screen is nice if a little glossy. Wide enough, a little short which pretty much requires full-screen mode in Firefox (F11 is your friend). The keyboard is nice, but cramped. Fine for short blog entries, but I wouldn’t want to write my thesis on it. The trackpad is small, but lots of bells & whistles… all it’s missing is double-tap for right click. And with 100 options for the Synaptics pad, the feature might be hidden somewhere.
WinXP is bearable, I’ll upgrade to Win7 soon enough. Incredibly light, 6-7 hour battery life. Plus, built-in SD card reader. Wireless is a little weaker than the MBP. We’ll see about cramming OS X onto it, looks like quite a bit of work regardless. Mostly, I just want this for Firefox and photo storage, although it would be nice to run Aperture. But might be more pain than it’s worth.