I forgot to mention that I finally played Mass Effect tonight
Back on the Eee again, just for a laugh.
I still can't quite get over just how small this thing is. Any previous laptop of mine, and the vast majority of models on the market today, would either crush your legs or boil your blood (often both) if actually sat on your lap. On the way home from school today, however, I took it out and typed up a script for a little comedy sketch. The only problem I encountered was the motion of the car itself.
It continued to be useful at school. I managed to get some of my Physics project written up, in between people stealing it to play Frozen Bubble and Penguin Racer.
That's another thing about the Eee. Even with my crappy old laptop, I only left it in the common room knowing that it was password protected and after telling a friend to make sure no one would use it. I can't imagine ever being willing to take in an expensive ultraportable along the lines of the MacBook Air into school. I'd never be happy leaving it alone and I wouldn't want it in my bag lest it somehow get scratched or damaged.
Yes, the Air and its expensive ilk can do more, but I think I'd be too frightened to use it to its potential, even if I did need such facilities while on the go. With the Eee, I'll happily leave it lying around when I'm not there and when the day's over it gets bunged in my bag along with some crumpled Physics sheets and my pencil case.
The whole little package just seems so durable and robust. Okay, so it's probably not what you'd take on a trip to the Sahara or into the rainforest but it feels solid enough to handle every day wear and tear.
I'm even considering doing some mods for it. Sam, who was off school today due to illness, says he spent most of his free time looking up details on the Eee PC and now seems determined to get one of his own. He says he's found this relatively simple mod that'll give the Eee a touch screen, the components for which only cost about £35.
Assuming he can get a copy of XP cheap enough (or, by some means that I don't wish to discuss for legal reasons, for free), he'll be able to put together a touchscreen, Windows laptop for less than £300. And, since he's doing English for which he'll only really need a word processor and, in the words of my Computing teacher, some "dusty old tomes", it'll likely be enough to get him through several years of university, along with his Mac Mini.
I know I seem to be waffling on about it a lot but I've just become really attached to this little thing. It's useful, fun and practical straight out of the box with the potential for a lot more, for people who know how to find it. And, eventually, I hope to be one of those people.
Anyway, time for something else. An amusing anecdote from my day at school, in fact.
I recall wistfully the days of primary and early secondary school, days when exams were unheard of, when homework took ten minutes and when the length of essays and projects was given in pages rather than words or experiments.
Back then, writing up essays on computers at home was quickly becoming the standard and everyone swiftly realised* that increasing the font size was far easier than writing more words. After all, a small increase in font, say by 4 points, could change a ¾ page essay into a 1½ page one. 2 wasn't even much of a stretch, provided you knew your way around double spacing.
I had cause to wonder this morning if someone hadn't been a little overzealous in their application of the same technique. The only other, and more likely, alternatives were some sort of accident or practical joke.
When we arrived in Computing this morning, lying beside the printer was a huge stack of paper. At first glance, you might think it had been a teacher printing out several booklets of notes or something when the photocopier was in use. The only clue to their origin was that on the top page, in landscape orientation and something like size 90 font, the words "Asgard is" was written.
Flicking over to the second page, we found "the Viking" and carrying on we found page after page of one or two words, including ideas about "the home of the gods" (about three pages) and something so exciting that the exclamation mark following it somehow got its own page.
Comparing it to a packet of printer paper lying nearby, we guessed that there must have been about 150 pages of it, repeating at least a few times. It wasn't until our teacher checked the network logs that we got anything exact - it turned out to be the same 29-page long document (or, quite possibly given the font size, the same sentence) printed out 6 times.
We were never told, though the logs probably said, who printed it (well, whose account it was printed on - would you do something like that under your own username?). The Vikings are one of the topics done in P7 so we guessed that it came from there.
You know, I think that might have been much more amusing if I had got to the point an awful lot faster. I do tend to ramble on a bit. I suspect that it's something about this little keyboard. It takes a while to get used to but once you do it's quite comfortable and I can type remarkably quickly with it.
That's about it for tonight. I've just checked the clock and realised how close I'm drawing to my arbitrary deadline. I may still get a woodle up tomorrow but Sam, who I was relying on for the art, was off school today and doing something after school yesterday, so I've not actually had a chance to tell him about it yet.
Maybe next week. I'm considering changing it to something more based on my own experiences, though still with some random, gag-based ones. Like the Tech Support 2257 series, which I guess would now be Tech Support 2258. I've still got a few old ideas for that kicking around, plus the original images, so I might put together one of them.
Wow. This has gone on to three pages now. I can't even remember when that last happened. But like I said a couple of paragraphs back, I need to wrap this up for tonight.
Have a nice day.
*And I just realised now that this version of Open Office only has USA English spell check.
I still can't quite get over just how small this thing is. Any previous laptop of mine, and the vast majority of models on the market today, would either crush your legs or boil your blood (often both) if actually sat on your lap. On the way home from school today, however, I took it out and typed up a script for a little comedy sketch. The only problem I encountered was the motion of the car itself.
It continued to be useful at school. I managed to get some of my Physics project written up, in between people stealing it to play Frozen Bubble and Penguin Racer.
That's another thing about the Eee. Even with my crappy old laptop, I only left it in the common room knowing that it was password protected and after telling a friend to make sure no one would use it. I can't imagine ever being willing to take in an expensive ultraportable along the lines of the MacBook Air into school. I'd never be happy leaving it alone and I wouldn't want it in my bag lest it somehow get scratched or damaged.
Yes, the Air and its expensive ilk can do more, but I think I'd be too frightened to use it to its potential, even if I did need such facilities while on the go. With the Eee, I'll happily leave it lying around when I'm not there and when the day's over it gets bunged in my bag along with some crumpled Physics sheets and my pencil case.
The whole little package just seems so durable and robust. Okay, so it's probably not what you'd take on a trip to the Sahara or into the rainforest but it feels solid enough to handle every day wear and tear.
I'm even considering doing some mods for it. Sam, who was off school today due to illness, says he spent most of his free time looking up details on the Eee PC and now seems determined to get one of his own. He says he's found this relatively simple mod that'll give the Eee a touch screen, the components for which only cost about £35.
Assuming he can get a copy of XP cheap enough (or, by some means that I don't wish to discuss for legal reasons, for free), he'll be able to put together a touchscreen, Windows laptop for less than £300. And, since he's doing English for which he'll only really need a word processor and, in the words of my Computing teacher, some "dusty old tomes", it'll likely be enough to get him through several years of university, along with his Mac Mini.
I know I seem to be waffling on about it a lot but I've just become really attached to this little thing. It's useful, fun and practical straight out of the box with the potential for a lot more, for people who know how to find it. And, eventually, I hope to be one of those people.
Anyway, time for something else. An amusing anecdote from my day at school, in fact.
I recall wistfully the days of primary and early secondary school, days when exams were unheard of, when homework took ten minutes and when the length of essays and projects was given in pages rather than words or experiments.
Back then, writing up essays on computers at home was quickly becoming the standard and everyone swiftly realised* that increasing the font size was far easier than writing more words. After all, a small increase in font, say by 4 points, could change a ¾ page essay into a 1½ page one. 2 wasn't even much of a stretch, provided you knew your way around double spacing.
I had cause to wonder this morning if someone hadn't been a little overzealous in their application of the same technique. The only other, and more likely, alternatives were some sort of accident or practical joke.
When we arrived in Computing this morning, lying beside the printer was a huge stack of paper. At first glance, you might think it had been a teacher printing out several booklets of notes or something when the photocopier was in use. The only clue to their origin was that on the top page, in landscape orientation and something like size 90 font, the words "Asgard is" was written.
Flicking over to the second page, we found "the Viking" and carrying on we found page after page of one or two words, including ideas about "the home of the gods" (about three pages) and something so exciting that the exclamation mark following it somehow got its own page.
Comparing it to a packet of printer paper lying nearby, we guessed that there must have been about 150 pages of it, repeating at least a few times. It wasn't until our teacher checked the network logs that we got anything exact - it turned out to be the same 29-page long document (or, quite possibly given the font size, the same sentence) printed out 6 times.
We were never told, though the logs probably said, who printed it (well, whose account it was printed on - would you do something like that under your own username?). The Vikings are one of the topics done in P7 so we guessed that it came from there.
You know, I think that might have been much more amusing if I had got to the point an awful lot faster. I do tend to ramble on a bit. I suspect that it's something about this little keyboard. It takes a while to get used to but once you do it's quite comfortable and I can type remarkably quickly with it.
That's about it for tonight. I've just checked the clock and realised how close I'm drawing to my arbitrary deadline. I may still get a woodle up tomorrow but Sam, who I was relying on for the art, was off school today and doing something after school yesterday, so I've not actually had a chance to tell him about it yet.
Maybe next week. I'm considering changing it to something more based on my own experiences, though still with some random, gag-based ones. Like the Tech Support 2257 series, which I guess would now be Tech Support 2258. I've still got a few old ideas for that kicking around, plus the original images, so I might put together one of them.
Wow. This has gone on to three pages now. I can't even remember when that last happened. But like I said a couple of paragraphs back, I need to wrap this up for tonight.
Have a nice day.
*And I just realised now that this version of Open Office only has USA English spell check.
posted by Alasdair Corbett at
11:44 PM
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