Also be sure to check out the Danny Macaskill video – equally awesome stunts, but with a bike.

Historically, I have not been a huge phone connoisseur. Before I had a phone, I remember my old roommate Jin and I outside of night classes surrounded by lots of people standing around talking on their phone rather than each other. We used to hold our hands up to our head like a hand set and say stupid things to each other – mimicking others’ trivial conversations. The guy talking on his phone at the urinal always was a bit of a turn off for a cell phone as well.

Finally, I broke down and bought one when my girlfriend at the time was going to drive across country by herself and wanted a phone in case she got into an accident. We got a couples plan. I bit the bullet. However, I was determined to get a brick of a phone. I didn’t want texting, cameras, flippy doos, I didn’t need to shave with it (razor joke.. *cough*). I just needed to make phone calls.

The brick phone lasted quite a few tumbles down stairs and drops onto pavement. I think I even threw it at someone by accident one time. However, its fate was sealed when I was at Jon’s pool, took a call, slipped the phone back in my pocket and jumped back in.

I tried to get another brick, but T-Mobil didn’t offer them anymore. So I ended up with a flippy doo phone complete with unnecessary buttons and a camera that took pictures that cost me a dollar to get off my phone. Finally, after a few tumbles, the phone only worked with the ear piece and even then, would randomly turn off on me during important teleconference calls.

In the mean time, the Iphone revolution ocurred and everyone was making cool apps, which appealed to me more than the gizmo itself. I caved and bought an ITouch last year for SXSW with the intention of making apps.However, at least at the time, that was not possible. Getting busy with other things “nerdcentric”, I just never got around to starting any apps. I also toyed with the idea of getting and Iphone to replace three devices – camera, phone, and ITouch. However,  I didn’t want the hassle of switching my mobile provider and I heard AT&T was a pain in the butt to deal with. I really didn’t want a Blackberry and otherwise, TMobile seemed to be left out of the multi-function swiss army phone market. But then Google changed that…

I was excited for when the G1 came out since, finally, cool phones I wanted was offered by my provider. I could develop apps in an emerging market (since the IPhone app market is soooo saturated). It also appealed to me to be able to make apps not under Apples’ annoying TOS (yes, I thought of a $1 booby shake application).

However, I  still never bit the bullet and got one. At the time, I had just bought my house and was short on funds. The idea of NEEDING to have a data plan was annoying since I had the minimal plan possible and that was still $60 after taxes and such. I still reminisce about the $10 per month land line of the olden days. Besides, G1’s flippy doo keyboard scared me since I am notoriously dropping my phone. Delicate moving parts and I do not mix well.

In the last six months my current T-Mobil phone started shutting off randomly and only worked with the ear piece. It was really getting annoying, but it was tolerable on a sort of “well, there are starving children in Africa” level. I could have easily scored a free phone since my contract had expired a while ago, but subconsciously I was waiting for a new wave of Google phones to come out.

With my birthday occurring yesterday, my girlfriend was being sneaky about my  gift. Neither of us have a lot of money right now. As such,  I wasn’t expecting much. However, she was hellbent on getting me a phone. She even tried to go in and buy one on her own, but found out that I had to be present to sign and handle the account authorization. So, before our movie date last night, we had to run a quick errand in the Midway and she took me to the T-Mobil store. I half knew what was up. However, I didn’t know we were going to the phone store. I kept joking as we walked “So you got me a gift card to AX Man?”, “Ooo a lifetime tab at Big V’s?”, “New rims from the Pawn shop?” But as soon as I saw the T-mobil sign in the mini mall, I knew. AWESOME!

We walked in both independently intending to get a Google Phone. However, I was a bit worried since I had not done much research. In the end the choice was easy  for lack of choice. I could either get the flippydoo Google phone that would break as soon as I dropped it or I could get a brick with a touch screen. Really, there wasn’t much difference in the phones – same service, same android OS, same camera, etc etc. Literally, it was just the device that was different. However, that was good enough for me. Since my contract was up, I signed a new one and walked out of there with the $500 phone for $200 and a full replacement warranty for $6 extra bucks per month (I’m sure I will need it).

So, now I am happy as a clam. I have been tinkering here and there and am generally impressed. The phone aspect of the phone is a bit cumbersome, but I’m sure I’m just missing something. I’ll probably write a review as I get more aquatinted with it, but all in all I am quite pleased. This very well could be the best b-day gift ever. Add that to a day of laying at the beach, watching Inglorious Basterds, and a romantic bon fire, the awesome party last weekend, and this might be best birthday ever.

Word. Kiss kiss baby. Thanks again! Hopefully, you won’t regret buying it for me for all those nights I will be up late making apps!

Credit: http://www.flickr.com/people/hinkelstone/

Today’s Interesting Bit of the Day is about tech mimicking nature, a twist on “art” mimicking “life”.

Leaves, yes *those* leaves, come in all shapes and size and perform many tasks. Some leaves are fuzzy to collect water droplets. Some leaves store toxins to keep predators away. Others form a funnel or bowl shape to collect water to evaporate slower. However, the primary function of leaves is to collect sunlight and convert water and carbon dioxide  into Chlorophyll, essentially plant food.

Converting sunlight into energy is something plants do very well. So well in fact that scientists are now starting to shift research from traditional expensive solar panels to ones emulating leaves. From the article, traditional solar panels are silicon wafers that directly convert sunlight into energy (i.e. Photovoltaic). The “artificial leaf” panels would mimic the process of photosynthesis. I can only guess that it might also help filter c02 in the air since that is part of the process as well. Double win. The article suggests that all the worlds power for a year could be supplemented with one hour of direct sunlight. This is amazing by any standards, but the article fails to mention the necessary amount of exposed surface to attain this much power. Any electromagnetic dorks out there will liken this to “flux”.  Either way, it is neat and I am glad to see the USA setting aside money to research it.

One other interested bit falls into the realm of power generation called “Piezoelectricity”. Typically, electricity is generated by turning a turbine which in turn acts like a generator. This can be done with falling water, steam, windmills, etc. Solar is different. But even more different (and bizarre) is Piezoelectric production of electricity. Essentially, there are certain crystals that, when force is applied, produce an electrical current. Many crystals will work – from sugar to Quartz. Piezoelectric devices are used in grill starters and my electric drum heads for example.

For the purpose of this post, I wanted to mention that scientists have attempted another way to generate power using the concept of the leaf – Piezoelectric Trees. They are essentially an alternative  to wind mills to harness wind energy. Imagine a tree covered in crystals instead of leaves – each generating power as they flap in the breeze. Granted, the leaves may not look exactly like the sort of crystals you are thinking of (nor even leaves for that matter), but you get the idea. There is a lot of really interesting piezoelectric science to discuss, but I will save that for another day.

As an aside, while looking quickly for a Piezoelectric Trees article, I found a recreation boat powered by the dance floor. I think I need to install one of these.

Thanks again for reading, and if you made it this far, please comment and tell me what you think of my “Interesting Bit of the Day” series.

Related Links:

• Scientists explore how the humble leaf could power the planet via Guardian.co.uk
• Flapping Piezo-Leaf Generator for Wind Energy Harvesting via Cornell.edu
• GO2 Catamaran Powered By Its Piezoelectric Dance Floor via Eco Trees
• Photovoltaics via Wikipedia
• Piezoelectricity via Wikipedia

Slinky - Photo Credit woodleywonderworks via Flickr

Today’s interesting bit of the day is about resonant frequencies. In layman terms, something’s resonant frequency is the point at which, when you “vibrate” it, will “shake” more than at other points.

These “shakes” can be caused by wind, sound, earthquakes, or people dancing to House of Pain’s hit song “Jump Around“. The concept of resonance was discovered by Galileo in the early 17th century, but as a physical phenomenon, has been around since the beginning of time. Some historians suggest that resonant frequencies may have even  exploited by early civilizations in war fare. Lets ponder this a bit.

According to Wikipedia:

In physics, resonance is the tendency of a system to oscillate at larger amplitude at some frequencies than at others. These are known as the system’s resonance frequencies (or resonant frequencies). At a resonant frequency the frequency of oscillation does not change with changing amplitude. Therefore, at these frequencies, even small periodic driving forces can produce large amplitude vibrations, because the system stores vibrational energy.

Firstly, some classic instances of resonant frequencies involve things collapsing. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse was an indent in 1940 (4 months after the bridge was built) where high winds caused the bridge the rock back and forth and ultimately collapse.  The wind caused the bridge to shake at its resonant frequency such that the road bed appeared rock back and forth like it was made out of rubber. The shaking was so consistent and prolonged that the bridge finally shook apart. The footage is surreal. This incident was studied heavily by civil engineers to build more wind resistant bridges. Bridges, such as the Mackinac Bridge connecting Upper and Lower Michigan, have sections of road bed that are simply steal grates to allow the wind to better pass through. While this prevents the bridge from shaking apart, it does create a scary view of the water hundreds of feet below if you look out the car window.

Wind is not the only thing that can destroy bridges using resonant frequencies- people can as well. An often told story introducing waves in highschool trigonometry is  of generals leading their soldiers to their death while marching in step across a bridge. The regularity of the marching shakes the bridge similarly to the wind in the Tacoma Bridge incident and causes its collapse. One such case was of the Broughton Bridge near Manchester England that collapsed in  1831 when troops marched in step over the bridge causing it to sway and rattle apart. Since then, troops simply walk across bridges rather than march. However, even in modern civil engineering, bridges have failed because of pedestrian traffic. One such case is the Millenium Bridge in London that received so much traffic when it opened that the bridge began to shake and had to be closed. The bridge was designed to support that much weight, but even though not marching, the vistors seemed to walk enough in step to hit the ressonant frequency of the bridge. This footage is scary as well. Perhaps this is a commentary on the “hive mentallity” of people or perhaps the state of civil engineering in the London. They do have their own Nursery Rhyme about it.

As we can see, resonant frequencies can be reached somewhat by accident. However, what if we wanted to utilize this on purpose.

Let us first look at the destructive aspects as well as everyone’s favorite physicist – Nikola Tesla. Tesla is credited for inventing the radio, alternating current electricity, improving many existing electrical devices and systems, and numerous other inventions. Tesla was a bit of an oddball and images of he with his various wireless electricity experiments are often the archetype of the  “mad scientist”. It didn’t help that he kept a lot of his ideas secret after a long life of Edison stealing them, lost patent claims, and the government supposedly trying to prevent enemy nations from getting to them first. One of his more interesting experiments  was the Tesla Oscillator, aka  “the earth quake machine”. Supposedly, Tesla invented a device that, when tuned to the resonant frequency of the object it was attached to, would cause the object to violently shake as if it was experiencing an earthquake. He even filed a patent for a similar device called the “Reciprocating Engine“. The famous tale is that “[he] established a laboratory on Houston Street in New York at 46 E. There, at one point while experimenting with mechanical oscillators, he allegedly generated a resonance of several buildings causing complaints to the police. As the speed grew he hit the resonance frequency of his own building and belatedly realizing the danger he was forced to apply a sledge hammer to terminate the experiment, just as the astonished police arrived.” (from Wikipedia). Based on some proposed designs, Mythbusters “debunked” the idea of the “Earthquake machine” in episode 60. However, to Tesla’s credit, the Mythbusters were able to shake a bridge (albeit not to pieces). Personally, I don’t know that a stunt guy and and a TV scientist can really produce conclusive evidence that debunks the claims of one of the greatest physicists of all time. Since the machine was destroyed and only the patent docs for a similar machine exist, perhaps we will never know if the earthquake machine lived up to its name.

That said, there are obvious military applications to being able to destory buildings and bridges using mechanical ressonance.  There are other types of ressonance that miliaries have been known to experiment-including acoustic ressonance. If you were ever in band, acoustic ressonance can easily be observed by notes being played that shake the response head of the snare drums causing the snares to bounce and make noise. This phenomnon has probably been observed for as long as horns and drums have been used near eachother, even though ancient people may have not understood ressonance. However, some theorize they did. It is thought that the story of the destruction of the Walls of Jericho from the Bible could have been caused by finding the walls’ ressonant frequency and playing that note on the horns of the invading Israelites. Gallilo gave the phenomon a name thousands of years later, but perhaps ancient people embraced ressonance.

Other military applications include producing “non-lethal” weapons that disable victims using sound. This site has a nice list of the effects of sound at various levels. At one frequency, your organs rupture. At another, your eyes start to malfunction (see ghosts?). At another, you lose your equilibrium. All are just a matter of frequency and amplitude, the fundamentals of any sound.

Another interesting resonance bit is the shattering of glasses using frequencies. This is often demonstrated when discussing resonance in Physics classes. Usually, however, this is demonstrated using speakers to produce a pure frequency (video). In a local 12th grade Physics class at the Minnehaha Acedemy,  professor Sam Terfa brought in a choir student who was able to do this with his voice alone. Epic.

Ressont frequencies are also the stuff of artists. Art metal group Sunn O))) dabbles in low frequency and ressonant music that reportedly knocked down ceiling tiles at their performance at the Walker Art Center. One of my old favorite art dork musical groups Merzbow also dabbles in ressonant frequencies which also caused me to stop listening to their music (long story). Personally, I am often reminded of band practice in the basement of my parents’ house where there was wood panelling. One of our bassplayer Josh’s favorite things to do was find the ressonant frequency of the wood panneling covering the basement walls and, to my parents dismay, play this note over and over ratting the house.

Anywho,  resonant frequencies can destroy bridges, shatter glasses, and sell records. Aren’t they great? Well, I hope you enjoyed this installment of interesting bit of the day. I have been compiling links for the last few weeks for this one. Please comment and let me know what you think of the series so far. I know it has not been daily, but I am trying.

Related Links

• A Short History of Sound Weapons pt 2 (Stalker)
• Millenium Bridge security camera video showing bridge trembling (Youtube)
• Millenium Bridge article (GoogleSightSeeing.com)
• Tacoma Narrows Collapse – News Reel Footage (Youtube)
• Walls of Jericho Collapse due to Mechanical Frequency (Squidoo)
• Shattering a Glass using speakers (Youtube)
• Shattering a Glass Using Voice Video (Science Friday)
• Sunn O)) Website (Idealogic)
• Merzbow (Wikipedia)
• A Short History of of Sound Weapons (via Stalker)

Photo Credit - belgianchocolate

Humans have grown used to a sense of exclusivity. Many of use believe we are the only intelligent life in the Universe. Most of us think we are at least the only intelligent life on Earth. However, intelligence comes in many forms and perhaps our own inability to see it is in fact a sign of our lack of intelligence.

At most we might give a pass to Great Apes. They are distant kin. They look like us. We’ve heard stories of their use of tools independent of humans, demonstrating the ability to plan ahead, and gorillas with IQs higher than most people who watch the MTV. Even monkeys, as I posted about before, figured out how to use other animals for transportation.

However, what about other animals? The inspiration for this post came from an article posted on Propeller.com today about Crows dropping stones in water vessels in order to raise the water level and ultimately eat something floating in it. The evidence suggest that Crows have the ability to plan and problem solve. Amazing, indeed.

A little googling revealed some other neat facts:

Dogs are believed to be better at reading human social behavior than our nearest primates relatives including language processing and interpreting hand gestures. The former article is especially interesting because it raises questions on what language truly is.

While not necessarily a sign of intelligence, many people’s belief that “homosexuality is a sin against nature”, might show our own unintelligent view of the animal kingdom.

Dolphins, which I assume most people think are somewhat intelligent, might be superior in intelligence to humans, depending on how you quantify it.

I’ll add a few more examples as I find them, but I intend not to make this list exhaustive. Do some research on your own. However, at least consider for a bit what “intelligence” means to you and where we fit in with a world of animals whose intelligence level approaches our own. Now, if my girlfriend’s dog were only smart enough to realize my roommate just put on a different hat when she barks at him like a stranger…

Related Links:

• Birds Tool Use Called “Amazing” via (Live Science)
• Birds Tool Use Called “Amazing” (via Propeller.com)
• Monkeys Ride Giant Rodents (via BlaineGarrett.com)
• Monkeys Ride Giant Rodents (via Youtube.com)
• Chimpanzees Learned Tool Use Long Ago Without Human Help via (Live Science)
• Stone Throwing Chimpanzees demonstrate Human-Like Behavior via LA times
• Dogs Get Gestures as Well as Humans via Discovery.com
• Dogs Understand Human Language via Wired.com
• Homosexual Behavior in Animals via Wikipedia

Is this what comes to mind when you think of prosthetic sight?

The keynote speaker for the “All Hands” meeting today was Erik Weihenmayer. Erik gave an amazing and inspirational talk about overcoming adversity and achieving great things when others believe you can’t.

This is often the topic of various motivational “You Can Do Anything” speakers. If I remember correctly, we had a few of these in middle school and high school mixed in with the “Say no to drugs” and “Avoid Peer Pressure” speakers. Usually, the “You Can Do Anything” speakers were (maybe) recovered Meth addicts or high school drop outs who got their GED and started their own auto salvage company. Obviously, a massive company like AOL can get a higher quality of speaker, and they struck gold with Erik. What makes Erik so great is that he is blind, and among other things, a rock climber. His feats include reaching Everest’s summit. Pretty amazing.

If that was not interesting enough on its own, Erik showed a new technology called BrainPort allowing visually impaired people “sight”. A textured mouth piece is placed on the tongue of the user. Cameras worn by the user translate video into a sort of pixelated  image that is then translated into the texture of the mouth piece. The texture triggers signals to the brain that are then interpreted as visuals. I envision it to be like those pin art toys you see at Spenser gifts, etc.

A video on the device can be seen on the Brain Port Website. From the video “Your brain is what really sees not your eyes. When your eye’s don’t work, you create another portal into your brain”. In the video, Erik can be seen retrieving objects with confidence and even discerning numbers. Very cool.

Other therapies have been researched including “seeing through your skin” but the BrainPort technology makes a lot of sense and seems similar to the development of smart prosthetic limbs using nerve connections.

My thought is that your brain is like the CPU of a computer (usually the metaphor is reversed). Your input devices and peripherals are your sensory organs (eyes, ears, skin, etc).  These are connected to your brain through nerves and chemical paths within the brain. The devices (eyes for example) detect an object (say a lovely member of the opposite sex) and send a signal to the brain to process it. Your brain receives the signal and processes as needed (perhaps sending signals to other parts of the body). Visually impaired people typically have a problem with only their eyes (the sensory device) yet their brain and nerves are fine. We have not yet been able to simply replace eyes (like you would with a broken scanner), but, as seen with BrainPort, perform a similar function using a different set of tools (perhaps using a digital camera in the computer metaphor).

Lots of interesting bits come to mind (synaesthasia, phantom limbs, etc), but I’ll save that for another day. Have a great weekend. Hopefully, you have enjoyed my posts this week.

Wheat in space - Nasa.gov

Today’s interesting bit of the day is an old favorite of mine – Dyson Trees. Dyson Trees were proposed by physicist Freeman Dyson as a means of creating atmospheric conditions on comets. The comet would provide the minerals and water for the tree to grow and the tree in turn would produce atmospheric gasses. This was all theoretical, but presumably is highly doable using available technologies.

The interesting bit about them is that they are proposed to grow as a sort of “shell” around the comets. Theoretically, the diameter of the comet is significantly smaller than that of the Earth. Since the earth is so large, trees here seem to grow perpendicular to the surface. In actuality, they radiate from the center like spokes on a bike. With the relatively small size of the comet, the trees could easily cover the surface of the comet to form a visual shell of foliage. Think of it like a chia-pet comet…. pet rock.

This inspires two thoughts:

Aside from the seeds themselves, the conditions exist for life in space on comets similar to that of primitive earth. Some theories suggest that elemental chemicals that helped create life on our planet originated from comments that crashed here. Given the proper comet and the introduction of organic material in the form of the tree and the oxygen it produces, higher forms of life could theoretically evolve in a sort of celestial petri dish flying through space. Can you imagine “catching” a comet, planting some seeds, letting it continue its orbit towards the sun, then catching it on the way back and harvesting a few years worth of growth? Heck, Haley’s comet could give us a forest of 75 year old lumber pending Einsteins’ theory of relativity.

The other interesting thought is making use of the gravitational forces in play with comets. Comets have their own gravity, which would allow for satellites and also are greatly affected by other bodies gravity which allows for transport. Short of building our own DeathStar, having a structure in space large enough to have even minimal gravity and mobility to support satellites would be a massive undertaking. Making use of comets could be a great way of energy harvesting. Dyson already proposed this as well in the form of Dyson Spheres basically networks  of satellites encompassing a celestial body for various purposes, including atmosphere trapping and solar energy harvesting. In the same aforementioned harvesting method above, comets could be fitted with solar panels, shot towards the sun, and the electricty could be harvested on the return trip. Pretty awesome in my opinion.

I propose that things of this nature are not far off. It seems like space exploration and colonization is something moving at a very slow pace compared to consumer technology. However, it has only been 40 years since anyone even stepped foot on another world and we have since made leaps in energy generation, space flight, etc.  I would love for one day to carve my initials in a Dyson Tree and I think it is probable. If the US is to again lead in space exploration and development, we need to get more kids interested in these things, which is part of the reason I do these posts. I hope it works

Related Links:

• How Does MicroGravity Affect Plants : Nasa.GOV (photo credit)
• Dyson Trees : Wikipedia
• Dyson Rings : Wikipedia
• Freeman Dyson : Wikipedia
• The Lunar Landing 40th Anniversary : WeChooseTheMoon.org

The Peter Principle is a  concept developed Lawrence J Peter in the 60s as a bit of office humor that states that all employees get promoted higher and higher until they attain a position which they are not suitable for and thus do not get promoted further. Another way to look at it is “If you are not currently in a position which you are incapable of doing, expect further promotion.” Originally humor, this has since been entertained as legitimate observation of the corporate world as well as abstracted to other areas. Read the full concept.

This was interesting for me for a few reasons. I have seen this a lot in most of the jobs I have worked – from Grocery Stores to Universities to Non-Profits to Conglomerates.  Essentialy, everyone wants to further their own career – be it for power  or a better quality of life. Perhaps it is the Idiocracy of the system: if enough of the upper escehelon gets eroded by incompetence, even the most minimally competent person will like like a genius. This leads me to another interesting concept in the “Related Links” of the Peter Principle -”Negative Selection“.  This concept suggests that political Dictators will stock their staff with the people least capable of reamoving him or her from power. This then trickles down through each lower position until you have a pyramid of leadership that is based on complete and utter incompetence. No wonder Dictatorships seldom work.

Anywho, I hope you enjoyed these finds. I am hoping to post something interesting/educational daily to help combat stupidity in our world. Feel free to email me with links you think should be posted.

Using the same community libraries I used for work, I would consistently get a 401:Unauthorized – “Failed to validate oauth signature and token”. This seemed odd since my code is really only about 3 lines and the libraries do the rest and everything worked fine at work. Thus, I thought maybe it was my Python installation, but that was up today. Even the Twitter Dev team said that it was rare to have a Request Token fail.

I spent about 2 weeks tearing apart the libraries and checking every step of the process. I contacted the Twitter Dev team to see if my server was somehow blacklisted. Finally, yesterday via the The Twitter Development Google group, someone posted this message.  The gist of it was that a 3rd party dev team was having issues getting the request token and traced it back to their server’s system time being 3 days off. So, I pinged my host guy. As it turns out, he didn’t have the time sync enabled in ubuntu and the clock was 2 hours off. As soon as he enabled sync, my code worked. Derf.

So yup, if you hit the unlikely case that your Request token doesn’t validate, check your system clock. Google Juice, help spread the word.

I feel like more electronics have failed in my presence over the last month than in all my previous years on this planet. About a year ago, the dvd drive on my work laptop died and I have been making due since, which wasn’t a big deal until recently. Around Thanksgiving, I bought an 1TB external hard drive for backups. For a while now, my work laptop has been acting pretty funny as well – freezing up, etc. So once my harddrive arrived, I backed up all my pictures and such onto the new drive and reformatted. However, reinstalling OSx proved to be difficult since my DVD drive was broken. I did manage to use my roommate’s macbook and do some magic trick with firewire to use her laptop as an external dvd drive. However, copying 2 CDs worth of install data over firewire took about 8 hours of a sleepless night one night. yuck.

Shortly after I was back on my feet, my new external harddrive started beeping at me an wasn’t recognized by any computer. I took the drive out of the enclosure and the sound was indeed coming from the drive, which meant the drive was dead. Awesome. There went all my photos and docs over the last 6 months…

Somewhere in there my phone died too. Or rather, I couldn’t hear anything out of the speaker nor could anyone hear me. I went  a few days without phone before trying my ear piece, which magically allowed me to hear people again. Yay for the fail phone. I’m broke and can’t afford a new phone right now, so I am running around with the scratched up POS with a missing battery cover and a janky ear piece. awesome.

Last weekend the pure unadulterated suckage continued. Before I got my job over 2 years ago, I bought a new PC laptop. Since then I have basically used my work laptop as my primary laptop and so the PC laptop has hardly been used. However, last weekend while Joe, Charles, and I were painting, I hooked it up to the PA system to play cds through. Everything sounded really skippy. At first I thought it was just scratched disks. However, then we tried netradio… and the netradio was skipping. After looking into it a bit, I discovered a SYSTEM IDLE PROCESS that was sucking up 98% of the CPU regardless of closing programs, restarting the computer, etc. Mind you, I was supposed to be working on paintings during this time – not trying to play on the computer. YARG. So, we just managed and listened to a bunch of skipping netradio. neat.

Then there were the last three days.,. Wednesday, my internet failed as it normally does. However, this time, I was midupload of some work – Specifically, a javascript file that was part of a massive code update I have been working on for a month. Once the internet came back up, the file on the server was empty. I scoured the local temp files for Transmit to find the code… nada. After cursing a lot and a quite a few cigarettes, I was luckily able to get back to before the loss in 2 days… i.e. today.

Shortly, after I got back to before the loss and was quite proud of how fast I managed to get it done, my computer started getting warm… and slow… and then finally locked up. This is not abnormal, even after reinstalling OSX. However, this time, the computer wouldn’t reboot and was reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal hot. Nothing I tried made a difference. So, I texted my boss who said to go to the Apple Store to diagnose it. After dealing with the usual Apple Store condecending pricks who try to explain how a computer works, I manage to run into my friend Adrian who I used to do music stuff with back in the day. He is a tech there now and was able to sneak me in. So, I will find out what is wrong within 24 hours. They think it is the harddrive. If so, that means the harddrive and the dvd drive are broken as well as the LCD fading horribly, a usb port not working, and it just generally being scratched and tired out. Granted it is 2+ years old and I use it 10+ per day every day. So, my hope is that work will spring for a new MacbookPro depending on the cost of fixing my old one. Eitherway, maybe I shouldn’t really be using anything with moving parts this weekend until I overcome this whole “edgercrusher” avatar I have apparently adopted. blarg.