Not related to anything, but on Saturday I went to the Apple store on Michigan Ave. to buy a USB sound thingie. But the one in the store seemed different than the one I saw on the Apple Store website, so I got out my Aspire One to go online and check. After a minute there were three Apple store employees checking out my Aspire One and asking questions about it. They were amazed at how light it was. One employee commented on how odd it was that I had a bunch of Apple employees all impressed at a non-Apple computer.

It's still in wide enough use in film and television that it will see some use there for a few more years.

Actually it's amazing how much it has vanished there as well. I don't see 3/4" tape or 1/2" tape very much. If it is tape based it's typically DVC and most places are going all digital so they are just moving files and working tapeless.

Yeah, I figure VHS is dying in the industry as well. I guess that's coming sooner than I expected. Last time I was in a post house, I saw plenty of 3/4" and 1/2" tapes around, but that was a couple of years ago.

So what is going to be the option for us non-Tivo people who see something cool on TV and want to grab it off the air? Those Russian musicals on the international channel aren't easy to find.

They sell DVD recorders, some of which come with hard drives to make them more TiVo-like.

I don't know about these rumors: More Hints of an 'iPhone Nano' from Case Manufacturers

Some have argued that the screen on an iPhone Nano would just be too small to be useful in the same way the screen on a regular iPhone is. So how about an iPhone Shuffle? Just press a button and it calls someone randomly selected from your contact list. If you don't want to talk to that person, just shake the iPhone Shuffle and it dials someone else.

Lenovo's dual-screen laptop is a small piece of insanity

The upcoming Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds is not messing around. Not only does this monster of a laptop have a 17 inch screen, Intel Core 2 Quad processors, and the option to have up to 980GB of storage, but it has a secondary screen that slides out from the side of the main screen. That's right: a dual-screen laptop.

The W700ds is set to drop next month, but it isn't going to be cheap. It's going to be $3,600 at the very least, in fact, so unless you really, really need that extra screen you might want to just settle for a boring old one-screened laptop.

What else can I do?

Replace the battery with a living one, for a start.

[link]

I've found them locally for $5-$18 (Radio freaking Shack).

All they really are is three button batteries (LR44 I think) molded together to make a "1.2 AA".

Fuck. Major crisis at our client's office.

Anyone know Oracle SQL?

eta: I gotta convert the Oracle data type DBTYPE_DBTIMESTAMP to a string.

eta: OK, I figured it out. Apparently, SQL Server doesn't like it when Oracle gives it a date field of 12-22-0808.

Smart Plug Could Save You $150 in Electricity

The mCube90G smart-plug hub plays the role of a strict bartender at a bar full of heavy drinkers — only in this case, the drinkers are power-thirsty gadgets running up your tab.

Innergie_green_techResearch has shown that the average American family pays anywhere from $50 to $150 extra a year on wasted energy costs from plugged-in electronics that aren't being used, such as DVD players and TVs that are ostensibly "off" and cellphones that are fully charged but whose chargers continue to draw a trickle of electricity from the wall outlet.

It's the latter category that the upcoming plug hub from Innergie targets: It cuts off the electricity flow of gadgets at the moment they're done charging, offering a good energy efficiency option to those looking for ways to save a few bucks.