So today I backed up all my crap on my laptop so I can reinstall the OS. Its just gotten a little cluttered since I got it and its just that time again. I booted off the DVD to start the format/reinstall, and had an “oh crap” moment. Luckily, from the installer it lets you load up the terminal app. I plugged in my iPod, and copied the files i forgot to backup to my ipod from the installer. <3

This week I had a lot going on. For starters, I took the boat trailer to get painted and sandblasted in santa clara and went on a nice bikeride to the top of St. Joseph’s Hill where I saw a very nice sunset. I went up to Sausalito again to help out my friend Alfonso with some computer stuff, as well as worked a bit for Cybermanor. Later in the week I went to the Control4 Real Tour off highway 92 with Gordon from Cybermanor. This was a small demonstration of the Control4 system and how they will integrate into homes of the future for home control and automation. They presented some cool aspects of home automation that I just never thought of before, including some major safety features. Some of these safety features include shutting off central air if there is a fire to stop the spread of smoke, and the flashing of exterior lights in the event of a fire to help firefighters find the location, if for example the flames and/or smoke are not visible. The whole control4 system communicates via 3 methods. It will use Ethernet, 802.11, or Zigbee. Zigbee is the slowest but also the coolest of the three, and is only used for sending control commands, like switching a light on or off because it is quite slow on the throughput, but it is a meshed network, and with a range that isn’t that great, you just need to add more zigbee devices, such as dimmers or switches, to extend the network further in the home. they relay signals off of each other, know how to figure out the quickest path, and will correct the path if a part of the home looses power.

On August 8th, I finally decided to bite the bullet and actually buy myself a PowerBook. I got myself a 1.5ghz 15” with the standard 80gb and 512mb with the addition of the superdrive. Two days later I got a PCMCIA EV-DO Verizon Card for mobile broadband internet, and discovered that the PCMCIA jack was busted on the PowerBook, so I took it back, and they gave me another one. I think by this point between the Mac Mini and having two PowerBooks, I’ve installed OSX about a dozen times. Two days later I ran into an issue for work where I planned on going to Huntington, yet one of my clients needed me to have internet access over the weekend. I went to Valley Fair and got myself a EV-DO access card. This card provides both 1X (144kbps) and EV-DO (384-1800kbps) access in areas where the specific type of service is available. Currently in the bay area EV-DO service is only available at the San Jose Airport, but it should have greater coverage hopefully by the end of the 3rd quarter, if not then it will be available by the end of the year. It will be like getting my Ricochet wireless back, the broadband mobile service from several years ago that I really miss a lot. With this new card I plan on making myself a StompBox (http://www.stompbox.com). This is basically a small embedded computer with the Verizon EV-DO Wireless WAN Card in it. The box also has a wireless network card to share access from the verizon service to any laptop that is within wireless range. People are building these boxes into their car, and adding cool internet related services such as GPS tracking with webcam snapshots. I plan on building at least one of these boxes. Build it into my car with webcam, gps and all. During the summer however it belongs on my boat. The webcam will provide me with remote pictures of Huntington lake while I’m in the bay area. The 144kbps service that i can get through this card is much faster than any dial-up connection that people up there are accustomed to.

Super Happy Dev House III was a blast. I cant say that I really accomplished anything, but I did learn a few cool tricks on my new Mac Mini. I learned that if you hold down the shift key while minimizing a program it will minimize in slow motion down to the dock, and if you kill the dock’s process id while its in motion, it will freeze in its current shape and you can use the window as if it was a normal shape, the window itself has no idea that its size has been altered. For example, you can do this with Firefox, and the browser continues to work properly in the genie shape. Kinda cool if you ask me. I brought my own car this time because I knew that I wouldn’t make it past about 2:30am.