20080418

I don't usually top post but this time it is well worth it! I just watched Dr John Medina's talk on his book Brain Rules (which made it into my whish list). His slides sucked but he is a brilliant speaker and the subject is fascinating.

I agree with his hitch (no scientific proof) that there is unbelievable power in unrestricted curiosity. I have known for a long time that you can't multitask but it is always good to be reminded. Last but not least, home would be a better place if men were better at listening instead of judging and women able to communicate efficiently about there psychological interior.

My new toy :P

I got myself a new laptop, a HP nc4400! I wondered about getting a Mac for a long time but decided against it for now. The reasons for that are:

• I use Unbuntu most of the time and couldn't care less about Mac OS X Aqua look, also I was favoring it over Windows cause I became addicted to the command line (and PowerShell doesn't make the cut).
• MacBooks are two heavy for my liking, except the Air but it lacks out of the box Ethernet.
• None of the MacBooks have a PCMCIA slot (which I use, USB 1.0 on my D30 is too slow ...).

It's new because it is a second hand machine (doing my bit for the environment :P). I figured I had been using the same laptop for the last 5-6 years so didn't need the fastest, latest and schnaziest. So far pretty happy with the seller Note-X in Paris (got it this morning).

I thought I'll contribute to the Groundswell by mentioning them here ;) I am not an eBay specialist but Note-X lists their products on eBay and sell them 100€ cheaper on there osCommerce driven online shop. I am surprised eBay allows that.

I received The one-page proposal today as well, funky format and promising subject :P

Last but not least, Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky two prominent tech bloggers I have been following for some time now are working together on a new web site for developers called Stack Overflow. They are not in stealth mode and planning to podcast about the conception of the thing on a weekly basis.

The nc 4400 is a great machine but doesn't have a DVD player. Wubi saved the day once again. I am now running Ubuntu 8.04 beta somehting (wubi rev 487) on the new toy. I guess I'll play with LPVM to migrate to a proper partition soon ;)