Dean Christakos: January 2005 Archives

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January 31, 2005

Best... laptop case... ever

After the laptop I was issued at work had a tragic hard drive crash, I sent off my hard drive to DriveSavers, who, for a price equivalent to the cost of about 25 Travelstar 40GB notebook hard drives, will extract your otherwise inaccessible data. Considering that half the contents of my thesis work were on there, there wasn't a question. Besides, you get your data express-mailed to you in a bunch of nicely packaged DVDs!

Of course, this caused me to ask some soul-searching questions, the first of which was "why don't I back up my data?" and the next being, "why have I been lugging around a huge, five and a half pound, 3-year-old IBM T22 laptop?" The answer to the last question turned out to be, "because it was a free loan from the MIT Media Laboratory." The idea of a "desktop replacement" that does everything your home computer could do, as the T22 is, sounds really attractive when you're looking for a laptop computer. However, once you've carried such a thing back and forth for a few years, the concept loses its appeal. Suddenly, that 15" screen no longer seems so necessary. Realizing that I could afford my own laptop from a later era for about $1000 that would be far more gentle to my back, I managed to track down a refurbished IBM X31 laptop which weighs about 3 pounds, features built-in support for bluetooth and firewire, and is far more conducive to traveling around giving job talks with. I have to give a big shout-out to Eritech for providing a good selection of inexpensive refurbished laptops.

The next thing on my mind was, of course, what neat gadgets and accessories to get for it. I came across the Viper XS laptop case. It is truly a thing of wonder, constructed of ballistic nylon and form fitted for a 12" laptop. It is also on back order for the next two and a half months and will set you back about $40, plus shipping. Still, I must have it.

On the other hand, if you have money to burn the Matias black aluminum "Laptop Armor" looks pretty appealing as well, assuming you have $150 to spare.

Update: A reader informs me of a similar, but more easily available, laptop sleeve from SFBags.com, also made of foam and ballistic nylon and in a large variety of sizes to fit whatever laptop you may own. Consider yourself enlightened.

Posted by Dean at 11:46 PM | Comments (2)

January 24, 2005

Pedestrian Traffic Report for Boston

After recovering from a brief cold, a hectic schedule, and, finally a blizzard, I returned to my previous exercise routine. Of course, given the snowstorm that shut out most people from the gym, MIT's Zesiger Center was full, leaving me unable to find a treadmill. However, seeing that today's weather report forecast highs in the comparatively balmy 22 degrees, I decided to get into my warm-weather running gear take a run outside using my standard bridge circuit route around the Charles River. However, today I decided to go for the 2.8 mile Longfellow-to-Harvard Bridge loop rather than my standard 5 mile Harvard Bridge-to-Footbridge loop.

Well, the cold was survivable, but let me give a report about sidewalk conditions:

The sidewalks by MIT along Memorial Drive are mostly clear, except for the sidewalk between Walker Memorial and Ames Street, which has not get fully shoveled and salted.

The Longfellow Bridge is mostly blocked to pedestrian traffic on both sides. As I ran by around 7 PM, a crew on the Boston side of the bridge was just beginning to shovel the eastern pedestrian walkway by hand. I ran in the street.

The pedestrian overpass between Charles Street and the Esplanade is passable. It seems to have been shoveled early in the storm, and enough foot traffic seems to have packed the additional snow down to something walkable.

The Esplanade is almost unpassable and completely unplowed. You're running through 2 feet of snow if you want to maintain your normal jogging routine. Some regions were plowed to allow access to the Hatch Shell, but other than that, nothing. I had to jump over onto Storrow Drive, dodging traffic, to make any progress. Finally I hopped back over to the Dartmouth Street pedestrian overpass between the Esplanade and the Back Bay, whose snow is just packed down enough to cross.

The sidewalks in the Back Bay were clear, and finally the eastern pedestrian walkway of the Harvard Bridge, while unshoveled, was passable to pedestrian traffic.

For the rest of the week, my advice for maintaining your exercise routine outdoors is to avoid crossing bridges and stay on the minor streets and sidewalks. I guess I'll be sticking to the Cambridge side of the river for my runs by the Charles for the immediate future.

Posted by Dean at 9:00 PM | Comments (0)

January 23, 2005

Snowed In

The big blizzard here in the Boston area means that I am more or less snowed in, as is the rest of Cambridge. In the meantime, I plan to finish up some work, catch up on my Tivo watching, watch some movies from my DVD collection, and find out just how many different meals I can scrape together out of some frozen chicken, canned soup, pancake mix, and stale bread. Meanwhile, according to my sources, Star Market is open today, but I doubt I'll make the trek out there. See you when it thaws.

I should also note that I saw not one but two joggers today. I admire that level of hardcoreness. Good luck to all of those out jogging today.

Posted by Dean at 5:33 PM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2005

Reminders of NYC

Those who have picked up a cup of coffee at New York City diners are no doubt familiar with the ubiquitous paper coffee cups printed with Greek motifs. Now you can buy your very own ceramic mug that looks almost indistinguishable from the original paper cup from We Are Happy to Serve You. This product seems to have already made the rounds around the weblogs, but here at the MIT Media Lab, I saw one for the first time, carried by one of the staffers. Unfortunately, the online sources seem to be sold out of them, right now. I'll have to be sure to pick up a few when they come back into stock.

On a related note, speaking of mugs, there was a contest to come up with a mug design for MIT Media Laboratory mugs given out to students and staff. I collected some highlights of the contest entries, featured here after the jump...

Continue reading "Reminders of NYC"

Posted by Dean at 2:37 PM | Comments (1)

January 6, 2005

Programming tips

Just in case you need to be reminded, this page on rotation matrices gives a good refresher on those geometrical transforms you might find yourself needing to do while programing.

Posted by Dean at 11:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 2, 2005

Vacation Over

Yeah, I've got plenty of amusing anecdotes. I'll save that for later. More importantly, save that money on CDs, concerts, electronic gadgets, and comics for a week:

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