New Notebook From ASUS Called “Eee” PC Uses Solid-State Drive. Nice that they announced it on my birthday (yes, I’m blogging this late). This is just what I have been looking for.

In addition to the N800, of course.  God I need Wimax – or the ability to inject packets on the N800.

Back the Eee 701. The one thing thats bugs me is the 3 hour battery life. WTF? It’s a what, 7″ screen? Flash hard drive? Where he hell is all that power going? Or did they just skimp on the battery? When =>3lb. notebooks can have 8+ hour real performance – with larger screens and real, mechanical, magnetic hard drives, something is very wrong with a very short 3 hour battery life. Maybe there will be an over priced battery option with more cells?

I can hope. Still, I treat notebooks as portable desktops and only use them around outlets – cause you never know when you’ll *really* need that battery – so the battery life isn’t a deal breaker. And prices of $200 to $300 are quite the opposite.

We have a vibe.

Is that little or lot?

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As a somewhat related aside, Adorno turns up in the oddest places.

From our field correspondent, via his Nokia N800. I got my WordPress client working; Rob’s got Gizmo and is working on binding his Wiimote. More to come as soon as I learn to type quicker on this thing.

On the to do list – self improvements and certifications, roughly in order:

1. Florida CCW when I go to Miami next week. You don’t actually have to go to Florida to get your permit, but while I’m there, ya’ know? Hopefully this will facilitate the process of getting a home premises/target permit in New York City.
2. Learn Perl. I’ve grown fat on being a user too long. Need to program again.
3. Get back to writing, particularly poetry. I’d like to tinker with some stricter forms, something I haven’t done in a long time, a long time.
4. Get that goddamn Ham license. Hell, I know the material anyway.
5. And, even though its no longer needed, learn Morse code.

Well, a bunch of stuff has changed on the site of late, though it might not be obvious:

• Various version updates for software.
• The text section finally has some things on it, albeit two old poems.
• The tech* section, while still bare, has my long forgotten DEFCON mod available for download.
• Some bad photographs have been removed from the gallery.
• An actual bio page, rather than the previous blurb – though this still needs editing.
• A navbar button to the about page has been added.

Still much to do – I need to bolster the text section, add some promised hacks, and some new photos would be nice.  Content, content, content.
I finally tested the site IE7, and noticed the navbar CSS problem returned because of a sync problem in my local copy of the site; it’s fixed.  I guess no one I know (the principal users of this site) uses IE7. Honestly, I’m not going to kill myself over this – the site looks fine in Safari (Mac & Win), Firefox, Opera, and Konqueror. Hell, even Lynx more or less worked. I could fix some compliance here and there, but that time is spent for the benefit of all, not IE users.  Anyway, lots to do.

It’ll come.

In a previous post, long ago I mentioned how I made this mod for DEFCON and was going to release it soon.  Well, I stopped playing DEFCON a while ago and never got to releasing it beyond some friends and personal requests.  This past weekend I noticed a decent amount of hits looking for the file.  You can now find it over in the tech* section.

Last Thursday, in the course of writing a long post about the NYCB performance I attended that evening, my notebook was stolen.

Long story short, I have my computer, as many as four people may be getting their cellphones back, and the suspect was arrested.

More than that I won’t say until the matter is resolved, but I am happy to post my thanks to the officers and staff of 6th Precinct, NYPD.

So, finally saw Jewels, a signature ballet of the NYCB. Now that I’ve added it to my “repertoire” of NYCB performances, I think I can go a while without seeing it again. Why? Jewels is a full length ballet, split into three parts, in order, Emeralds, Rubies, and Diamonds. The sets make it something of a crowd pleaser – in fact, the melodramatic ooh-ing and aah-ing was a bit annoying – however, in truth, it is a weak ballet.

Let’s be specific here – Emeralds is boring, and Diamonds is, well, pedestrian: there is nothing specifically wrong with it, but it does not offer anything remarkable either.

Rubies is another story; we’ll get to that in a minute.

Lets start with the bad.

Emeralds – first off, the company was not particularly sharp for the performance. Hell, I wouldn’t be excited either. If one image can properly capture the experience of watching Emeralds, it would be nymphs frolicking in the forest – after smoking a bag of pot. Bad pot. One notable exception was Megan LeCrone. Her performance was elegant and sharp. Though but a corps dancer, she took full advantage of having an extended role here – and still turned in an excellent performance in the closing Diamonds. Her performance makes a good argument for a promotion to soloist. Her performance and the music to the third part of the ballet – Fauré’s Sicilienne – were the only positive notes here.

Diamonds, the last of the Jewels, was better. Not good, mind you, but better. I would not characterize it as classic Balanchine, but rather stereotypical Balanchine. One thing made clear by this performance, however, is that Charles Askegaard has got to go. Look, I get it. he’s tall and blond – not bad features if you are trying to get a job with Peter Martins. However, when all four of the male corps dancers are more impressive than the principal on stage, something is very wrong. The NYCB has a couple of principals like this, and they should dump them. This is not a complaint against the type mind you – Nikolaj Hübbe is a fine dancer – but there are limited principal spots and the quality of the male dancers – with some notable exceptions – is wanting.

One of those exceptions is Damian Woetzel. Though I kept joking that he looks like he should be playing The Doctor, he really looks like Ford Prefect. Perhaps I have seen too much British sci-fi, but the point remains. Now, irrespective of the possibility that he keeps a Sub-Etha Sensomatic Thumb next to his towel backstage, the man can dance. He does it with energy. He does it with precision. He does it at age 39. Tonight, he did it in the best of the three ballets.

The three roles in Rubies were perfectly cast, and the (somewhat undeserving) audience was rewarded. Rubies is a perfect mix of choreography and [it was at this point that this notebook was stolen] music. Damian Woetzel, as mentioned, was energetic and sharp; Yvonne Borree was charmingly impetuous. Then there was Teresa Reichlen. Tall, blond, and at 5’8″ towering over the rest of the dancers on stage, she embodies the word irresistible – I am proud to admit a crush on her. Promoted to soloist in 2005, I’ve never seen her and not been impressed. For the final performance of the Fall 2006 season, she played the Firebird, which along with Rubies, should become a signature performance. The “cabaret dancer” as I’ve come to nickname her, even at 23(!), should be considered – nay, a certainty – for legendary Kyra Nichols‘ spot as a principal when she retires this year. She fills the same need in the company, representing the same physical presence – tall and able – a crucial role in a Balanchine company. Hopefully the NYCB doesn’t burn her out as it has so many young dancers.

You see, I googled “Alice and Bob get it on” and much to my dismay, I got 0 results. You crypto people are so cruel. They’ve been talking for the longest time, encrypting sweet nothings to each other, and yet no one has ventured to allow them their rightful catharsis. Well, once this post is indexed by a myriad of search engines, a wrong will be righted.

Oh, and another thing – I assure you, Bob, for one, really doesn’t care if Eve watches.

This post inspired by this brilliant cartoon.

Telling me the 2nd amendment gives me the right to a musket is like telling me that my right to vote allows me to choose my favorite white Virginia landowner.