Slapout Tech

This is a post to test out Window Live Writer. This is bold. Heading 3 item 1 item 2 one two blockquote here Flying cars and washing machines hyperlink Wow. It appears to have pulled in my theme settings. That's pretty cool. Hmm. Check spelling. I like that.    insert a table here   What is a tag provider?

Several years ago I wanted a note program for my PDA, so I designed one but never built it. Then I got my Motorola Q phone and noticed that it didn't have a note program with it. I tried using a text editor, but it was a hassle to save each note to a different file. I just wanted to enter my note and move on. And I wanted an easy way to see my notes. So I decided to pull out my old design and code it up. What makes it different from other note programs? I tried to make things as easy for the user as possible. The main idea is that you see a list of all your notes on one half of your screen and as you scroll thru them, the currently selected note appears on the other half. You use the Up and Down keys to scroll thru the notes. If the note contains more than half a screen's text, you can scroll thru it by using the left and right keys. You can easily browse your notes with just the directional pad. The first line of text in your note becomes the title that you see in the list. Th...

Some people think I'm crazy for keeping old computer magazines. But despite the fact that things in the computing world move so fast, some things do stay the same. And sometimes it's fun to look back and see what has changed (and what hasn't). Earlier today I ran across a copy of PC Pro from November 1998 -- ten years ago. The inside front cover is a Dell ad. Later there's a review of Lotus SmartSuite Millennium Edition. (Remember when 2000 was approaching and everyone was tacking "2000" or "millennium" to the end of their product names?) There's a large article on the recently released Windows 98 including a sidebar about multiple monitor support. Page 309 talks about Gigabit Ethernet. Further on there's an overview of KDE -- version 1. The "Leisure" section mentions a Star Wars game based on the upcoming Episode One movie. Mech Commander received 5 out of 6 stars. Towards the end there's also a Dilbert comic. (Wow, Dilbert’s ...

It's the 21st century. There are some technologies you'd think we would have by now. The one most people think about is flying cars. We don't have (readily available) flying cars. But I think that's probably for the best -- we can barely handle the non-flying kind. But the technology I don't understand why we don't have is a machine that will wash clothes and then dry them. We've had cars for less than two hundred years. But we've been washing and drying clothes for millennia. It's a problem that affects almost everyone--poorest to richest. You should simply be able to put in your dirty clothes in one machine, have them be washed and dried and then come out clean. It's a simple concept, so why don't we have them yet?

Remember when... ...PDAs used regular batteries (AAs usually)? ...BASIC had line numbers? ...computer magazines published type-in programs? ...a box of floppy disks cost $20? ...Atari made computers? ...2400 baud was high speed? ...going online meant dialing up a local BBS? ...hard drives were an optional accessory? ...printer paper came with tractor feed holes? ...computers only ran one program at a time?

They say that if you have an older TV you don't have to worry about the digital switchover coming next year. This is because you can just get a converter box. But what about all the handheld TVs out there?