Initial research, electronics journals

In preparation for writing my proposal, I’ve been able to do some initial library research. I spent a few hours today reading through the last year’s worth of Electronic Design, which is an electrical engineering magazine that seems to target people on the very technical side of electronics product development. I found a number of good (albeit short) articles there that will provide good background information on the technical details behind miniaturization, power considerations, and IO issues that affect SFF PCs.

What I really need to find are journals that focus more on the human factors side of PC design. One name that I need to follow up on is the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. Also of potential interest is a journal called Pervasive Computing, published by the IEEE—unfortunately my school doesn’t subscribe to it and back-issues are very expensive for non-IEEE members.

New laptop!

I recently realized how much more productive I am when I work at the campus library instead of at home. This consequently made me realize what a PITA it is to work on my aging 90′s era Sony Vaio laptop (500MHz processor, no battery, tiny screen, carries like a brick). So, taking advantage of a $500 off $1599 coupon code at couponmountain.com, last night I placed an order for a shiny new Dell Inspiron 6000. I had also been considering an Acer TravelMate 4404, with its 64-bit AMD processor and fancy Radeon X700 graphics, but I decided to go with the Dell for its extremely detailed WUXGA (1920×1200!!) screen and the 2-year at-home warranty service that I was able to configure for about the same price. I’m hoping that the screen will make for a good CAD display, and maybe I won’t be as distracted by games with the Dell’s Radeon X300 graphics chip.

I’ll post a review when the unit arrives in a couple weeks.

Great review of cordless drills

I’m looking to replace an old cordless drill that no longer holds a charge and came across this pretty good article about current cordless drill products, options, and technology. It’s a shame that I’m having to replace my current drill, but unfortunately it was a bargain buy at the time and the company that made it apparently no longer exists. I’m going to spend a little more this time and get something that will hopefully last longer–my current favorite is this Panasonic that’s received good reviews on Amazon and elsewhere.

Salad Fingers

I came across this Flash animation series by a young artist named David Firth. Salad Fingers is a dark, sometimes comical but more often just plain disturbing look inside the mind of a lonely, childlike soul who enjoys nothing more than to stroke rusty metal surfaces with his long green fingers. I really enjoy the artist’s visual style and the devices he uses to convey the animations’ bleak and subtly discomforting atmosphere.

The series is available at Newgrounds as well as on David’s homepage. Not recommended for children.

More on system-config-network

Now that I’ve been using my linux laptop with its new wireless connection, I wanted a way to switch between configurations for home (specific ESSID with encryption) and school (various ESSIDs with no encryption). I struggled with this for awhile using the system-config-network tool, which shows up in xfce as “Network Device Control” under the System menu and used to be called redhat-config-network in the RedHat days. However, I was having trouble getting multiple profiles to work, and the documentation wasn’t helping.

Finally I figured it out with the help of this guide on LinuxPlanet. Apparently settings in the default “Common” profile actually affects all profiles, which is why I was unable to get my Common (home) and School profiles to maintain separate settings. The key is to ignore the Common profile and create discrete new profiles for each actual set of settings you want to use.

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