November 28, 2006
Wireless Wonderland
I belatedly decided to enter the world of mobile craziness. My Motorola v600 cell phone has been becoming worse and worse lately -- the charger is extraordinarily finicky about connecting to the charging jack, the screen backlight goes out and requires intentionally dropping or throwing the phone to come back on, the keys don't work most of the time, and the battery only holds a charge for a few hours...in all, the 3 years of water-logging, (unintentionally) dropping, freezing, melting, and otherwise abusing my phone have caught up with it.
The good folks at Amazon are now selling Cingular's 8125 phone for $75, with a free (probably crappy, but still free) bluetooth headset. It only has EDGE networking, not 3G like its $300 more expensive cousin, and it only has 802.11b networking (also unlike the more expensive phone), and it only has a 200mhz processor (instead of the 400mhz cpu in the 8525, I guess you get the point), but it's cheap, the data plan is cheap, and I could really use a PDA again -- life has been getting disorganized without my old Handspring, whose screen I cracked quite a few years ago.
What's fun now is figuring out how to hack the phone, before I even have it. Apparently I can use some overclocking software to bump the CPU speed up to 240mhz comfortably. The extra CPU speed seems silly, but it's apparently necessary for running Skype on the phone, which means that, while I'm at home (or near any open access point), I can have pretty cheap VoIP calling without burning my limited talk minutes.
I also got a rather fun offer in the email today from the folks at FON. They're giving me a free Fonero wireless access point, that I just have to leave accessible to the world in return. For the promise of making them some money, I also get free wifi wherever there's another FON router plugged in. For anybody thinking to get a wifi router for their home, FON makes a ton of sense. Their routers are really cheap (or free, in my case, I guess since I signed up for an account early enough), and they're now backed by Skype and Google -- you can even get little 802.11b/g "wifi phones" from them, for use with any FON router. FON is like the communist marketing genius of wireless internet providers. And now my internet lust/addiction can be fed constantly, from laptop or palmtop. When next we get in a barroom argument over some trivial fact, I'll be right with a web browser and Google to see who's right.
Post a comment
Further back...
ArchivesFriends and Family
Search
Previous Trips...
-
Hiking Mount Whitney, 2007 
Spring Break in West Virginia, 2005
New Year's in Paris, 2003-2004
Coming to America, 2003
Protesting in Berlin, 2003
Prague Bier-Tour, 2002
Dresden, 2002
Recent Reading
![]()
The Curve of Binding Energy
John McPhee follows famous physicist Ted Taylor in this piece that was -- and probably still -- ahead of its time.
Originally published in 1973, McPhee outlined the coming security and environmental issues surrounding the plutonium enrichment processes. For the most part, though, McPhee invites the reader to draw his or her own conclusions, although he does point out the ease with which any number of people could obtain the material (though not necessarily the manufacturing prowess) to make an atomic weapon.
The question still sits in my mind after reading -- are we being too paranoid, or not paranoid enough?
Rated 
by reid
on October 01, 2007
by reid
on October 01, 2007
![]()
Zodiac
Zodiac touts itself as an 'eco-thriller,' and it is just that. Told from the first-person perspective of ST (or Sangamon Taylor), the book recounts a roughly six-month period of his life busting big corporations for violating environmental laws.
Not the tree-hugging political activist type, ST is equipped with chem labs, scuba divers, maps, and an organization (GEE International, the Group of Environmental Extremists) that masterfully brings the press into the fold to scare the public with the very real dangers posed by illegal dumping. It's sort of a Sierra Club member's wet dream -- a band of ecowarriors that actually get things done.
ST finds something odd happening in Boston Harbor during his tale: a new form of pollution that could poison everyone on the planet in a matter of weeks. His quest to uncover exactly who and what is causing the latest spike in toxins goes all the way up to the President of the United States, and could end up costing him his own life.
While a neat and fast-paced tale, the novel drags on a bit toward the end, begging disbelief from even the most forgiving sci-fi folk. While not as good as his latest offerings, it's still a great read for those that enjoy a good Stephenson novel (or even those who don't).
Rated 
by reid
on July 17, 2005
by reid
on July 17, 2005
![]()
Cat's Cradle
A few years ago, I attempted to woo an online datee, and she immediately criticized me for my politics. I protested the war on Iraq, which was "a shame." She defended her position of complete noninvolvement by standing behind Vonnegut.
It may seem odd to open a review that way. My assumption is now not that she was an idiot, but that she had only read Cat's Cradle, and only with a rather odd viewpoint.
Cat's Cradle looks at a cold-war world where the personifications of religious, political, and scientific single-mindedness collide to destroy the world.
Vonnegut tells a masterful tale, but it makes me wonder what one person's indifference would do to prevent us from all dying? So for now I will continue to unblindly stop unjust wars, even while I'm only reading.
Rated by reid
on July 17, 2005
by reid
on July 17, 2005