i-sako.com

...that is the question. Well, the question of the moment, anyway.

A friend from work has offered me a reasonable deal on his Zaurus SL-C760. I’ve borrowed it for the evening to see how well I like it. Actually, I’m using it right now to write this blog entry.

Although this model is currently using one of the Sharp ROMs, I plan to try out one of the alternative ROMs—which supposedly make the Zaurus into more of a mini-laptop than a PDA—if I do end up getting it. The form factor is perfect for use during my daily commute, and if I can get it to run a decent editor (of which there seem to be plenty) I should be able to get a fair amount of work done during that time. If I can also get it to run Perl or Python, that would be even better! I understand that MySQL has been ported to the Zaurus, which would be handy for the many LAMP projects I keep finding myself involved in.

If nothing else, having a Zaurus would enable me to post to this blog more often, as this entry demonstrates.

So far, I’d say the prospects for this deal look pretty good. 

My wife, who often finds herself frustrated with the amount of time I spend on the computer, recently found that she’s not alone. According to this survey from Citizen (link to Kyodo news article in Japanese), nearly 30% of wives and 20% of husbands feel frustrated about the amount of time their spouse spends using a computer.

(This is actually one of the reasons I haven’t posted anything to this blog for nearly two months. I’ve been trying to be more available for my family by limiting the amount of time I spend doing computer-related things.)

Consider this post a public service announcement: If you are reading this, there is a good chance your spouse is not very happy with you right now. Go fix that.

Ever since the advent of Mac OS X, I’ve been wanting to get a Mac, but just couldn’t justify the price. For some time now, I’ve been joking that my Linux workstation is “a poor man’s Mac,” but Apple has recently taken that joke away from me by releasing the new Mac mini, the first Mac that just about anyone should be able to afford. Priced at just ¥55,800 in Japan ($499 in the States), the “Mighty mini” has me thinking that a new computer might be in order—but hold the umeboshi, thanks.

On the other hand, I’m not at all dissatisfied with Fedora Core 3, the latest version of my flavor of Linux. Granted, it’s not quite as cool as a Mac, but it is considerably cooler than the world’s most ubiquitous OS—and less buggy, too!

With Linux getting better and better and Macs getting cheaper and cheaper, I can’t help but wonder how much longer the Dominance of Redmond can last.

Among technology enthusiasts in the Tokyo area, I have long been something of an apostate for my relative ambivalence about mobile phone technology. For the first three years I lived in Japan, I was pretty sure I didn’t even need a keitai (the Japanese word for “cell phone,” which I really wish would get assimilated into English—borrowed words like sushi and samurai are so passé). When we moved to Kanagawa a few years ago, my wife finally persuaded me to get one, but I hardly ever used it (except for the mail feature, which I used regularly to keep in touch with her). 

More recently, new keitai models have come with on-board cameras, which you might think would be attractive to me, seeing as I work with cameras every day. The problem I had with these, though, was that the resolution was often so low as to be almost useless—even for just using on Web pages. Ever more recently, though, new phones have been released with 2.0 and even 3.2 megapixel cameras, which is just about the level where you can get acceptable prints (if you print small). So when Casio introduced its new A5407CA model, it caught my attention. The fact that my previous keitai is now slowly reaching the end of its useful life (engineered obsolescence sets in after about three years for most models, I believe) made it even more appealing. So, as of yesterday, I am the proud owner of a new 2MP keitai. I would have been even prouder of the 3.2MP model, the A5406CA, but those extra MPs come at quite a premium, so I decided that I could settle for “just two,” which is kind of funny considering how impressive that is in a phone.

Perhaps this new toy will give me a reason to set up the moblogging features in ExpressionEngine. At any rate, it should allow me to capture those scenes that I miss when I don’t take a camera with me, which is often. 

I was completely unphased when the recent discussions on Evolt.org’s thelist turned to Google’s new, invitation-only (for now) Gmail service. Evolt is, after all, a geek-driven organization, so naturally they would talk about such things. But in the past couple of days, however, discussions about Gmail invitations—who’s got `em, who wants `em, and why they are worth having—have all but taken over many of the mailing lists I follow, even the non-technical ones.

I’m now feeling like the only person in the world who hasn’t received an invitation yet—not that I’ve been expecting one. In fact, this blog entry is the first time I’ve even given the issue any serious thought. My Web-mail needs are more than adequately taken care of, so Gmail is not really very appealing to me, but the question I would like to have an answer to is:

When is Google going to get into the Web-hosting business, thereby forcing all other hosts to jack up their own services to remain competitive, as Gmail has for the Web-mail service providers? If Gmail can afford to offer a gigabyte or two of mail storage for free, surely these Web-hosting companies can offer more than the typical, fixed fee 100MB-500MB or so, right?