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About two months ago, the amazing UltraBob gave me a very nice computer. He had named it Dweezil. My intention had been to pull the brains out of my older computer in order to make my very own Franken-Dweezil, but so far I haven’t had much time for such things. See, here’s Dweezil and his brain donor just waiting for the operation (Dweezil is the one on the right):

I thought this past weekend would have been a good chance to swap in that extra brain, but I ended up spending it making room for a newcomer in the home office…

I was completely taken aback by something my wife said this evening: “Wanna buy a Mac?”

(To know why this is so surprising, you need to understand that my wife is the type who usually stops listening whenever anything even remotely related to computing crops up in conversation.)

What’s more, she was even making specific suggestions. “The eMac is a pretty good deal,” she said, “and I think you can even get one that allows you to burn DVDs…”

Picture me, flat on my back, on the floor—because that’s exactly what I was, floored by this unexpected proposal. Apparently the idea struck her when she saw a Mac advertisement on the same page as this news story:

Microsoft warns of a score of security holes

Microsoft released on Tuesday fixes that cover at least 20 Windows flaws, several of which could make versions of the operating system vulnerable to new worms or viruses.

If you ask me, this sort of thing is not really news (when isn’t Microsoft releasing critical patches by the truckload?), but why look a gift horse in the mouth, right?

Although I was never a big fan of Macs in the past, OS X really changed everything. Combining UNIX reliability with Apple’s ease of use was a real triumph. I’ve been longing for one ever since.

Anyway, now that I’m seriously looking into buying a Mac, I need to tap all of my Mac-using friends for advice. For example, how useful is AppleCare? Are the .Mac services worth paying for? I can probably do without the AirMac Extreme card and the internal Bluetooth module, right? These things aside, what are the must-have software titles and other accoutrements that no self-respecting Mac user should be without?

Oh, and while you’re at it, ply me with assurances that Mac OS upgrades are not as perilous as Zeldman makes them seem.

Looks like my daughter’s first keitai will come with a built-in translation feature.

Translation cell phone in the making for 2007 release

A groundbreaking cell phone that automatically translates the speaker’s language from Japanese to English and vice versa could be on the market by 2007, it has been learned.

Actually, I believe UltraBob was involved in providing a somewhat similar service (using real people to do the translating) before he went on to establish Akatombo Media. Looks like he may have gotten out of that business just in time.

Of course, given the difficulty of creating machine translations that are actually meaningful to the target audience, it may be a while before all the kinks are worked out of the system. If it works, though, it will be cool to have a Babel fish in my pocket.

Given a recent spate of problems with my antiquated computers (both of which are well beyond retirement age, in computer years), I’ve been thinking about getting a new computer sometime soon. The real question was whether to break down and do so in June or wait until my holiday bonus in December.

As fate would have it, this morning my boss showed me his copy of The Nihon Keizai Shimbun, which featured an article about HP’s plans to sell Linux-based PCs starting in June. Well, that certainly makes the decision a whole lot easier!

Wired is running the following:

Asian penguin: HP plans to become the first company to trumpet personal computers that run the Linux operating system in Asia, HP’s Japanese unit said.

Other details, such as when the sales will begin, haven’t been set yet.

The HP computers will use an operating system made by Tokyo’s Turbolinux, and will include the company’s OpenOffice.org 1.1 suite of software.

Turbolinux 10D is a nice distribution, so I’m sure it would appeal to Japanese who are looking for an alternative to Windows. (Coincidentally, it also shares its name with another 10D I’ve got my eye on.)

I’m already sold on the idea. The only thing left to do is persuade the wife that it’s time to buy a new computer…which may be harder than getting all of Asia to buy Linux-driven PCs from HP. I’ll try every bit as hard to achieve the former as HP will the latter. With any luck, we’ll both be successful.

Update

Nevermind. This blip from Yahoo News just came in:

Although the deal doesn’t target consumers who buy home PCs, the announcement by the world’s largest computer maker could greatly boost Linux on desktops and laptops.

In that case, I might as well wait until December after all. 

Today has been a better-than-average day in terms of new releases. I was excited to see that the hard-working folks over at the Mozilla Organization have released new versions of Firebird (now called Firefox—I really wish they would stop changing names all the time, though I understand why they did so in this case) and Thunderbird.

Ordinarily, this would be enough to keep me entertained for the whole day, but the geek gods had an even better surprise in store for me today. The long awaited “next version” of pMachine (the blogging tool that runs this site) has been released, but it’s not a new version—it’s a whole new product! The new ExpressionEngine is very impressive. I’ve been meaning to redesign this blog for some time, but the recent release of ExpressionEngine gives me a fresh dose of incentive. Stay tuned for big changes. Cool ones.