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Welcome to the Menasoft main site!
This site is a showcase for projects, research, philosophy/rants and gripes by Dennis Robinson and sometimes others. Be sure to check out the Blog section for posts, news, feedback etc. and the Projects page for a synopsis of Menasoft software projects. Please contact us at contact@menasoft.com with any questions or comments. My RSS feed can be found at http://www.menasoft.com/rss.xml
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I have been paying ~$60 a month for a Verizon home phone line that I almost never use. I have 2 cell phones that I use most of the time. (iPhones are pretty cool, different post). I really like having a phone line other than my cell phone so I can give that number out to utilities and people who I don’t really want to talk to directly. It seems really silly to pay $60/month just for a voice mail line.
I decided to look around to see what my options were. I saw some adds for MagicJack for $40 a year. Installed it about a month ago and canceled my Verizon account.
I just installed the RC (Release Candidate) for Windows 7. This replacement for the much maligned Windows Vista is scheduled for full release in 2010 i think.
Its a bit buggy but i must admit i haven’t decided to hate it yet.
I managed to totally avoid all contact with Windows Vista, but i decided i cant avoid Microsoft OS’s forever. XP is getting a bit old and creaky feeling.
I installed W7 on top of an existing XP machine. I did not use the update feature. It nicely copied the Program files, Windows and Documents and settings folders into a folder called ‘windows.old’ and replaced them with the much more sane ‘Users’, ‘Windows’ and ‘Program Files (x86)’ folders. OK, I’m somewhat impressed by how clean that was.
Gripe, Gripe, Gripe.
Ok here are a few recurring problems i want to gripe about. Problems that have been in multiple generations of MS Windows that have never really been addressed.
A have a bunch of computers in my house. They are noisy, hot and consume lots of power. I use them for work, play, controlling my house, answering my phone, lots of stuff. But I just keep thinking that this is not a very optimal configuration.
I remember reading some old scifi books years ago where people had a ‘house computer’ that would monitor their needs and talk to them, take their calls, make sure the house was ok. etc. Is anything like that possible for reasonable money today?
I’m toying with the idea of a trying to build this home server for my next machine. I’ve a number of ideas for it. But lets let the imagination run a bit wild for what this is supposed to do.
I held out as long as i could, but I finally joined the iPhone club. (Not the Apple/Mac club yet) I just got the iPhone 3G. I waited in line for about 4 hours the day after they were released. Very silly I know.But at least i didn’t camp out overnight. hehe.
Being me, I now have to figure out how every bit of it works.
For anyone looking at phones and is considering an iPhone I’ll try to do a mental dump of what I’m seeing. Ultimately i recommend it but there are some things that might be a turn off for some.
Google, Amazon and several others have announced availability of renting space on there servers. Not just space as in disk storage space but actual computing time. These systems that allow this are referred to as Computing Clouds (CC)
I’ve upgraded the old pages to a much nicer format. This is the new gallery for Irth screen shots.
Here for example is a picture of the sample landscape in wire frame and non wire frame modes with fog turned off. Notice the decimation and size of the terrain triangles into the distance.
I’ve just built a new computer. Back in the old days (~3 years ago) things were much easier. Anyone could build a computer (more or less). Now it seems things aren’t quite so simple. There are lots of new things to go wrong. Technology mismatches can cause sub optimal performance (best case), pointless expense or even cause the system to go up in smoke (worst case). I decided to share my research/results with others who might want to build a modern, high power, yet not too expensive machine (~$650).
Price/performance ratio is a big issue here. As a general rule, 1.5 steps from cutting edge is about where i want to be. Paying extra to get the latest of anything is rarely worth the money. Paying extra for the next .5GHz step in CPU speed is never worth the money. (IMHO)
This is a fun topic i just had to write something about. I was listening to the radio today and heard the host (Clark Howard) say I should worry about “computer addiction”. He named a bunch of warning signs and introspective questions we should each ask ourselves to see if maybe we have a problem with our use of computers. Computer addiction I was told can have all sorts of bad consequences and many people are effected by it and don’t even realize it. After confirming that I have 9 out of the 10 watch signs of this dread condition, I promptly decided to ignore it. I’m more or less happy with my use of the computer.
The real point I took from this radio show was how often I hear such warnings. Every day there seems to be some new things I should worry about. Every single one of them is VERY important. The world is just full of scaremongers. Are these people really just attention starved? They realize that scaring people is a way to be heard? So often I hear people under 30 talking about how things are “nowadays”. hehe. The world is plenty scary without inventing silly things to worry about. I figure if i have a better chance of winning the lottery than being effected by X, then its not worth worrying about. You know anyone who has won the lottery?
Anyhow, I started thinking about all the things I’ve been told I should worry about:
