ganesh

Epson America, Inc. – Product Information – MovieMate 25

Epson has this great (from technical specs) box
for projecting a nice 80″ inch image from six and a half feet away. Would that Apple devine a similar box that would have (along with analog/digital i/o connections) Wireless and streaming from local
and WAN networked computers, a Docking station
for a video ipod, sort of a Mac Mini witha projector built in. Last year there were rumors about a thing called Asteroid….I would call this Asterisk!
If Apple enters the TV projection market with such a product I expect the stock to split (again) in two months from the release date.
Oh, I do love the rumor farms milking ideas before
Apple MacWorld keynotes. Someone check Steve
Jobs’ sleeves…

I am trying to figure out how to use [WordPress](http://wordpress.org) AND [MovableType](http://sixapart.com) at the same time. Now, I have [Plone](http:/plone .org)
running on Panther/G4 already here…uh, I haven’t used it much, but it’s been up since January 2003.
Stay tuned…writing thoughtfully to a website is a very different task than trying to get all the back-end stuff together.

[Make your Own 100$ laptop]( http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/12/make_your_own_100_laptop.html )

Here’s a piece on how to make your own
100$ laptop involving an Emate. Now I used an
eMate for a few years as my “portable” computer
during a time when I was contracted to various
companies and needed a way to check my personal email. This little green laptop was the best thing at the time (1997-2000) when I used it. I could check my email, surf the web (over phone lines or ethernet). I had the memory updates and a 16 mb pcmcia memory card which at the time was HUGE.
It had Newtontalk installed in it so when i would invoke the calendar program it would say:
“No Meetings Today, No Events Today”.
Plus, on the Bus to work I could play Golf or the
awesome Star Trek Game (both of which I never
mastered since I suck at computer games).
Alas, I sold the eMate (and bunch of other Newton
stuff – I had all the books, and couple of the 100
models) around the time the iPod came out-
I still have and use a 5 gig first gen iPod.
I think this project, however, is kind of rediculous.
I can appreciate the motivation but it will seriously NOT be less than 100$. I doubt the battery in
a used Newton will hold up very well, handcrank
charger or not. It’s a noble idea, but I think
it’s not quite the thing that you’d hand off to
a sub-Saharan (or even a sub-New Yorkian)
schoolkid.

Welcome to Owlgarden and the Owlgarden Blog.
Owlgarden is also found at owlgarden.blogger.com.
This may supplant it, but for now it will be the main
info point for Owlgarden.net.

Ok, now I am setting up my own Blog in WordPress and trying to settle on themes and a texture to be a central communication point for all things OwlGarden.
The point of this site is to deliver some podcasts, redevelop some video/music/art ideas that were lingering in the digital closet for a few years, and provide
a nice home for the exchange of ideas.

“First, I want to thank Ray Kroc and Ronald McDonald for the opportunity to serve as Lead Fry Cook for the last three semesters. Their support and friendship mean a lot to me, and I wish them all well. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the Servers, the dishwashers,the pickup window staff, the prep chef, and the Big Mac, shake and fries lovers for making my McDonalds experience so meaningful.

“Growing up in the shadow of  the Golden Arches, I never dreamed of having the chance to work for a local fast food franchise during such an historic period.

“My decision not to return as Fry Cook of the Brookline McDonalds is an extremely difficult one. I will always cherish the relationships I developed here and am proud to have worked side-by-side with so many great people, in and out of uniform, as together we brought great burgers to Boston.

“In my time as Fry Cook, I gave my entire heart and soul to the organization. During the process leading up to today’s decision, I came to the conclusion that I can no longer do so. In the end, my choice is the right one not only for me but for my complexion as well.

“My affection for the hamburgers did not begin three semesters ago when I started working here, and it does not end today. I will remain on the job changing saturated oils for several days as we finalize preparation for next week’s kitchen staff meetings. Thereafter, I will make myself available to the new fry cook to ensure a smooth and stable transition.

“My passion for and dedication to Fries, Vanilla Shakes and Big Macs with Cheese remain strong. Although I have no immediate plans, I will embrace this change in my life and look forward with excitement to the future.”

_____________

Press Conference

Q: Theo when you came here three semesters ago, obviously with a clean complexion, …basically I think everybody would like to know from your standpoint what happened here and why are you no longer the Lead Fry Cook of the Brookline McDonalds Franchise?

Well what happened, to answer your question broadly, is I think we had a lot of success as a burger joint together over the last three semesters and we cooked a lot of great meals  together….that doesn’t disappear at all with me leaving.

McDonalds remain a very, very strong franchise, with very sound leadership, and we’ll be serving billions more  going forward. As I said in the statement, in the end, this is a job you have to give your whole meat and potatoes to, you have to devote yourself to fries completely. You have to believe in every aspect of fried food . And in the end, after a long period of reflection about myself and my complexion, and the time, I decided I could no longer put my whole heart and soul into it.

Q: Was there anything that could have been done at all to you to stay?

In the end, no. We had many talks about schedules and tasks, who would man the fry stations, who flips the burgers and pours the shakes.

Q: When you met with us after the season, it seemed like your heart and soul was in it. What happened (since then)?

There was a pimple, and when I turned the microscope on the pimple  and on my complexion,, we all felt that to do this, you had to pop the pimple. You had to really pop it. And that process was very difficult. I think a lot of good came from that process. There were a lot more of blackheads that probably should have been Oxycleaned a long time ago, but in the end, you asked what changed, the pimple revealed that I could not put my whole heart and soul into the fryolator at this time.

Q: Do you have a good relationship with Ronald (McDonald)?

Yeah. My relationship with Ronald is one that spanned about 14 years. I started eating burgers at age 2. We’ve had a very successful Happy Meal relationship. I think Ronald and I like each other. As with any long relationship, there are complexities, there are zits and abscesses, there are occasionally times where you have yearnings for Burritos and Chinese Food. But in the end, I want what’s best for Ronald. I wish him well in the future. When I look back, he’s done a lot for me. In the end, 30 years from now when I look back on my relationship with Ronald McDonald, I’m gonna see it as a positive influence in my life.

Q: Theo it almost sounds like you have a little burn out, does this mean you’ll step away from fast food…?

No, I am not burned out. As I said in the statement, I have tremendous passion for the burgers. I have a tremendous dedication to fries and shakes.  I work hard, but I enjoy it and I’m not at all burned out.

Q: Do you see yourself returning in five to 10 years in (a similar) position?

With Mcdonald’s? Well again, the decision right now is that it’s the right thing  and obviously it’s not a decision I take lightly. Hopefully I will  graduate from High School and I wouldn’t rule anything out, but for right now the difficult decision is to walk away.

Q: Theo (you said) there were no chain of command issues… was there some component of your relationship with Ronald McDonald that caused you to decide that continuing was untenable…?

It’s not fair to attribute my decision to any one french fry or burger or any one person. There were many all beef patties that went into this decision and it’s not something I ate lightly. It was not a snap reaction, it was not… indeed it was not a single order of fries. 

I’m not concerned with my legacy at all. I’m concerned with frying  the right potato when I work as a fryer, in the capacity of Lead Fry Cook, I’m in charge of building a a french fry, maintaining that crispiness and handing out as many  ketchup packets as possible every year, as many double orders as possible.

–end transcript—

So folks, by now you know that Apple and Intel are all lovey dovey
and will likely bring us
dual 3-4 ghz machines by this time next year. then Leopards will be
pouncing on ’em- I predict in
Dec. 2006 we’ll be seeing spots.
The WWDC Keynote is up on Apple’s site and though there’s a treacly
hesitation about this transition but
if you’re using a G5 (like me) and Tiger (like me) you’ll know that
it probably won’t make a lick
of difference to the person at the keyboard. Tiger is wonderful on a
fast machine and
pretty excellent on the G4’s as well. It’s slick and elegant. So who
cares about the chip except
folks who hate Intel (there’s always a curmudgeon for every
announcement) , I have no doubt that this transition will help build
new machines faster and lighter…And just remember code for Intel
will run on AMD chips if Intel starts to suck.
Freescale and IBM currently compete for Apple innards and though they
haven’t delivered cooler
faster processors as predicted-they are great ( A G5 chip is almost a
parallel processor in itself).
With new Technology the next best thing is just around the corner.
(esp. with Apple- with MS it’s down the street -around the block-make
a left-stop at the light-go right -down the alley-there it is!)
The big surprise is that you can order a developer Intel box (oop I
almost wrote G5) today and
get one in two weeks (with caveats- you are kinda borrowing the
machine).

So the transition, despite what you may read on eWeek or Cnet etc.
will be what it is -for the record
the best thing ever to come out of Apple (Hardware/Software and IDE)
was the Newton. And that chip (the ARM) came from Intel …..

b

On Jun 6, 2005, at 10:44 AM, benjamin lowengard wrote:

> big buzz all weekend, i speculated somewhere that Apple was building
> an Intel based 2 button mouse thus combining 2 rumors in 1…we’ll
> know in a couple hours…
> here’s my hirsute (as opposed to astute) speculation:
>
> 1) intel starts ppc fabrication?
> 2) apple has new intel based i/o box- for HDvideo?? for Audio
> 3) Apple switching to Intel x86 could be intense (transition wise) but
> I’m not sure how that would sit with developers.
> 4) Apple Announces 8 cpu 64 bit AMD processor add on card for g5.
> (just kidding)
>
> Just remember- BeOS vs NeXT purchase (surprise) at macworld ’96 –
>
> verrrry interesting…..
>
> On Jun 6, 2005, at 10:12 AM, Alex Lowengard wrote:
>
>
>> Ben,
>>
>> What have you heard about Jobs thinking of going to Intel?
>>
>> Sasha
>>
>>
>
>

Here I am again, responding after MacWorld05-now that the Apple pundit/evangelist/rumor sites
have had their say. here’s mine:

I suggest you go to Apples’ website and take a look at the keynote. Not very exciting but you can
at least scroll through the boring parts and take a look at the demos. Obviously Steve is selling
Apple in his usual way-black turtleneck, paced very carefully, i was hoping for as “under the seat” surprise
like the wireless toilet-seat iBooks I saw in NY MacWorld one year. No such luck but some nice things did show.

SOFTWARE

iWork (Keynote 2 & Pages) (word processing app)
Hooray! Keynote is great and the one thing it is lacking is useful text editing. The “Appleworks” folks
can stay with Appleworks if they need a spreadsheet, I don’t need one. Integration with the iLife apps looks
promising. Output Keynote to Flash…? this means Pages will be your simple html editor. Since I’m a fan of Create and Composer (and NVu) I welcome the competition for simplifying this stuff.

iLife 05 (iDVD 5, Garageband 2, iMovie HD, iTunes 4.7)
The iLife suite is a great and cool suite of Applications. Like the iPod it introduces people to Apple software, which if needed scales to Pro Apps very well : iDVD to IDVD Studio, Garageband to Logic, IMovie to Final Cut, iTunes 4.7 to ??(iTivo?)??. Ok, you have to ditch your sub 1.25ghz iMacs to really use these applications (see below)
and a DVD drive is useful. But since this is included with new Macs-everyone has the tools for rudimentary
file editing- be they pdf,txt,jpg,html, etc…

Final Cut Express HD
-A nice upgrade and includes Soundtrack-precurser to Garageband, but a little more powerful.

iPod shuffle
$99 dollars for an iPod? cool.

Mac mini
$499 for an Apple CPU with iLife05? Awesome…be sure to get more memory, bluetooth, airport card, the combo
drive- the faster cpu–uh oh- better look at that iMac G5 again.
Really, I’m hoping Apple treats this as the loss leader it can be. Sure you can build your own *nux box inside a Shuttle case but this is so well constructed, technology folks will just salivate.

—
So I wait for more stuff to come along: Griffin Technologies released an awesome number of peripherals this week,
and NAMM is coming up -that may be interesting as well.
I just ordered an Alesis Micron- from what I hear this is the coolest keyboard anywhere.
more on this later…
O