[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

Owlgarden
People who know me well also know that I am no friend to Corporate greed and short-sightedness
toward Energy policy, Employee responsibility (formerly known as loyalty), and the exploitation of
third world industry in order to better the bottom line of an accounting sheet presented here in
America.

There are lots of problems with America, especially perceived if you’re a liberal who has compassion toward
all the hungry and impoverished people here and elsewhere around the globe. Industries like Automotive, Tobacco,
and Petroleum corporations are failing the American people with their lack of motivation to address these issues
and , by way of their international sales, this also fails the rest of the world .
Our republican administration seems to want it this way by supporting corporations as if they were wealthy
individuals- not as an infrastructure to our economy, letting these corporations perform terrible acts of irresponsibility
toward the environment, and forgetting that generations following us will be left with a deathly planet of poison and disease.

Rather than complain endlessly about this arrogant attitude (which I do elsewhere on this blog)
I propose doing a bunch of stuff to help forward the cause of building a New World Order, not THAT New World Order
based on terror politics in the Middle East and Asia, but replacing the conservative policies of our government
with that of a peaceful initiative, future forward looking policies, and the rebuilding the attitudes of Energy, Health, Education, Transportation,
and Media Industries toward a more social corporate responsibility.

First off, you cannot blame American people for smoking. The key problem here is the tobacco industry and the failure of
FDA to ban nicotine as a problematic ingredient. It is obvious to me, as a smoker, that I would smoke way less without the addictive
qualities of nicotine, and probably not smoke tobacco at all if other substances of less addicting qualities were legalized.
I find it weird that as a smoker who would like to quit, the government is not taking responsibility in this. I mean, the government
should be telling the tobacco companies to shape up or pick up the tab. All instances of litigation of the 90’s -billions of dollars –
were mishandled and abused-dumped into lame-ass programs hardly benefitting anyone but the lawyers. The government
has to step up and strike the industry where it hurts- and that’s in the addictive fuel of nicotine.
How do you do this?
1) Declare nicotine a controlled substance on the level of Cocaine and heroine.
2) Create a policy of 0% Nicotine in non prescribed products.
3) Let the tobacco companies continue the business but give them a time line to eliminate the nicotine in their products.
4) Encourage Big tobacco to grow Big cannabis instead. Why cannabis? Because it is economically sound to grow and has
far more useful purpose in producing cloth, paper, and oils than tobacco has. Legalize it, don’t criticize it.

Secondly, There should be NO tolerance for lowering gasoline and industrial emissions standards at all. SUVs burning less than 25 miles per gallon should
taken OFF THE ROAD. Trucks should be forced to comply with equivalent standards as well, and conversion to alternate energy
propulsion systems must start today. . There are dark days ahead if this is not done now. We have the technology to build personal and industrial technologies that don’t pollute and Americans will have to learn to move a little slower for the sake of the world. If America does this
so will the rest of the world. This I know.

Third, We have to change what we are teaching children. The Republicans and the Democrats seem to think that Arts, Music and Sports
aren’t that important compared to math scores and reading comprehension tests. By requiring schools to meet some politicized standard for
learning isn’t learning- it is Pavlovian training. Creativity through multiple means of expression, coordinating resources among communities
rather than forcing them to compete for funds (children being the victim in this case) is not right. We have to turn this around and
make Arts, Music and Sports the conduit for Math and Reading and social learning. We are in a society that is short on long term achievement
and long on short term attention span. And we reward this. Growth, in a child, is combined process of society, parenting, learning by doing,
and experiencing positive behaviors in peers and adults.

Fourth and lastly, We are predisposed to some ancient Judeo/Christian ethic that does not reflect our society as a whole. Indeed, where our founders established freedom of religion as long as it was their religion to practice freely. People need their religion in order to cope with their own personal issues but in America we should not tolerate the demands of any particular religious morality- which by itself often is defined by a political infrastructure. All Americans have a right to believe what they choose to believe in, regardless of the Government. This includes Buddhists, Atheists, Polytheists, Satanists, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Sun worshippers, what have you…
The government cannot discern between these cultures, nor should it referred to on our money, in our courts, or in government institutions
anywhere. Time to take your religion home and to your preferred temple. Don’t try to proselytize me, I have my own relationship with
my own peculiar Godhead and I won’t try to convert you either.

I have more to say on how we should change our America -Today I see a decadent society starting to tumble into calamity and our nationalistic
attitudes reek of fascism and exploitation with our own population and in the world at large. Time to change this now. Revolution starts at home.

-Owlgarden

Here’s my blog post for today on Apple….

If you’re a rumor junkie like I am- trying to detect just what old
Steve Jobs will announce next weekis a great game.
This week has been amazing – today Apple stock jumped
4+ to just shy under 70. Yesterday Servers were publicly released with 2.3 gig g5s
and a faster buss (and top off at 1.2 gig sata internally), Xsan boxes are shipping.
Imagine connecting your 5 G5 FCProHD Edit suites to an
Xsan sitting on top a 36 terabyte disk array (not just Apple’s array
either-Sun boxes/IBM/etc can be added to the array..um just plug them
in.. 10.3.7 was released last week and they dropped the price by 200$ on all
the Displays.

Rumors are motorboating along and its propellor is Apple suing the
rumor mills. HAH! what does this mean?
Apple did this last year and I remember Macworld 2004 being a bit
underwhelming. Lots of rumors (Apple pda mainly)
This year there will probably be lots of whelm.

rumor count:
1) Apple Phone with itunes (motorola alludes to this),
2) a G4 rectangle headless box (rumor lawsuit material)
3) Flash Pods (2 gig solidstate? or 5 gig mini or 80 gig pods? Beatle
ipod (that’s my own rumor)(lawsuit) ?
4) a new 17″ monitor? (for the switchers)
5) A fw i/o box for garageband users? I hope so…
6) Appleworks and Keynote and ??? as iWork suite (where goeth MS
Office?) Office for the rest of us…
7) Plus there will be talk about X.4 Tiger (uh, NDA alarm on) Maybe a
date set… some great stuff is in Tiger: widgets, Core DATA, Automator
(you gotta see this )Spotlight, Safari all in 64 bit(? maybe..I’m sure
the kernel will be 64 bit)- Finally data to saturate the bus.
8) Steve Jobs CEO at Disney?
9) Aqueducts discovered on Mars?

and I think Wednesday’s Apple financials will be amusing as well…
And though Microsoft is still King, it’s a one eyed King, and Apple
seems to have 2 or 3 eyes.

if this isn’t amusing enough Folks,
read the transcripts for the CES keynote with
Conan O’Brian and Bill Gates. (demo gods were not kind to Bill again)

http://www.cesweb.org/attendees/conferences/keynotes.asp

Conan Rules!

please note I bcc’d a bunch of folks on this message
be kind!
happy nu
b