Yes, good old ebay comes to the rescue when trying to find a classic
mac to ‘refit’ with new parts. Even today, searching for ‘mac classic’
on ebay UK turns up some likely targets.

A few short days later and I was picking up a lovely Mac SE for under a tenner – whoo!

Yes, it even still worked – after a fashion; I didn’t actually have any
software for it… or a mouse, or keyboard, but then it doesn’t matter
as sadly it’s all going to get ripped out! (ha ha haaaaaa)

So, now to sort out what’s going to go in it… [continued tomorrow!]

So, almost all the computers at home (well my home anyway) are macs. Lovely, shiny macs… ahhh!

Except for one. It’s not bad, it’s a little mini-itx PC that’s low
power and very low noise. Before ‘converting’ to macs I was obsessed
with trying to make the humble PC be more quiet and fit into the home
environment better – nasty, noisy beige boxes don’t really fit at home
I think!

Basically I was a bit ahead of the whole ‘media centre PC’
curve (yes,
early adopter as usual) and this was bought as a bit of an experiment,
also to be a little jukebox of both audio and video things. (and yes,
this was before the mac mini, which is what I’d go for now)

So, that was fun, it didn’t really ever work very well, especially as
I’d unwisely decided to go for maximum geek points and try to make it
work using gentoo
linux. Nice idea in theory. In practice – very flakey, much things
breaking all the time. In short, far too much like hard work for a home
computer (I’m of the mind that after fighting with the damn things all
day at work, I want things to just work
at home.) The poor little thing was left somewhat unloved and forgotten
under the TV, not really ever used and quite folorn. (awww)

However – after fully mac-ing up and remembering this wonderful mod
in which a little mini-itx PC board was stuffed into an old Mac
Classic, I thought… “hmmm… sounds like a good idea!”

But to be honest, I didn’t want to have a mouse and keyboard
attached. I still want to use it as a jukebox of some kind. So, a touch
screen would be useful – but I can’t do that with the built-in old 9
inch black & white screen. After a bit of searching on the web I
found the perfect thing – an 8″ touch screen designed for fitting in
the back seats of cars. Perfect!

Now all I needed to do was find the poor, unsuspecting mac to stuff my left-over PC bits into… ebay to the rescue!

[the story continues in the next episode, tomorrow!]

It’s quite literally true for some of the guys I work with:

(I think that’s about 15 but to be honest I lost count after a while)

Katamari Damacy review for website

crazy video introduction
http://media.ps2.ign.com/media/716/716651/vids_1.html

good review
http://www.largeprimenumbers.com/article.php?sid=katamari2

Buy at Lik Sang

In the best videogames, the plot is either irrelevant or just barmy.
It�s indicative of the genius of Katamari Damacy that it is both.

Fun and charming, it leaves you with a smile on your lips and a song in your heart�
Laa laa laa laa laa laa laa kat-a-mar-ee dam-a-sheee

I jumped aboard the 3G bandwagon a while back with a free Sanyo S750
from Orange. I’ve had a mixed time with that – very poor battery life
with the 3G on for one, but that’s a rant for another day.

For now I wanted to relay my current object of gadget lust, which I’m
eyeing up as a replacement for the (shitty) Sanyo thing I have.

�
It’s the HTC Universal – info in chinese with lots of pics here
Here’s a press release about it too
And some Engadget coverage

It looks very shiny – both 3G and WiFi for data access in & out
of home/office, a big screen and even something approaching a real
keyboard for mo-blogging and even writing of proper long documents,
whoo!

I think the main thing that attracts me is the software aspect – being
Windows-based I can actually add my own code, and also hopefully all
the connectivity like synchronising calendards & address books will
actually work, unlike my current phone, which is just sooo rubbish it
drives me crazy.

One more thing: it’s due to come out in the UK ‘sometime this year’ as
an Orange SPV something-or-other. If anyone from Orange wants me to
give it a trial I would be very happy to oblige

EDIT: it would also play a mean game of Manic Miner using a spectrum emulator… yay!

Well, not actually, but the UK govt is 150 computers
short, incredibly.

Despite
claims that all information on these missing PCs are supposedly secure,
you do wonder how much info is leaking out of the government that way.
And they wonder why people are against ID cards.