Best place to buy RAM? Hey tong, i need to buy some ram for my xp box, i am swapping way too much. i am up at crucial, is this the best place to buy?

ipod for Windows. Brad got one of these and loves it – i got one of these recently and finally got around to setting it up. easy to set up – i was already using musicmatch and that’s what it uses too with an ipod plugin. what a cool device. i got it with 20GB, which is supposedly enough for like 4000 songs. now i can take my entire music library with me wherever i go. i bought it direct from apple and it came within a couple days. a great xmas present. Personally I don’t totally get it. My music library is 10000+ songs, well over 20G, so i can’t take my whole library with me. I’m not sure how to decide what to take. And the idea of hauling my data around is odd to me, i’d rather just stream it up from my server to anyplace I am. But maybe it is time to try it out.

Allie’s Essay – First Place. Way to go Allie – INSIGHT showcase of student work

If I Was In College Right Now. Tong and I have had a little thread going about college – what would we be studying/doing if we were college age right now. I’ll let Tong speak for himself, but as much as I love software and networking, I think I’d be focused on materials science and the merge of materials science and information processing. Nanofabrication, the IT technologies to let us design and control materials and material fabrication at atomic scales, “smart” materials, etc. I just love this area and suspect that I would have a lot of fun in this area.

Or instead of diving to the atomic level, I’d go high and study architecture and urban planning. My first love, this is what I wanted to do when I was 13. I love the pure design thinking, the human orientation of the design work, the blend of aesthetics with science.

I’m certainly not unhappy with the choices I did make – software, digital technology, networking has been a fascinating path and there is still a ton to learn and do in this domain.

Blog Community Ethos. Wow something I love about the blog community is that anyone will respond to your email or comments. Truly friction free communication. Partly a function of the software, but more a function of the kind of people drawn to blogging – people I like. Also you are encouraged to put your thinking out for public view, which allows dialog, criticism, and refinement, and makes your thinking that much clearer. Kind of like the benefits of open source, applied to thinking.

As we approach Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the blog community – for the great communication, for the open sharing of ideas, for the experimentalism, for the risk taking.

Santa Switch. I miss Will Ferrell on Saturday nights – here’s a little fix

ieHTTPHeaders. Hey Adrian you wanted to know more about what was really happening when a browser requests a page for your embedded browser – check this tool out – ieHTTPHeaders

Comments. Added comments just for Adrian. Not sure I want comments really. :)

Xbox and 802.11. More info on Broadband Reportsforums. Thanks Adrian.

Windows Movie Maker Beta. Finally downloaded this and started playing with. The pros – lots easier to use and less buggy than a lot of the shovelware you find with vidcap cards and with systems. A huge con– it is impossible to discern what codecs it is using, or to force it to use a particular codec. I want to share a move with some folks over the web, and they are using unknown systems. How can I pick the exact codec I want, how can I pick the most compatible cross platform codec? If I want to force it to use DivX, how do I do that?

Sandy and Dave’s Report on the Broadband Home. This is a worthwhile read – http://BroadbandHomeCentral.com/report. Good articles this month on ip transport vs mpeg transport, msft smart displays, digital radio, etc.

Java and .Net both a disaster. Edwin discusses this on the Collaxa site. I agree with the tenor of his thoughts – people need to do smaller, more incremental development. I also think the platforms are just too complex – we need a simpler platform for the next generation of apps, one that a developer can get their head around in a day with minimum expense.

Ohio State “Fans”. Kevin is upset about the amoral and dangerous actions of some people in Columbus celebrating the Ohio State win. It upsets me too. The university has spoken out, Coach Tressel should speak out against if he hasn’t, and the players should as well.

I don’t think this behaviour is unique to Columbus – I am sure that, had Michigan won, some people would have taken the opportunity to misbehave in Detroit – some of the citizenry there have proven themselves to be adept at misbehaving every year around Halloween. And I note that of the 49 arrests so far, only 7 are students, and hopefully the bulk of the misdeeds will be seen to have been done by people not associated with the University.

But everyone should be made accountable for their actions, and the University and the members of the football program should be very vocal in denouncing this behaviour.

Outward Bound Auction. Went to the Outward Bound “Black Tie and Tennies” event last nite. What a hoot! Standard men’s attire – jacket and tie up top, shorts and hiking boots below. As soon as we got there, we all got harnesses and helmets. And for the first two hours, we were flying through the Convention Center on the zipline, rapelling down the walls, navigating rope bridges above the dining room, etc. Just great fun – it is hard to be stuffy when you are wearing a harness and helment, and people are flying over your head on the zipline screaming. Following the fun we had the standard silent auction, dinner, and live auction, proceeds to beneift the Outward Bound scholarship program. Just a great time, highly recommended. L. and I scored some great gear in the grab bag portion of the auction and we met great people of course.

Xbox Live and 802.11a. I’m trying to figure out if this combo will work well. My xbox is in one of the few rooms in my house without a cat5 tap and so I want to use 802.11a to bridge the xbox onto the lan. I can find little info about this config on the net. Officially, Microsoft says it won’t support wireless connections. But on the xbox forums, many people have said they made it work. Many of them recommend the Linksys WET11 bridge. I’ll probably try that.