I say "R7"; you hear "ass heaven", and really the product marketing team should have thought of that

I bought one of these the other day and this morning it finally arrived!

(Image shamelessly stolen from random google images search, as I currently don't have a functioning camera).

Although it looks like an e-book reader, it is really one of these in disguise.* That is, sure, it reads e-books, but it has a fully functioning Ubuntu system under the hood, and you can do anything with it that its frankly rather embarrassing 600 MHz processor and 256 MB of memory allows you to. I actually bought it for working on at cafes and the like, and together with a USB keyboard like this (still in the mail), it will be almost like having an entire desktop computer (from 1998) that miraculously weighs less than a pound and fits in a purse. It has practically no hard drive space either but I'll buy it a pet 16 GB SD card (once I get over my rage at having tried to do so on eBay last week and getting scammed), and together with dropbox, which I use for just about all my files anyhow, that should be plenty of room.

So not really an iPad killer, but perhaps a netbook-lust killer. I was deluded for a while into thinking I wanted a netbook, but this is even more portable, cuter, runs linux out of the box, and has a touchscreen.** For $350 AUD, that's pretty good going. I'm currently trying to build it a little case, and a stand, and kiss it gently and tell it it's pretty and all the things one does with a brand new gadget.

________
* But lighter, and without the parallel WinCE and Android OSes taking up extra space.

**Of course, what I really (truly madly deeply) wanted was one of these or these. Mysteriously, however, all smartbooks seem to have disappeared from the market before they even hit it. (Technically the Always Innovating smartbook hasn't quite disappeared, but I find their statement under the "order" tab a little suspicious: "The current Touch Book production is in stand-by and will resume in the summer [this statement has been up since January] when we will release our newest and craziest innovation. Ordering today ensures you a better place in the queue list, and you will be offered the option to upgrade." No one except me seems surprised by this bellyflop. After all, who wants a tiny, cheap Linux-based tablet with a 10-hour battery life and detachable keyboard? Um, me. That's exactly what I wanted. So I had to damn well build it myself (said the little red hen). And she did.

I really want to use this in a class

I'd love to use this in a class to teach about dummy subjects.
Sadly, as Geekman pointed out, that would probably require me to first explain how venn diagrams work, and then the origin of the quote. By which point it probably wouldn't be half as funny.

Sigh.

(Image from GraphJam)

If Jane Austen had had Facebook access...

...Pride and Prejudice might have looked something like this.

(Seen at Hoyden about Town)

On second thoughts, the Hamlet one is even better. I especially like the following lines:

Hamlet posted an event: A Play That's Totally Fictional and In No Way About My Family

Polonius thinks this curtain looks like a good thing to hide behind.

Polonius is no longer online.

Ophelia loves flowers. Flowers flowers flowers flowers flowers. Oh, look, a river.

Ophelia joined the group Maidens Who Don't Float.

I like the "traveling through time" line best

How to get out of paying your bills. (Or not.)

Also, WTF?

The New Zealand accent: you're doing it wrong.

Does anyone else remember Rainbow?

I was having a nostalgic browse through old kids TV shows on Youtube today (inspired by Flea's mention of The Electric Company). And then I googled Rainbow.

Did everyone but me already know about this episode? It shows Zippy, George and Bungle in a whole new light...



(Supposedly it was an episode the cast and crew made as a private joke, but that then escaped and made its way onto the (adult, thankfully) air.)

Sixes and sevenses

ScienceGirl has tagged me to do the "6 random things about me" meme, which reminded me (*blush*) that I was tagged ages ago to do this, meant to, and never got around to it.

In googling to try and find out who it was who tagged me so long ago, I discovered yet ANOTHER blogger who had tagged me, this time for SEVEN random things.

At this rate, I could just list seven random bloggers who have tagged me and gone rudely ignored. But that wouldn't do at all.

Since I find it hard to manage the truly random, I'm going to do three pseudo-random lists and hope it makes up for all the missed opportunities.

Six random things that happened today:

1. Our landlord sent a letter saying he's putting our rent up by $25 a week. (The bastard.)
2. I didn't get the package of the IVF drugs that I am meant to start taking on Saturday, even though the clinic sent them on Monday. This is starting to worry me.
3. I heard that a random person I was chatting to about teaching at a workshop recently was actually someone important and has been talking me up to the Vice Chancellor.
4. I wrote a proposal for a $10,000 teaching enhancement grant. It basically said, "Pay me to do some teaching, and this will enhance things." I don't suppose that's quite what they had in mind, but I used buzzwords* and made it sound all sexy. Also, see (3).
5. I encouraged a student to apply for a teaching enhancement grant too, hereby lowering my own chances of success. I'm so strategic.
6. I turned my back on the kitchen sink for two minutes, and two wine glasses spontaneously shattered. Spontaneously, I tell you! Fortunately, this saved on the washing up. Just think what a waste of effort it would have been if I hadn't left them sitting there since Monday night.

Seven random things about me inspired by a shuffle on my iPod:

1. Rammstein: "Sonne". I get easily sunburned. This year I've been wearing sunscreen every day, even in winter, and I think my skin is happier for it.
   
2. Split Enz: "I got you". Sometimes I listen to New Zealand music because I feel I should. Sometimes I listen to it because I like it. When I do the former too many times, it subconsciously shifts to the latter. This is probably why my taste in music is so crap.
   
3. Nena: "Nur geträumt". I dreamed about Sarah Palin one night last week. I can't believe I am having political dreams about an election that isn't even in my country. Please, internet, can we stop with the American election media bombardment now?
   
4. Savage Garden: "Crash and burn". I've only crashed a car once. Unfortunately it was the first (and only) occasion when my parents let me drive to school. I made sure to arrive right when the bell went so that everyone would see me. Everyone did, in fact see me. They saw me drive into a fence.
   
5. Spin Doctors: "Two princes". I've never met a royal. But my grandfather taught Prince Edward when he was at Wanganui Collegiate in the early 1980s. I imagine teaching royalty would be a case of the ultimate snowflake student.
   
6. Chumbawamba: "Tubthumping (I get knocked down)". In my third year of undergrad I worked nights and weekends at KFC. I quit on the day I turned up bruised and bleeding from being knocked off my bike by a car a few blocks away, and my boss still wouldn't let me go home to recover, and threatened to dock my pay for being 15 minutes late.
   
7. KLF: "Justified and ancient". My mother is relatively ancient, but never, never justified :)
   

Six random blogs that I have been enjoying lately but which haven't made it to my sidebar yet
(This is kind of like tagging people, but some of these aren't the sort of blogs that you tag, and as for the others, I don't suppose they read me. Perhaps they too will discover this a year or so later via teh Google.)

1. Cake Wrecks
2. Not always right
3. The Bloggess
4. Sociological images
5. Woulda coulda shoulda
6. FemaleScienceProfessor

__________

* "Pay me to do some (deep-learning-inspiring, research-driven, Web 2.0) teaching, and it will enhance (outcome-optimized, student-centered, world-class) things."

Linkity link

Nom nom nom nom:


And hey—there are actually people out there dorkier than me!

Oh dear

What New Zealand is famous for in the news today.

Because I am marking assignments...

... of course I have new (unrelated) fun links to share with you.

Currently making me laugh out loud.

My current addictions on zefrank.com

...are these two toys.

Window into marriage in the 1930s

This "marital rating scale" from 1939 is amazing in all sorts of ways.

Some surprising excerpts:

The man gets points for "consulting wife about business affairs", turning over the "whole paycheck" to her, and helping with housework and childcare. He gets 20 points for making sure his wife has an orgasm whenever they have sex. He gets "demerits" for not getting dressed on Sundays, and for "writing on the tablecloth with a pencil." (Is pen better? And was this really a common problem?)

The woman gets demerits for wearing red nail polish, "wearing pajamas while cooking", failing to wash the top of the milk bottle before opening it, walking around the house in stockinged feet, and "taking dope".

She gets points for being able to "carry on an interesting conversation" (good little wifey), "keeping snacks in the refrigerator for late night eating", and being "jolly and gay".

Then there's the complaints that I've still heard people making today:

• Calls, "Where is the - " without looking for it first. (Man)
  
• Leaves dresser drawers open. (Man)
  
• Squeezes toothpaste from the top. (Man)
  
• Puts cold feet on husband at night to warm them. (Woman)
  

Birthdays and biscuits

It's my birthday!

Geekman gave me this cute little teapot and cups, and a selection of fancy teas.

He also gave me some virtual shoes, in that we went shopping for them, but I couldn't find any I liked that also fit.

My parents, in the best StyleyGeek Parents tradition, appear to have forgotten. Which is still better than giving me one sock, so see me not be devastated.

In other news, who needs a birthday cake when you can have orange and almond biscotti?! (Well, me. Apparently I need both. Hence the Armenian Nutmeg Cake currently in the oven. But let's pretend it was a rhetorical question.)


Orange and Almond Biscotti Recipe

2 ¼ cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 ¼ cups sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 Tbsp olive oil
¼ tsp almond extract
finely grated rind of 1 orange
½ cup chopped almonds

Sift together the flour and baking powder; stir in sugar. Make a well in the centre and gradually stir in remaining ingredients; mix well. Divide dough in half and shape into two logs 6cm wide and 20cm long. Place on greased oven trays and bake in 180°C oven 30-35 minutes or until browned on top. Cool slightly then cut into 2cm slices. Lie slices flat on tray and return to oven for 15 minutes or until brown. Cool on wire racks.

Desktop on my desktop

I was tagged for this meme by Jana surreptitiously via email. I think this could be a whole new fashion: doing memes without posting them on your blog. But I'm going to break the chain and share the result with you.


This is my office desktop.

Notable highlights:

• Left mid: Coffee. For working purposes.
• Upper left: Window. For parrot purposes.
• Upper not-so-left: My desktop. Ubuntu. The background changes randomly every 30 minutes. Currently some generic abstract picture of crystals.
• Just right of the computer: plan of all the work I had been going to do during the semester break. Mostly not crossed off, alas.
• Just right of that: My Communist Leaking Mug. Which never holds enough red pens. (The world does not hold enough red pens; such are my students. Ha! Just kidding! They are awesome! (And they read here.))
• Right lower quadrant: Big stack of assignments. The sticky note on top says "Re-mark: these are too lenient." I guess they were the ones I did after drinking a little to numb the horror. (See above for obligatory "ha just kidding" disclaimer.)
• Mid right: Wall chart listing all the branches of Indo-European with dates of first attestation, approximate dates of dialect divergence, and dates of extinction (where appropriate). I love this chart so much I want to marry it. (Sorry, Geekman. We can be polygamous.) Updated to say: Get your own copy here!
  
• Bottom right: Dialect Change: Convergence and Divergence in European Languages. You have to love a book that gives good subtitle.

I guess I should tag people now.

I vaguely remember people posting pictures of their workspaces a while back, so if you already did this, feel free not to bother. Bearing that in mind, I tag:
Bardiac
Lucy
Ianqui
Anastasia
Psycgirl

This is teh awesome

This haiku generator gave me some great haikus created from my blog. Apparently my blog is all about:

Trivial mundanities:

if you really
like me better than those guys
i'll show you a bag

reasons to mention
it it might be easier to
have an iron

i need to buy a
thicker whiteboard marker
i requested one

The realities of academia:

supervisor is
also expected to do
research and service

Shameless self-promotion

pretty in pink look
at me i'm prettier than they
are too expensive

Parrots:

a gang gang made a
noise like a squeaky door why
are you doing this

to rustle there was
a swooping and a squawking
and a chattering

How I'm not from around here:

hour before bedtime
it's my accent isn't
it i just found out

new zealand news is
just weird turns out they are they're
just boring and grey

And finally, a general summary of what my blog's about:

serious weirdness
potential and it might save
her from eating her

(Seen at The Hussy's).

Carnival time!

There's a new Carnival of GRADual Progress up. And the Frog Princess is looking for people to help out with it in future.

Carnival of GRADual Progress

There's a new one up. Over at lines ever more unclear.

There's a carnival.

Go read it, because it's cool.

Because it's been a while since I blogged about productivity tools

For the last few weeks I have been using a great online "to do" list application, Remember The Milk. The more I use it, the more I like it.

In my opinion, its best features are the following:

It talks to Google products. You can integrate it with Google Calendar, or (my personal favourite), with Gmail. In Gmail your to-do list then becomes a right-hand column, so that someone like me who checks their email obsessively has no excuse for forgetting the tasks for the day.

It is super easy to add tasks. You can do it from within your Gmail account, from within Google Calendar, by sending the program an email, or on the Remember The Milk site. Minimally, it involves one click and typing in the name of the task. (You can add much more info about the task if you wish, though, including priority, due date, location, etc.)

The application is smart. For due date, for example, you can type "today", "tomorrow", "Wednesday", "1 Jan", "Jan first", etc, and it recognises all of these and converts them to its standard formats. If you are adding a task from within your email account, and include the name of one of your contacts (e.g. "call Richard"), it uses your email address book to auto-complete.

It probably has many more features I haven't explored yet, but one of the things I like about it is that you can get started straight away using a very minimal subset of what it can do, all of which is totally intuitive, and only begin using the more advanced settings and features if and when you find them helpful.

The carnival of GRADual progress is up!

Go take a look. I'll still be here when you get back.