Tech Miscellanea

Friday, September 5, 2008

Google Chrome

We've been playing with Google Chrome a bit, but don't yet see anything special enough about it to switch from Firefox/Opera.  Anyone have an opinion on it?  Is it any more stable?  I need something where I can have 20 tabs open and lots of applications running at once. 

Project Playlist

I like the Project Playlists many people have embedded on their blogs, but the whole concept worries me a bit.  The RIAA is suing Project Playlist for copyright infringement.  As I understand it, Project Playlist merely collects links to supposedly legal sources of the music and makes it possible for bloggers to embed it, so it is not like peer to peer file sharing.  Moreover, the lawsuit may be simply a prelude to Project Playlist licensing the music.  

But the RIAA has sued about 20,000 people for file sharing.  Although many settled, one jury in my hometown of Duluth, MN awarded the RIAA $222,000 against a woman who shared 24 tracks in her Kazaa folder.  (The judge in that case is expected to declare a mistrial soon.)

So I'm a little paranoid about Project Playlist.  Are there any alternatives where you can compile and embed playlists of legal MP3s?  I usually buy mine from Amazon. 

First post and some tech

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Hello world, this is my new blog about life in Brownsville for a native Northerner.

It's been 4 years since my family and I moved to the Rio Grande Valley, and I still don't speak Spanish, so as you can see I have not done a great job with assimilating into Mexican culture. We do eat a lot of tacos, though.

My son recently celebrated his ninth birthday, and we decided to buy him a laptop to replace the old, broken Gateway he'd been using. This 2goPC mini laptop has been permanently attached to him for the past week.



(Obviously pictured with boring full-size laptop for comparison purposes.)


The little handle is a nice touch, given that he insists on bringing it everywhere we go to get wi-fi. It runs on the educational version of Linux and, as far as I can tell, has everything he needs in a PC for quite some time. I kind of covet one of these things. Packing up a regular laptop for travel is a pain. My husband thinks it would get me laughed out of court, but I disagree.

I linked to my favorite blogs without asking anyone. If this is a breach of blogging etiquette, please let me know.