Distraction

I'm ashamed to admit it, but my time has been consumed by toys, tech, tunes and games.

First distraction: (um...not *really*) The family! We been doing....stuff.

Second distraction: The iPod Touch I got as a Xmas pressie has proven to be incredibly versatile, useful, absorbing and.....well....fun....and very absorbing. It's like having a laptop in your shirt pocket. A really cool one. Touch this, touch that. A tenth the size of a netbook, but on the Net anywhere I can get wifi. That's mainly my house and my work, but there are a lot of $3 / hour Tomizones out there, too.

But the iPod. Yeah...I'm raving. You can add loads of new programs to it. So far, among the many, my favourites are:

• WifiTrak - for finding and connecting to wifi hotspots
• Speedtest - for finding out how fast these hotspots are 
• SimCity 
• Facebook
• WeatherNZ 
• TouchTerm (for SSH-ing into other systems) 
• Safari browser and iPod IMAP for Gmail
• Air Sharing - lets me share files I put on the iPod Touch with PCs over wifi. Sort of like a wifi-capable USB stick, if you like.  

....and loads of other stuff. The  "Lightsaber" app makes my iPod touch sound like a Star Wars light sabre as I wave around.

Third distraction: Tunes. The whole family is kitted out with iPods, so we need music to play. No problem. I spent 4 days, dawn to dusk, ripping every CD in the house as 256k mp3 files. They reside in a shared folder on the home server for ease of access by anyone in the house. There are also a variety of USB sticks available for quickly composing "sets" for playing on the USB-capable (nice and cheap) stereo we got from DSE.

Fourth distraction: DosBox on Ubuntu Linux. The kids and I have been playing old favourites like "Crystal Caves", "Monster Bash" and "Duke Nukem 3D". They all play perfectly on Linux. Especially Duke 3D. At 800x600 with 22Khz sound and 8 voices, it's better than it used to be on the old system I used to play it on.

Fifth distraction:  Windows v7 beta. I installed the 64-bit version a few days ago. It looks and feels a lot like Vista on my AMD Opteron-based system with 4GB of RAM. MS IE (64-bit *and* 32-bit) at first crashed accessing msn.com, which I thought was funny. I managed to change the home page to Google and it's been stable since.  I didn't think much of the (Windows 7 only?) "Homegroups". I have Linux, XP and Vista in the house and it wasn't at all clear whether they would be accessible. I'm also able to share files on the iPod Touch.

I know that in the background there is important stuff going on. Gaza. The unfolding economic mess. The new copyright law that says I'm guilty if accused - never mind due process. Much, much more. Most of it bad.

But right now I'm having some fun and playing with my toys and tech. There will be time enough for outrage and action in the months ahead.  Certainly no shortage of things to get up in arms about. The people who backed the US-originated foreign, financial and economic policies that made the present mess are - perversely - now running New Zealand. The timing is fascinating and shows how very little so very many in NZ really understand about the world around them.