Growing up is optional

A while back I pointed to some cool wooden computer parts. It seems someone has gone one better and made a whole wooden laptop. [via hack a day]

I’ve just found the first reason I would want to migrate to PHP5. I’m not a great programmer. I learnt BASIC as a 9 year old playing with ZX81 and Commodore 64s. I don’t care about better OO support and all that stuff that appears to have been built in to PHP5, I just want a nice simple interpreted language. PHP4 works and I am a great believer (probably out of laziness) that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The reason I would seriously consider migrating is SimpleXML. After reading about Yahoo! Search Web Services and hunting for a nice simple PHP XML Parser I found this tutorial. Like its name suggests, its simple.

The one thing I think that is holding back wider uptake of PHP5 is that most hosts are not getting demand for it from their users. In a commercial environment where you run your own servers it can be much easier to change that to potentially upset 100 hosting customers on a shared box. Most people don’t need it. PHP4 just works.

I’ve upgraded to WP1.5 and am using the theme ‘Placid‘ from Chris Lin. I’m still working out a few things, like getting caching on my del.icio.us links in the sidebar working.

I can’t use my PC for more than about 15 minutes from lunchtime. It’s too hot. It just stops working. Specifically, the harddrives can’t be detected. I can still boot with Knoppix and use the net, but I can’t do any real work. The next morning all is OK again.

What’s nearly as bad is that in this heat my IR remote controls for my TV and stereo both stop working too. While getting up to change the channel is a pain, it’s worse that I can’t use some functions without the remotes.

It’s a good thing I live near the beach.

Oh yeah. How cool. End of discussion.

I’ll be lining up for one when it hits the shelves in NZ (probably with a bigger harddrive and more RAM). This is a smart move by apple; capitalise on the brand familiarity and current fad status of the iPod with a serious, price competative mac. And of course like most apple products it look awesome too.

I’m playing with Wordpress 1.5 so things may look a little weird here. I really like the theme setup and also the ability to write pages instead of posts. There may be a few bugs over the next day or two. Hopefully not too serious. Update: let me know it there are any problems

The news of Surpnova.org’s shutdown was not surprising. It had to happen, but it’s like trying to stop the tides changing by banning people from looking at the moon.

I’m not an expert on bittorrent or protocols in general, but I saw Simon do this (for mp3s) and thought apache’s default index page would be similar for torrents. Turns out I was right

My head is saying that I need to replace my PC. What I want to replace it with is a Mac. I don’t know why; there’s not rational reason I can come up with other than they’re cool. I don’t own any software for a Mac. I don’t have any specific need for a Mac. I’m more propeller-head mixed with suit than ponytail.

I understand all of the arguments for why I should use a PC. Why should I use a Mac?