Year of the tiny laptop

I am vaguely sick.

I was very sick a week ago. I stayed home Monday and Tuesday, worked from home, had a horrible cold flu thing. After that I lost my voice completely for about three days, then I am just now starting to get it back a little, sometimes. Tea helps. No carbonated things at all helps more. I may need to go to a doctor if I am still like this on Monday. My sarcasm is my only natural defense.

This was the year of the tiny laptop. I wanted an OLPC, of course, since I first saw them, and I wanted the Eee PC since ai realized how insane it was going to be trying to get an OLPC. My mother got me an Eee PC for Christmas, I think I mentioned before, and I got myself (and one anonymous small child) an OLPC. Hope he enjoys his.

I didn't really mention it before now since I was kind of embarrassed to have gotten two tiny laptops almost at once. The OLPC showed up (after the most worstest shipping process ever) last Thursday, after I had pretty much given up on it getting here this year. I'll write more about it later.

Other gifts I got were a big tub of homemade candy (my mother makes a huge batch every year for all the relatives), a very strange monkey that I'll take some pictures of tomorrow, a subscription to Make magazine, and a t-shirt that detects 802.11. I also got a really neat artifact, a SYM-1 computer, from 1978. I don't think it was a Christmas present so much as a "I found this in my garage, please take it" present, but it's neat to look at. The board is all laid out by hand, everything is through-hole, and I am pretty sure it's only a two-layer PCB. It's the kind of computer that makes you think "I could have built this".

I think the best present I got (is it rude to say that? Let's just say it was a really good present then) was a box from Emily and Tucker that was completely unexpected. It had a book called Growing Up Weightless by John Ford, a mug with a subway map (of the Lunar Transport Services TranCity System), and five envelopes of Really Good Tea. Thank you both very much; and I'm guilty that I haven't done the same for you! I'll have finished my gift project by TCon at least.

I gave presents mostly to my parents. My uncle got a book (Anubis Gates, because it's a damn good book), and my father got some stuff to go with his other present, which is a Basic Stamp (he's gotten into electronics lately, like me). Gave him a breadboard and three ICs that were discussed in Code, which is one of his favorite books. My mother got a DVD of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (it was $5!) and one of The Simpsons Movie (which was what she actually wanted). My father and I went in together on an Apple TV as well, since she likes Apple stuff, and TV. Seemed like a good match. I still need to work out a way to put DivX files on there without hardware hackery though. Looks like it'll probably be easier to convert them to MP4 first instead of convincing the TV to play DivX. I keep downloading things I want her to watch though, like House of Cards, so I am anxious to get that going.

I am right now waiting for the Dr. Who Christmas episode to download. I'll make another post later, probably, since I'll be still waiting on that, and I think I figured out something else interesting to say about programming languages.