Gadgets and gizmos
Nov. 7th, 2005 04:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morslaThe gadget age has well and truly struck... I went to see my parents on Sunday, and helped them to set up a new PC. Now they're taking photos with a digital camera, ripping CDs and booking flights/travel insurance online. Mum wants an MP3 player to use while she's out in the garden, and they have finally started checking their email now that it's the main line of communication with my sister - she's currently working in a small pub two hours north of Inverness, in Scotland. I've introduced Mum to the wonders of Firefox, and she now has health & medical news available through RSS bookmarks - very helpful when you're chugging along on a 56k dialup connection, as you only need to load pages that you want to read.
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aeliel and I spent most of Sunday back in Somerville, with a shopping trip in the afternoon to look at more camping gear. I've just started wearing in a pair of Merrell boots... this will take a few weeks to do, but they should last the better part of a decade once I break them in. Even better, I discovered that CSIRO has a corporate discount deal with the store, so they cost much less than I'd expected to pay. Hurrah for milking the end of my employment here for all it's worth :) I have a decent collection of field gear from geology, and a few new additions for hiking - if I'm likely to have trouble getting consistent work next year, I might as well make the most of any time away from a 9-5 schedule.
Hell, if battery life improved enough I could get a laptop and work from the top of a mountain somewhere. If they can build fuel cells for mobile phones and MP3 players, surely we'll see some production model laptop fuel cells on the shelves soon.
Went for a wander through the Docklands area on the way home. There are a few new bits, added since I walked through there withjilavre. I like the new playground - all the equipment is designed with circles and circular motion in mind, and the ground is covered in that strange rubber tiling that covers the footpath near Parliament station. I climbed on (and jumped off...) bits of public sculpture until the sun went down, and headed back home. I see a picnic expedition happening in the next couple of months...
aeliel and I spent most of Sunday back in Somerville, with a shopping trip in the afternoon to look at more camping gear. I've just started wearing in a pair of Merrell boots... this will take a few weeks to do, but they should last the better part of a decade once I break them in. Even better, I discovered that CSIRO has a corporate discount deal with the store, so they cost much less than I'd expected to pay. Hurrah for milking the end of my employment here for all it's worth :) I have a decent collection of field gear from geology, and a few new additions for hiking - if I'm likely to have trouble getting consistent work next year, I might as well make the most of any time away from a 9-5 schedule. Hell, if battery life improved enough I could get a laptop and work from the top of a mountain somewhere. If they can build fuel cells for mobile phones and MP3 players, surely we'll see some production model laptop fuel cells on the shelves soon.
Went for a wander through the Docklands area on the way home. There are a few new bits, added since I walked through there with
jilavre. I like the new playground - all the equipment is designed with circles and circular motion in mind, and the ground is covered in that strange rubber tiling that covers the footpath near Parliament station. I climbed on (and jumped off...) bits of public sculpture until the sun went down, and headed back home. I see a picnic expedition happening in the next couple of months...
