http://www.idlehamster.com/index.php/site/index/ en Copyright 2008 2008-09-28T23:31:00-05:00 http://www.idlehamster.com/index.php/site/the_rise_of_netbooks/ http://www.idlehamster.com/index.php/site/the_rise_of_netbooks/#When:23:31:00Z Ever since ASUS introduced the Eee PC late last year, every computer company in the world has been scrambling to introduce their own.  Well except for Apple and Sony, but Sony is rumored to be working on one.  They're neat little machines, but I can't see how people get any serious work done on those things.  Especially when it comes to word processors, those things get bigger and slower with each release.  But if Apple wants to enter this market I suggest they leveage their iPhone technology and make a tablet with an attachable keyboard, similar to Compaq's old 10" tablet. 2008-09-28T23:31:00-05:00 http://www.idlehamster.com/index.php/site/spring_cleaning_in_the_summer/ http://www.idlehamster.com/index.php/site/spring_cleaning_in_the_summer/#When:23:20:00Z I just got rid of an extremely old laptop - an IBM ThinkPad. I'm not sure what model it was, but it was a Pentium 75 with 24 MB of RAM running Windows 95. It had a floppy drive and an external parallel Zip drive, I guess CD drives weren't popular then. In addition to that, I ripped out my old internal Zip 250 drive from my Linux box and dumped 20 zip disks that were collecting dust. It was a total pain because Ubuntu would only recognize a zip disk at boot time and then I couldn't eject a disk until it was in restart mode. Of course when I attached the drive to my old windows box, it worked fine. Its kind of funny when an OS released in 2001 worked better than one released in 2006. The linux box is next to go, its an Athlon 1.2 GHz system with 768 MB of RAM. Its a full tower with a pretty weak graphics card and a tiny hard drive. I'm going to fully wipe the hard drive and reinstall the latest version of ubuntu since I don't have copies of XP laying around. If anyone wants it let me know otherwise its going to a local computer store. The windows box will be after that, but I have to clean it up and get rid of its graphics card, it draws more power than its power supply can handle. Which causes it to crash when there is heavy graphics work like 3d games. Update: I also have an old Palm Tungsten E if anyone wants one. 2008-09-01T23:20:00-05:00 http://www.idlehamster.com/index.php/site/objective_c_and_the_iphone/ http://www.idlehamster.com/index.php/site/objective_c_and_the_iphone/#When:01:29:00Z With the launch of the iPhone 3G and the AppStore, developers around the world are rushing to grab a piece of this new market. Mac developers have a distinct advantage since the iPhone leverages MacOS X 10.5 APIs and frameworks. These interfaces are written in Objective-C, which is sort of in between C and C++ with a few unique pieces thrown in to spice things up. I'm sure many developer are scrambling to find tutorials. I found a couple that may help. Learn C for CocoaLearn Objective-CObjective-C Beginner's Guide 2008-08-07T01:29:00-05:00 http://www.idlehamster.com/index.php/site/whats_happen_to_you_digg/ http://www.idlehamster.com/index.php/site/whats_happen_to_you_digg/#When:04:05:01Z I was just reading about California banning the sale of trans-fats on Digg and I was shocked to see the majority of the comments were against it. The commentators were claiming it infringes on their rights and they didn't want the government babysitting them. Now I hate to lump people into groups, but this is classic Libertarian thinking and its pretty naive of them. Trans-fat are a public health hazard that have been linked to coronary heart disease. They only exist because they're cheap. They're like the food equivalent to asbestos, but I'm sure that group would defend their right to buy that crap too. I remember when Digg was geeky, but now it seems to be home to a bunch of political extremists and that just plan sucks. 2008-07-27T04:05:01-05:00 http://www.idlehamster.com/index.php/site/working_with_embedded_assets_in_as3/ http://www.idlehamster.com/index.php/site/working_with_embedded_assets_in_as3/#When:17:30:00Z I've been working with embedding SWFs in a pure AS3 project using the Flex 3 IDE and I ran across a little problem. All the examples just embed a SWF or JPG and use them directly on the stage. While this is fine for most instances, I needed to change the value of the TextField in my symbol. Embedding just a SWF won't allow you to do this. You have to use a symbol within an embedded SWF. All you pretty much have to is add the symbol property into the metadata line, like so. [Embed(source="assets/icon.swf", symbol="number")] private var Icon:Class 2008-07-12T17:30:00-05:00