Tollef Fog Heen's blog

I find myself blogging a lot on paper lately. Though blogging, being a short form of the word weblogging, it then becomes an oxymoron, and they're not available to anybody before I get around to typing them in.

I really don't know the reason for this trend of mine, but I have a few guesses: The first and foremost is that my laptop is kinda broken with all the ACPI problems and stability problems with the motherboard. (And that IBM claims otherwise.) Another reason is the instant-on capability of paper. I just pick up my notebook and a pen or pencil and start writing. My laptop doesn't do that at the moment, since I broke ACPI when upgrading to 2.6. Those two reasons means paper is less fiddly when it comes to writing down thoughts just there.

I hope me seeing it as fiddly doesn't mean I'm getting bored of computers, which would be a disaster as they are quite a big part of my life. To test this theory, I'll fix all the outstanding issues (like ACPI sleep states) once I get the motherboard fixed. Of course, it still doesn't address the issues of a laptop being more or less useless outdoors or the severly limited battery life. Because of the sucky battery life, and the weight of my current laptop, I wish for a new one, either an IBM X40, the HP 4010 or one of the smaller Fujitsu Lifebooks. All should have around ten hours with an extra battery pack clipped on. Of course, I won't buy one until the current one is worn out.

Each time you fly from somewhere to somewhere else, the crew go through the same procedure before take-off: Turn off all radio receivers and transmitters during the whole flight, and during take-off and landing, please turn off all electronic equipment.

The call for turning off transmitters, I can understand, though why you should turn off receivers, I am not sure. The call to turn off stuff like CD players and such is just silly; yes, they contain a small electromotor which will emit a bit of noise, but if the navigational systems of the plane are that suspecible to jamming and malfunction, I am really, really scared of flying.

The problem of having a rule like the one above is that you make those who know the factors involved question your judgement and make them ignore other rules which might actually matter.