clock … watching time, the only true currency

A journal from John B. Roberts

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Entries from May 2006

Installing MacBook RAM requires significant force

May 18th, 2006 · 36 Comments

I installed a RAM upgrade this morning on the MacBook, moving from two 256K modules to two 512K modules. While Apple is getting kudos for the ease of HD removal (video from Macworld), the RAM upgrade requires notably more force than I imagined. The instructions are simple, and the only tool required is a small [...]

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Tags: Tech

MacBook in my hands

May 17th, 2006 · 1 Comment

I started a new gig today, and a very pleasant part of the day was spent setting up a spanking new MacBook. (Yes, more on the new gig soon… not meaning to be cryptic, just trying to gather my thoughts semi-intelligently. And it’s late. And I want to watch the Champion’s League final from earlier [...]

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Tags: CNET · OpenDNS · Tech

Book: The Terminal Experiment

May 17th, 2006 · 1 Comment

I travelled this weekend, which meant I got to start and finish Robert Sawyer’s The Terminal Experiment. In a fun combination of two technology sectors, the story follows the impact of EEGs taken at a nanoscale level and software constructs of human brains/personalities. Call it a mashup, even…with an evil genius AI committing real-world murder [...]

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Tags: Books · Robert Sawyer · Science fiction

Movie: Mission: Impossible III

May 15th, 2006 · No Comments

As a mental break, I enjoyed Mission Impossible III last week. The action keeps jumping, as does the location (Vatican City, Berlin, Shanghai, Virginia, etc.). The only suspension of disbelief which was hard to swallow? When the MI team, in the middle of Shanghai, has a hard time getting a cellphone signal. Maybe in one [...]

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Tags: Movies

Why Don’t Ad Agencies Advertise?

May 7th, 2006 · 3 Comments

“Why Don’t Ad Agencies Advertise?” is a simple question I’ve never considered. And it’s a remarkable to consider, even if it’s a deliberate overstatement. The author of the article is Simon Sinek, CEO of Sinek Partners (terrible, Flash-heavy website), which clearly is in the marketing field, but I can’t immediately discern why it is or [...]

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Tags: Media

Finding the perfect gift

May 7th, 2006 · No Comments

Via 43 Folders, I read David Sedaris’s essay Memento Mori in the New Yorker. Essentially, a wide-ranging riff, which includes a few paragraphs on the challenge of finding the perfect gift. Sedaris on the challenge: Hugh thinks that lists are the easy way out, and says that if I really knew him I wouldn’t have [...]

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Tags: Everything

Movie: Deliverance

May 2nd, 2006 · 1 Comment

Yes, it took me this long to see Deliverance (1972). I thought the story originally appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, as this 1994 history of the magazine explains: It was to The Atlantic Monthly that a little-known writer named James Dickey came when he had something called Deliverance that he wanted to publish. But it’s [...]

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Tags: Movies