Mr T’s rants and ravings

I think I read about this idea somewhere but I don’t remember where. It’s a great idea though and really works. But let me back up a minute.

There are, I am sure, some people who keep their microwaves nice and clean. They cover everything they cook and they clean up any mess that is made right away. Yeah, well, that’s not me. As a result my microwave gets a little ugly from time to time. Worse still things are sort of baked on and hard to clean away. Has that ever happened to you? (Probably not to Matt.) Or perhaps you have been forced to use a microwave that was a mess and wanted to clean it out first.

Scrubbing doesn’t really appeal to me. I try to avoid hard work unless it is absolutely necessary. So that is where the steam cleaning comes in. Fill a microwave safe mug or glass with water and run it for a while. You want to water to boil for a while but its probably not a good thing to boil it all away. Then let the microwave sit for a minute or so.

Now open the microwave and wipe it clean and dry with a paper towel or sponge.  Repeat if necessary but generally once is enough. The boiled water becomes steam and pretty much softens every bit of gunk inside the microwave.

This post brought to you because I couldn’t sleep. But it does work. I used it today in fact.

I’ve got a couple of browsers on my laptop. IE of course. FireFox and Safari as well. Over the weekend I installed IE 8 beta 2 to try out. And today I installed Chrome from Google. Why not? Everyone else is.

For the time being I will stay with IE 8 though. The address search on IE8 and Chrome is similar but the one on IE 8 works better for me. The tabs on Chrome are on the top of the screen which bugs me. It is not as convenient and seems to be a change for the sake of being different and not for any good reason I can see. Also Chrome does not support Silverlight and Photosynth and I need those. So major fail there. Hopefully they will fix that.

I do like the default tab on Chrome. It shows your most frequently opened pages. The default tab on IE 8 shows the pages you have most recently closed which I do find quite useful though so it is not a huge edge there for Chrome. I am used to bringing up a number of pages at once from the favorites menu. I have a couple of groups that I use for specific purposes. One hit and they all open. I haven’t figured out how to do that with Chrome or even if it is possible.

So Chrome may be the hot new thing but there are plenty of reasons for me not to use it and not really any compelling reasons to use it. Well it was worth trying.

Edwin Guarin is driving a bus fitted out as a high tech, lots of games and devices, digital dorm room to campuses around the NorthEast.  He’s writing about the trip on his blog.  He’s showing of computers, Zunes, Xbox 360 (apparently Rock Band is popular on the tour so far) and giving away gifts and prizes. Its a fun way to get a look at some cool technology.

The full schedule is here. Stops this week include:

• Hofstra University
• NorthEastern University
• UMASS Boston
• Bunker Hill Community College

Next week

• Bentley College (I expect reports from this stop)
• Harvard
• Boston University

Still more following that - check the schedule for schools, dates and times as some of the locations are yet to be determined. If he comes to you campus or to a campus near you stop by and tell Edwin I sent you.

Worried about getting beaten up or kidnapped while you sleep? Living in a hostile environment? Like a dorm perhaps? Then this may be the bed for you!

I actually designed something like this when I was a kid. I’m not sure why though. But it is interesting to see that someone did it for real. I wonder what sort of market there is for this sort of thing?

So I got a new laptop and I’m still getting used to it. It is bigger (though still pretty light) then the one I had been using. More memory (4gb), more disk (150gb on the main one and I forget how much on the second one that I can swap in and out with the CD/DVD reader/burner), both hard drives are 7200 rpm, a docking station, travel power cord, extra battery and who knows what that I haven’t discovered yet. It’s a Lenovo Thinkpad T61 for those of you who have to know.

Installing all my software is not a big deal. I seem to have access to all the media I need. The biggest thing I am getting used to is the keyboard. The delete key is at the top and I am used to it being in the bottom. The Fn and Ctrl keys are swapped from what I am used to. And I am used the the arrow keys being more isolated and the down arrow key having a nub on it. All four of the arrow keys have nubs (I just found them) but there are at the top of the keys and I am used to feeling on the bottom of them. This is messing up my typing in the dark.

The "mouse" keys around the touch pad are different. Not better or worse so much as just different. It is taking some getting used to. I’m sure I am going to like this new laptop and even if I don’t it has to be better than the one it replaces which I have grown to hate with a minor passion. I just wish the keyboards were as standard away from the letter and numbers as they are with them.

I’m a Chevrolet Corvette!

You’re a classic - powerful, athletic, and competitive. You’re all about winning the race and getting the job done. While you have a practical everyday side, you get wild when anyone pushes your pedal. You hate to lose, but you hardly ever do.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

One of my favorite Christmas presents this year was an AeroGarden. It’s basically a small hydroponics set up for growing plants indoors. There is a special light and a pump that pushes water and nutrients into the mini-planters. Right now I have lettuce planted. Sprouts showed up in about 2 days or so. They should be harvistable in about 3 weeks and last for another three months or so. I’m getting a kick out of watching them grow so far. I hope it works out.

One of the other things they offer is a special try for starting seedlings for outdoors. I am thinking that I would like to try that as well. It holds 70 plants and that would be plenty for me. I could start all the tomatoes, cucumbers and pepper plants I want. I might also try some corn and sunflowers as well. I’ve tried starting plants inside before but for some reason it never seems to work out. Perhaps with this system it will.

The other thing I am thinking about is getting a second device to keep in my office. I would grow something different there. Perhaps flowers. So far plant I have tried in my office has died. But honestly I think that has been a combination of not getting watered enough and not enough light. I travel a good bit and I need a good healthy light on a timer as well as a system that can go without me adding water every day. This should do that.

And it is a gadget too! What more could a geek want but a gadget that grows things.

As I found yet another take-out order gone wrong this week I started thinking about the problem of fast food restaurants and take-out windows. Part of the problem is the people who work these windows. You need someone smart enough to get the order right but not so smart that they get bored and quit right away. It seems like a lot of places skimp on the "smart enough to get the order right" part when they hire people.

So I was thinking that this is an area ripe for robots and computer controlled ordering. Voice recognition systems are getting better and seem like they might be as good as some people who work at these drive-through windows. The last time I was in a fast food restaurant where the people seemed really smart and spoke really good English I was in Norway. Lately in US places people seem to be having almost as much trouble understanding me as I do them.

Anyway. I could see a robot operation that took orders using either voice recognition or some sort of interactive display. The food could be cooked and assembled and presented to a person to hand through the window. I’m not sure we’re ready for a robot to hand out the food and collect the money yet. It might work with credit cards though.

I see two major problems. One is that we may need smarter customers to manage computer ordering. There is no way to make it completely idiot proof. There are some amazing idiots out there. The second is that there are already a shortage of jobs for the types of people who tend to take these jobs. High school students, mothers and seniors looking to fill time and pick up a few extra bucks, and people without more marketable skills. So that is a social issue.

We’d still need people to feed the equipment and handle screw ups. Hopefully there would be fewer screw ups in the preparation of the order but remember that a lot of people would be likely to mess up in what they order. But if you could get my with one or two people at times that now require three to five there would be some savings in payroll.

There is one other potential problem. Sometimes companies modify the product to fit production at the cost of quality of the product. I can’t see that being an issue at some fast food restaurants where quality is not so impressive as it is.  Plus I think that a lot of semi-automation adjustment has already taken place. How much worse could it get?

Amazon has a new electronic book called Kindle. It looks pretty good and has good battery life and can store a lot of books. The wireless Internet (limited to buying and downloading reading material) with no extra costs is a huge benefit I think. I like that they backup your data for you as well.

The one question I have that I don’t see is if you can give a book to someone else when you are done reading it. I could live with it not being on my reader afterwards as that only seems fair.

It is expensive though and I wonder if the $400 price will be a show stopper. Time will tell I guess.