What do robots do when not our bidding?
Discuss all the things we talk about when we think no one’s listening; god, unicorns, and our failing memories.
What do robots do when not our bidding?
Discuss all the things we talk about when we think no one’s listening; god, unicorns, and our failing memories.
Earlier this spring, I picked up a used electric lawn mower. After performing marvelously for most of the summer – it died.
Batteries no longer held a charge. Dead.
Not that unusual in this household.
The batteries in the 2 Dell Mini laptops in the house also, after 2 years, can’t hold a charge. Which, if memory serves, is about when the batteries in my Apple laptops also went out. Maybe sooner.
I called up the manufacturer – who said the batteries could only be purchased through them or Home Depot. Only Home Depot.
The Home Depot down the street from me had no lawnmower batteries on the shelf. Not even for this year’s mowers. Nothing. HomeDepot.com had something they said would work – but it nothing like the dead batteries.
I called up Batteries Plus – and they were more than happy to help. It was pretty remarkable to see how effortlessly they found and installed the replacement batteries.
We finished mowing the lawn. Yet today – the new batteries were dead – despite being charged over night.
I opened up the hood to find a wire dangling disconnected.
After a quick search online – I found the wiring diagram for this specific mower and it’s now charging in the garage.
So, no, I’m not worried about HP no longer making hardware devices. The TouchPad is the best tablet I’ve worked with in 10 years. And there’s a thriving internet community around it.
Plus, at least HP is saying upfront they’re divesting themselves from hardware. Unlike many other manufacturers and retailers that just act like their products don’t exist once they leave the shelves.
Knowing that the hard drive in my MacBook Pro will go at moment, I picked up a MacBook Air this week (13″, 1.8GHz, 256MB, 4GB).
In the process of setting it up – I’ve decided to make this new machine a focused, minimal, work, machine. Despite Migration Assistant – I want to start some new habits, not repeat old, bad ones.
So far this means:
In an effort to minimize my downtime when the funny noises this MacBook Pro is making finally amount to something – I’ve wired up a git repository to OS X’s native launchd service. The git repository hold all of my active projects – whether development projects with their own repos, research projects, consulting project. Everything.
Right now, there’s a Mac mini holding the shared repo with a MacBook Pro and a MacBook Air pushing and pulling to it.
mkdir active-projects.git
cd active-projects.git
git --bare init
cd ~/Documents/Projects
git init
git add .
git commit -a -m "initial commit"
#!/bin/sh
DATE=`date -u`
cd /Users/YOUR-USER-NAME/Documents/Projects
git pull origin master
git add .
git commit -a -m "Active Project Sync - $DATE"
git push origin master
chmod +x project-backup.sh
< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
< !DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>YOURNAME.rsync.backup</string>
<key>LowPriorityIO</key>
<true />
<key>Program</key>
<string>/Users/YOUR-USER-NAME/Documents/active-projects.sh</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>active-projects.sh</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true />
<key>QueueDirectories</key>
<array>
<string>/Users/YOUR-USER-NAME/Documents/Projects</string>
</array>
<key>WorkingDirectory</key>
<array>
<string>/Users/YOUR-USER-NAME/Documents/Projects</string>
</array>
</dict>
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/active-projects-backup.plist
Thanks to culturedcode’s instructions for syncing Things with git & Launchd.
Landing in my inbox this morning:
“Many people have mentioned that they didn’t receive the Evite invitation we sent, so I’m sending this follow up email…”
Yet, for whatever reason, they all feel so perfect right now.
It makes me smile to think about a mass migration out of Twitter into boring, timeless, technologies like email and IRC. IRC especially.
Each day, there’s some number of Google+, Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter notifications in my email inbox. Ironic that these communications services, seemingly wanting to be as ubiquitous as email, need to use email as a primary notification service.
And the daily deal space (Groupon, Living Social, et. al.) are 95% email.
Every couple of days, I’m asked, ‘What comes after Twitter, Facebook, (etc)?’
I don’t know, I’m in email.