I no longer wear a watch of any kind. At home, there are various other things that tell me the time, in particular my computer, which I sit in front of for much of the time. Outside the home, I rarely need to know the time, but in case of need I can look at my iPhone, which I carry with me in case my wife wants to call me.
I didn't wear a watch for a long time, eventually got a smartwatch. It keeps track of how much sleep I get and how much exercise. I am supposed to walk briskly or equivalent exercise for an average of half an hour a day and the watch lets me keep track of that.
I occasionally go downstairs with my cell phone left in my office, can take a phone call on my watch. It's also useful for timing things in cooking.
Yes, I don’t feel the need of a smartwatch for any of these purposes; but who knows, perhaps I will at some time in the future.
When my wife gave me a Kindle for Christmas 2011, I didn’t think I wanted one, but I soon discovered that I liked it; and indeed preferred it to reading paper books, which was entirely unexpected.
I was like that for a long time (decades), but eventually started wearing a "fitness tracker" / "smart watch" for sleep tracking, etc. I was helped along in sticking to that decision by the willingness of university researchers to provide Fitbits in return for sharing the data they generate.
I believe the main purpose of a watch nowadays, at least for men, is to be the only piece of jewellery men can legally wear by the virtue of it being thinly disguised as something practical.
I’m not keen on jewellery, piercings, tattoos, or makeup. I can tolerate them easily enough, but I don’t admire them on other people, and I don’t feel the urge to adopt any of them myself. For personal decoration, we have clothing; I think it’s enough.
I'm surprised you'd refrain from wearing jewelry due to curious societal norms, particularly given your interest and skill in creating jewelry. On a related note, what's your perspective on lab-grown diamonds, considering your hobby?
My perspective on diamonds is that they are boring. If you want an expensive stone both emeralds and sapphires are much prettier. If you want a beautiful stone there are much less expensive options.
My perspective on synthetic gemstones in general is that the price difference between synthetic and natural says something interesting about utility functions.
Men can wear rings, and I think some men wear earrings. My son had one ear pierced when he was in his teens, though I’ve never noticed him wearing anything there except a plain black filler. I suppose men could also wear other jewelled items such as cufflinks, maybe a tie pin or something. Though I’m not the right person to consult about these things.
I don't like rings, since I use my hands. I don't wear a tie or the sort of shirts that need cufflinks. I think men wearing earrings is a generational or cultural thing, a signal for something that isn't true of me.
But I concede that all of those options exist. And in the SCA I get to wear a couple of pendants and occasionally a chain.
I had one of those Asus "netbooks" back in the day, as well as a Samsung T401G, a "slider" phone with a physical qwerty keyboard. I used both to blog from an event or two, but ultimately decided that a full-size laptop was worth the extra weight and bulk versus the inconvenience of the small keyboards/screens.
It's a little hard to recall with accuracy, but I THINK that as of that time (2010) I was running a 15-inch PowerBook G4. Until recently, I've usually tended to run a few years behind the times on my computers, so that sounds about right (my desktop at that point would have been a 2006-era Mac Mini). I always got my stuff used, either as hand-me-downs or at resale stores. Same now, I guess ... if I buy a "new" computer online, it's either low-end or a refurb.
Yeah, weight wasn't something I thought about when you asked "how big?" My recollection is that that old Powerbook was pretty heavy compared to today's laptops, including my current Chromebook, which is a little smaller than I find convenient for working on (14" screen), but which is very light and which does double duty as a touch-screen tablet.
I don't travel a lot, but I want to eventually put together a dream travel rig -- a Raspberry Pi size mini PC with two miniature projectors no bigger than the Pi to use as "monitors" (or the supposed coming "monitors the thickness and weight of paper that you can just roll up or fold up") and one of those things I keep hearing about prototypes of where instead of a keyboard and mouse you have a couple of bracelets that detect your hand/finger movements as if you were typing/mousing. Basically a whole setup that takes up the physical space of a trade paperback but lets me have screen size as large as I like.
That would be my dream for working from hotel rooms or other people's houses when on the road. I can get by with a phone or tablet while sitting in airports, etc.
Hotel rooms, at least in the US, have televisions, so you could use those for your screen, and there are foldable bluetooth keyboards.
When traveling I always have my Air. But I have been thinking, next time I have to replace my cell phone, of getting a foldable and seeing how well that plus speech-to-text works as a substitute.
I'm incredibly picky. To get much real work done, I require two side-by-side monitors and a full-size keyboard. Right now when I travel, my bag includes the laptop, a not very good USB travel monitor, a mouse, and a full-size US keyboard. I've tried folding keyboards, roll-up keyboards, smaller keyboards, and just hate them.
I only use the laptop AS a laptop if I absolutely have to do something and I'm on a plane, in an airport, etc. As soon as I get somewhere I expect to stay for more than a few hours, it's basically just the base unit of a desktop PC.
But that's just me, of course. And it's only when I am 1) traveling and 2) have to get work done when traveling. If I'm just traveling for leisure and have "time off" from my various jobs, I try not to use a PC at all and my phone as little as possible. When I was a teenager in the 1980s, I thought it impossible that I'd ever be willing to spend 24 hours away from a computer; now I like to do so at least a couple of times a year.
A Hackernews survey reported that most computer programmers of our generation (X) typically learned to program between the age of 10 and 14, whereas those who began their careers in 2020 typically started in college. I think, the reason for this is a lack of a modern equivalent of "home computers" on which most of us cut our teeth. After a bit of market research that brought up nearly nothing, I decided to make my own product with the help of some likeminded people. The first iteration was a modernized version of the computer which I programmed as a kid, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum (a British 8-bit micro from 1982). We even got as far a working prototype, but as I started writing the book for it, I realized that teaching BASIC in the XXIst century is child abuse. The second iteration is an Android-based netbook of a form-factor identical to Eee PC (sourced from a white-label Chinese manufacturer), with a Lua-based programming environment. We're about to launch a beta program next week. It came out much better than the first iteration, with all the lessons learned. I do agree that some old ideas are worth reviving from time to time, but not all that feel that way.
We purchased our 02 Lexus LS 430 just before COVID at an auction down the road from Facebook’s headquarters. It was donated by the previous owner’s family to support some good cause. Luckily for us the low mileage well maintained vehicle had a very close call with a 2 to 3inch diameter by a foot-long cylindrical object that hit the hood, roof, and trunk lid of the car, but missed all the glass. The dents are noticeable starting at about 5 feet from the car. The paint did not crack, which is somewhat amazing. The resellers at the auction were put off by the damage so it was down to three of us who were looking for an upgraded daily driver to bid on the car. I drove it home that day and my wife wouldn’t consider any other sedan. She will drive our 1999 SUV when the weather is bad. The LX is a 4X4 and sits up pretty high.
The cd players work in both vehicles. I think I’ll switch out a Moody Blues cd for our Bruce Springsteen Greatest Hits CD. The sound quality is great in either the LS or the LX. I’ll que up Bruce’s “Glory Days” first as it will remind me of the time my grad father taught me some techniques to get a baseball to second base quickly. He loved playing the game and his insights on calling for various pitches given what’s gone on before came in handy during my days playing the game. He spent a few months in an infirmary in France after being gassed on the front lines back in 1918.
It wasn’t until about a year ago that we learned he lied about his so he could enlist when President Wilson called for the youth of the country to enlist. He was 15 when he started basic training and he finished high school after the war. I am fairly sure he would of gone to an upcoming event at Stanford if he was around- https://events.stanford.edu/event/april-3-2025 -“Join us as we mark a decade of dedication, innovation, and energy at The Central Energy Facility! For the past 10 years, our plant has been a cornerstone of reliable, sustainable energy, fueling progress and brightening countless lives.”
I used to have an earlier version of Civilization on my Mac Mini. After the second or third time I stayed up at night playing it till my eyes were raw, I uninstalled it. A year later I tried reinstalling it, promptly did the same thing, and uninstalled it. Now I'm not going to install it again.
I have access to the free version of ChatGPT and have been playing with it, largely exploring fictional worlds I'm creating for tabletop roleplaying games (it can, for example, suggest period actors to play the characters in a game set in 1932, or list interesting restaurants and bars in a small city in 2033; on the other hand, it's so hard to get it to represent a non-player character appropriately that it's only marginally worth it). It's enough fun so that I'm not going to buy the paid version, which would let me spend more time playing with it! The free version lets me economize on willpower. . . .
Do you think D&D is likely to go to being played with some of the characters AI? It could solve the problems of getting enough players and of a player not showing up.
I suppose that might work for D&D style campaigns, where the characters tend to be archetypes who may (do!) grow in power but don't really change in personality, or don't need to. My own campaigns tend to be heavier on characterization, and I hesitate to think that AI could emulate that, at least not with the resources of LLMs. My own solution to the problem of not getting enough players has been to play face to face via Zoom. Currently I have two campaigns going, with five players in each, and play in a third where I'm one of six players (and the GM and two of the players are players in campaigns that I run).
There was one campaign I was in a decade or two ago where one of the players moved away—but he had made his character so vivid that in his absence, from time to time, one or another of the players would jump in and deliver dialogue for him. "Toby like beer! Crunchy on outside, foamy on inside!" That's sort of like having an LLM run the character, in the sense that having a roomfull of women do calculations is sort of like having a "computer" in the modern sense. . . .
I once had the Ericsson psion 5mx clone (MC218). I still remember my excitement, but after using it just a couple of days to take notes at university it fell out of my coat pocket as I was tying a shoe lace, destroying the screen despite the clam shell design.
Later I gave physical keyboard another try with the smaller Nokia N900, but it was a bit too bulky and the software wasn't great. Though I still used it until it suffered the dreaded loose micro-b usb slot issue that has killed so many devices.
These days I've become comfortable enough with on-screen keyboards that the convenience of a regular smartphone wins out, but every once in a while I still look to see what's available with physical keyboard.
I think I had one or more of the Ericsson machines — I remember at some point someone else was making Psion's and I bought at least one, probably still have it.
I don't like on-screen keyboards but my kids seem to be able to use them, so it may be just a matter of learning a new skill. Nowadays I use speech-to-text to type on my phone.
Yes I still have my Casio Boss PC sync mini somethingorother. It still works and if I could sync it to my today's computer it'd probably often be in my pocket.
"Time Machines Like an Arrow"? Sorry, I couldn't resist.
I had a Vectrex, mostly because it had a 6809 processor, just like the one in my Radio Shack Color Computer 3. Because I worked at HP, I had access to free hardware, so I built my own multi-cartridge with an EEPROM and socket. I only put the games that I owned on it. Eventually stopped using it and sold it on EBay. It was a lot of fun, though.
I had the 3D goggles, which used a spinning disc to separate left eye and right eye. It was pretty cool, but also pretty flashy because of the insufficiently low frame rate. Unfortunately, in the pre- TiltFive.com days, 3D goggle didn't know where you were, and so couldn't adjust the display accordingly. So ... headache inducing.
Similar to the News Group for the Vectrex, the ancient Macintosh community lives at 68kmla.org, except the folks who mutated over to tinkerdifferent.com. Still keeping all the generations of old Mac hardware alive and developing new upgrades and software.
For Strategic Conquest and similar, it sounds like you have a great solution, but another option is to obtain a G4 based Mac Mini (pre Intel) and use the hack for installing OS 9 on it (Mac Minis were OSX only, officially). This is the most compact classic Mac platform. Or just have an old LC or similar laying around, but they've gotten a might more pricey recently.
I no longer wear a watch of any kind. At home, there are various other things that tell me the time, in particular my computer, which I sit in front of for much of the time. Outside the home, I rarely need to know the time, but in case of need I can look at my iPhone, which I carry with me in case my wife wants to call me.
I didn't wear a watch for a long time, eventually got a smartwatch. It keeps track of how much sleep I get and how much exercise. I am supposed to walk briskly or equivalent exercise for an average of half an hour a day and the watch lets me keep track of that.
I occasionally go downstairs with my cell phone left in my office, can take a phone call on my watch. It's also useful for timing things in cooking.
Yes, I don’t feel the need of a smartwatch for any of these purposes; but who knows, perhaps I will at some time in the future.
When my wife gave me a Kindle for Christmas 2011, I didn’t think I wanted one, but I soon discovered that I liked it; and indeed preferred it to reading paper books, which was entirely unexpected.
I was like that for a long time (decades), but eventually started wearing a "fitness tracker" / "smart watch" for sleep tracking, etc. I was helped along in sticking to that decision by the willingness of university researchers to provide Fitbits in return for sharing the data they generate.
I believe the main purpose of a watch nowadays, at least for men, is to be the only piece of jewellery men can legally wear by the virtue of it being thinly disguised as something practical.
I’m not keen on jewellery, piercings, tattoos, or makeup. I can tolerate them easily enough, but I don’t admire them on other people, and I don’t feel the urge to adopt any of them myself. For personal decoration, we have clothing; I think it’s enough.
I cut gemstones, make jewelry as a hobby, so resent the fact that I can't wear it. Fortunately my wife and daughter can.
I'm surprised you'd refrain from wearing jewelry due to curious societal norms, particularly given your interest and skill in creating jewelry. On a related note, what's your perspective on lab-grown diamonds, considering your hobby?
My perspective on diamonds is that they are boring. If you want an expensive stone both emeralds and sapphires are much prettier. If you want a beautiful stone there are much less expensive options.
My perspective on synthetic gemstones in general is that the price difference between synthetic and natural says something interesting about utility functions.
Men can wear rings, and I think some men wear earrings. My son had one ear pierced when he was in his teens, though I’ve never noticed him wearing anything there except a plain black filler. I suppose men could also wear other jewelled items such as cufflinks, maybe a tie pin or something. Though I’m not the right person to consult about these things.
I don't like rings, since I use my hands. I don't wear a tie or the sort of shirts that need cufflinks. I think men wearing earrings is a generational or cultural thing, a signal for something that isn't true of me.
But I concede that all of those options exist. And in the SCA I get to wear a couple of pendants and occasionally a chain.
I had one of those Asus "netbooks" back in the day, as well as a Samsung T401G, a "slider" phone with a physical qwerty keyboard. I used both to blog from an event or two, but ultimately decided that a full-size laptop was worth the extra weight and bulk versus the inconvenience of the small keyboards/screens.
Your phone probably didn't have the Psion magic spell on the keyboard. How big was a full sized laptop when you switched to using that?
It's a little hard to recall with accuracy, but I THINK that as of that time (2010) I was running a 15-inch PowerBook G4. Until recently, I've usually tended to run a few years behind the times on my computers, so that sounds about right (my desktop at that point would have been a 2006-era Mac Mini). I always got my stuff used, either as hand-me-downs or at resale stores. Same now, I guess ... if I buy a "new" computer online, it's either low-end or a refurb.
The Air is light enough so I carry it much of the time.
Yeah, weight wasn't something I thought about when you asked "how big?" My recollection is that that old Powerbook was pretty heavy compared to today's laptops, including my current Chromebook, which is a little smaller than I find convenient for working on (14" screen), but which is very light and which does double duty as a touch-screen tablet.
I don't travel a lot, but I want to eventually put together a dream travel rig -- a Raspberry Pi size mini PC with two miniature projectors no bigger than the Pi to use as "monitors" (or the supposed coming "monitors the thickness and weight of paper that you can just roll up or fold up") and one of those things I keep hearing about prototypes of where instead of a keyboard and mouse you have a couple of bracelets that detect your hand/finger movements as if you were typing/mousing. Basically a whole setup that takes up the physical space of a trade paperback but lets me have screen size as large as I like.
That would be my dream for working from hotel rooms or other people's houses when on the road. I can get by with a phone or tablet while sitting in airports, etc.
Hotel rooms, at least in the US, have televisions, so you could use those for your screen, and there are foldable bluetooth keyboards.
When traveling I always have my Air. But I have been thinking, next time I have to replace my cell phone, of getting a foldable and seeing how well that plus speech-to-text works as a substitute.
I'm incredibly picky. To get much real work done, I require two side-by-side monitors and a full-size keyboard. Right now when I travel, my bag includes the laptop, a not very good USB travel monitor, a mouse, and a full-size US keyboard. I've tried folding keyboards, roll-up keyboards, smaller keyboards, and just hate them.
I only use the laptop AS a laptop if I absolutely have to do something and I'm on a plane, in an airport, etc. As soon as I get somewhere I expect to stay for more than a few hours, it's basically just the base unit of a desktop PC.
But that's just me, of course. And it's only when I am 1) traveling and 2) have to get work done when traveling. If I'm just traveling for leisure and have "time off" from my various jobs, I try not to use a PC at all and my phone as little as possible. When I was a teenager in the 1980s, I thought it impossible that I'd ever be willing to spend 24 hours away from a computer; now I like to do so at least a couple of times a year.
A Hackernews survey reported that most computer programmers of our generation (X) typically learned to program between the age of 10 and 14, whereas those who began their careers in 2020 typically started in college. I think, the reason for this is a lack of a modern equivalent of "home computers" on which most of us cut our teeth. After a bit of market research that brought up nearly nothing, I decided to make my own product with the help of some likeminded people. The first iteration was a modernized version of the computer which I programmed as a kid, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum (a British 8-bit micro from 1982). We even got as far a working prototype, but as I started writing the book for it, I realized that teaching BASIC in the XXIst century is child abuse. The second iteration is an Android-based netbook of a form-factor identical to Eee PC (sourced from a white-label Chinese manufacturer), with a Lua-based programming environment. We're about to launch a beta program next week. It came out much better than the first iteration, with all the lessons learned. I do agree that some old ideas are worth reviving from time to time, but not all that feel that way.
RE- A fortunate collision.
Does the CD player work in the I30?
We purchased our 02 Lexus LS 430 just before COVID at an auction down the road from Facebook’s headquarters. It was donated by the previous owner’s family to support some good cause. Luckily for us the low mileage well maintained vehicle had a very close call with a 2 to 3inch diameter by a foot-long cylindrical object that hit the hood, roof, and trunk lid of the car, but missed all the glass. The dents are noticeable starting at about 5 feet from the car. The paint did not crack, which is somewhat amazing. The resellers at the auction were put off by the damage so it was down to three of us who were looking for an upgraded daily driver to bid on the car. I drove it home that day and my wife wouldn’t consider any other sedan. She will drive our 1999 SUV when the weather is bad. The LX is a 4X4 and sits up pretty high.
The cd players work in both vehicles. I think I’ll switch out a Moody Blues cd for our Bruce Springsteen Greatest Hits CD. The sound quality is great in either the LS or the LX. I’ll que up Bruce’s “Glory Days” first as it will remind me of the time my grad father taught me some techniques to get a baseball to second base quickly. He loved playing the game and his insights on calling for various pitches given what’s gone on before came in handy during my days playing the game. He spent a few months in an infirmary in France after being gassed on the front lines back in 1918.
It wasn’t until about a year ago that we learned he lied about his so he could enlist when President Wilson called for the youth of the country to enlist. He was 15 when he started basic training and he finished high school after the war. I am fairly sure he would of gone to an upcoming event at Stanford if he was around- https://events.stanford.edu/event/april-3-2025 -“Join us as we mark a decade of dedication, innovation, and energy at The Central Energy Facility! For the past 10 years, our plant has been a cornerstone of reliable, sustainable energy, fueling progress and brightening countless lives.”
The CD player works.
I used to have an earlier version of Civilization on my Mac Mini. After the second or third time I stayed up at night playing it till my eyes were raw, I uninstalled it. A year later I tried reinstalling it, promptly did the same thing, and uninstalled it. Now I'm not going to install it again.
I have access to the free version of ChatGPT and have been playing with it, largely exploring fictional worlds I'm creating for tabletop roleplaying games (it can, for example, suggest period actors to play the characters in a game set in 1932, or list interesting restaurants and bars in a small city in 2033; on the other hand, it's so hard to get it to represent a non-player character appropriately that it's only marginally worth it). It's enough fun so that I'm not going to buy the paid version, which would let me spend more time playing with it! The free version lets me economize on willpower. . . .
Do you think D&D is likely to go to being played with some of the characters AI? It could solve the problems of getting enough players and of a player not showing up.
I suppose that might work for D&D style campaigns, where the characters tend to be archetypes who may (do!) grow in power but don't really change in personality, or don't need to. My own campaigns tend to be heavier on characterization, and I hesitate to think that AI could emulate that, at least not with the resources of LLMs. My own solution to the problem of not getting enough players has been to play face to face via Zoom. Currently I have two campaigns going, with five players in each, and play in a third where I'm one of six players (and the GM and two of the players are players in campaigns that I run).
There was one campaign I was in a decade or two ago where one of the players moved away—but he had made his character so vivid that in his absence, from time to time, one or another of the players would jump in and deliver dialogue for him. "Toby like beer! Crunchy on outside, foamy on inside!" That's sort of like having an LLM run the character, in the sense that having a roomfull of women do calculations is sort of like having a "computer" in the modern sense. . . .
I once had the Ericsson psion 5mx clone (MC218). I still remember my excitement, but after using it just a couple of days to take notes at university it fell out of my coat pocket as I was tying a shoe lace, destroying the screen despite the clam shell design.
Later I gave physical keyboard another try with the smaller Nokia N900, but it was a bit too bulky and the software wasn't great. Though I still used it until it suffered the dreaded loose micro-b usb slot issue that has killed so many devices.
These days I've become comfortable enough with on-screen keyboards that the convenience of a regular smartphone wins out, but every once in a while I still look to see what's available with physical keyboard.
I think I had one or more of the Ericsson machines — I remember at some point someone else was making Psion's and I bought at least one, probably still have it.
I don't like on-screen keyboards but my kids seem to be able to use them, so it may be just a matter of learning a new skill. Nowadays I use speech-to-text to type on my phone.
Yes I still have my Casio Boss PC sync mini somethingorother. It still works and if I could sync it to my today's computer it'd probably often be in my pocket.
"Time Machines Like an Arrow"? Sorry, I couldn't resist.
I had a Vectrex, mostly because it had a 6809 processor, just like the one in my Radio Shack Color Computer 3. Because I worked at HP, I had access to free hardware, so I built my own multi-cartridge with an EEPROM and socket. I only put the games that I owned on it. Eventually stopped using it and sold it on EBay. It was a lot of fun, though.
I had the 3D goggles, which used a spinning disc to separate left eye and right eye. It was pretty cool, but also pretty flashy because of the insufficiently low frame rate. Unfortunately, in the pre- TiltFive.com days, 3D goggle didn't know where you were, and so couldn't adjust the display accordingly. So ... headache inducing.
Similar to the News Group for the Vectrex, the ancient Macintosh community lives at 68kmla.org, except the folks who mutated over to tinkerdifferent.com. Still keeping all the generations of old Mac hardware alive and developing new upgrades and software.
For Strategic Conquest and similar, it sounds like you have a great solution, but another option is to obtain a G4 based Mac Mini (pre Intel) and use the hack for installing OS 9 on it (Mac Minis were OSX only, officially). This is the most compact classic Mac platform. Or just have an old LC or similar laying around, but they've gotten a might more pricey recently.
I have a lot of old Macs in my basement but that's less convenient and I am not sure any are old enough to run OS9.