Nowadays things are very different. My ear for music has matured quite a bit, in genres and sound. But, the role music plays in my life has changed quite a bit as well. A good harbinger of this is my first .mp3 player. Not a dedicated sound device at all, instead a PDA. Music to me now is one of several timelines or streams in my day. Sometimes that stream is muted or empty, but it’s always present, concurrent to the other streams in my life. When I moved from the Tungsten to my first Treo (650) this concept of life streams really took shape. In fact, the framework of my day-to-day experience hasn’t changed much since then.

You say, “I thought this post was about some amazing value?” I say: Who’s blog is this? Look up if you’re confused…go ahead, I’ll wait. –

Right, it says TreoBenny 2009, which means the posts here go like I want, being TreoBenny and all. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to continue for those that like to read my writing…all four of them.

While still carrying the 650, I made the jump to Bluetooth audio. Mostly because my wired solution was killed do to a drop, but that’s another story. While there is reduction in sound quality, it’s a price I pay readily for scrapping wires. As I eluded to earlier, the role digital music has in my life is one of support. It goes alongside all of my other activities and needs to be extremely mobile. Bluetooth accomplishes this famously. I use my BT headphones at home as well, thanks to a class 1 USB dongle. So, for a long time I had no use for wired headphones at all. Then I re-entered the mobile PC world with a netbook and notebook purchase. Because I spend significantly more time on the notebook than netbook, I realized I’d need some kind of personal audio solution. I was damn tempted to get a mobile Bluetooth adapter (c’mon, it’s cute as hell) but I fought off the urge. Besides, this model of notebook has only 2 USB ports (I know, crazy) one for the air card, one for the mobile HDD. I have a hub but…ok I’m getting off topic again.  So, I decided I need some headphones. I wanted earbuds, small as possible. I wasn’t too concerned with quality, just as long as I could hear the music in something no louder than a coffee shop or restaurant. And dear.God.not.white!

Enter Peanutz

I decided to give Walgreen’s a try after looking online for decent earbuds. $40? Really? I was prepared to sacrifice quality and comfort, I just wanted something small and inexpensive. Low and behold, i come across these gems.

Enter netbook…

Constraints on cash and the rising Geek popularity of netbooks met, had dinner, had a great time, and hooked up on the living room couch to conceive my netbook purchase. An Asus Eee PC 900A. 4GB SSD, Xandros Linux distro, no Webcam. At $199, I was comfortably under-budget and I added an 8GB SD card to supplement the otherwise tiny SSD (solid-state drive.) I did a fair amount of research on this particular model, only the price surprised me. When I first started looking around at netbooks, Best Buy still had the Linux models online. About 2 weeks into my search, all the Linux models disappeared from the Web site. I was a little nervous that maybe the Linux models weren’t being sold at all. Part of the netbook charm to me was returning to Linux. (Inspired by a class, I installed Fedora 8 on a box I bought on Craigslist, but had to abandon it.) I decided to go into the store to see what I could find, rather than my typical buy-online-pickup-in-store. Once in the store the choice was clear, the price had me sold.

During my research of this particular model I saw that some people had issues with wi-fi. I didn’t have wi-fi issues however. I opened it up, browsed to my router, put in the key and there I was, in the familiar online place. The biggest dig against this machine was its distro. Every account of Xandros described it as clunky, bloated (leaving just a few MBs after updates) and unpleasant overall. Alongside of these negative reviews was often mentioned an ubuntu distro specifically optimized for the Eee PC, originally titled ubuntu-eee. I assumed I could install ubuntu-eee onto the 8GB SD card and boot from it, so the cramped 4GB SSD never really worried me. However, I made a few discoveries once I had my netbook in hand. First was that booting from the SD card was not an easy undertaking, like simply changing the boot order in the BIOS. From what I found, it can be done, but it was more of an undertaking than I expected, and honestly, well beyond my familiarity of Linux. So, I decided to go ahead and install ubuntu-eee over Xandros. I would need to create a USB install stick. The first few forums I found said very clearly that this install stick had to be created in ubuntu. Having had enough experience with Linux to know there is live media (runs entirely from an optical disc or USB stick,) I downloaded the latest ubuntu to my desktop and then followed the instructions from a couple forums to create the bootable media.

Much to my surprise, the tool itself, unetbootin, suggests creating the bootable media using Windows, not ubuntu as the forums said. Oh well, I had already installed ubuntu inside Windows, which was easy and although I don’t use it on my Pavilion desktop to date, I’m glad I did. Ok, back to topic. I don’t have a small capacity USB drive anymore, just a 120GB mobile drive. So, what I did was use one of my 2GB SD cards in a USB adapter. (I bought a 2 X 2GB pack and have always kinda had an extra one.) It worked just fine.

Worthy of note, ubuntu-eee was the pre-1.0 version. Once the distro debuted in earnest, at 1.0, it took on the name Easy Peasy. To compare Xandros on the Eee PC to Easy Peasy is not a comparison at all. Xandros required some acrobatics just to get repositories configured and updates proper. Easy Peasy just.works.

At Home	On the Train	At Work

I’ve included my Curve in a couple of the pics to show the relationship in size. I consider the two related in a way. I’ll get to that later.

That’s a screenshot of my machine in the Favorites tab. (Didn’t know I was on Skype did you?) I’d like to draw your attention to the Tweetdeck icon. Yes, it and Adobe AIR run in Linux. Takes just a little Googling to get them running. I later on had a tough run-in with AIR on my x64 notebook. But that’s for later in this ‘Toys and Their Joys’ series. Oh yeah, it’s a series

Well, there you have my initial netbook experience. Pt. II of this to come soon, well, yeah, soon. I’ll bring you up to speed on the current state of my Eee PC, and how I’ve been using it.

I started as an online student with the International Academy of Design & Technology in Oct. of 2007 as an AS in Web Design candidate. I have worked for a school at Northwestern University for 10 years now, and my co-workers all had snide remarks when I chose IADT Online. “What do you know about this program? Have you compared it to others? Aren’t you worried about the stigma of online education?” My replies were always very simple. IADT Online offered a ‘Web Design’ degree, which was very important to me (versus visual communications or digital media or whatever…) I felt an online degree was my only chance at going to college.

I believe in using the Web to its fullest: for communication, productivity, and of course, education. Why attend a fairly new program in the already murky waters of online education? To make an impact. There is newness all around me. I’m a new artist to a new media, a new student in a new school. There are two major ways to deal with newness: resistance, and complacency. However, I believe that all the great people of history, (and many other great people that will one day become great people of history) dealt with newness as an opportunity.

So…my first tangible effort of making an impact at IADT Online is starting the Graduation Committee, GradComm. To this effort I will be traveling to Tampa, FL, the campus that houses the Academy Online staff. The nitty gritty of GradComm is for another forum. This post is mainly to announce my trip to Tampa and a general idea of why.

Now for the fun…if you are in the Tampa area and would like to meet myself and other design minded, social media driven, fun times loving, and all around TEH AWESOME people, join us at Splitsville Lanes in Channelside Plaza, Friday March 20, around 9pm.

Listen to all the happenings of my GradComm trip online via:

	@IADT_GradComm on twitter
	TreoBenny on brightkite
	@TreoBenny on twitter
	TreoBenny on qik
	TreoBenny on viddler
	TreoBenny on seesmic

My wireless carrier is AT&T. In addition to the voice line, I also have a USB air card. Because I’m currently between notebook computers, I use that data-only SIM card in a handheld, currently the Treo 680. The Treo has long been the flagship of my handheld fleet, beginning with the 650. One day, while I still had a notebook, it hit me that I was paying for an unlimited data line for the air card number, but I really only used it for an average of an hour or so per day. So I decided I’d carry two handhelds to maximize the money I’m spending. I bought a Blackberry Pearl from a co-worker and used it for the voice line, using the Treo as a data-only device for the times when I wasn’t using the air card in my notebook, (which was most times.)

I bought a more powerful desktop PC and sold the entry-level notebook; again, trying to maximize the money I have invested in my hardware. Notebook prices are stabilizing, but the features included in this price range are growing rapidly. The $400 notebook I bought in Aug. of 2007 is far behind what that same money will buy today. I sold it for $200, with plans to spend another $400 on a notebook. That’s $600 for the use/ownership of two notebooks, with a significant upgrade in the middle…I’m totally fine with that. So, now that I don’t have a notebook at all, the role of the data-only handheld has become more permanent. The Treo is a capable device, and if it was 100%, I wouldn’t even be looking for another handheld. However, my 680 has seen better days.

I think there is a software conflict buried deep in the contacts. The 680 uses the Palm OS, the last of the Treo line that isn’t Windows. (The Centro is ‘newer’ than the 680 and has the Palm OS, but all Treo’s after the 680, i.e. 750, 755, 800, and now Treo Pro, have the Windows Mobile OS.) The Palm OS was able to sync with Outlook for contacts and calendaring, via a 3^rd party conduit. With the 680 came native Outlook support, with an Outlook conduit offered by Palm themselves, seemingly with no drawbacks. Outlook uses color-coded ‘categories’ to sort contacts and appointments. The Palm OS also uses color-coded categories, but when Palm started offering their own Outlook conduit, they stopped supporting the sync of category colors. Now, on the handheld, the colors have no role at all. They aren’t visible and you can’t edit/select them. However, if you used the Palm Desktop, instead of Outlook, you could then see the colors. As a former 650 owner, that information is in my contact files, as I used the Palm Desktop for quite some time before I started using Outlook at all. I noticed some bugginess after a few months of having the 680. Through some hard resets, (that’s a factory reset) I more or less isolated it to the contact data. The device functioned well while still empty, but got wacky again when I brought in the contacts from Outlook. Because the Treo is a touchscreen device, software conflicts can decrease physical functionality of the screen itself. I noticed that the edges of the screen weren’t as responsive as they used to be. To add insult to injury, I was out getting rib tips after a big rain and got splashed by a passing police car. I didn’t realize for maybe 15 minutes, but the pocket holding my Treo got water in it and the device got soaked pretty bad. It had been sitting in an inch or so of water the whole time. I lost more screen functionality, and the voice recorder stopped working, meaning I also lost the ability to make ringtones and record audio in videos. I’m able to still use the Treo, but it’s a mere shell of its former self…

I’m having problems with the trackball on the Pearl as well, but I’m not PearlBenny, I’m TreoBenny, so I won’t go into details. Basically, that brings me up to today. I’ve been peeking at the BJ II for a couple weeks now, and there’s only one thing I wish it could do. Since it doesn’t have a touch screen, I can’t use my buddy Alan’s (@cheaseco) mseesmic app. Not thus far anyway…but otherwise the BJ II is a stout device and should fit well as the new data device. I’ll slide the hobbled Treo over to voice duty, which is very light since I really only talk on the phone to one person. I may continue to listen to .mp3′s via the Treo, but we’ll see how the BJ II’s media player capabilities hold up.

Exactly how I came to the seasonal structure I’m not sure. I guess my life in general is very seasonal. I play sports and work in education, both driven by seasons. Either way, it seems to work for me. I can find enough time to make color scheme changes every few months, even a small redesign of the logo itself. As you can see scrolling through this blog, I seem to only post about that often as well

I’m in the market for a new handheld these days. In a perfect world that’s an unlocked Treo Pro, but we’ll see how that works out. I’m actually considering a BlackBerry. Will I then be known as BlackBerryBenny? No. TreoBenny is a brand and a metaphor for mobile connectivity. It’s not going anywhere. As far as what else is going on with me…well that remains to be seen as well. I’ll just say that for now, I’m trying to take things one day at a time…

Oh, btw, the new winter logo is below. Select it to check out the new homepage.

What are all these things REALLY? Fun & games?

Yeah, to an extent. But to me it’s so much deeper and more involved than that. In short, I believe we are approaching the height of a Renaissance-like revolution in how we communicate and more importantly, how we think. Through my 12-Step inspired travels of the last 6+ years, I’ve also internalized the concept of service. That if any situation or entity is worthy of my criticism, it’s worth me offering to help. I feel that we, (that is, all of us on this planet) are approaching a potentially historic period. But not in a good way. I fell that this revolution in communication and thinking is so profound and inevitable, that it will eclipse any previous cast system to date.

Hold up, what did he say? Cast system? Like nobles & peasants & thangs?

Yes.

Don’t misunderstand me, there are few things new under the sun, (arguably none,) so all of the concepts driving the revolution I speak of are as old as the days are long. However, because of the World Wide Web and advancements in manufacturing, the access to these ideas is more widespread today than ever before. Some of the topics discussed without batting an eye on networks like twitter and facebook, would have been reserved for conferences and forums attended by only the globe’s leading minds and other notable persons. Basically, the gates to a huge percentage of the world’s knowledge have been opened.

Here’s where it gets interesting. The concept of giving the masses access to this knowledge isn’t new either. But, people think differently today than they ever have, in my opinion. We are, in general, more open to new ideas, thanks to technology and (being totally honest) changes to the Earth’s climate and other natural events. People are no longer able to stick their heads in the sand and label forward thinking individuals as heretics and madmen. Instead, it has become quite fashionable to challenge previously unchallenged schools of thought. So, it’s a happy story I’m telling right?

Wrong.

Quite the opposite. I believe we, (again, I mean the whole planet) are in danger of a serious social conflict. On one side are those that embrace this revolution of thinking and communication, on the other side, those that do not. There has always been conflict between revolutionary thinkers and the status quo, but in the past the revolutionists were such a minute population that the disparity in thought only grew at a snail’s pace. Now, it’s much closer to 50/50. What happens when two conflicting schools of thought gain equal power? I think the U.S. Civil War is a perfect example. (In case you believe the Civil War was fought because of slavery, it wasn’t. It was a war about economics and lifestyle, like ALL wars in the last 300 – 400 years.)

Confused yet? Don’t worry, here’s the point of all this: I’m active in social networks and I actively seek knowledge of the latest in personal technology not only because it’s in line with my career goals or a match for my personality.

I believe I have no choice.

Being on the leading edge is no longer for the radical few. If you aren’t on the leading edge, you’re gonna get left behind. Period. The speed of innovation and implementation is exponentially beyond anything we’ve ever seen to date. But, I’m not gonna willingly leave anyone behind. I have a personal mission to inform and as many people as possible about the communication and technology renaissance. Not like standing on the corner shouting, but as I encounter people, I try to introduce them to anything that I’m involved with. I won’t withhold knowledge that I believe is changing the world. I feel the continued pursuit of this knowledge is my duty to my fellows – my 12th Step if you will.