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I had the privilege of presenting at this event. This is a vid of the pre-event activities. I’m hoping I can get hold of some media of me *during* my presentation as well. I’ll be adding the slides as a vid soon as well.
I’m a big fan of Potbelly’s sandwiches. Period. So I’m never too far from choosing A 2Xmeat Wreck on wheat for lunch, or dinner. (It rings don’t it? “double-meat-Wreck-on-wheat”) Today, I seriously considered staying in for lunch, given the second coming of fall…in June…ugh! But, I caught a tweet from @gapersblock about some lunch specials today. Turns out Potbelly’s switched to Zapp’s chips from Vitner’s and offered a free bag of chips with any sandwich during lunchtime today. I was particularly excited about the Crawtater flavor…that’s right, crawfish boil flavored potato chips. The Church St. location didn’t have this flavor, but my disappointment didn’t last long. There was live music and a bustling atmosphere which made up for it. See for yourself 
FTR: Today I got a BIG Wreck on wheat, instead of 2Xmeat. It did the job 
You know #ACTB by now right?…no? Ok, for the last time, visit angrycamp.tracysbasement.com to see what I’m talking about. Anywho…I made the trip to #ACTB with only a second hand BB Pearl to keep me connected with the rest of the Internet. (Cause about 25% of the Internet was in Tracy’s Basement…LOL!) It was time to procure some new hardware of a mobile persuasion…
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.
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| 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:
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@IADT_GradComm on twitter |
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TreoBenny on brightkite |
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@TreoBenny on twitter |
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TreoBenny on qik |
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TreoBenny on viddler |
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TreoBenny on seesmic |
The lights are out in half of my building at work, (not my half dammit.) As I headed to the water cooler I tell one of my co-workers “We should totally go down there and play It.” He says, “play…what?” I made a similar utterance to a co-worker of mine transplanted from L.A a while ago. I explained to her that ‘It’ is ‘Tag’ (she didn’t know what the hell I was talking about either.) A quick poll or surrounding co-workers, from PA and MI, they too say they’ve never heard of a game called ‘It’ only ‘Tag.’
Do you call the game ‘It’ or ‘Tag?’
It’s as if social networking had all-star balloting, and all the voted-in members came to hang out in Tracy’s Basement…
You probably wouldn’t have pegged me for the type, or maybe you would. Either way, here’s a brief vid of my No Pants 2009 experience.
TreoBenny on Viddler
