Escaped Thoughts

I ordered my new computer today, since my G4 733 has been feeling its age for a while now—or more accurately, I have been feeling its age. The slow, stuttering-music-playback-inducing app launching and switching has been thrown into sharp relief by my new iMac at work, as has the volume of the fans. Finally, I snapped.

I had been planning to wait for an Intel-based tower, since I've always been an easy-upgrade, separate-tower-and-monitor kind of guy. After all, it's far better to be able to upgrade your monitor or your CPU separately, right? And a tower is just way more expandable than an all-in one. So clearly, buying an iMac isn't the right choice for me.

Only... it doesn't really matter. I've owned 4 computers, not counting the one I just ordered, and I've never upgraded just the monitor or the CPU. Sure, there was a laptop in there to foul things up, but I wouldn't have stayed with a CRT when I got my G4 anyway, and in the five years I've had that I never could justify a new monitor to myself. And component upgrades? It's a nice thought, but mostly I just add memory. Being able to add a wireless card to the G4 was nice, but I never really needed it. The CD -> DVD upgrade was necessary for Tiger, but that was after the machine was already 4+ years old. So while it sounds nice, it's really not that big a deal for me after all.

“But surely,” I said, “I couldn't be happy with an iMac. I'm a Power User™, right?”

Right?

As it turns out: not so much. The most strenuous thing I do regularly with my computer is work with my digital photos. I use the internet and iApps, and that's most of what I need. Sure I play some games, but only a tiny fraction of what I used to—I don't play the kind of games that push the envelope of computing power. Diablo II is the most taxing game I have, and I can play that on my G4. Heck, I could play it on my old G3 laptop. It's not exactly cutting edge. And sure, I do a few super-geeky things still, but mostly that's scripting and web development. It only takes so much horsepower to run a text editor—especially when your text editor is vi. Yes, I do some programming that involves compiling, but not so much I need the kind of raw power a higher-end beast like the Quad G5 offers.

So here it is: Hi, I'm Stuart, and I'm not as much of a geek as I thought.

Category: Life

Writebacks (0)

While setting up the new site I did a bit of rearranging, since I wasn't worried about preserving existing links. In the process, I was trying to decide where to put this whole section—I had used /blog/ before, but I dislike the word on aesthetic principles. I decided on weblog, which is less ugly (albeit a bit harder to say), but not before I got to thinking about the development of the term; I've heard the argument somewhere that both blog and weblog are equally silly, because it's just a new medium for something like a journal (not really a new form of communication) and therefore doesn't deserve a word.

Now even if one accepts the idea that it's not a fundamentally new style of communication (I don't) there's plenty of precedent for creating new words or phrases when something is adapted to/adopted by a new medium. Which brings me to today's “quiz”: list in the comments as many such words or phrases as you can think of. Points will be awarded for each non-duplicate answer that is accepted by a panel of expert judges*.

To get the ball rolling: television show

Update: Laura (despite now being hugely in the lead) thought the criteria needed some clarification. Specifically, the term itself must clearly indicate the appropriation of the old word for some new medium. So “radio play” counts, but “forum” doesn't.

* Panel of expert judges may or may not actually exist. No purchase necessary to play.

Category: Language

Writebacks (4)

That's right, I finally decided to carve out a little chunk of the intarweb for my very own. For now it's just the weblog, but I'll eventually move more content here and create a real site of some sort of description. Maybe.

Will this actually motivate me to update regularly? Will photos go up in a timely manner? Will there be a new exciting language quiz every month? Tune in next time to find out! Same bat time, completely different bat channel!

Category: Life

Writebacks (0)