NaNoWriMo 2009

I’ve made the decision to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. It’s been 2 years since I’ve actually participated as a writer. I have participated every year though, in some form, and I really do enjoy it. It is one chance to just write. I love to write.  I know that isn’t really displayed here, but I’m not very good at blogging. I don’t like writing about myself much, and I have trouble with putting my own thoughts into words.

I love to write about other people. People that I’ve made up, preferably. I love shaping someone elses’ life and doing what I want to it. I also enjoy the pressure of NaNoWriMo. For anyone who doesn’t know what NaNoWriMo is, and doesn’t like links, it stands for National Novel Writers Month. It’s an annual creative writing project that takes place in November, encouraging participants to create a 50,000 word novel within the 30 days, ending November 30th at 11:59 local time.

My first year participating in NaNoWriMo was 2003, and I was a junior in high school. It was crazy, and stressful, and I tried so hard, and what I ended up with was a 74,368 word novel that I still can’t read to this day because it makes me want to pull my hair out. I’m sure it is terrible. I am sure it has mistakes, but it is there, marking the fact that in my life, I accomplished something that many never dream of. It is tangible and that makes me feel great. Years later when I was participating in my 3rd NaNoWriMo in 2005, I was away at college. It was again stressful, but instead of creating tens of thousands of words full of crap, I created my best writing to date. It felt absolutely amazing to have this book that I created, and have it actually be fairly awesome. I like that feeling.

That’s part of the reason I’ve decided I want to participate again this year. I’ve been in a bit of a…mood recently, and I think this is just what I need to get myself out of it!

So you can expect to hear more about that as it comes closer to starting time. We’ll see how this goes. I imagine I will be at least decently productive, especially since I have my super awesome netbook! Which reminds me, I should probably put word on it. It came with the disk, but I don’t have it on it, because I switched to Ubuntu NBR, ended up hating it, so I had to switch back to XP. So I need to get on that soon. Sticking it on the to do list!

Dell Mini 10v review

I thought that I should talk more about my super awesome dell mini 10v now that I’ve had it for like a week.

There are certainly some upsides and some downsides to netbooks in general and some awesome and not so awesome things specific to this netbook. Let me first say that I love the thing. It is cute, pink, and even though it still remains nameless, we have definitely bonded in the past week. I’ve used it to blog, and work, surf the internet, watch videos on Hulu and Netflix, play games, listen to music, and even read a book or two! It has taken over the place of my Nokia n800 tablet, I don’t even use it anymore, and will be selling it soon actually (so if anyone wants a great condition (always had a screen protector on it) Nokia n800 with its accessories and box, an awesome leather case, and a bluetooth keyboard, for like $100 say it!)  which is sad news for my n800 but it will just have to learn to deal. I’m sure I’ll find it a good home.  Okay, now that all that’s out of the way, let me get a rundown of the specs of my 10v out here.

10.1″ Widescreen Display (1024×600)
Intel® Atom Processor® N270 (1.6GHz/533Mhz FSB/512K cache)
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950
1GB DDR2 SDRAM
160GB, 2.5inch, 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
Integrated 1.3M Pixel Webcam

It’s decently spec’d for a netbook. I will probably bump the ram up to 2 gigs myself later on to give it a little speed boost, but it really is okay. It’s good for what it does. Sometimes it is a little slow on certain things (those crazy Facebook games like Farmville make it sad) but other than that it is snappy for basic web browsing, and even writing a blog like I am doing with it currently.

It’s keyboard isn’t cramped like many people complain that netbooks are. I believe dell says it is 92% of the size of a normal (I assume by normal they mean a 15 inch?) laptop keyboard which is actually really great. The first 5 minutes of use on it were a bit tricky for me as I would hit a instead of s and the typical typos that you would expect when you are moving to a smaller keyboard but I quickly adjusted and it feels quite nice now. I certainly don’t feel cramped at all. Another cool thing about the keyboard of the Dell Mini 10v (and possibly other dell minis but I don’t know) is the Function keys. First the Fn button is in the right place, as I’ve heard it isn’t on some netbooks, but you don’t have to push it for the volume, brightness, print screen, etc. you actually have to push it to hit the F buttons (like F5 or F11) I’ve actually found this to be a really nice change because I definitely use the volume and brightness buttons quite a bit more than I do the F keys.

The trackpad is also interesting on this netbook in that it doesn’t have buttons separated from the pad like most netbooks and laptops do. The buttons are actually built into the trackpad. The Buttons are also touch sensitive like the rest of the pad. I understand some people don’t like this, but I really enjoy it because it is not only more aesthetically pleasing, but it feels great too. The trackpad also has multi-touch, gestures, and two finger scrolling, though I haven’t really gotten into any of that yet.

Most netbooks use an awkward resolution of 1024×600 (though some don’t, like the first HP mini and the Dell Mini 12) and this one is no exception. The resolution is awkward at best. It feels odd, and sometimes viewing certain webpages may look a little different. I have found that going full screen is the best choice when a website doesn’t seem viewable.

The 10v comes with a 3 cell battery which seems to last nearly 4 hours for me when I am doing normal web browsing activities and around 2 hours when I am watching a movie (Hulu ftw) full-screen. This isn’t bad at all. If you don’t like that though you can get an upgraded battery from dell, though it lifts the notebook up a bit, and make it last a bit more than 6 hours.  Some say it is easier to type with the 6 cell battery because of the angle that it puts the keyboard at. It’s worth a look, I guess.

One of my favorite…features, though I’m not sure it can really be called a feature is the power supply. You’ve seen a normal notebook power supply with its long rectangular piece that you connect a second cable to. They aren’t terribly portable. They take up too much room. They are hard to wrap up and stick into a bag. The power supply that comes with the Dell mini 10v is awesome! It’s just one piece and is more like a larger cell phone  adapter than a normal laptop power supply.  They also come with a cord control thing on it (you know, little velcro strip you wrap around the cord and secure it to itself) for easy wrap up. Or at least mine did.

It’s a very quiet laptop also. It doesn’t have fans inside it at all. Instead it seems to just have a few extra ventilation holes. It does run a little warm at times. Especially when I am watching video.  It seems to only get warm under the right palm rest/right ctrl key area, though I’m not sure what is under there and don’t have any plans to take it apart in the near future. I will probably eventually find this out when I go to upgrade to 2 gigs of ram, because the upgrade requires quite a bit of work. At least it is upgradable though, unlike the Mini 10. It never gets overly warm though. I imagine the lack of fans also lends to its excellent battery life.

Overall, it’s a great little machine, and if you go through Dell Outlet you can get it for a great deal.

I have button hate!

Now, I don’t normally bag on vista, but after having it for a while, I’ve noticed one thing I really really hate, and it is this button. I don’t really remember what the middle button did in XP, but I know it wasn’t this. Sometimes I am browsing through my photos, maybe deleting some, or looking for something specific. This probably means I’m using the forward button and maybe sometimes even the back button. Sometimes however, I accidently hit this dumb middle button. You know what this does? First, it freezes my whole computer for roughly 3 seconds. Then, my screen goes black. Then, It scrolls through every picture in that folder slowly. And is difficult to exit. Stupid slideshow button. Go away. No one likes you.

World of Warcraft – because I got really super bored.

Okay, so I started playing world of warcraft. Yeah. I was really bored and Reed (Reflexman08) talked me into giving it a try. I started a 10 day trial, and it was enjoyable.

Now that the 10 day trial is over though, I have decided not to continue it, not that it was ever really a question. I just can’t make myself spend $15 dollars a month on a game. I can justify the $8ish bucks a month for xbox live by the fact that I can play soo many games, but I justify a monthly fee of 15 dollars for one game, no matter how enjoyable it is.

Let’s talk favicons, people!

Favicons. FAVICONS.

Favicons are awesome, okay? Yeah. Awesome. They are pretty, and small and make things look super cool.

Now, I use firefox. It’s cool, and it works better than IE. I also use the built in bookmarks toolbar which is really sweet looking.

Until you see the websites without Favicons. Then, it is just sad. Favicons, URLicons, Webicons, whatever you want to call them, please use them! The prettiness of my bookmarks toolbar depends upon it. Also, you see how there aren’t any names beside them? Granted if I roll over them it will show a name (Thanks to the Smart Bookmarks Bar Add-on!), but how am I supposed to know what your website is without a pretty little icon to show me? hmmm? Seriously, if you don’t have a favicon, you should.


Related Links/help:

http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/

http://www.degraeve.com/favicon/

http://www.favicon.com/

http://www.clickfire.com/favicon-tutorial/