I have not gotten to do as much Eee PC hacking as I’d like to, but I have been experimenting…

I took all of the vCards from Apple’s Address Book.app and exported them to a single file. I then use the ‘PIM’ application on the Eee PC to open it. It loaded them up ok, but not all fields are treated the same. In Address Book.app you can have multiple ‘home pages’ for an entry, but that gets all munged up in the Eee PC’s PIM application. I may have exported as a version 2.1 file, so I should try a 3.0, maybe that will bring the photos along as well. Still, a good first attempt. (The photo you see was taken with the Eee PC’s built-in camera.)

Our second bit of fun was getting jEdit installed. Luckily, I’m not the first, so following this Eeeuser forum thread made it pretty simple. Now I can run my favorite text editor anywhere…

I am typing this on my Apple keyboard, which is connected to my Asus Eee PC. The Eee PC is also connected to a old Apple VGA monitor running at 1152×864 (though there is a black border all around the screen.) I’m mainly testing the actual OS right now, which happens to be Xandros. It works pretty well.

Xandros is pretty nice. I know Ubuntu is the favorite OS of most desktop Linux people I know, but Xandros seems ok. I still need to customize the system a bit, but for now, it’s pretty functional. I’ve run Firefox, OpenOffice, Skype, ssh’d into a server, played with the webcam, and there is still much more to do.

First, my gripes… On the tiny keyboard there does not seem to be a caps lock indicator, so you don’t know when the caps lock is on. If you’re typing text you can see, it may not be a big deal, but typing a password you see **** and have no idea if it’s uppercase or lowercase. (Note: There is a caps lock indicator, but it’s on screen, I just didn’t notice it at first.) When I plugged in the external monitor it didn’t show immediately (it might be the Mac user in me that expected that) and I had to open a control panel to get it to show up. The trackpad button seemed like it took more pressure to click that it should. Maybe it will loosen up in time. I also need to get used to tapping on the trackpad to click, since I’ve never had a machine that supported that. (I may end up getting a small mouse to use with it.) I noticed the wife had used it to check her email (webmail) and I asked how she like it, her reply was “It was fine, expect for the small screen and hitting four keys when I wanted to hit one.” :)

The kids think it very cool. They’ve already asked for their own, for Xmas, or when they go to high school or college. At some point I’ll let them use it and see what they think. They use Macs and Windows PC’s pretty often, so they might have a different perspective.

Getting the wifi functional was a bit of work, but I will blame that on my network setup at home. (I’ve got a few old Macs connected via USB wifi adapters which complicate things.) I’m pretty sure the wifi is solid now, but we’ll see how it goes. (Update: One thing I noticed was that I wasn’t waiting long enough after booting for it to connect. It just took another minute or so for the connection to be made, then all was good.) When I disconnected the external monitor, I couldn’t use the built in screen because everything was off screen, as it was displaying the LCD display at the resolution I had the external monitor running at, so another note, be sure to set the display back properly for the internal LCD before you disconnect the external monitor.)

Did I mention it’s tiny? You know it’s tiny, but until you see one in person and use it, you don’t appreciate how tiny it is. It seems funny right now to be using such a tiny computer with a full sized keyboard and a 17″ monitor. I’ll be bringing it with me to the next Web414 Meeting so you can see it in person.

I got an email from Larry Clarkin a while back asking if he and Dave Bost could use some of my music for a podcast they were working on. Larry’s a nice guy, I mean, he didn’t even have to ask, since the music I’ve recorded this year has all been released under a Creative Commons license, but he did, and that’s cool, and now the first episode of The Thirsty Developer is out.

The funny part about it is, if you would have told me a few years ago that two guys from Microsoft wanted to use some of my songs in a show they were doing, I probably would have laughed out loud. Larry and Dave are both good guys though (they’ve sponsored BarCampMilwaukee both times) so they’re ok in my book. They’re just starting, so I’m going to cut them some slack on the attribution part, but I’m sure they’ll get it in there somewhere. :)

I did it, I actually ordered an Asus Eee PC. It’s the tiny little laptop that runs Linux (and supposedly Mac OS X!)

I’m hyped. I can’t wait to be mobile again. Despite the fact that Gabe gave me a very nice G4 this week, I do miss a machine that’s not stuck on a desk. I’m pretty confident I can toss this in my backpack and not even notice it’s there until I need it. I couldn’t do that with the Wallstreet, or even the smaller G4 iBook. The Eee PC fills a niche, for sure. In fact, some believe Apple will come out with a tiny laptop like this (well, except it’ll cost $1000+ but it comes with a free spinning beachball!)

I’m sure you’ll see more posts once I get this thing. And yes, the waiting is the hardest part! In the meantime, checkout the eeeuser.com forums, to see what Eee PC owners are saying.

I’ve been using Flickr for a few years now, as well as publishing ocono.com but a loose binding occurred in January 2007 when the Oconomowoc Group on Flickr was born.

It took quite some time, but it looks like we’ll actually have a real life event. We’ve scheduled a photowalk for Sunday, November 18th, 2007. We plan to meet at 10AM at the gazebo on Fowler Lake, and then do a walk around the lake, taking many photos. Join us, it’ll be a fun time, and you’ll get to walk past my house. I might even tell you which one it is.

Maybe we’ll see some photos of Oconomowoc that aren’t taken by myself or the few other members who regularly post. I’m even bringing the kids along, and each will have a camera with them to capture things from the “kid point of view.”

Gabe Wollenburg (friend of ocono.com) managed to get some press in the local papers about the event, so who knows? We might have some newcomers show up. If all goes well, we can try to do this more often, maybe every month or so, until we run out of cool places in Oconomowoc to walk around and snap pictures of. (Like that will happen!)

Well, it’s as official as it’s gonna get… Or maybe we’ll officially announce it at this week’s Web414 Meeting, but DrupalCampWisconsin is scheduled.

DrupalCampWisconsin
Saturday, January 19th, 2008
10AM - 10PM
Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE)

There’s a page on BarCamp.org with more info: http://barcamp.org/DrupalCampWI and we’ll be adding it to a number of other sites in the coming weeks.

This is going to be much smaller than an event like BarCampMilwaukee2, since it is a 1-day event, with a specific focus, which is of course, Drupal.

If you are interested in attending, please add your name to the wiki page. If you are interested in sponsoring this event, please get in touch with me.

(Oh, the above image is only the “official” logo if no one else bothers to create one, or I get a bit more feedback on it.)

At BarCampMilwaukee2 we had FRS radios, and I fear we had way too much fun with them, I mean, in addition to actually using them for their intended purpose, to communicate effectively within the space we had available to us.

Last year I had thought that FRS radios would come in handy as an ad-hoc public address system. Well, we had a real PA this year, so we used the radios as needed, and for finding each other, and for screwing around. Actually, they were quite useful, as we were in a building with doors that were occasionally locked and you often needed someone to let you in, or when you just had to know where Ashe was.

While out on the Photo Walk session (aka mil[photo]waukee) and scaling the roof of a certain fortress, we were able to alert Gabe that he should come outside and wave to us.

Yay for radios and geeks who are nerds when it comes to using them. I even hear that Gabe plans to return my radio at the next Web414 Meeting…

I have not yet gotten an Asus Eee PC, but at this point, I still plan to. The budget for this year allows for it, but right now I’m sitting tight watching all the fun the folks who do have an Eee PC are having. I figure by the time I have one, there will be tutorials all over the web on how to tweak, customize, and hack the thing.

In other news, I saw that the Everex TC2502 Green gPC is available at Wal-Mart for $200. It runs Ubuntu, has OpenOffice, and other open source apps, as well as a focus on connecting to the net and using online apps from Google and others. See a trend here? Is the network finally the computer? Could this be the beginning of the end for Windows?

And what about those Mac people, wait… I am still one of those Mac people! I do love the user experience of using a Mac, and as a creative professional, I can’t imagine a better platform. But… From a consumer standpoint, meaning “running a machine for consuming, not creating” I’m set to go with something besides a Mac. I can’t justify the cost of a Mac laptop, but an Asus Eee PC for $400 or a Nokia N800 for $250, yeah, totally doable. I’d still push it to the limits of what the machine can do, but I wouldn’t try to complete a big client project with it.

My big fear now is that the Eee PC’s will sell out, and I’ll have to wait. As I said, I’d still really like to get one before 2008. I think it’s worth waiting a few weeks to see what happens… Will they release a new model? Will they run out? Will they appear in stores? Heck if I know…