SemiConscious Dot Org

At long last, the final present of Christmas 2007 has finally arrived: I hold in my hot little hands none other than an XO laptop. In fact, I’m writing this post on it!

No, my hand is not in the foreground. It really is that tiny.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the One Laptop Per Child program, the rather ambitious aim of which is to put $100 $200 laptops in the hands of schoolchildren in developing nations worldwide. For a short time last year, they ran a special “Give One Get One” promotion, wherein you could purchase one XO for yourself if you also purchased one for donation to a child in the developing world. On the very last day of the G1G1 program, yours truly, deciding he needed to both repair his fractured karma and purchase a new toy, plunked down the mad scrilla.

Last night, it finally arrived.

All the crazy stories you’ve heard about this machine are true: the screen really is visible outdoors in direct sunlight, the twin wifi antennas really can pull in a signal from a ridiculously long distance, the touchpad really can be used as a writing tablet with a stylus, it really is impervious to dust and heat, and it really does have no hard drive (all internal storage is handled by a combination of ROM and flash memory.) This is an amazingly well-designed piece of hardware.

The software, however, is another story. It’s a special, stripped-down version of Fedora Linux called Sugar, and it’s designed to be very simple for kids to use. I think it’s a little too simple, personally: installing new software is very difficult. The visual look of the GUI is like no operating system you’ve ever seen, so different in fact that it’s quite jarring. And the included web browser is just hideous: it’s slow, breaks formatting, and forget about playing embedded audio or video content.

However, all of these things are fixable. The good folks at Opera have already created a version of their browser specially modified for use on the XO, which I was able to install in just a few quick steps. And lo and behold, there are already several hacks for installing Ubuntu as an alternative operating system, to give the laptop a much more grown-up feel. (There are even rumors that the Redmond Borg Collective will attempt to shoehorn XP onto the XO, but I prefer to pretend that’s just a horrible, horrible nightmare.)

So, yeah: a qualified thumbs up. It’s not a mobile workstation, but it ain’t a toy, either. And it was cheap and it helps out kids in need. I heartily approve of both the concept and the execution of this program.

I’d say run out and buy one immediately, but you can’t. The Give One Get One ended on December 31st, and there are no plans to revive it. I am, and will always continue to be, the only person you know who has one of these babies. Ha ha!

You can still give one to a kid in a Third World country, however. So go do it, you stingy bastard! Now! What are you waiting for?

It’s amazing, when you quit the public library for a real job in the real world, how little time you have for frivolities like blogging.

Also, Happy Clusterfuck War Day.

A ragtag alliance of deadlocked Rasta cavemen and African Masai warriors join forces to do battle with ancient Egyptians led by Emperor Palpatine. Oh, and the pyramids were built with woolly mammoth labor.

Yes, it is as bad as it sounds.

It has long been a favorite pastime of lousy traitors who want the terrorists to win liberals to point out the crashing ignorance of Americans concerning the entire rest of the world outside our borders. Well, here’s your chance to prove those nogoodniks wrong and point out that America still excels in the production of something besides war, death and senseless destruction – namely, mad geography skillz!

Yup, to shut those rotten Frenchmen up, all you have to do is take this test. It’s simple, really: you name as many countries as you can in five minutes. I could only get 85, but then I’m terrible typist, and the country names need to be spelled correctly or they don’t count. I’m betting that I’m probably the only person who took the test and remembered Nauru, Kiribati, and Tuvalu while simultaneously forgetting Spain, Italy, and, yup.

Offering you any hints or tips would be tantamount to cheating, but I’m a New England Patriots fan, so obviously I frickin’ loves me some cheatin.’ So here’s my advice: if you get stuck on remembering the spelling of Whogivesaflyingfuckistan or some other place we may or may not have bombed yet, consult this map.

Oh, and also, the clock starts counting down as soon as you click on the test page, so in the time you’ve spent reading these last few paragraphs, you’ve lost valuable seconds. Wicked sorry.

(test link via World O’ Crap)

You Know What’s Stupid? Everything I Don’t Understand.

Will you look at all this stuff I have neither the intellect nor the maturity level to process? What a load of crap. It’s in my face every day, doing lots of things I don’t have an immediate desire to do and saying things I can’t identify with at this stage in my life. How lame is that? I mean, what kind of pathetic loser would actually enjoy something that’s so incredibly not among my personal preferences? Not me, that’s for sure.

Just when you’re ready to give up on The Onion and conclude that they’ve lost it, they come up with something so effortlessly, transcendentally brilliant that you remember why you liked them in the first place. Too bad they can’t do this all the time…

(link via Chris. Since my friends don’t post to their blogs anymore, I’ll just keep on posting stuff they send me. It sure saves me the time and effort required to come up with my own material.)

Best. Blog. EVER.

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness in a quiet American suburb.

Some of my personal favorites:

(link via Tannhauser, aka Grand Poobah Barabas Maximus)

Also, Stuff White People Like (link via MaxLibris) and Monk-e-Mail (link via…um…shit, I forgot. Wicked sorreh.)