jamestanman's Xanga

Ricing out my Laptop

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:09:53 GMT

I guess some asian guys rice out their cars. I rice out my laptop and my bike. A flexy noisy keyboard is unacceptable, especially under the Thinkpad brand! So I set out to remedy this issue myself.

I'd say "shame on you lenovo", but being $800 cheaper then a similarly specced Macbook Pro, I can say the gains definitely outweigh the losses here. Plus the use cases are fundamentally different. A Macbook Pro is a luxury item. As with our cars and our bikes, we demand the very best from luxury items (especially if we're dropping top dollar on them).

An older (or newer? who knows) T400 keyboard. It honestly doesn't look to bad. Holes, yes, but still pretty solid looking.

A T61 keyboard. Fits! And is definitely older than the other two. A great improvement over the original keyboard that came with my Thinkpad. The internal bracing added for the problematic keyboards really makes the T61 keyboard shine.

New T400 keyboard (if I'm correct). This is what came with my Thinkpad. Note that the metal is thinner and is supplemented by a plastic sheet. Gain? Weight savings? Better cooling? Loss: Incredibly flexible keyboard that'll give way with little to no effort, especially on the left side. Really noisy too! Had an odd hollow sound when typing on the left side. I generally couldn't type in class or the library without a bunch of noise.

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Costco Run and Other Photos

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:17:34 GMT

Peter and Thomas with ISA sun glasses.

Thomas with a giant tub of frosting.

Thomas with a giant tub of milk mix (yuk).

Damn you Panda Express! Dammn youuuu!

Layne at the crappy Windows 7 event listening to crappy presenters.

Why didn't I think of doing this?

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This morning on Gizmodo...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:45:36 GMT

From Andy Grove to Steve Jobs, shameless ripped from Gizmodo.

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Random photos I found on my cell phone

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:04:01 GMT

Vincent with a very big saw blade. Santa Cruz.

Other Photos:
1. Bike Accident
2. A very delicious bowl of noodles from Nobu's around the corner
3. I was $40 away from my very own Cinelli Alter stem (can be found on ebay for $80)
4. Our beloved pumpkin :/
5. Yep, it's the fetus.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Entec's Panda USB

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 22:24:03 GMT

Oh man, or these. Scary.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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WWF USB Panda - adorable, or

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 22:21:49 GMT

First Thought: Aw, a Panda USB - how sickeningly cute.
Second Thought: OH CRAP

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Dust 514: official trailer

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:18:43 GMT

As typical from CCP, fantastic graphics and cohesive artistic styles. It's a great reminder of how large the space ships are.

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Heat Map of UCD Bike Accidents

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:20:54 GMT

With the Tour over, I haven't really posted a lot of bike related things. But I guess with the new year, there's a nice slew of bike accidents on and off campus. I found this heat map that a UCD grad student set up that analyzes the number of bike accidents at a given intersection or street. It doesn't give super rich data, but I think it gets the point across.

I'm glad to learn that I do indeed have the safest route to and from campus (5th->4th->3rd->campus). I'm a bit surprised at how many accidents there are along 8th Street though. I also thought it was interesting that there were no metrics on accidents on campus. But then I realized, every intersection on campus probably has an accident. It probably also goes unreported too.

If you have time, I'd also recommend his blog post on the matter. In a nutshell, his sister was hit head on by a car:
http://vort.org/2009/04/29/davis-crash-map/

Anyways, ride safe out there.

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Really Matlab

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:20:30 GMT

Really, Matlab? I need to have Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator on my Macbook to run you?

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The Asian Spanish Teacher - Community

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:36:41 GMT

Community has a lot of energy. The best I can characterize it as is a funny version of How I Met Your Mother. Like, my eyes don't bleed what I watch it. There are no pretenses of reality, they are all characters and they're all obviously dysfunctional.

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