Yeraze's Domain 3.0

For the last few years, geeks everywhere have been drooling over the “Optimus Keyboard” by Art Lebedev. For the uninformed, the Optimus Keyboard is a full-sized keyboard boasting an OLED display on every key so that the images on the keys can reconfigure dynamically to match the running application. You can hit his website for some interesting artistic renderings of it in “Quake” mode showing the weapons & directional arrows, and in “Photoshop” mode showing all the tools.

Every geek wants one of these things, but noone really knows how much one will cost. ~130 OLED’s can’t be cheap, but some people (Like government institutions /wink) don’t care how much it costs. Over the last couple of years, the designer has levied the popularity of the Optimus into the Mini 3 and the Upravlator. Both interesting ideas, but mere ghosts of the possibilities in the true Optimus. The Mini 3 sells for around $130-$150, with proceeds funding the development of the Optimus. But if 3 screens are $130, what would be the ungodly price of a full keyboard?

Unfortunately, we may never know. Over the last few months, they’ve begun leaking information about the Optimus and alot of sad announcements have been made:

• October 16th – Screens will be only 32×32 pixels (Smaller than the Mini3), and will not use OLED afterall.
• October 26th – Keyboard scaled down from 113 keys to 103
• November 10th – 11 Programmable keys stripped from the left side (if you miss them, you can buy the “Upravlator”, whenever that comes out)
• November 21st – Many keys of “secondary importance” will not have an LCD display.. Evidently both shifts, the spacebar, enter key, arrow keys, and the numeric keypad are of “secondary importance”, although I’ld love to see anyone try to type without a spacebar or enter key.
• November 27th - All the keys with displays will be Black and White.

Of course, all these changes were made to lower the price to something reasonable while targeting the “90%” of the market. What I don’t understand is that a keyboard like this won’t be used by the 90%, rather by the 10%. The 10% that want, and would be willing to pay for, the extra keys with color displays. I know that even as excited as we were about finally getting Optimus keyboards for the office, we don’t really see the usefulness of the one portrayed above, and I doubt we’re alone.

Of course, the “Optimus 103″ will make money for the “Optimus 113″ and “Optimus 133″, but if noone buys the first will the others ever appear?

Update

• November 29th – An announcement is made that the Optimus 103 will cost $1200.  One Thousand, two hundred dollars. 

He’s stated earlier that the price will be announced publicly on December 12th, so with any luck this is a joke.  If it’s not, then I think we might have just witnessed the death of the Optimus.
[tag:optimus][tag:artlebedev][tag:keyboard][tag:hardware]

So Thanksgiving 2006 is over, and I’ve survived. We decided that it was worth the risk to go ahead and load up the car and head to the folks for the holiday. Getting there was easy (2 cars) but coming back proved more difficult.

But thankfully, it’s over. The food was good, everyone got a chance to see Ethan, and we got some good pictures as well. The MythTV ran at home recording all our stuff, and after a hard night we’ve finally gotten Rhianna to sleep in her own bed again. Only a few more weeks till we have to do it again for Christmas.
[tag:thanksgiving][tag:holiday][tag:family]

Earlier this week I broke down and ordered a Motorola RAZR V3 (Blue) to replace my old Samsumg phone. Laura’s had one (the Pink one) for a few months now and it’s been fantastic. It’s got alot of advantages over the Samsung, including:

1. Faster Response on menus
2. Voice Recognition Dialing
3. Better Signal Strength (My Samsung was unusable in the hospital, but her RAZR worked flawlessly)
4. And alot of other stuff I didn’t really care about (Java, MP3 Ringtones, Camera, etc)

Unfortunately, I’m somewhat disappointed in the Cingular loadout of the phone. It comes with absolutely 0 games (It has a 1-level Demo of Bejeweled, that’s it), only 3 real ringtones (none of which are a phone ring), and very minimal other options. Cingular has done a great job of stripping down the phone to it’s bare essentials, forcing you to fork over $1.99 for every ringtone and $5.99 for every game.

So I ordered using Cingular’s Online Store and had it delivered. When it arrived they were kind enough to pop in a SmartChip for me, and provide instructions for activating it via phone (Call their office, register the new SmartChip, etc). Laura said it took them about 10 minutes to activate hers when she bought it. Seemed a bit fishy to me since our existing Samsung phones used smartchips, and shouldn’t you be able to just move the chip and viola? They told laura it would “confuse” things and not work. Well, I’m here to tell you that it does work. I simply pulled the smartchip out of my Samsung and popped it in my RAZR, and viola it worked. I did have to rebuild most of my address book since almost none of it was on the SmartChip, but that’s easy enough to do.

So after playing with it for a few days and using the “Cingular MediaMall” to download Bejeweled, I decided it was time to figure out how to connect it to the computer and get free games (Like these, nothing illegal) installed. I had noticed when Laura first got her phone that the charger is simply a Mini-USB connector, but the computer was unable to recognize and automatically install any drivers for it. So the search began…

Well, it’s been a busy week. Monday Laura went in for the first visit of the week, and low and behold the doc decided to do the section the next day! We went over for another, and hopefully last, NST and they decided to just keep her the night. Sure enough the baby was born Tuesday morning. Ethan Reese Hand came into the world via C-Section on Tuesday Morning, 7lbs 3oz and 20inches long. He was in perfect health, a far cry from the month of NICU time that Rhianna took.

Much to our surprise, they sent Laura home yesterday, so now I’m at home tending to the two of them. Laura’s doing better, but still pretty sore. Ethan’s doing great, so long as we keep him rolled up in a blanket so tight he can barely move. Give him space and he screams, ball him up and he takes a nap. Go figure.. [tag:baby][tag:family]

Well, I’m happy to report that the MythTV has been running beautifully for the last month as a dedicated backend. I’m using my PC with WinMyth as a reduced-functionality front-end, and the Web Interface lets me to scheduling and DVD Burning. I even setup Xvnc and use that to run the FrontEnd to do things like Cutlist editing. Once I figured out how to enable the advanced Commercial Detection (Blank Frame + Scene Change + Station Logo), I’ve been using that for cutlists with virtually 0 editing, it’s amazing how accurate it is. It’s odd to experience, but it’s a great relief to no longer have to plan around watching TV. So I miss Mythbusters on Wednesday night, or I miss my BSG & Dr Who on Friday night, it’s all on the MythTV and I can watch it whenever I want. I’ve been able to catch up on alot of late-night shows I typically miss (Venture Brothers, Robot Chicken, etc) and record alot of stuff I typically miss. Whenever I’m bored I have shows to watch, and I don’t have to reschedule my life to watch TV.

Also, I’ve been able to get the system to do a few additional things since it’s on 24/7 but only recording for 3 or 4 hours a day. Today I got “TorrentFlux” setup to manage BitTorrent downloads without having to leave my main desktop running all the time. That saves me a bit of headache and some on the power bill (I hope), and keeps the system busy for the remaining time. All in all, I’m pretty happy with it. I do wish I had a true front-end for it, and I’m toying with setting up a second hand Xbox as a MythTV Frontend. With the baby on the way, however, I don’t have the time nor the cash to play with that right now. [tag:mythtv][tag:torrent][tag:pvr][tag:htpc]

So this marks the end of Week 36.  We’re both expecting that, one way or another, next week will be “the week”.  With Laura going in for NST’s 3 times a week, we’ve learned the names of everyone at the hospital.  They don’t even bother to ask Laura the usual questions, they just quietly hand her the form and let her fill it out, or use the photocopied form in “the drawer” at the nurses station.  Tomorrow is another one, so I’m gettin ready for a fun day of sitting in a cramped little chair watching the Food Network while our stomachs rumble.

Things at work have taken a turn for the worse too.  I’ve gotten my first “un-fun” project:  Write up Use Case Diagrams , Specifications, and a Statement of Work for the new website.  And have it all finished by next Friday.  Of course, Laura’s gonna pop any day now, so I don’t know how I’m gonna pull this all together.  Especially given I’ve never heard of UML before, but this ” Managing Software Requirements” book has all the answers.  (sigh).  Guess it can’t all be fun  & games.[tag:work][tag:baby][tag:uml]

Today Laura was balancing the checkbook against the website listing of charges (Isn’t the internet great?) and noticed a $14.99 charge from “Turbine Entertainment” was pending.

If you don’t know, Turbine Entertainment is the group behind Dungeons & Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings: Online.  I played DDO for a few months right after release, but I canceled it long ago (Early July by the email).  I even got into the LotR:O Alpha, but only played it once. So why were they charging me?  Someone steal my account information?  Someone steal my Credit Card number?  Or just a technical goof.

Well, it took a while to finally find a phone number (Good luck finding one anywhere on Turbine’s Site).  The number I finally found is in the Account Information area after you login (Which confirmed that my account was closed, still) and, for anyone who needs it, is 781-407-4020.  The automated attendant starts off with “If you are calling in regard to a pending charge to your account” and goes on to explain, basically, that this was an accident and they’re working on reversing all the charges.

Whew.. Had me scared for a bit.  I normally wouldnt’ post something as trivial as this, but I know alot of fellow former DDO junkies read this page (Hey RAIDer’s) and I just wanted to spread the word.
[tag:ddo][tag:turbine][tag:credit]