What the– you’re building a cat?

Yes, an Arduino-powered one at that! One that won’t cause allergies or disgust its owner with hairballs. Petting CAT will make it react positively, purring at 50Hz (a healing frequency), giving the same benefit as a real animal. This is achieved through conductive thread/fabric and a vibrating motor. Many more surprises are to come; new Arduino shields and other fun parts will be in my mailbox soon! I’ll get some video up during the week, along with a few design/layout paintings too

First off, there IS no “E” key.

QWFRTY??!! how is THAT pronounced– Kwiffertee? I liked Kwertee just fine! But it seems that the E was having an identity crisis and wanted to become like its neighbor, the F… oh wait! Where’d F go?

SLIG?? Shouldn’t that be something down the lines of… SDFG? “SLIG” is pronouncable! Maybe this row wanted the pronounceablility QWERTY had.

My best guess is that E ran away, F moved up a story and I made a clone of itself.

O, no….

I and P are perfectly intact, but O is GONE! O woe is a keyboard sans O!! Perhaps O decided that the numerical equivalent of nothingness, 0, was more slender and O wanted to slim down. Slimmed down a lil’ bit too much, as it’s not there anymore…

Or perhaps it caught Spacebar Syndrome?

Either the spacebar threw a party and C, V, N, M and > took off…. or the spacebar was putting on the peer pressure to said keys about how cool simplicity is through empty space, and they decided to try out that ‘fashion’.

Besides all the individual key drama, this old HP keyboard (P2359AA, doesn’t look like they make em any longer) has been a wonderful computer companion.

My geeky goal?

To completely wipe off every key’s letter print.

It dawned on me before embarking on my CalArts adventure that I’d somehow have to take all my digital swag  with me. And being that my digital swag is  some 200GB’s, there wasn’t a chance of it all squeezing into my laptop’s memory.

The best solution was clear: to get a portable hard drive that would allow me to transfer so-called digital swag from my home computer to my laptop and back and forth between the school’s servers. After some research, it looked like Western Digital’s Passport Essential series was the most compact when it came to size– and, another major plus: it’s instantly cross-compatible with Mac and PC. (Couldn’t ask for any more, using PC’s at home and Macs in the school labs!)

Drive operation is simple… plug-and-play USB; you’re ready to go as soon as it’s plugged in. It comes with an insta-launch application (PC only); but it’s a hard drive, right? Why mess with anything other than storage space? I’ll admit I haven’t explored the insta-launch application any more than a few clicks, so I can’t give any opinions on the software it comes with.

Drive operation is quick and snappy: I haven’t experienced any crashes, lost/corrupt data or even browsing drags. Playing media straight off the drive (music, movies, pictures) is seamless; the only hiccup is that this does not run at 7200 RPM’s (and it is USB)– so don’t expect lightning-speed thumbnail loading when dealing with your image files.

“Unplugging” the drive is as near to painless as you’ll get for a media device like this (unlike a paltry little thumb drive): Eject it (Mac) or Safely Remove Hardware (PC) and within ten seconds you can unplug it and pack it away.

I’ll also have to brag about the durability of this USB-powered puppy (which, by the way, doesn’t require a separate power cable): Many-a-times have I left it in a case in my bag, only to completely forget about it and stack various books, binders, and sketchbooks on it… and, on a few occasions, have probably dropped it. Now, I reallllly don’t recommend that you go out and play baseball with your hard drives (even if they are in their safety cases)… but the thing keeps happily saving and transferring my files; and it’s next-to-silent, to boot.

Overall… I haven’t found a single downfall to this hard drive (except the fact that the 500′s didn’t exist when I originally set out to purchase mine);  if you’re looking for a user-friendly, fast, portable hard drive… I hiiiiighly reccomend this one! (I’ve already converted several of my friends to Passport Essentialism, and they’ve all found the hard drive really helpful for server/laptop transfers, along with general storage).

Well…. it seems to be in its original first-packaged mindset… battery got drained 50% by flashing on and off, well…. Maybe, just maybe I can revert it to its original state… the charge goes on and off. Oh clie PDA, you were a wonderful companion….

A cell phone? Frying a PDA?? The PDA’s so old it doesn’t even do WiFi…

Strangely, after the hard reset it still knew what the date was. hmmm.