Humble Beginnings

Way back in the earlier days of EVE Radio, Urban Mongral had this nifty little show called Desert Asteroid Disk, a knock-off of a BBC show where someone was “marooned” on an island and interviewed there. Here of course, Urban maroons people on a roid.

Anyway, Urban convinced me to do this, and this is pretty much how he and I met up for the first time and did anything broadcast-like together. Our microphones sucked, but I got to choose what music was played. This is pre-POS war stuff, and even back then we’re being wistful at the promise of faction warfare. I was also in my carebearing mode at the time.

Was a blast to do the interview (my first), and was really neat to hang in the various ER chat channels when it was broadcast and chat with folks as they listened. It’s a bit dated now, but might be a fun listen for someone anyway. Enjoy!

[audio:http://www.winterblink.com/audio/Winterblink_interview.mp3%5D

Dell Inspiron 1420

So as promised, I figured I’d do a little writeup of my new Dell Inspiron 1420 laptop, which shall see some field use at Fanfest this year.

One of the main reasons I went with a Dell as a laptop is that I’ve had a lot of experience with them in the past through work. They’re pretty solid units overall, so it wasn’t a big stretch to go with one. I’d considered picking up a Toshiba or something through Best Buy, but found the experience there to be too much of a hassle.

14″ seemed to be the perfect size for portability, I really don’t have any need to go much higher than that. This isn’t intended as a desktop replacement rig, since my custom built one is far more than adequate enough for gaming as it is. The high res glossy screen is pretty damn nice, and made for a worthwhile upgrade to the basic matte display.

It came with Vista Home Premium, and once my initial nausea subsided I’m finding I’m liking the OS more than I thought I would. The silly hardware requirements and extraneous CPU use no doubt impact battery life though, but I got a second battery to help with that. My only complaint was that Dell doesn’t provide physical OS media, you only get a restore partition on the drive. Thankfully they’ll courier one upon request, something which I’ve already done.

So far I’m extremely pleased with the purchase. Price wise this is pretty much at the ideal price point for someone who needs a laptop but doesn’t want to spend a kajillion pesos to do so.