Zeno's Paradox: Scotland Entry: Much Later than I Would Have Liked

Zeno's Paradox

July 20, 2003 - Scotland Entry: Much Later than I Would Have Liked

I was hoping to post more entries of my trip to Scotland, but my server died sometime earlier in the week. I cannot ping the machine, which may be a positive thing since computers tend to remain ping-able after disk failures. I'm hoping that the system got caught in some soft of tight kernel loop or something like that.

Anyways...

I'm on my last full day here. Yesterday, we went out to the western Scottish lochs to places like Loch Lomand and Inverny. I did some GPS tracking of the route and locations and I'll be trying to get an X3D/VRML representation up sometime in the next week (after I bring the server back up). We had wonderful seafood at the top of Loch Fyne and we say the "capital" of the Campbell clan at Inverny. I picked up a nice plaid throw that can be used as a blanket in addition to some liquors that will reside in my wine box and spirits shelf. I took some pictures that I hope to post when I'm able again.

The day before, we headed out to Edinburgh to meet with the GCU-BBC research librarian who will be handling the information from the BBC into the Spoken Word project. She was younger than I expected and quite nice. After lunch, we took a walk on the Royal Mile and saw Edinburgh Castle. Inside the castle were the Scottish crown jewels, scepter, and sword. Within the castle was a Claymoor (Claymohr in Scottish?) sword that probably weighed as much as me and was definitely as tall as me. Of course, pictures to come...

One of the highlights of the trip has been conversing with my hosts. David Donald is an ex-Conservative politico who has become more Liberal and now teaches political science at GCU. His depth of knowledge is seemingly unending from the local history to Malthusian dilemmas in economics. It was great to listen to him and Jerry Goldman have good-spirited debates about various things. Jerry comes from the libertarian perspective, while David is a fan of a more cautious approach to issues like trade regulation. Even when Jerry has been gone, I've had great conversations with David late into the night. I've also had some good discussions with his wife Christine about the Middle East mess. It's been a great time so far and something that would make any stay in a hotel seem utterly lacking.

I ended up taking my poli-sci exam today. I felt that I had a good grasp of the materials, so I wasn't too worried. One area where I was weak was in discussing the relevant research. I find it easy to absorb the main ideas and concepts, but when it comes to things like "Discuss the Roberts and Halley article about the impact of regulation on the third world", I find myself wanting as I have to think back to what things of the ones I know were associated with the named paper and separating out their contributions to the rest. I don't know if this type of recognition of who wrote what is actually valuable or if it's a side effect of the publish-recognition culture of academia. I suppose it has use if you are tracing the evolution of certain trains of thought, but in the arena of ideas competing against each other (old and new alike), it doesn't seem that necessary. Overall, though I felt that I did alright on the test.

And finally a tentative decision to the Mac Conundrum. The Conundrum can be stated thus: "Chris's beloved PowerBook is getting to old to do the new cutting-edge stuff that he wants it to do. He needs (wants) a replacement that can do movie-editing, run Panther, and be as portable as the machine that is being replaced. This solution should also take advantages of technology such as Firewire 800 and Airport Extreme." The overwhelmingly dominant train of thought was to purchase a 15" mythical AlBook when Apple finally decided to announce them. However, since I've been waiting their announcement for the past six months, my patience is running thin.

So, I started thinking differently (clever, no?). Instead of relying on one machine to do these tasks, what if I used two cheaper machines instead? So I'm now considering getting a PowerMac G4 with a 17" Apple LCD ($2023) and a lower-end 12" iBook ($1020). Compared to the 17" AlBook (too big to be portable - $3178), I get all the features I wanted for less plus expandability. So, while the G4 PowerMac does not ship with Firewire 800 yet, I can just buy a PCI adapter at a later time. I can also elect to add more disks as I need them. I also would have an Apple display that would last several generations of machines. Plus I get upgradability again.

The iBook would be exceptionally light, with great wireless range. Since my computationally-heavy tasks (movie making, media encoding, video conferencing, etc.) would be handled on the desktop, I don't lose much going with a more modest machine. Plus I have the advantage that I don't have to purchase it all at once. Since the G5 has come out, I can take advantage of dropping G4 PowerMac prices. I could stand to hold off on the iBook purchase for a few months while prices only drop. Overall this seems to be a much more attractive option than a single laptop. I think that I'll make a final decision after my next paycheck.

Ok, so that's it for now. Time for me to start packing and organizing the snapshots that I've taken this trip.

Posted by br284 at 03:06 PM

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