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Yes, it IS important to vacuum once in a while… who’d have guessed?
The first computers I ever built (and then disassembled and then rebuilt) never seemed to gather any dust. But over the last 5 years I’ve seen an increasing amount of dust gathering inside my computers’ cases. I have no idea why… it seems [...]

I know it’s going to be a big success but at first glance it’s confusing as to where its market is.
It’s not a replacement for a laptop:

it has no USB ports for peripherals
no multi-tasking (we think)
limited opportunity to develop applications for it (developers have to work within the walled garden of the AppStore and users [...]

I’ve never thought of us as exactly over-flowing with choices for buying computer components here.
Sure, there’s a great little back-street parts shop every couple of miles, but their range is usually pretty limited and a lot of that is “we can order it for you and it’ll be here this afternoon”.  But they are very [...]

Somewhere, in amongst all this, I’ve been volunteering at Free Geek.
And, it must be said, having a fabulous time.
I spent last Thursday dismantling the computers that are being scrapped. Open the case, remove the power supply, remove the motherboard, remove the RAM, the battery, the processor and heatsink. Put it all in separate piles, grab [...]

I was at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival at the weekend and ran across a stall for Free Geek.
They’re a volunteer organization that takes people’s unwanted old computers, strips them down, ethically recycles the unusable parts, takes the reusable parts and builds them into fresh computers. Then loads Ubuntu onto them and sells them dirt [...]

I bought an apartment when I first lived here. I still have it now and rent it out. I was over there this morning doing some work and, as I left, I saw an enormous pile of stuff stacked up beside the dumpster.
On further investigation I found a full dinner service, set of speaker stands, [...]