I had a chat about using monitors and Apple TV with a tech friend and he says that he watches most stuff on his tablet or PC. I asked about watching shows with his wife and he just looked at me. I guess everyone watches what they're interested in these days and that often doesn't coincide with your spouse. Our television is from the 1990s and it's a CRT hooked up to an antenna in the attic. We use it maybe once a week (some of us do). We aren't set up to do group watching but I could get around to that. My ideal solution would be an Apple TV hooked up to a 27 inch WQHD monitor (these are only $300 these days). I don't know what we would be watching though.
> I'm sure that some stay but a lot more leave. That makes it a very transient town. The locals know this.
I think that some do come and go but there are a lot that stay. But they move to the suburbs when they want to start a family as the schools in Boston aren't the best even though Massachusetts is typically in the top two or three in K-12 education in the country. People do move to other areas of the country which are cheaper than Boston too. I think that there has been decent migration to the triangle area.
> From my experience, I was treated very differently that someone born there. I found the people there to be very insular
> and not particularly friendly. I lived next door to someone for 2 years and not once did they even say hello to me. I tried
> once or twice and then gave up on them.
Why do you think that you were treated differently? I think that the distance thing is something that's part of New England's character. Many other areas of the country [and world] are more welcoming. You have to be willing to break the ice and be somewhat socially outgoing to build relationships here.
I like the Surface Pro from a hardware perspective but I don't like the direction that Microsoft has taken on Privacy, Updates and being fairly pushy on Windows 10. I have an iPad Mini and a MacBook Pro; the former for consumption and the latter for work. It's a great work machine and I especially appreciate the native Unix aspects. If Mac OSX weren't around, I would consider going with just Linux and Windows 7 on an old laptop or desktop.
I don't really see the point in touch on a PC but I mainly use an environment with multiple large monitors. I use an Apple Mouse which has touch enabled on the surface and I also use the Apple Trackpad in the office. I also really like the 1980s-style IBM-PC keyboards. They weigh a ton but they are fantastic at positive feedback.
Boston does have a lot of old triple-deckers but it has a lot of new-construction apartments and condos as well. There is a lot coming online in the Seaport District and in Cambridge and Charlestown. There's a huge new construction project next to the TD Garden that just started that will build condos/apartments and a lot more retail. I would disagree on Boston being provincial as you do have a lot of students that come in for the universities and stay here after they graduate with BS, MS and Phds. Boston is a city of neighborhoods and their characters vary widely from place to place. Those universities cost a fortune to attend and I'd guess that parents that can afford those universities can also afford to travel.
Which Garmin model do you have? I have the Forerunner 610 and find it quite accurate but it depends on what you're doing. If you're running a 5K, then you're likely doing lateral or diagonal shifts from time to time to get by someone slower in front of you, or worse, a few people running side-by-side at a slower pace than you want to run; so you're adding distance. You might also wander off to the side to grab a few cups off the water table or you might be running in the middle of the course when the distance is measured from the shortest part (especially in the case of a loop).
I've done some testing on a high-school quarter-mile track and found that the Forerunner 610 was very accurate. I've seen lots of tests with multiple GPS watches and the Garmin devices do really well with road-running but lose accuracy with trail-running - something where you can dart around a lot to avoid rocks, brush, etc. and where there may be a lot of tree cover that can make tracking harder for your device. The folks that do the testing often wear multiple watches at the same time and then compare the readings of all of the devices.
When running, you also have arm movement which is a bigger factor with a watch than a phone (assuming that you're using an armband). I think that differences should balance themselves out over time. Note that this is for GPS-based devices. I do not think that stride-based devices are worth the bother if you want any kind of accuracy.
The Garmin watches also allow you to upload your runs to their cloud for analysis so you can look at a map to determine whether or not the distance was reasonable in your mind. If your run overlays the race course and you find that you made a lot of side-shifts or that you ran on the outside of the course, then it would be reasonable that the distance recorded was greater than the race distance.
I've read reviews on the Garmin Fenex 3 that they had problems with the software for a while (not sure whether or not this is still a problem). A reviewer on Amazon posted maps from the Fenex 3 and another device (maybe the Forerunner 620) that showed the discrepancy. He was wearing both watches at the same time. It's something that was reported on multiple sites this past Spring so I assume that it's fixed by now - that appears to just be a new-product bug.
The property taxes in my town are $25/$1000 of property valuation so that would be $6,250 on a $250K home. I'd say that salaries run $75K - $130K for software engineers in this area depending on experience, skills, the company and your job title. I live in a smaller home, and paid off the mortgage around 2000 and my property taxes run about $4,000/year.
In the US, we have Federal Income Taxes, State Taxes and Local Taxes. State Taxes mainly come in the form of income and sales taxes though there can be state property taxes as well. Local taxes mainly come in the form of property taxes though they can also come in the form of sales and income taxes. You can't really do anything about Federal Income Taxes because they apply to the whole country. In New Hampshire, the main tax is property taxes; so if you have a high income and low property value, then you don't pay much in state and local taxes. If you want a really expensive house, then you are going to pay proportionately more in state and local taxes. Better school districts tend to have higher property taxes so that's a consideration if you plan to put your kids in public schools. One approach to saving money is to live in a weaker district but to use private schools, charter schools or home schooling.
My 2014 Retina MacBook Pro does everything that I need it to do but this would be a fun machine even though I don't think that I could use more than maybe 25% of the CPU. I do some video transcoding from time to time but I think this would be insane for that.
Boston has a vibrant tech scene but it's quite an expensive place to live. It's not as expensive as San Francisco or New York but it's not cheap and it appears to be getting more expensive. There's a small city called Nashua just over the border in New Hampshire. Houses aren't too bad, traffic isn't too bad, no income tax, no sales tax but property taxes are relatively high. There is some high-tech in Nashua itself up to Manchester (city to the north) and there's a fair amount of high-tech companies south to Burlington, MA (you can commute to jobs in MA down about 20 miles - you don't really want to commute into Boston). The biggest downside is likely the cold, snow and ice. The Southern NH area is mostly a family area - not a big singles scene - younger adults prefer to live and work in Boston - this area is a nice place to raise a family.
My wife and I were added to some expedited airport list so that we go through a lower level of screening than other passengers. This year, it appears that our kids were added as they had to go through the regular line in past years and now go though the same line with us. I don't really have a clue as to how all of this stuff works.
Oracle has a Semantic layer over their RDBMS that comes with their Spatial package. My only knowledge of it comes from talking to a product manager about it a long time ago.
My son works in a shop which uses SMW for their LIMS. I'd say that it's an enterprise application with him as the main developer and a few other non-IT/CS/EE folks writing queries against it. He's like a developer + DBA and everything goes through him and he writes almost all of the forms and reports from requests by his department. I've been fairly impressed with the size of their application that's been developed by a pretty small and mostly non-technical team.
He has to fix SMW problems from time to time too. SMW had some rather severe problems with maintenance and I think that the group that used to do it is in Germany. There is a place to get maintenance I think but I don't know how reliable it is. He goes in and fixes problems with SMW when there's a problem that they can't work around. That's part of the fun with Open Source.
I work on multiple projects as well and my VD layout has evolved over time and location. If I'm at home, I am hooked up to a single WUXGA display so everything is on one monitor and I use five virtual desktops for everything. In the office, I have two screens but I still use the same five VDs but in a different layout. When mobile, I use the same setup that I use at home.
I have a Linux development environment on the main monitor (when I'm running multiple monitors). I will put different projects in different terminal windows. I have a Notes application that has pages for my projects so that I can quickly get back context when I'm moving from one project to another. My remaining VDs browser, email and short text notes and todo lists.
I got to where I am by trying out different things and determining what works better (by finding the problems with other setups). Eventually you get to something that's optimal overall. Then you may have to tweak it for new tools or new features or new hardware. This overall approach seems pretty simple. I don't think that I'd set up a VD per project unless I needed multiple operating systems and then we'd have to play with VMs.
The weather in the Northeast the past five weeks has been absolutely brutal on roofs. It's resulted in dangerous weight conditions resulting in many roof failures and ice dam issues resulting in interior leaks. The biggest problem in my area is finding professionals to get rid of ice and snow on roofs. Guys that will know how to work in dangerous conditions and not damage your property and that understand the issues that lead to roofing problems. Also guys that can deal with chunks of ice weighing hundreds of pounds and realizing that they shouldn't be breaking off ice just over a skylight or other fragile features around a home. It's also nice if they clean off all of the snow and ice around your property that came off your roof. Let me know when there's a robot that can do this.
The main problem with homeschooling statistics is the self-selection problem as parents choose to homeschool. The homeschooling results are compared to public school results which have a mix of selection and default. We don't know how the kids of homeschooling parents would have turned out had they gone to public schools. Homeschooling parents are presumably more dedicated and involved and would probably be a net positive for public schools with free labor from parents.
Homeschooling itself is self-selection but often the research is as well. There are some studies that use a large population - say from a curriculum provider - but many are from those that answer questionnaires. If you were doing a poor job at it, would you answer the questionnaire?
There is a tremendous amount of potential in homeschooling if you have the resources, time, energy, support and strong inclination. But it is a huge amount of work and you have to be able to deal with negative or questioning comments from neighbors, relatives, coworkers and others that the kids come into contact with. If you want to see the potential, take a look at Alison Miller - her mother practiced unschooling - basically let the kid study whatever they want to without necessarily any structure or curriculum. Two other well-known examples are Venus and Serena Williams. I believe that they used correspondence lessons. Homeschooling may have given them the time to practice tennis to become the best in the game. It's interesting that their parents didn't have any training for tennis or tennis instruction.
The rate of learning at public schools, on average, is abysmally slow. Do even 1/2 of high school graduates know Algebra? There are many excellent districts but you may have to spend a lot of money on real estate to live in one of those districts so that your kids can attend them.
I received notice of a 30-year service award last week. Trying to decide if I stay here for another ten until retirement or look around - the job market is better than I've seen it in many years.
My son and daughter self-taught themselves C when they were around 11 or 12. I just gave them the K&R book and they played around with it. Son's university taught the first two courses in C (intro, data structures) and then did Java, Scheme, C++ in other classes. I thought that it was a really good way to go as you do feel closer to the metal. One thing that I like about C is that you can flip on the assembler switch to see the generated code and provide a little explanation as to what's going on at a lower level. They really don't understand until they get an architecture class but you can give them an idea as to what's going on below.
Assembler can be a headache for students because you have to write so much code to get something done. A good macro facility can help a lot but it's hard to avoid a lot of typing.
If you're an academic, then you should have access via your institution via your library. If I really need something from ACM or other research journals, I can just ask one of my kids to get it for me through their universities. I could also drive to a local university with public access to computers with journal access.
I have a Garmin GPS Watch. It's great to track your runs and has a website where you upload your run information and biometrics so that you can replay your run or analyze your performance. It works as a regular watch as well. It can also give you a picture of your run or walk so that you can determine where you are relative to where you started in case you get lost.
So it's good for running and they have models for triathletes that are waterproof to 10 meters or something like that. Mine handles the rain just fine.
It will interface with fitness club equipment and digital scales and it comes with a chest strap that you can use to measure your heartrate while you workout. You can also set alarms for minimum and maximum limits. The updated model also has motion sensors in the chest strap so it can do things like analyze other stuff about how you run and make recommendations.
Of course there are limitations. It's big and thick. It has a touch screen but it's imprecise and there's not a lot that you can do on a touchscreen that small. It will run for 8 hours on a charge. You need a special charger. I'm a runner and most people think that runners are nuts and they're probably right but a runner and geek will put up with the limitations to get the functionality present.
I really doubt that Apple, Samsung, Google, etc. are going to produce something that caters to this market. I don't think that their products will have the durability of a special-purpose device and I don't think that their biometrics sensors will be anywhere as useful as the Garmin's chest strap. So I will be happy to see what they come up with but I have a lot of doubts as to how useful the devices will be. BTW, one thing that I would like is an iPod Nano with BlueTooth for my runs. I have older generation Nanos with wired headsets but I'd much rather go wireless. An iPod Nano watch would work but I'd have to wear my Garmin on one wrist and the Nano on the other.
Scientific calculator with motorized mag card reader for program and data storage. The card reader/writer no longer reads and writes reliably and the original NiCad batteries died many years ago but I use NiMH batteries in the original battery case and the calculator works. Nice to have an LED display as I like to work in dark conditions. I saw one at the Smithsonian back in the 1990s.
Thanks for checking. I won't be using the free version. I guess I'll have to buy a licensed version (and run it on Windows) or stick with Growly Notes. Growly Notes is the path of least resistance at the moment.
Growly Notes is not cloud-based software. It will sync selected notebooks in your LAN if you wish though.
One-Note has online and offline modes. So you can save files in the Cloud if you want to or just locally.
BTW, a huge number of people use Cloud-based tax prep services. A huge number of people use H&R Block where you give all of your tax information to a person and there have been cases of identity fraud with (human) tax prep services.
The current Mac OS X similar product is Growly Notes, written by a former Microsoft Word developer who now develops Mac OS X Apps. I use Growly Notes extensively for home and work stuff. I put my status information for my projects, record what I do daily and copy in Specs, emails, pictures, PDFs, etc. You can drag in videos, audio files and documents. The program will sync to other computers running the same software as well. I put my tax information in there which makes it easier to do my taxes. I have college stuff for the kids, hobby project ideas, directions for how to do things, etc. You can encrypt at the notebook or page level and you can do various searches. I've heard from others that One-Note does a lot more. One-Note can sync to the cloud but we don't put work-stuff on the cloud. I don't put a lot of personal and family stuff on the cloud either. You could drag all of your utility bills into One-Note so that you can retrieve them if and when you need them. One Note also has Outlook integration and I think that you can drag in stuff from Microsoft Office documents for live update. At any rate, I'm going to move over to One Note from Growly Notes as I want a product with support from a team and I like that I can put it on Windows and Mac OS X. It will be somewhat of a pain in the neck to migrate my stuff over. BTW, this is a big deal. One-Note was originally designed as a planning and notebook tool for college students. Microsoft bought it and a lot of people found out how useful it is for the workplace.
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I had a chat about using monitors and Apple TV with a tech friend and he says that he watches most stuff on his tablet or PC. I asked about watching shows with his wife and he just looked at me. I guess everyone watches what they're interested in these days and that often doesn't coincide with your spouse. Our television is from the 1990s and it's a CRT hooked up to an antenna in the attic. We use it maybe once a week (some of us do). We aren't set up to do group watching but I could get around to that. My ideal solution would be an Apple TV hooked up to a 27 inch WQHD monitor (these are only $300 these days). I don't know what we would be watching though.
> I'm sure that some stay but a lot more leave. That makes it a very transient town. The locals know this. I think that some do come and go but there are a lot that stay. But they move to the suburbs when they want to start a family as the schools in Boston aren't the best even though Massachusetts is typically in the top two or three in K-12 education in the country. People do move to other areas of the country which are cheaper than Boston too. I think that there has been decent migration to the triangle area. > From my experience, I was treated very differently that someone born there. I found the people there to be very insular > and not particularly friendly. I lived next door to someone for 2 years and not once did they even say hello to me. I tried > once or twice and then gave up on them. Why do you think that you were treated differently? I think that the distance thing is something that's part of New England's character. Many other areas of the country [and world] are more welcoming. You have to be willing to break the ice and be somewhat socially outgoing to build relationships here.
I like the Surface Pro from a hardware perspective but I don't like the direction that Microsoft has taken on Privacy, Updates and being fairly pushy on Windows 10. I have an iPad Mini and a MacBook Pro; the former for consumption and the latter for work. It's a great work machine and I especially appreciate the native Unix aspects. If Mac OSX weren't around, I would consider going with just Linux and Windows 7 on an old laptop or desktop. I don't really see the point in touch on a PC but I mainly use an environment with multiple large monitors. I use an Apple Mouse which has touch enabled on the surface and I also use the Apple Trackpad in the office. I also really like the 1980s-style IBM-PC keyboards. They weigh a ton but they are fantastic at positive feedback.
Boston does have a lot of old triple-deckers but it has a lot of new-construction apartments and condos as well. There is a lot coming online in the Seaport District and in Cambridge and Charlestown. There's a huge new construction project next to the TD Garden that just started that will build condos/apartments and a lot more retail. I would disagree on Boston being provincial as you do have a lot of students that come in for the universities and stay here after they graduate with BS, MS and Phds. Boston is a city of neighborhoods and their characters vary widely from place to place. Those universities cost a fortune to attend and I'd guess that parents that can afford those universities can also afford to travel.
Me too. At least it gets updated even if Android doesn't (three of our Android devices are off official support).
Which Garmin model do you have? I have the Forerunner 610 and find it quite accurate but it depends on what you're doing. If you're running a 5K, then you're likely doing lateral or diagonal shifts from time to time to get by someone slower in front of you, or worse, a few people running side-by-side at a slower pace than you want to run; so you're adding distance. You might also wander off to the side to grab a few cups off the water table or you might be running in the middle of the course when the distance is measured from the shortest part (especially in the case of a loop). I've done some testing on a high-school quarter-mile track and found that the Forerunner 610 was very accurate. I've seen lots of tests with multiple GPS watches and the Garmin devices do really well with road-running but lose accuracy with trail-running - something where you can dart around a lot to avoid rocks, brush, etc. and where there may be a lot of tree cover that can make tracking harder for your device. The folks that do the testing often wear multiple watches at the same time and then compare the readings of all of the devices. When running, you also have arm movement which is a bigger factor with a watch than a phone (assuming that you're using an armband). I think that differences should balance themselves out over time. Note that this is for GPS-based devices. I do not think that stride-based devices are worth the bother if you want any kind of accuracy. The Garmin watches also allow you to upload your runs to their cloud for analysis so you can look at a map to determine whether or not the distance was reasonable in your mind. If your run overlays the race course and you find that you made a lot of side-shifts or that you ran on the outside of the course, then it would be reasonable that the distance recorded was greater than the race distance. I've read reviews on the Garmin Fenex 3 that they had problems with the software for a while (not sure whether or not this is still a problem). A reviewer on Amazon posted maps from the Fenex 3 and another device (maybe the Forerunner 620) that showed the discrepancy. He was wearing both watches at the same time. It's something that was reported on multiple sites this past Spring so I assume that it's fixed by now - that appears to just be a new-product bug.
The property taxes in my town are $25/$1000 of property valuation so that would be $6,250 on a $250K home. I'd say that salaries run $75K - $130K for software engineers in this area depending on experience, skills, the company and your job title. I live in a smaller home, and paid off the mortgage around 2000 and my property taxes run about $4,000/year. In the US, we have Federal Income Taxes, State Taxes and Local Taxes. State Taxes mainly come in the form of income and sales taxes though there can be state property taxes as well. Local taxes mainly come in the form of property taxes though they can also come in the form of sales and income taxes. You can't really do anything about Federal Income Taxes because they apply to the whole country. In New Hampshire, the main tax is property taxes; so if you have a high income and low property value, then you don't pay much in state and local taxes. If you want a really expensive house, then you are going to pay proportionately more in state and local taxes. Better school districts tend to have higher property taxes so that's a consideration if you plan to put your kids in public schools. One approach to saving money is to live in a weaker district but to use private schools, charter schools or home schooling.
My 2014 Retina MacBook Pro does everything that I need it to do but this would be a fun machine even though I don't think that I could use more than maybe 25% of the CPU. I do some video transcoding from time to time but I think this would be insane for that.
Boston has a vibrant tech scene but it's quite an expensive place to live. It's not as expensive as San Francisco or New York but it's not cheap and it appears to be getting more expensive. There's a small city called Nashua just over the border in New Hampshire. Houses aren't too bad, traffic isn't too bad, no income tax, no sales tax but property taxes are relatively high. There is some high-tech in Nashua itself up to Manchester (city to the north) and there's a fair amount of high-tech companies south to Burlington, MA (you can commute to jobs in MA down about 20 miles - you don't really want to commute into Boston). The biggest downside is likely the cold, snow and ice. The Southern NH area is mostly a family area - not a big singles scene - younger adults prefer to live and work in Boston - this area is a nice place to raise a family.
I prefer Gnome Terminal but will just use xterms if GT isn't loaded on a system that I'm using.
My wife and I were added to some expedited airport list so that we go through a lower level of screening than other passengers. This year, it appears that our kids were added as they had to go through the regular line in past years and now go though the same line with us. I don't really have a clue as to how all of this stuff works.
Oracle has a Semantic layer over their RDBMS that comes with their Spatial package. My only knowledge of it comes from talking to a product manager about it a long time ago. My son works in a shop which uses SMW for their LIMS. I'd say that it's an enterprise application with him as the main developer and a few other non-IT/CS/EE folks writing queries against it. He's like a developer + DBA and everything goes through him and he writes almost all of the forms and reports from requests by his department. I've been fairly impressed with the size of their application that's been developed by a pretty small and mostly non-technical team. He has to fix SMW problems from time to time too. SMW had some rather severe problems with maintenance and I think that the group that used to do it is in Germany. There is a place to get maintenance I think but I don't know how reliable it is. He goes in and fixes problems with SMW when there's a problem that they can't work around. That's part of the fun with Open Source.
+1
I work on multiple projects as well and my VD layout has evolved over time and location. If I'm at home, I am hooked up to a single WUXGA display so everything is on one monitor and I use five virtual desktops for everything. In the office, I have two screens but I still use the same five VDs but in a different layout. When mobile, I use the same setup that I use at home. I have a Linux development environment on the main monitor (when I'm running multiple monitors). I will put different projects in different terminal windows. I have a Notes application that has pages for my projects so that I can quickly get back context when I'm moving from one project to another. My remaining VDs browser, email and short text notes and todo lists. I got to where I am by trying out different things and determining what works better (by finding the problems with other setups). Eventually you get to something that's optimal overall. Then you may have to tweak it for new tools or new features or new hardware. This overall approach seems pretty simple. I don't think that I'd set up a VD per project unless I needed multiple operating systems and then we'd have to play with VMs.
The weather in the Northeast the past five weeks has been absolutely brutal on roofs. It's resulted in dangerous weight conditions resulting in many roof failures and ice dam issues resulting in interior leaks. The biggest problem in my area is finding professionals to get rid of ice and snow on roofs. Guys that will know how to work in dangerous conditions and not damage your property and that understand the issues that lead to roofing problems. Also guys that can deal with chunks of ice weighing hundreds of pounds and realizing that they shouldn't be breaking off ice just over a skylight or other fragile features around a home. It's also nice if they clean off all of the snow and ice around your property that came off your roof. Let me know when there's a robot that can do this.
The main problem with homeschooling statistics is the self-selection problem as parents choose to homeschool. The homeschooling results are compared to public school results which have a mix of selection and default. We don't know how the kids of homeschooling parents would have turned out had they gone to public schools. Homeschooling parents are presumably more dedicated and involved and would probably be a net positive for public schools with free labor from parents. Homeschooling itself is self-selection but often the research is as well. There are some studies that use a large population - say from a curriculum provider - but many are from those that answer questionnaires. If you were doing a poor job at it, would you answer the questionnaire? There is a tremendous amount of potential in homeschooling if you have the resources, time, energy, support and strong inclination. But it is a huge amount of work and you have to be able to deal with negative or questioning comments from neighbors, relatives, coworkers and others that the kids come into contact with. If you want to see the potential, take a look at Alison Miller - her mother practiced unschooling - basically let the kid study whatever they want to without necessarily any structure or curriculum. Two other well-known examples are Venus and Serena Williams. I believe that they used correspondence lessons. Homeschooling may have given them the time to practice tennis to become the best in the game. It's interesting that their parents didn't have any training for tennis or tennis instruction. The rate of learning at public schools, on average, is abysmally slow. Do even 1/2 of high school graduates know Algebra? There are many excellent districts but you may have to spend a lot of money on real estate to live in one of those districts so that your kids can attend them.
I received notice of a 30-year service award last week. Trying to decide if I stay here for another ten until retirement or look around - the job market is better than I've seen it in many years.
My son and daughter self-taught themselves C when they were around 11 or 12. I just gave them the K&R book and they played around with it. Son's university taught the first two courses in C (intro, data structures) and then did Java, Scheme, C++ in other classes. I thought that it was a really good way to go as you do feel closer to the metal. One thing that I like about C is that you can flip on the assembler switch to see the generated code and provide a little explanation as to what's going on at a lower level. They really don't understand until they get an architecture class but you can give them an idea as to what's going on below. Assembler can be a headache for students because you have to write so much code to get something done. A good macro facility can help a lot but it's hard to avoid a lot of typing.
If you're an academic, then you should have access via your institution via your library. If I really need something from ACM or other research journals, I can just ask one of my kids to get it for me through their universities. I could also drive to a local university with public access to computers with journal access.
I have a Garmin GPS Watch. It's great to track your runs and has a website where you upload your run information and biometrics so that you can replay your run or analyze your performance. It works as a regular watch as well. It can also give you a picture of your run or walk so that you can determine where you are relative to where you started in case you get lost. So it's good for running and they have models for triathletes that are waterproof to 10 meters or something like that. Mine handles the rain just fine. It will interface with fitness club equipment and digital scales and it comes with a chest strap that you can use to measure your heartrate while you workout. You can also set alarms for minimum and maximum limits. The updated model also has motion sensors in the chest strap so it can do things like analyze other stuff about how you run and make recommendations. Of course there are limitations. It's big and thick. It has a touch screen but it's imprecise and there's not a lot that you can do on a touchscreen that small. It will run for 8 hours on a charge. You need a special charger. I'm a runner and most people think that runners are nuts and they're probably right but a runner and geek will put up with the limitations to get the functionality present. I really doubt that Apple, Samsung, Google, etc. are going to produce something that caters to this market. I don't think that their products will have the durability of a special-purpose device and I don't think that their biometrics sensors will be anywhere as useful as the Garmin's chest strap. So I will be happy to see what they come up with but I have a lot of doubts as to how useful the devices will be. BTW, one thing that I would like is an iPod Nano with BlueTooth for my runs. I have older generation Nanos with wired headsets but I'd much rather go wireless. An iPod Nano watch would work but I'd have to wear my Garmin on one wrist and the Nano on the other.
Scientific calculator with motorized mag card reader for program and data storage. The card reader/writer no longer reads and writes reliably and the original NiCad batteries died many years ago but I use NiMH batteries in the original battery case and the calculator works. Nice to have an LED display as I like to work in dark conditions. I saw one at the Smithsonian back in the 1990s.
Met him in Whistler back in 2008 when he was doing JIT.
Thanks for checking. I won't be using the free version. I guess I'll have to buy a licensed version (and run it on Windows) or stick with Growly Notes. Growly Notes is the path of least resistance at the moment.
Growly Notes is not cloud-based software. It will sync selected notebooks in your LAN if you wish though. One-Note has online and offline modes. So you can save files in the Cloud if you want to or just locally. BTW, a huge number of people use Cloud-based tax prep services. A huge number of people use H&R Block where you give all of your tax information to a person and there have been cases of identity fraud with (human) tax prep services.
The current Mac OS X similar product is Growly Notes, written by a former Microsoft Word developer who now develops Mac OS X Apps. I use Growly Notes extensively for home and work stuff. I put my status information for my projects, record what I do daily and copy in Specs, emails, pictures, PDFs, etc. You can drag in videos, audio files and documents. The program will sync to other computers running the same software as well. I put my tax information in there which makes it easier to do my taxes. I have college stuff for the kids, hobby project ideas, directions for how to do things, etc. You can encrypt at the notebook or page level and you can do various searches. I've heard from others that One-Note does a lot more. One-Note can sync to the cloud but we don't put work-stuff on the cloud. I don't put a lot of personal and family stuff on the cloud either. You could drag all of your utility bills into One-Note so that you can retrieve them if and when you need them. One Note also has Outlook integration and I think that you can drag in stuff from Microsoft Office documents for live update. At any rate, I'm going to move over to One Note from Growly Notes as I want a product with support from a team and I like that I can put it on Windows and Mac OS X. It will be somewhat of a pain in the neck to migrate my stuff over. BTW, this is a big deal. One-Note was originally designed as a planning and notebook tool for college students. Microsoft bought it and a lot of people found out how useful it is for the workplace.