A Drunken Madman

It's good to have friends in Sales & Marketing. Courtesy of the great folks over at Wacom, I'm now the very proud owner of a Graphire Bluetooth Tablet. I also took posession of some videos explaining how Wacom gear works with Windows Vista (more on this anon) which can be viewed here, here, here, here and here.

Actually installing the hardware was easy as. Out of the box and onto the desk it goes, in goes the rechargable lithium-polymer battery, on goes the charging cord, and the included bluetooth dongle goes into a handy USB port (or not, if you have it built in, as one of my notebooks does). Windows Vista takes care of installing this device with no issues, then it's a simple matter of adding a new device in windows while activating the 'connect' feature of the tablet with a little button on the base.

From here, all easy. Then came the tablet driver bit. Three attempts with the bundled driver was enough - clearly the driver isn't Vista-compatible despite the fact that it shipped with a prominent 'Windows Vista' decal. Luckily, the Wacom site has this driver, which does work, and from there, plain sailing.

So what does it offer me? Well, for one thing it's wireless, so I can slip it into my laptop bag and have pen input anywhere. I get Vista's Tablet PC features without investing in a tablet PC, and I get gesture control and other nifty stuff. Now all I have to do is re-learn how to use one, as my previous Wacom Pen Partner has been at end-of-life for, oh, years. I'm quite looking forward to sitting in the pub, tablet on knee, laptop on table, and drawing terrible things for the amusement of all.

Photos available here - oh, and it retails for about 400 bucks. Thanks Wacom!

Last night's Curry Run was low on numbers but high on fun as the Runners headed to Cumin in Crow's nest. The night was kicked off in fine style at the Crows Nest Hotel with plenty of Cooper's consumed by the lads and much toot talked. Slightly late we headed off to the restaurant, a venue we've visted before, but back when it was Piar. Already a few sheets to the wind, many sheets were added with wine over a banquet of Lamb Rogan Josh, Butter Chicken, Beef Vindaloo, naan and rice - standard fare but nicely done. Much more toot was talked and promises to catch up when sober made (of which I've remembered a scant one)

Yah Boo Sucks to the runners who didn't make it (you know who you are) and Yay to those who did! And watch this space for a potential schism in the ranks as I begin to form an Inner West chapter of CRU for those of us on the right side of the bridge. Photos are available right here - submit caption ideas in the comments area...

My cubemate Tristank just got a new notebook delivered. And well may I say notebook - it's not much bigger than the familar spiral-bound paper notebooks we used to carry around once upon a time. It's a Fujitsu Lifebook P1610 and it came with 80Gb of Harddrive and 512Mb RAM, powered by a 1.2GHz processor and wrapped in a cute little tabletPC format, pumping out a 1280x768 image on a 9 inch-wide touch screen

In the picture above it nestles comfortably atop my personal dreadnought notebook, an Alienware Area 51m, with 17inch screen (1920x1200), with twin harddrive bays (currently 1x 80Gb), 2Gb RAM, a 2.13GHz processor and 256Mb of video memory on a Radeon Geforce GO6800. Oh yes, and a 5.1 audio subsystem with subwoofer.

Both are running Windows Vista Ultimate, and surprisingly, both run Glass. While I adore the screen real-estate and outright power offered by my beastie, I have to confess a certain feeling of, well, charm exuding from Tristan's pocket pack. Now if I could just get over the compulsion to call it Barbie's Dream Laptop I'd be tempted to invest in one myself.

Oh, and the small one weighs in approx 1Kg (2.2lbs). Big one is specced at 3.6Kg (8lbs)

Update: Tristank's blog on the subject is here

Yes, despite the opposition of wannabe-theocrats John Boy, Abbot and Costello, Mark Vaile, and (surprisingly or not) new Labor leader Kevin 'bring in the god squad' Rudd, Peter Garrett and Tony Burke, therapuetic cloning of embyos has the go-ahead. A step forward has been made, despite the opposition of those who prefer to think with the gut in place of the organ so well evolved for it, the brain.

Said Rudd: "I find it very difficult to support a legal regime which allows creation of a form of human life with the single purpose of allowing the conduct of experimentation.". Well, yeah. OK. Twisting the point a little though, aren't you? We're not talking about Josef Mengele type experimentation here. We're talking about genuine medical research which may benefit millions. Morally, what's your stance on IVF, Kev? Many, millions of embryoes are created every year for IVF treatments for the sole benefit, in each case, of a single family. Most are destroyed, incinerated. Where's the difference?

Using these embryos to form stem cell lines could allow medical miracles to happen, and that promise was almost crushed by people in parliament whose possibly-sincere beliefs cloud the rational judgement which would otherwise exist, and whose ways of thinking obscure facts which don't fit their fluffy pink worldview.

Luckily, saner heads have prevailed.

Further reading: TellMeAboutStemCells.org

[Update: Blacklash has started; "We lost, therefore we're going to whine to the press and try to demonise the issue"]
[Update#2: Yes, I've suspended judgement and waded in to the SMH's reaction page. I know they're just echo chambers which do little but add noise to the issue, but I feel strongly about this issue.]
[Update #3: The News.com.au reaction is saner than I expected it to be. The usual level of discourse there is, shall we say, semi-literate. Also, thinking about Rudd's vote against this bill, are we looking at the beginning of Australian Labor's march towards a Blairite model? A left wing party led by a man with right wing ideas?]
[Update #4: after a re-read it seems the IVF info I've used previously doesn't specifically apply here -  this bill allows use of embryoes from different sources - however it still stands that if you oppose using embryoes for this kind of research, then you MUST oppose IVF, for the same reasons, destruction of embryoes being the primary one. Article updated accordingly]
[Update #5: SMH is carried a list of how pollies voted on the issue. Please, if you support the issue and your MP voted yes, call or email your local member and congratulate them for taking a good stand on an emotive issue. Anthony Albanese, our member, voted for the bill]