Right now the PC is my office computer, which means I have two internal harddrives – a primary and a backup – and two monitors, along with video editing software that can process my stupid camera’s obscure file format natively. What I’d like do do is this:

• Move the Mac to the office and the PC to my room (I can’t play video games on the Mac, so it seems better to use it as a work computer)
• Buy a mini-DisplayPort to VGA adapter so I can use a second monitor with the iMac (~$8, including shipping)
• Get more storage space, either:
  • Buy two external hard drive enclosures to use with the iMac – one for storage (since the 300 gig internal drive isn’t cutting it for me) and one for backup (around $30 or $35 each)
  • OR crack open the iMac and put in a new drive (I have tons sitting around). I’d still need one more external case for backup
  • OR do both? Decadent!

That list wasn’t quite as overwhelming (or expensive!) as I thought, which is nifty. Any other thoughts on how I can make my work/play setup as awesome as possible, for as little money as possible?

Galcon

Just got Galcon on my Android phone to tide me over while I’m traveling this week. (And am currently playing it instead of, y’know, memorizing my lines or prepping for my show…)

It’s a pretty great game, described by Penny Arcade as “Space Risk in Real Time.” That is, you’re trying to take and hold planets by moving armies around. There are no dice rolls – it’s a pure numbers game – and the bigger your planets are the faster you generate new armies.

At an easy $2.99, available for iPhone and (in a larger edition) for computer) I highly recommend it.

You will be missed

It was bought by a local record store, to entertain their customers, so I still plan on stopping by to say ‘hi’.

I bought this one! This one! Mine!

As I mentioned last month, I bought an electric bike shortly after I got out of the hospital. Specifically, a Currie EZip Trailz. (I feel particularly clever because it’s currently $499 at Amazon, but I bought it for a brief period when it was $399.) I haven’t really discussed it much since then, though, so I figured it was time for an actual review.

First, a bit on how electric bikes work. They all have some sort of motor connected to a battery, allowing for extra oomph while biking. The motor is either strapped onto the fame (like my bike) or, for more expensive models, built into the hub of the wheel. The hub motors are better and quieter, but the external motors are cheaper. The battery then goes somewhere on the frame of the bike, in this case attaching to the rear rack. Again, on fancier bikes, the battery is more well-hidden. Depending on the style of the bike, you get power to the motor either automatically, by pedaling, or manually, by a handle-mounted throttle or trigger.

The Trailz is about as low-end of an electric bike as you can find. It’s a steel frame, so it’s super heavy, the battery is less expensive, so it’s heavy, and the motor is mounted rather than hub-based, so it’s heavy. With the battery, the bike weight about 90 pounds. Without, it’s closer to 75. I got the step-through model because, to be totally honest, it’s a bit more girlie. So sue me.

The bike has two modes of operation, which Currie calls “Pedal Assist” (PA) and “Twist and Go” (TAG). Pedal assist means that the motor will automatically kick in when you’re pedaling, to give you an extra bit of power. You can also twist the throttle to get even more power, but by default the motor will help you out a bit. In my experience, PA gets me to about 13 or 14 MPH without much work, which is pretty great. TAG means you don’t have to pedal at all, but I rarely use it because it makes me feel like a complete tool. It’s fun, particularly when showing off the bike to friends, but I like the experience of pedaling a bit.

This is the emotional experience of riding the electric bike.

What I usually end up doing is using pedal assist to get me up as fast as it’ll go, then twist the throttle for maximum speed. I’m going to be a giant dork and say I feel like it gives me afterburners, which is just awesome. It’s particularly fun to pull up next to a (real) biker at a stoplight, and just waste them when the light turns green. Or bike lazily by someone who is clearly working much harder than I am, even though I’m going faster.

Using the pedal and the throttle, I’ve been averaging about 16 MPH, and can hit 20 MPH if I want to really work for it. For comparison, on my real bike, I usually averaged about 14 MPH and was working a hell of a lot harder for those 14 than I do now for the 16.

So what about downsides? Well, the big one has been weight. I intentionally chose an inexpensive entry-level electric bike, and I’m not regretting the purchase. However, next summer or the summer after, I may seriously consider selling this one and upgrading to something with a lighter frame and/or a better (and lighter!) battery. While biking with the motor, you don’t notice the weight. But if you try to bike without the motor, or need to carry the bike at all, the weight becomes kind of ridiculous. It’s like you have this easy, breezy time getting up to 16 MPH with the motor, but then hit a steep incline in difficulty. Not just because you’re trying to go faster, but because you’re suddenly trying to drag the 90 pounds of steel bike and heavy battery with you.

Likewise, the throttle is a little tight. By which I mean it takes too much effort to hold it in place to go – the spring returning it to the neutral position is strong enough that my hand will begin to tense up over the ~6.5 mile ride to work. Possibly a sign I should lay off the friggin’ throttle, but why would I want to do that?!

I do like that the battery is removable, even though it’s friggin’ heavy. That means I can store the bike somewhere – in my garage at home or in the basement storage unit at my office – and still take the battery up to my apartment or my office to charge. The charger is about the size of a laptop power thinger, so is easy to stick in my bike bag and take to and from work. In playing with the bike along the lakefront, I’ve successfully biked 15+ miles on a single charge, but I’m paranoid enough about being stranded at work that I take the charger with anyway. I’m pretty confident the 12 mile round trip would be no problem for the battery, I’m just a cautious gal.

Throttle and battery level

Speaking of the battery, the bike does have a red/yellow/green battery power indicator on the handlebar, which is nice. However, as anyone who has used something with a live battery status indicator can tell you, they aren’t very accurate. (Think about the battery gauge on your laptop.) If you’re cruising along using only a little battery, the indicator will be at green. If you then push the throttle and get a boost, the indicator may drop to yellow. If you go from a complete dead stop and use the throttle to get going (I’m lazy) it may even drop to red. I think I understand why – because it’s telling you the load it’s able to draw, and unlike gas tanks it’s hard to tell how much is “left” of a battery charge – but it’s still a little annoying. I think I’d rather have an analog needle gauge displaying the total charge, even though I know it’d jump around (like the digital lights do) as usage changed. But I’m a big geek who thinks about these things, so I don’t know if that’ll be a practical concern for most people.

So what do I think of my purchase? I (almost universally) love it. I have a few frustrations – namely the weight and the throttle – but nothing huge. I knew about the weight going in, and that’s purely an indication of how much I was willing to pay. But the ability to get to and from work on a bike, without having the full strain of biking, is awesome. And it fit what my original goals were: A) I’m able to raise my heart rate without arriving to work drenched in sweat, and B) Getting to work on the electric bike results in a comparable travel time to driving. On the way up to work, when there wasn’t much traffic, it takes me a bit longer to bike than to drive. But on the way home, during rush-hour, it’s probably just as fast – if not faster – to use the electric bike as it is to drive. I’m also more willing to stop and get groceries or whatnot on the way home, because carrying them is easier and less effort.

The only reason I’m rethinking the purchase is because of my situation with work. This may have not been the best financial decision as I look for another job, but it was definitely a great purchase. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments, but I’ll have to answer them later: I’m about to go bike to work.

A physical copy of You Suck costs $10.07 on Amazon. The Kindle version costs $9.99.

I realize that the promotion, layout and typesetting, and author fees make up more of the cost of a book than the physical, printed book. But I’m sorry – I refuse to believe the physical book costs eight fucking cents.

iTunes is a brilliant example of digital distribution done well: It’s easier than searching for files on torrent sites, it’s cheaper than buying the physical album, and the per-song and per-album costs aren’t insulting to the buyer.

At $6.99 I’d consider buying the Kindle version of You Suck. At $4.99 it becomes less expensive than the used copies, and leaps into the realm of “impulse buy.” At $2.99 or less, I’d be buying eBooks left and right, even if they only garnered mediocre reviews. It’d be worth it to take the risk, and I’d probably stop going to the library entirely.

At $9.99, a whopping $0.08 less than the hard copy, I feel sort of embarrassed for Amazon. It’s like I was flirting with a few different girls. One represents buying the book, one represents going to the library, one represents pirating the book, and one represents buying a Kindle edition.

Buying the book is super hot, great in bed, but requires expensive gifts.

Taking the book out from the library is pretty good looking, solid in bed, but unwilling to make long-term commitments.

Pirating the book makes me feel a little dirty, but suppressing my guilt is often worth the solid make-out sessions.

And, in the corner, sits Amazon’s Kindle. She seems really hot, almost as good as buying the book outright, until you approach. She gets up to  say “Hi”, trips over herself, spills punch all over her dress, drops the glass and breaks it, and in the silence when everyone turns to look at her, someone else whispers, “Yeah, I hear she’s also got a bad case of crabs.”

It’s just embarrassing to watch.

I bought this one! This one! Mine!

Just ordered an electric bike. I’ve been talking about this for a while (over a year, in fact) but I’ve always resisted.

I have the money saved up, but I always have trouble spending money on myself. It’s so easy to justify not spending, to save for that next thing (or, say, the hospital bills I’m still getting). At the same time, this account was specifically set up to save for fun things, and this is fun!

I finally had a chance to test drive the one I ended up buying, the Currie EZip Trailz, and it was a lot of fun. It’s the low end of the Currie line (an already lower-end electric bike company) and I really seriously considered getting a more expensive model. But this version was a lot of fun to ride, even though it was a heavy (steel) beast.

And, dammit, I’m having a tough time right now. And I wanted a toy. Yay!

Aquaria

Like computer games? Like indie computer games? (Like the previously-mentioned World of Goo?) Than you’ll love The Humble Indie Bundle. It’s a pay-what-you-can system where, for whatever you decide to send toward the project, you’ll get five great indie games, and some of your money will go toward two amazing charities: Child’s Play and The Electronic Frontier Foundation. The games also all run on Windows, Mac, and Linux. I feel like I’m using too many italics in this post, but I’m crazy excited at projects like this.

Penumbra

They’ve already raised over one million dollars (prompting an extension of the Humble Bundle) with more than $100,000 going to each of these developers and each charity. I paid $20 (slightly more than the average) but feel like I got more than my money’s worth.

So go! What are you waiting for?!

So it surprises me when – on days like today – I see that WordPress.com Stats shows The Thang Blog has been viewed 50,000 times in the last year or so. And it really surprised me to see a graph like this:

February is only half-way over, so its numbers are looking pretty good, too

Now those are views, not visitors. So if you’ve been sitting on a page hitting ‘refresh’ all day, you’re being counted twice in the above graph. But Google Analytics, which is a little smarter than WordPress.com Stats, is still telling me I’ve had 11,000 “unique visitors” over the past year(ish).

As someone with no pretenses of fame, I think that’s pretty cool.

Google Analytics also gives me some really fun (if, for my purposes, useless) statistics. Just like I was hoping.

• The majority of you – 61% – use Firefox. (Then it’s IE, Safari, Chrome, Opera)
• The majority of you – 69% – use Windows. Most of the Windows users are on XP.
• 11 visits have come from someone(s) looking at this blog on a Playstation 3. Why? I can’t imagine…
• Top referral sites are Google, passiveagressivenotes.com, and stumbleupon.com

I’d love to take this as an opportunity for any lurkers to come out and say hi! Do you have a blog? I’d love to hear about it. Have you been reading for a while, but never commented? Now’s the time! The statistics are fun to see, but they don’t really tell me who is reading this blog – give a ‘hello’ in the comments, and tell me something about yourself.

But, even as just the voice mail, it’s great!

First, it displays a visual voice mail list of recent voice mails. And shows (poorly, computer-generated) transcripts, which is cool, but not horribly helpful. It also allows you to see the transcripts, and listen to voice mail, online. But the visual voice mail display and navigation, totally integrated within Android after downloading the Google Voice app, is GREAT!

In theory, I should get invites to let other people get in on the fun. I don’t have any right now, but I only registered a few hours ago. Lemme know if you’d like an invite and, if/when I get any, I’ll send ‘em your way.

On a slightly unrelated note, I think I figured out why my Droid kept killing calls, putting people on speaker phone, hitting keys, etc. (Basically, why it was letting the touch screen turn on during phone calls.) The sensor to check whether or not the phone is at your ear is in the upper-left corner of the screen, not the upper-right, as I’d previously thought. Adjusting how I held the phone, coupled with snipping off the piece of screen protector covering the sensor, seems to have elimnated the “why can’t my fucking phone be a good phone?!” problems I’ve been having.

Hopefully, anyway…