I'm typing this on my new netbook . It's an Acer Aspire One from Walmart ($298 retail). Sounds like a plug because it is. I get no money from this, but I like to extole the virtue of value. I know in my last entry I talked about thriftiness and saving for the important purchases, but this is my one big-ticket item for a while. I bought this because I wanted something to do my extra-curricular work on seeing as how my old desktop is 3 years old and I needed to update my work environment. In this case, I'm keeping the desktop to do the heavy graphics stuff and using this for development and blogging on the side. I can't always be home, so I got this to be able to do so.

It's a marvel of technology (at least at this time, it is). A little Atom processor (dual-core 1.6GHz) with a gig of memory and a large hard drive. The box spec reads 120GB, but actual size was ~150GB, so I definitely got my money's worth (YMMV, so you may just end up with the 120GB drive, either way still a good deal). 3 USB ports, 2 MMC ports (1 SD, 1 multi), RJ45 port, and built-in wi-fi. Just what you need to do a little work on the 'net on the side. No CD/DVD device, so program installation is limited to what you can get on either Flash memory sticks/cards, but with the standard software and what is available through the 'net, you can really do quite a bit. I have a dev environment set up so that I can test page updates without internet connectivity, and I have some minimal graphics software to do some basic editing if I have to. All in all, worthwhile.

My wife also wanted her laptop back. It was useful to have a wireless laptop for when I'm not in my office to check e-mail and the like. She was complaining I spent more time on her laptop than she did, so I compromised and bought this one.

My son calls it "Michael-sized," which it is. He thinks it might be for him. Someday it might be, but for now, it's all mine. The keyboard is smaller than normal, but it still is pretty easy to type on. A few keys which are located weird, but I guess I'll get used to it. The display maxes out at 1024x600, which is small for most, but larger than my first computer's display (at 640x480). It makes thing a bit hard to read, but if you max the Internet Explorer window (F11), you can make respectable reading for most pages. This is a good thing.

If you get an opportunity to test drive one, I wholly recommend you do so. Don't just buy it because it's "cute." If it turns out you can't stand the size of the display or keyboard, then it's really not worth the money. There are other larger sized laptops out there, just a little bit more in cost. This model prides itself on portability, and that means doing without the bells and whistles that larger displays can bring.

Oh, yeah, and if you plan to spend any length of time on it longer than 20 minutes, buy a mouse. The touchpad works for short time lookups, but a mouse is so much easier to deal with. Also try to update the touchpad drivers to disable the pad on external mouse plug-in. Saves you some time from re-typing when your fingers graze the touchpad while typing.

But as the means to an end, it works for me...

I found something out... I'm not alone in this part of the world. Not the real world... I'm never alone here. Not the virtual world... there are too many to count and one can be sure that they can find a partner to level in an number of MMOs out there. No, I speak of my blog. I seem to be sharing bandwidth with people who are too limited to create their own graphics... let me discourse...

I created kenzden.com about 5 years ago. Not much more than a collection of webpages that I put files for the world to see and, if they want to, use. I've expanded since then with a couple of blogs and a forum, but the original webpages still exist. These people are NOT using my files, but rather my bandwidth. They are linking my file(s) to their webpage when they create them. This shouldn't come as a surprise to me. I'm an artist and sometimes people ask me for art. This I understand. If I post it on the web, I expect it to be viewed, copied, heck even plagiarized (not that I tolerate that... I'll go after folk if I think it's worth it). These guys have the nerve to link their Style Sheet Background code to a file named Black640x320.bmp... That's right a BLACK BITMAP ! Nevermind that anyone with half a brain can open up Microsoft Paint, set the properties to 640x320 pixels and fill it in black. It irked me... thence lies the tale...

So I check my logs for the first time in 5 years... just a simple one-day log and I notice something that I've seen in the stats page I have, but never really investigated. I have several pages putting GET requests for Black640x320.bmp . The stats page shows that Black640x320.bmp is a popular file, but I just figure people are using and downloading my tutorial. But there were entries for Swedish blogs in the referral sites... aLOT of hits from them. So when I'm checking my logs I see these GET statements and that starts to cheese me off... I start to plan my revenge...

I take a 640x320 bitmap (black, of course) and add a little bit of text to it. Something like "Don't link to my graphics. Make your own Black bitmap." I run off to the blog sites and sure enough... there they are! I monitor the logs for the next couple of hours just to see if these sites are visited frequently. Sure enough there are more log entries for the sites. One of them drops from the log and I go visit. They have nicely removed the link from their style sheet. The others, not so much. I take a new bitmap and add " This file is no longer available. " We'll see what happens.

It's not so much that they were using the image, or even really stealing my bandwidth so they wouldn't have to take up space on their precious sites. It's the fact they they didn't have clue that they just needed to set their background style to #0000000 and it would put a purely BLACK background on their site, which was what they were after (I checked their sheets, and yes, that was what they had set for). It's script kiddies that don't understand what they are doing that irks me. Take the time to learn a little about what you are setting up. It was A BLACK BITMAP ! Not even an image, just black...

Talk about thick....