BigCat’s Blog of DOOM

I bring to you the best thing about democracy and open source all wrapped into a super-charged challenge to the established business models of the ‘man’ capped off with a bottled entrepreneurs spirit of true capitalism.

OpenMoko: How to disrupt and Industry, but make more money for everyone.

That is their sub-line, not mine…it links to a presentation the inventor did.

I’ve written briefly about this before, but I’ll summarize what this is again. You take a completely open source design for hardware (as in all schematics are available, and so are all of the API’s, drivers, and such for the chips in it), package a specialized version of Linux on it to look slick on mobile phones (much like motorola recently did for the RAZR and other new phones, aptly named motolinux), supply it only with open, standards-based protocols for communications (screw you Verizon and Sprint and your stupid CDMA) and you pop out a baby of bottled freedom and money in the form of a phone.

This phone’s release date for developers was announced recently on the mailing list.

For reference, here is a comparison to the iPhone.
http://www.libervis.com/article/forget_iphone_hail_openmoko_the_true_revolution, and here is a feature by feature breakdown
http://www.linuxtogo.org/gowiki/OpenMoko/iPhone, except this list is missing the new accelerometers that the Neo1973/OpenMoko have recently added to the retail hardware release.

( Why this Matters to you....or as I like to say it 'Why I want to kick the Man in the face' )

So I led worship last night at small group for the first time ever. It was a lot of fun and a little scary. Definitely played like crap, but no one seemed to mind much. (gotta love that about the small group environment when it comes to trying new things)

The most interesting thing came from me neglecting to bring a pick. I was just using my thumb and middle finger pressed together and strumming across my fingernails like that when I noticed that was really starting to hurt at one point on the top of my middle finger.

As it turns out, I dragged my finger from my first knuckle down at one point instead of hitting the strings with my fingernail….and now I’m missing the skin from there and the blood needs to be cleaned off of my guitar and strings.

I didn’t realize what was up completely until I finished. Luckily I don’t think anyone else did either, so it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Just makes me wish I wasn’t doing some installation of some motors myself today cuz it stings like a bitch when I get grease or dirt on it.

The last sentence in this story is wrong. This is a purposeful attack engineered by the hive-mind.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL1432171020070614

Besides just being interested in the Tesla Roadster I’ve been on a big eco-friendly kick, and just had an odd interest in power electronics in general lately. To that end, here are some odd links.

Very cool:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/06/enertia_house.php

Very Stupid…I hate the government…they are now attacking people for being inventive and friendly to the enviornment
http://www.charlotte.com/112/story/153260.html

Another note, I’m possibly going to be putting solar power in the house…no joke. We have a very exposed south facing side of the roof, and even in the winter you can run the meter backwards during the day. It is going to be through a neat company exploring a new buisness model for solar installations. It is an interesting rental idea, where they do the install and own the equipment, and you only pay a flat rental fee. It has a bit of a pyramid thinger to it, so if you do it say that I referred you. The local rep I’m working through is at this site and the company is called Citizenre.

A weird link for you.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-06-12-cellphones_N.htm?csp=34

and another neat one having to do with wireless power for your cell phone.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/wildcharge/wireless-gadget-charging-makes-world-debut-july-9-268185.php

Tomorrow I update on my mythTV project which now has some basic TV tuning capabilities…now I just need an antenna to get the signals Updates when I finish it.

Hardware arrived this weekend. Geforce 6200 AGP. Had to dremel off a little bit of the lower part of the bracket for mounting in the dell dimension 4100 because it has some stupid guide things on the bottom of the slots. The original GeForce 2 MX had a small chunk missing there (only it looked like it was made that way) so I just shaved down a similar part to match on the new card.

Impressions so far is that Beryl runs a lot smoother, and the front-end software for MythTV looks a little snappier. Came with S-video TV Output, so the hooking it directly to the TV will have to wait for a while until I get a new AV receiver.

HDTV Tuner card should be in tomorrow or the next day. Looking forward to trying this whole MythTV thing out in its entire glory once I get that working.

I will update then.

Fascinating article about a female reporter for the LA times working in and around Saudi Arabia. Really worth it if you have a few minutes.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-women6jun06,1,6178058,full.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

If you haven’t seen this yet, make sure to check it out, cuz it is pretty sweet.

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=40.714476,-74.006996&spn=0.04001,0.063858&z=14&om=1&layer=c&cbll=40.714496,-74.007007

I guess my only question is; When they take the picture of my house, how can I make sure that I’m standing in front of it, so I get my picture taken with the house?