Jeni's Musings

When I was young, my dad taught me a way of making tough decisions. You get a sheet of paper, make one column for each of the possibilities, and list pros and cons. The one that ends up with the most (important) pros and least (important) cons is the one that you should choose. My dad is a TJ-type.

My mum also taught me a way of making tough decisions. Her way was to toss a coin. But the point was not to just toss the coin, but to see how you feel when it landed. If you’re pleased, go with it. If you’re disappointed, ignore it and go with the other choice. My mum is a FJ-type.

[Update: Added Lenovo X300 to the comparison table. I haven’t managed to find a firm price, but the model I’d be looking at (with 4Gb RAM) is selling for 2,926 Euros, which is £2,230.58.]

My current laptop is on its last legs, due to an annoying hardware problem (the plastic holding together the screen hinge on the right has broken, and every time you open up the laptop it feels like there’s a chance the screen will disconnect entirely).

So I need to find a new laptop, which is a shame because aside from being underpowered compared to current laptops, this one is just about perfect. It’s a Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook P7010 and has the following characteristics that I appreciate:

• small: it’s about the size of an A4 piece of paper (but thicker, obviously), sits easily on my knees even in cramped commuter trains, and slides neatly into a smart shoulder bag that people never suspect holds a computer
• light: it’s much less than 2kg, which is my cut-off weight
• widescreen: it’s a 10.6” widescreen with a resolution of 1280x768. Actually, it’s the width that I appreciate, so I guess widescreen isn’t essential if the screen is larger anyway, but I need those 1280 pixels.
• battery life: the battery life used to be around 6 hours, which is enough for the longest train journeys, or just an evening unconstrained by power cords; it’s tailed off now, but it’s still not bad

So first there was the XML Summer School. This year was my sixth, and it was really great to hang out with chums old and new. I love that

• you get to meet people from all corners of the XML community, even ones you haven’t got the slightest interest in, and learn that they’re human too (even the web services guys)
• there’s always something to learn; I’ve seen some talks for six years on the trot, others were completely new this year, but they’re all worth attending because the audience, war stories and discussion are always different. Also, because each talk is aimed at newcomers, you get a great overview of topics that you’re not so familiar with, and you can always chat to the speaker later to find out more
• there are social events laid on every evening that you’re expected to attend, so you’re practically forced to socialise, which is useful for an insecure introvert like me who’d otherwise be sitting in her hotel room getting miserable imagining everyone else having a good time
• there’s a creche, so despite being inseparable from two small children over the last four years, I’ve still been able to attend without dragging an entourage with me (not that I object to the entourage, just the expense and the dependency)

I left feeling not only invigorated and inspired, but also a part of a fun and friendly community.

My dad got me a FLY pentop computer for my birthday! Basically, it lets you draw your own interface on special paper: draw a box, some numbers, some operators and an equals sign, and you’ve got a calculator; draw a keyboard and some circles for drums, and you can make music; write details of an appointment, and it’ll store it and repeat it at the designated time.

My dad (Hello Barry!) has much more time to surf than I do, and often sends me interesting links. One that he sent recently was a video presentation of a multi-touch interface that’s really worth checking out. I thought I’d just write down a few of my thoughts on that and one of the talks at DocEng 2006 on interactive paper, since they’re both about how we might interact with computers in more intuitive ways in the future.