racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

Finally! I’ve been searching high and low for a real live unit. Now I’ve finally seen one. It’s the HP 2133 Mini Note–the entry-level Linux version.

This one was spotted at an electronics retail store in Trinoma in Quezon City, selling for the SRP of PhP 24,9xx.

So far, I haven’t seen any other stores currently carrying the mini note in stock.

Here’s an interesting video supposedly of Bill Gates’ last day on Microsoft. This was shown during Bill’s keynote at the 2008 CES.

A few days ago we bought an inexpensive Philips AZ1021 Sound Machine, which has a CD player and an AM/FM tuner. With full-fledged mini and micro component systems at my living room and home office I initially had second thoughts, but given the attractive price of PhP 1,700 (less discounts; price is equivalent to about US$50) I thought it wouldn’t hurt to have one more. I intended this for use in the bedroom, and for Caren’s and Cate’s preschool classroom (their CD player was giving out already).

What’s great about the AZ1021 and most other portable Philips CD players is that they can run on batteries.

Little did we know we’d be very grateful for buying the tuner/CD player that day. We woke up from our sound sleep Saturday night to howling winds and with the power out. I knew there was a storm coming, but I didn’t know it will be hitting Metro Manila directly.

So I dropped in six “C” cells and tuned in to one of the reliable AM stations (DZMM, 630 KHz) to monitor the happenings around the country. Our other tuners at home were either FM-only, or were AC-only, or both, so the Philips was the only one we could use to tune into radio news (except for the car’s AM/FM tuner, of course).

And it turned out we were hit pretty strong. Typhoon Frank was already aground, with storm signal no. 3 in the Metro, bringing about a lot of casualties and injuries here and elsewhere.

And during those times, you would hear the radio commentators/news anchors urging people to go out and get battery-operated radios. You sure would appreciate small pieces of low-tech in these times of crisis.

If you’re looking for a theme to spice up your WordPress blog, try out Rubidious, Performancing Themes’ June release.

Rubidious is a three-column theme sporting deep hues of red and blue. The theme name is based on the chemical element Rubidium, which comes from the Latin term for “deepest red”.

Two light-on-dark sidebars sit on opposite sides of the main content. The left sidebar is called “menu” in the Widgets configuration page (WordPress 2.5), and is ideally made for navigational elements like links various subpages. The theme supports WordPress 2.5’s avatar features, though it should work with WordPress 2.3 just fine.

I have a few new personal blogs I’ll be launching and I think I’ll be giving Rubidious a try.

ForeverGeek reports that a company called QuickerTek has developed solar panels for the MacBook Air for charging while on the go. And then there are also solar-cell embedded handbags in which you can charge your mobile phone or iPod.

With energy costs surging up these days, I think it’s great to look into alternative sources. These are still expensive, though. At $1,000 a pop for the solar cells for the MacBook–that’s about half the cost of the notebook itself!

But when you’re in the middle of nowhere, without any other power sources, I bet having sunlight power your devices would sure be cool.