tintedpane.com

First up, SlingShot bikes. These bikes have no down tube and instead rely on the longitudinal flexing of the top tube to provide a suspension feature. A big selling point is their ability to fold up for airline/car transport without requiring a check in fee/huge ass SUV. Is Dennis listening to this Ruban?

Second, we got a new linux flavor called Ubuntu. This distribution wants to take over your desktop. I don’t know how they’ll fare, but good luck. This provides a nice segue to Tomboy, a nice piece of linux software that keeps track of your notes in a wiki-linking fashion. I want to fire up a LiveCD to try it out…

Then there’s Seven-Zip, a zip/unzip program for windows that can replace WinZip. It boasts a higher compression rate than WinZip, but I’ll probably be using it because it’s free and doesn’t have the annoying WinZip popup everytime I use it. The speed is also very satisfactory. Seat of the pants feels like it’s even zippier (sic). It’ll also replace WinRAR.

Finally, for everyone who works in front of a monitor, which is everyone I know, there’s Workrave, a piece of open source software that helps prevent/reduce the symptoms of RSI. (Actually, every piece above is OSI compliant.) It has a small window that can stay open telling you how long you’ve been on the computer (tracking keyboard presses and mouse movements). The way it works is to have microbreaks (~30secs) every few minutes and a rest (~5-10min) every hour or so. It keeps track of stats such as how many key presses you’ve made and how many meters you’ve traveled with your mouse. Included are exercise techniques and a lockout feature that forces you to take breaks from the computer. All of this is highly configurable of course.