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My 2007 trip to Chicago

Dave Farquhar General , , ,

I just got back from Chicago. I used to go there a lot, but hadn’t been since high school. Consider this my travel diary. I don’t expect it to be interesting to most people, but maybe someone else will find it useful.Lodging

We stayed at a hotel in Rosemont. The rates are much better in the suburbs, but to get to the Museum of Science and Industry when it opened at 9:30, we had to leave at 7 am. That’s counting the shuttle ride to get us close to the El station, the trip in the El with a transfer to another line, and a transfer to the bus line. So we were spending roughly five hours of our day traveling to and from the hotel.

Transportation

We used public transportation because parking in Chicago is expensive and it’s difficult to drive there. We may reconsider that in the future. It’s also possible, though, that if we stayed downtown near the things we want to do, we still wouldn’t need a car. The trip to the airport would be longer, but we only make that trip twice.

The CTA tourist pass is a really good deal, and the more days you buy, the deeper the discount. And if you make a mistake and leave the station when you meant to change lines, the mistake won’t cost you any extra money if you have the pass. If you’re paying as you go, it will.

My sister and brother in law used a Water Taxi to go from the Field Museum to Navy Pier via Lake Michigan. That was after we had split up for the day, so we didn’t do the Water Taxi thing, but they said it was a fun experience.

We flew to Chicago. I love flying, or maybe I should say I used to. I’ve flown three round trips since Sept. 11–once to and from Dayton, once to and from Orlando, and once to and from Chicago. The “random” screenings are absolutely, positively not random. I’ve been flagged each and every time. I know why. My name sounds vaguely Middle Eastern (it isn’t–it’s Scottish). As I was being patted down yet again today, a thought occurred to me as well. Why would any Arab use the name “David?” That would be like a member of the Bush family using the name “Saddam.”

My bag set off alarms, so it must have tested positive for something. Other than shampoo or sunscreen I have no idea what, but they weren’t going to tell me what they thought it tested positive for. After all, with a name like Farquhar, I might be a terrorist. Can’t trust those bagpipe-toters.

I’m thinking the next time, we should consider Amtrak. Chicago is a 45-minute flight from St. Louis, but the TSA told us to get there 3 hours early because of security. Figure 3 hours sitting at the airport, whatever time the plane has to sit waiting to take off, the time in the air, and the drive to the airport, and you’re up over the 4-hour mark. Amtrak is about 5 1/2 hours. It’s longer, but it’s a lot cheaper (I found a rate of $88 for two adults round-trip) we won’t get as much guilty-until-proven-innocent treatment, we can carry more baggage, and as far as I can tell there are a lot fewer silly restrictions on what we can take. Since my wife is a diabetic, we have to keep some food with us at all times, which meant we had to buy a bunch of food at the only place within walking distance of the hotel. The quality of what we could get wasn’t very high, and the prices were double or triple what we would have paid close to home (think $5 for a box of Cheerios). And we had to throw away our leftovers since we couldn’t put them in our carry-on luggage. I guess there’s a bomb recipe somewhere that calls for Cheerios and apples. Oh, wait. No, bringing outside food in might hurt the airport’s profits. But we’ll call it “security” because that sounds better.

Driving is an option, of course, but I can’t drive to and from Chicago for $88 in a Honda Civic.

So I’m thinking Amtrak, and put the savings toward staying in a hotel in a less out-of-the-way place.

Things to do

As far as things to do, the City Pass is a good deal. For $50, you can go see the observatory, the Han*censored* Building viewing deck, the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum, and the Museum of Science and Industry. If you see four of those, you more than pay for the booklet. Plus you don’t have to wait in line. That can save you a couple of hours per attraction all alone.

We’d buy the City Pass again.

Where to eat

What’s the point of going to Chicago if you don’t get pizza, right?

We tried Gino’s East one night on a tip from a friend of my brother in law. Of course it’s good. The place has been around since 1966.

But we got to talking pizza with the bus driver as we were en route from the Museum of Science and Industry to the Han*censored* Building. He told us to try Giordano’s. As luck would have it, there was a Giordano’s within walking distance of the hotel.

Now that I’ve done some digging, I think Giordano’s was the place we tried back in 1989 on our second trip to Chicago.

I liked them both. They were both distinctive, and neither is something I should eat on a regular basis if I want to continue to weigh about 145 pounds. But on a future trip I wouldn’t mind eating dinner at one and then doing dinner the next night at the other.

I remember the very first time my family went to Chicago was in 1985. We wanted to get Chicago style pizza, and somehow or other we stumbled on this place called Perry’s. I have absolutely no idea where it was. I found a website for a place on Devon Avenue in Park Ridge by that name that’s been around since 1967, and the menu features the Gutbuster, which I vividly remember Dad pointing out to me on the menu in 1985. So it’s possible this was the place.

Being our first experience with Chicago-style pizza, Perry’s is now a family legend. And you know how legends go. They get bigger with each passing year. I think within a couple of months the pizza in our memory had become a foot thick, or at least six inches. And nothing we’d had before, and nothing we’ve had since was half as good.

Part of me would love to find Perry’s again, but part of me thinks it would be best to just let legends be legends.

For lunch, a good choice is the nearest hot-dog stand for a Chicago-style hot dog. Let me preface this by saying I normally do not eat hot dogs. I don’t care much for the taste, and I know they’re one of the least healthy things on the planet for you to eat. But I liked these. A traditional Chicago-style dog has onion, tomato, pepper, pickle relish, mustard, chile pepper, and celery salt served on a poppy seed bun. If you put ketchup on it (the person at the counter won’t), the ghost of Mike Royko will come haunt you, and he’ll undoubtedly have some other disgusting ideas for things you could have put on the hot dog instead.

I wouldn’t eat them on a daily basis due to health concerns, but I’ll eat one every time I go to Chicago from now on.

Shopping

There aren’t many places on the Magnificent Mile that I can afford to walk into, let alone shop at, and I’ve never been much for shopping anyway. I hear Chicago has lots of really great train stores. I stayed away from those, putting my short-term financial goals ahead of my hobby.

But if you like to shop, there are tons of places to do it.

Meet Melvin.

Dave Farquhar Personal , , , ,

I have a new un-friend now. His name is Melvin.

Thanks to Melvin, I can almost add library sales to places I’ve been kicked out of. It’s a short list, but it includes the library, church, Best Buy, and substitute teacher Rick Hannebutt’s seventh grade theology class.It began innocently enough. My wife and I arrived early. We were 10th in line. The problem was that within about half an hour, we were 15th in line. For example, one guy came in, asked where the end of the line was, and then walked up and took a spot two or three places in line ahead of us. He wasn’t the only one who did it, but he was the closest one.

The guy behind me said something to him. They had a brief exchange, then the guy who cut in line apologized, got in his car, and left.

It was stupid, because if he’d gone to his proper place in line, he would have only been five or six places back. There’s not much difference between being the 10th person in and being the 15th.

Then Melvin came staggering out of Applebee’s. He walked over to his black Chevy Celebrity (very much like the one my driver’s ed instructor drove, back in 1990), got out his bag, and then went to the front of the line and talked to the people standing up there. Nobody up there let him in, so he settled back, two places ahead of my wife and I.

Melvin seems to go to all the places I go, and he’s elbowed in front of me (or tried to) twice in the last two weeks. Furthermore, I saw him steal from an estate sale. It takes a special kind of scumbag to steal from an estate sale–the deceased’s survivors could be relying on the proceeds from that sale to pay for the funeral, for all we know.

Needless to say, I’m pretty tired of Melvin.

"Sir, I think you got here after we did," I said.

"You’re wrong, Junior. I got here two and a half hours ago, then I walked over there to have a couple of drinks. You can ask anyone here. Now why don’t we step over here into the parking lot and we’ll settle this. You’re messing with the wrong guy," Melvin said.

"If you take a swing at me, I’ll call the police. And keep in mind I do have your license plate number."

"If you call the police, I’ll call my lawyer and he’ll be over here so fast, and I’ll be sure to get your number too–"

I wonder what it says about Melvin that he has his lawyer on speed dial?

Just then, one of the people running the sale walked past.

"Ma’am, this guy is threatening me."

"Actually," I said, "He’s trying to start a fistfight and I don’t want a fistfight. I don’t want any trouble here."

She took my admission money and gave me the don’t-give-us-any-trouble look. I nodded and thanked her. She told me she’d keep an eye on him.

The guy standing behind me told me he’d heard people at a sale last week talking about Melvin too.

Melvin went up to the front of the line and started ranting at the people up there about me. They kept looking back my direction with confused looks on their faces.

None of the people up there are people I know well, but I see them often enough that I don’t want trouble with them. Melvin came back, took his place in line, and tried to burn holes through my skull with the laser death rays in his eyes.

For a few seconds I stared back, then I decided that was stupid. I tried to egg him on a bit. I looked back behind me, tried to look confused, looked back at him, and mouthed, "There’s nothing back there."

Well, the other people in line thought it was funny. That was probably too far over the top though.

Once I was pretty certain Melvin was going to stay put, I walked up to the front of the line.

"Hey, I don’t know what he told you, but he tried to get me out in the parking lot and start a fistfight. I just want you to know I didn’t threaten him. I’m not that way," I said.

They nodded. "So we’re cool?" I asked. They nodded again. I smiled, thanked them, and took my place in line.

Melvin continued his gaze of death. I turned around and made smalltalk with the guy behind me. He cracked a few jokes about drunks.

Finally we got to go inside. I watched my back pretty much the whole time. You can’t trust a drunk guy with his lawyer on speed dial, after all. Wherever Melvin was, I stayed away.

Finally, he walked up to the counter. I heard him say he had 10 record albums. I was standing a good 15 feet away with a big crowd in the room, so I guess a lot of people know he had 10 record albums. I breathed a sigh of relief when he left.

My wife asked if I found something I wanted. I told her I got what I wanted the most.

"What was that?" one of the people running the sale asked. "Anything good?"

"My fistfight buddy left," I said.

"Is that a CD or a book?" she asked. "I’ve never heard of that."

"Oh, it’s not a thing. The guy who tried to start a fistfight with me in the parking lot left."

"That was YOU?" she asked.

Yeah, I’m pretty harmless. I’m usually fairly polite too. But I guess the word was out about me now, even if the people who knew the story couldn’t place my face with it.

A few minutes later, I ran into one of my acquaintances from the front of the line. "You know Melvin’s gone now," he whispered.

I nodded.

"What happened?"

"He challenged me to a fight, and I said if he took a swing at me I’d call the police," I said.

"Ah, so that’s why he brought up the police. Nothing wrong with that. You have to protect yourself."

He told me a little more about Melvin, that he tends to be paranoid and he’d been drinking. When he’s sober he’s harmless, he said. He laughed when I told him Melvin told me he’d been drinking.

"In the morning he probably won’t remember any of it," he said. And he told me I’d handled the situation pretty well.

We’ll see how much Melvin remembers. I’ll see him again, I know. But I’m pretty sure the people who run the sales we both end up frequenting like me better than him. I don’t pick fights, and I buy a lot more stuff.

And they know it.

And now, since I know I’ll get asked about it, here’s the story behind the places I actually have managed to get kicked out of.

The library: It was closing.

Church: It was closing too. Yep, both of them sound a lot more interesting than reality.

Best Buy: I uttered a couple of colorful words when they wouldn’t honor the extended warranty I’d bought. The manager and customer abuse rep asked me to leave. I went to a different location and got my stereo exchanged under warranty there.

Substitute teacher Rick Hannebutt’s seventh grade theology class: He never liked me because I wasn’t a Cardinals fan. I didn’t like him much either. The kid sitting next to me hit me with a dusty mitten. I pushed his arm away and told him to quit.

"Davit," Hannebutt bellowed, "You may leave now."

I was really mad then. Twenty years later, I don’t know why. I don’t think anyone in that room wanted to be there, and I was the one who got to leave.

I think Melvin makes for the better story.

Incidentally, Melvin isn’t his real name. I would never mention someone who has his lawyer on speed dial by his real name.

It’s pretty close though. His real name is the same as that little Martian from Looney Tunes.

I wish I’d tried out Cafe Manhattan much sooner

Dave Farquhar St. Louis ,

My wife and I tried someplace different for dinner tonight. Cafe Manhattan has been near the intersection of Lindbergh and Tesson Ferry since 1989–longer than I’ve been driving. And since it’s just a couple of miles away from where I went to high school, where I live, and where I worked for seven years, I’ve driven past it a lot.

Big mistake. But it’s going to be in heavy rotation from now on.In 2006, Cafe Manhattan got the RFT award for best milkshake in St. Louis. So I had to try it. It’s done up the old fashioned way, and you get the metal cup, and I’ll admit it’s awfully good. I’ll put it ahead of local favorite Oberweis, but it’s not quite up to par with Crown Candy Kitchen. Of course for me it’s also a much shorter drive.

The other reviews suggested to me that Cafe Manhattan is a greasy spoon, but that’s not really a fair label. Not everything is deep-fried or grill-fried, and there’s a very surprisingly large number of vegetarian dishes on the menu. I wouldn’t call it a health food place, but if you want a place to eat and there are vegetarians in your party, this place is a winner.

The menu claims the hamburger is the best in St. Louis, so of course I had to take up that challenge. It was very good, but I think the burgers at Concord Grill, a couple of blocks away, are better. Let it be known, however, that regardless of Citysearch’s claim that Hardee’s makes the best burger in St. Louis, that Cafe Manhattan’s burger is much better.

My wife had something called a Liberty Melt, which was a bunch of veggies on whole wheat bread with some type of Wisconsin cheese on it. Not my thing, but she loved it. She’s a vegetarian now, which can make going out a little difficult sometimes, but she changed her mind about four times about what to get before settling on this one. She wasn’t disappointed.

The service was excellent. The place was packed, and yet everything arrived quickly. The meal probably arrived 10 minutes after we placed our order–faster than some fast-food restaurants. The staff was attentive and courteous and kept our glasses full.

And I almost forgot the atmosphere. The building it’s in used to be a Naugel’s–one of many local Mexican fast-food chains that have come and gone–but they’ve done a lot with it. The interior has classic diner floor tile and tables, and there’s a jukebox in the corner. But along the ceiling there’s a shelf that runs the perimeter of the dining room stuffed full of Americana–old soda bottles, signs, toys, and other neat things. Lots of casual dining chains try for that look, but Cafe Manhattan does it better.

As far as having the best milkshake, best burger, best pizza, or anything else, if you’re willing to look, you’ll find one or two places that are a little bit better at each of those things. But I doubt you’ll find anyplace that does all of it better.

And while the place was busy, this was a Saturday night. Had we gone to O’Charley’s or Friday’s or Applebee’s at that time, we would have had to wait. We didn’t have to wait and we got better food.

Now I know what I was missing when I drove past those hundreds–if not thousands–of times. We’ll be back soon.

Frequent your local produce market

Dave Farquhar Saving money

There’s a tiny produce market in a former Amoco gas station about a mile from where I live. I’ve driven past it for years without ever so much as stopping in to see what they had.

I wasted a lot of money that way.I read in the excellent book Eat Healthy For $50 a Week that produce markets sell fruits and vegetables for less than grocery stores. Finally last weekend, my wife and I checked out that assertion.

What we found was that the selection wasn’t nearly as great as the produce section of a large grocery store–at least not in March–but the prices were good. They were never any higher than the grocery store, and often the prices were much lower. We got a head of lettuce for 25 cents, for instance. Prices vary. Lettuce was 25 cents on Sunday, and it was 98 cents today. I’m guessing on Sunday he was trying to sell down his inventory, so he cut the price. A bag of apples that usually costs a couple of dollars at the grocery store was a dollar.

It’s probably best to stop at a produce market a few times a week to get a feel for the best day to buy different things. But since I eat a couple of pounds of apples a week, that stand could easily save us a dollar or two a week. That’s $50 or $100 a year. Not exactly chump change. And that’s on a single item.

The other good thing about produce markets is they’re generally locally owned, so you’re supporting your neighbor, and while not everything sold there is going to be locally grown, you can bet anything that’s in season locally will be. Supporting your local economy is always a good thing.

Incidentally, that book has lots of other good ideas in it. My wife and I probably spend more than $50 a week on food, but the ideas in the book probably have saved us $10 a week, minimum, since we read it. That’s $500 a year. That’s half a house payment.

Total retro overload

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , ,

OK, so first I find out that Quantum Link has been reverse engineered and resurrected, and then I find out there’s a darn good C compiler for 8-bit computers, including Commodore, Apple and Atari. It’ll even compile GEOS (the Commodore GUI) programs!

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Beware Nigerians seeking computer equipment

Dave Farquhar Spam , ,

It wasn’t really a 419 scam, but I think I came a little too close to falling for another Nigerian scam this week.

Some time back, I listed some computer equipment on Craigslist. Not really high-dollar stuff, but stuff I’m not using, and while I’m not in desperate need of the money, it would come in very handy. And Craigslist is a lot less hassle than a garage sale.I listed it about a month ago, and interest was ice cold. Then yesterday I got a message from someone named Anna Gray asking if I would agree to sell it to her. Interesting way of putting it, but at the time I didn’t really take much note. I was just excited at the possibility of turning a computer that was just taking up space into 50 bucks.

The would-be buyer wanted to use a money transfer. “Aren’t you in St. Louis?” I asked immediately. My whole reason for using Craigslist was to avoid shipping and money hassles. Women are rightly nervous to meet strange men for transactions (and when they aren’t, they probably should be), but I’ve handled several transactions like this lately. Standard procedure is to meet in a public place that’s as convenient as possible for both of you. I generally take my wife so there’ll be a female present. If you’re a woman and can’t take another person with you, make sure you have a cell phone with you, and to make sure the other person knows you have it, make sure the person sees you casually talking on it as you arrive (even if you’re faking it). The ability to quickly dial 911 heads off a lot of trouble.

“No, I’m not in St. Louis,” she responded.

Well, so much for that.

She said she would pay me using Moneygram. She would send them the money, and then when I shipped the item, I would provide Moneygram with the tracking number, and I would get the money.

I would later find out that’s not how Moneygram works, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Knowing it could easily cost more to ship the computer than my $50 asking price, I asked my would-be buyer if she was willing to pay the shipping. She said she would send me a FedEx ticket. Then she said she would send me the money via Moneygram. She asked me every 30 seconds if I’d received the confirmation e-mail yet. “No,” I said. “But I’m in no particular hurry.” It wasn’t like I could ship the laptop immediately anyway.

She informed me that Moneygram was having technical difficulties and begged me to be patient. I found it odd that she was able to ask and receive an answer so quickly. Usually when a company is having technical difficulties, their customer service is slow too. I didn’t think anything of it yet.

Then I got busy and didn’t write back right away. She got just plain rude. “Are u there? BUZZ!!! BUZZ!!!”

Obviously she wasn’t willing to extend me the same patience she expected of me.

Once I got less busy, I got back to her. I’d received an e-mail message claiming to be from Moneygram, and I’d received a shipping label from Fedex, and told her.

“Take the package to Fedex tonight and give the tracking number to Moneygram and you’ll get your money,” she said.

I told her I was busy that night. Which I was. I’d had plans for a week and I wasn’t going to cancel them over a $50 computer–especially now that I was going to have to go to the trouble of finding a box and packing materials for the thing.

“I guess it’ll be OK if you ship it first thing in the morning,” she said.

Umm, well, I didn’t know what time I would be in, and I had to be at work first thing in the morning. Besides, if I had to drive it to the Fedex station, I was looking at a 45-minute drive.

“Take it to the closest Fedex. But if there isn’t one, you’ll have to take it to the station. First thing in the morning.”

How considerate. But that wasn’t the first thing that came into my mind. Actually the first thought that came to mind is a not-so-pleasant one-syllable word.

I told her I’d do my best, thanked her for her help and her interest, and reminded myself that I was being paid to free up some clutter from the house. Emily would like that. And if I spent $10 of it on her, she’d like it even more. So I put it out of my mind and told myself I’d print off all the paperwork that night, when I went in search of a box.

And aside from telling Emily I’d sold the computer, I did put it out of my mind until late that night.

Emily had a box and packing material ready for me. It wasn’t perfect, but we could have done a lot worse. So I packed it all up, then I went to the computer and printed off the paperwork. The Moneygram e-mail said I would have to provide them with a tracking number, full name and address, and either a driver’s license or social security number before they would free the money.

I didn’t like that. I didn’t like it at all. Nobody needs that information.

Making matters worse, the e-mail included a tracking number on the cash. I followed the link in the e-mail, punched in the tracking number, and it said it had no information on the tracking number.

The e-mail from her containing the Fedex shipping label also contained a customs form. She asked me to print and sign three copies. Customs? That seemed odd.

I printed the label. It had a declared value of $1. While the computer isn’t worth much, it’s worth more than $1. A DEC VT100 terminal is worth more than $1 to someone who needs it. I started to realize I wasn’t dealing with a very honest person here.

Then I printed the Fedex shipping label. The address looked odd to me. It registered when I pulled the label off the printer.

Nigeria.

It all made sense now. The unorthodox English. The belligerence. Demanding information they shouldn’t need. Classic symptoms of 419 scams.

Another rude one-syllable word came to mind. This time I said it out loud a few times. Someone in Nigeria had my name and address!

Mind you, not everyone in Nigeria is a crook, but suddenly I had a whole host of reasons to be suspicious.

So, when I was supposed to be getting up at the crack of dawn to send a computer halfway around the world, instead I was doing research.

On Moneygram’s own site, I found this:

MoneyGram is not an internet escrow service or a shipment service. We do not email a confirmation notice to inform a person that a MoneyGram transfer has been sent to them for payment of an internet purchase. Do not believe that such an email is genuine even if it contains the MoneyGram name and logo. The MoneyGram service should not be used as an escrow service.

And then I found indication that some Nigerian scammers have an affinity for buying computer equipment, particularly Apple Powerbooks, off Craigslist, using Moneygram.

Of course, seeing as part of the process asked for my social security number, losing the laptop was the least of my concerns. Once she had my name, address, and social security number, chances are she’d be able to get lots of other things at my expense as well.

Needless to say, the computer is still in my living room and I’ve kept the digits to myself.

My Nigerian buddy sent me a number of messages in the morning asking me if I had shipped the laptop, and since I had expressed some doubt in my last message, took pains to assure me that all was well. I replied to the message that said all was well, quoting that paragraph I found on the Moneygram site and asking her to explain.

I never heard another word from her. Seeing as there was a point in time when she couldn’t go three minutes without hearing from me, maybe I should find that odd.

Unless it was a scam, of course. In which case, there’s nothing at all strange about this new silence.

Finally! A $60 RAMdisk on a PCI card

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , , ,

PC World: Taiwanese hardware maker Gigabyte Technology has stumbled upon a faster way to boot up PCs based on Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system.

Please allow me to quote something I penned back in 1999: “I’d love to see someone design and release a battery-backed hardware RAM disk for PCs… Such devices existed in the early 1990s for the Commodore 64/128 and the Apple IIgs and permitted these systems to boot their graphical operating systems before the PCs of their day had managed to bring up a C: prompt. A similar device for today’s PCs would do more to boost system performance than any other innovation I see coming down the pipeline any time soon.”You can find the paragraph, in context, on page 214 of Optimizing Windows for Games, Graphics and Multimedia.

Enough self-congratulation. I’m glad someone finally made this device, which is called the Gigabyte i-Ram PCI ramdisk. And here’s the great news: The device is going to cost about $60 without RAM. 512-meg DIMMs can be expensive or cheap. A quick scan turns up some that I’d be willing to trust for $41 from Newegg.com.

It plugs into a PCI slot but it only uses the slot for power. Data itself is transferred via a serial ATA cable. This improves compatibility, I suppose, but I would have liked to have seen the serial ATA hardware integrated onto the board. But that would have increased costs, and arguably most of the people who will want this already have serial ATA. At least the target market does. I don’t know if this is going to prove more popular with people who want to hot rod their Pentium 4s, or people who want to increase the life expectancy of an older PC. This thing would do wonders for Mom’s PC, or my sister’s PC, and their primary interests are word processing and e-mail. They would love the speed and the quiet.

I’ve got all sorts of ideas for this thing. The article says it’ll be out in July. I want one BAD.

What kinds of ideas? For one, I’d love to eliminate the biggest source of latency in my PCs. I tend not to hit the CPU all that hard most of the time, but I sure do hit my disks hard. I’d love to eliminate the last mechanical piece in the system. Let’s face it: Hard drives crash. This thing gets wiped out if it loses power for 12 hours, but how often does that really happen? And if you’ve got a UPS and you shut the system down, shouldn’t it last indefinitely? Backing the data up to a real hard drive on the network somewhere, or onto a memory stick will solve that issue. Between that and a Ghost image of the system partition, you can recover from a power outage fast.

And who doesn’t want an ultra-quiet PC? Get a cool-running CPU and video card, and maybe, just maybe, your PC can survive on its case fan alone again. With this on a mini-ITX board with an external power supply, a completely fanless, ultra-quick PC might be possible.

And I can see all sorts of applications for this thing for my new employer.

I’m as excited as a puppy when company comes over bearing dog biscuits.

A compelling toy train layout with animations done on the cheap

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Layouts featuring Lionel, American Flyer, and other O or S gauge trains don’t have to be expensive. Joe Rampola has lots of ideas for creating a good-looking layout with lots of animation (aside from the trains) using mostly inexpensive items. His site has lots of pictures and video clips.

His work has been featured in both Classic Toy Trains and O Gauge Railroading magazines.Among his better ideas: Lay a loop of HO gauge track, then put 0-4-0 mechanisms from cheap HO scale locomotives in the frames of 1:43 scale die-cast cars and make streets for the layout. This is a similar approach to K-Line’s new Superstreets, but Rampola did it years earlier, and his approach is a lot less expensive for those who can live without instant gratification. His approach also allows you to use any vehicle you want, so long as you’re willing to modify it.

He also has plans and instructions posted for lots of inexpensive animations he did using the cheap unpainted (and unfortunately, discontinued) K-Line figures from the classic Marx molds of the 1950s. Sometimes you can still get lucky and find a box of unpainted K-Line figures hiding on hobby shop shelves.

He even has his animations controlled by an old Timex Sinclair 1000 computer. He gives enough detail that I suspect someone good with homebrew circuits could adapt his circuit and his program to another computer, such as an Apple or Commodore. Even a 3.5K unexpanded VIC-20 ought to be up to the task, let alone a behemoth Commodore 64.

I’ve always bristled at the thought of adding electronics to my traditional layout, because my trains are my escape from computers. But using a real computer–real men only need 8 bits–to control parts of a layout does have some appeal to me.

Apple II clones

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , , ,
Apple II clones

In the 1980s, IBM wasn’t the only company with a clone problem. Apple II clones were less common, but a surprising number existed.

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Cheap hardware won’t stop software piracy

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Who’s to blame for rampant software piracy? According to Steve Ballmer, AMD and Intel. Oh, and Dell. Charge less for the computer, and there’ll be more money to pay for Windows and Office.

Steve Ballmer doesn’t know his history.

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