Nov 22 2005
It’s only week four and I’ve already decided I’m going to stop numbering these entries. Feel free to take a pen and write the number alongside this entry – it’s your screen. 
I was thinking about doing a Top Ten Scotch list but Sunday’s tasting session has made me realise I need to revisit everything I’ve ever tried, now that I’ve discovered that adding water can actually be a good thing!
So how about a techie Top Ten this week? How about my Top Ten Techie Toys that I’ve owned? That sounds like a good idea, and then I can do a Top Ten Toys I Want For Christmas in a week or two.
Oh, and I’m scoring these on how good they were when I got them, not now, before someone laughs at the age of some of the picks. :p
- The new video card/ TV tuner I got at the weekend – a TV window in the corner of the screen is really distracting
- Dell Latitude laptop / wireless router – I’d wanted a laptop for a while and we finally bought one on eBay; it’s really useful for when I write my notes during the Formula One races. [Sad but true]
- The hand-built Linux server that I put together…
- …and the cooling system that got it through this summer!
- Dell 19″ LCD monitor – if it hadn’t been on sale, I don’t know when we’d have been able to get one … and it’s a huge improvement on the CRT I used to have.
- Creative Nomad Zen Xtra MP3 player
- Hooking up our Pioneer 5-disk DVD player to the Samsung Worldwide VCR means that not only can we play video tapes from (almost) anywhere, we can also watch DVDs from other regions. It’s really smart – just put the tape/disk in, hit play, and the VCR works out how to translate it to NTSC. Very cool.
- Palm PDA – first I had an M105, then an M130, and now I’ve got a Tungsten|E – each one has more bells & whistles than its predecessor, but they were all great.
- Canon PowerShot S110 digital camera – it’s just over 4 years old and still going strong; it goes everywhere with me, which is why the photo gallery is so big!
- Memotech MTX512 – my first computer (circa 1984) and co-star of “Weird Science“. Yes, it had 32Kb RAM (that is Kb, not a typo) and a 4Hz (yep, 4 Hz, not KHz or MHz) Z80A processor
