When
· Naughties
· · 2007
· · · October
· · · · 20 (2 entries)
Boingo · Preparing for that July trip to Berlin, I was worried about getting online; Lauren poked around a bit and suggested Boingo. It was a huge success; I got an hour or two in at Heathrow going and coming, and the little German hotel was also on Boingo. I’d sort of thought, when we got back, that I’d cancel, since it seems to be more a European than US thing. But it keeps showing up here and there, probably enough to be cost-effective. In particular, O’Hare airport, which has ong been T-Mobile (expensive and slow) or nothing, now has a network that named “Concourse” which uses Boingo and is damn fast, I think maybe the fastest WiFi throughput uploading pictures to ongoing I’ve ever seen. So if you’re traveling a lot, you might want to check it out.
[3 comments]
[3 comments]
Portal · While I was in Minneapolis I was walking through a mall and there was the Orange Box on sale. Under the influence of Nelson Minar and Ars Technica, and especially given that it was priced in those inexpensive Yankee Pesos, I had to pick one up. I never played Half-Life nor Team Fortress, but the latter sounds fun; I wonder if we should put together a dynamic-languages-mafia or concurrency-obsessives team or some such. I’m not a serious gamer, so I started with Portal. I’ve put in a couple of hours now; it’s quick, lightweight, occasionally quite difficult, unlike anything else, and funny. It seems to provoke outbursts of Deep Thinking, f’rinstance from Schlaghund and Leonard Richardson; so I guess I gotta say something. It’s amazing how deeply embedded in our collective consciousness is the notion of the lethally impersonal corporation with a dead marketing voice. Dear Marketing Professionals; when you think “message control” several generational cohorts of geeky target demographics are thinking about the Portal voice. Go play it, and shudder.
[9 comments]
[9 comments]
