What the hell is Page’s Law? Guys at Google can make their own laws. This one makes sense though:

Put really simply, what this means in the real world is that the performance of a PC and other devices constantly increases. So why do PCs never really seem to get faster?

Well, call it Page’s Law. Page’s Law was actually coined by Sergey Brin, who dropped in at the tail end of a Google press conference, and was asked about the pace of software and Web development.

“Page’s Law is sort of the opposite of Moore’s Law,” Brin said. “Page’s Law says that every 18 months software becomes twice as slow.”

Yeah.

Every laptop computer user has a situation where the laptop is sitting on top of furniture or on your lap, on a soft cloth surface. This can heat up a laptop, to the point of meltdown if you are not careful.

I’ve always been tempted to buy a laptop pad designed for home use, the kind with a wooden platform and a soft pad attached underneath of some sorts. But why? Something like that, from a store, is going to cost $10 – $20.

I don’t really feel like spending that much money on something that fundamentally simple.

Here’s what I do.

I just use a 3 ring binder or a book as a laptop platform.

I would guess that most people have a bookshelf with books and binders of sorts. Just see what you’ve got on your own shelf. Atlas-sized books work good for larger laptops. You’ll keep your laptop computer off of cloth surfaces that promote overheating, and you’l save yourself $20.

I stumbled across an interesting read at the Early Ed Watch blog today that got me reminiscing about all the educational computer games that I played back in the ’80s and early ’90s. I was a kid during that time, being born in 1979.

Computer gaming was reaching the classrooms, and I logged my fair share of Number Munchers hours. Imagine that. Learn and play video games at the same time. It was novel concept back in those days.

From Early Ed Watch I worked my way over to an article titled “The Top 10 Most Influential Educational Video Games from the 1980s“. What a good read.

From Educational Games Research:

People who grew up playing videogames are influenced by them, especially when designing games of their own. Those who played through the 1980s are reaching their professional prime, and the games they played in school are worth examining. Here we’ll take a look at what I consider to be the top ten most influential educational games from the 1980s.

I guess I fall into this category of people who grew up playing video games in the 1980s. I must read on. This is getting interesting…

After reading about and being reminded of the classics like Sim City, Number Munchers and Oregon Trail, I just want to play some of these games to see what my impressions of them are now as opposed to how I thought they were awesome when I was a kid.

This guy over here named Justin uncovered a couple links to both Number Munchers and Oregon Trail. I had to try to see if I could get them running.

First try was Number Munchers. Nuts. I can’t seem to get their emulator plugin to download into FireFox. The download fails.

Well, maybe I can get into the Maxis site where Sim City can be played online for free. Good times.

Haha. I don’t know why this one made me laugh. Once I noticed it, I thought it was quite hilarious.

The funny thing is this:

• I am first told that the message is exactly 2148991 characters long. This is a very specific and large number. This computer is showing me that it knows insane details that a mere mortal human should not care about.
• I am then told that a certain amount of characters from the beginning of the message are being shown to me. 106496 to be exact. So exact, that the computer adds “or so…” to the estimation of characters that are being shown.

Come on.

Don’t think that I don’t know what you are up to, you program. You are a lot smarter than you lead us to believe… you can’t play it off.

I don’t like it.

I always catch the glare of finger prints on my laptop screen. It bothers me. It especially bothers me because of the fact that my laptop computer screen is of the glossy finish type. If there is a finger print or smudge, it is very obvious.

Bad Habit?

If I notice a smudge on my screen, I clean it immediately. If I do not clean the smudge, I will sit and think about it until it is clean.

Just don’t touch the screen

It’s not that hard. When pointing at things on the screen, there is no need to drag your finger tip over the screen itself.

Maybe this is just something that I have to get used to.