January 2007 Archives

It's been a while since I wrote about the hardware and software that makes it possible for Me to do all the things I do. We'll start with the Hardware, move on to Software in Part II, while Part III will deal with specific websites often used, and we'll finish with what fun things happen in combination.

I've got lots of geeky gadgetry, though I'm not always successful in using it all the time, and sometimes one device can replace one or two others, but not always permanently.

The core of My Digital Hub (thank you, Steve Jobs) is My Apple 12 inch Powerbook G4. The Powerbook is 29 months old and needs some of its stickers replaced, as they've become not so nice looking overtime. Just about everything revolves around said laptop.

I recently bought a decent cell phone, instead of the cheap stuff that gets given away free with new accounts. I ended up with the Motorola RAZR with the dragon etching on it. The design is actually one created by Ami James as featured in the show Miami Ink. However stylish the phone is however, I was more concerned with its functions, such as Bluetooth, a decent interface, and the calendaring (which we'll get into further in the software section).

http://www.blyberg.net/card-generator/ has a script for making amusing library catalogue cards, complete with those scribbles. I have no idea why this is as entertaining as it is, but it's giving Me lots of ideas for a project I'm working on.

Well, this weekend, I'll be where the map shows you. I have a meeting, so get put up in the hotel. Extra bonus: I get frequent flier miles just for sleeping in the room.

There's a song known to the working classes of Morgan Maska, particularly precious to the halfling population, known as The Dear Green Place.

The city was founded by Vicar Kentigern, a retiring halfling cleric, and Knight of The Road, over a thousand years ago. Kentigern's given name was Mungo, and upon his death a decade after the founding, the burg was renamed Mungo City. The word "city" was more an affection, as there were no walls, and the settlement meandered along the riverside for quite a ways. Travellers often quipped that one could never tell when one was in town, but could always knew they weren't quite there.

For the first 300 years or so, it was your standard halfling settlement, with a minority population of other races, which grew over the next 150 years as it became a trading centre, primarily dealing in textiles. Each spring, the Shearling Festival would bring marketers from leagues in every direction to hawk their wares. Given the halfling base to the population, the annual council of Grandmothers would meet at this time.

It was the finding of iron in the Grey Hills by Tarquin Creegan, one of the Stoneborn halflings, that brought the Marlow (halfling) and Gulnyr (Dwarfen) families to Mungo City. Within a halfling generation, the population had more than tripled, and the city had changed from a peaceful, agrarian community, to a much harsher, dark, industrial centre, primarily trying to compete with the mines of the Lossenor in production of raw iron and alloys. It was in this time that the name was changed to Morgan Maska, as the Dwarfen tongue took hold, as the halfling populous was pushed out of power.

So quick was the economic turn over, that in a scant 220 years, iron production of the Grey Hills slowed to half of what it'd been a century before and the region began to decline. In a desperate attempt to keep the economy going and to take their city back, a group of industrious halflings of considerable wealth but questionable licit standing began to convert the old fields to the production of tobacco, and bought old factories for its mass processing and distribution.

As a then-partner in a pipe leaf plantation in the Caledonian Peninsula, I can tell you that the market for all but gourmet tobaccos has never recovered. It's obscene how low a price an individual farmer continues to get for a years crop.

Today, the tobacco trade has also dropped somewhat, and Mungo City struggles to find its place in the world. Some sections of town have recovered, and there is an increasing vibrancy to the older downtown areas. It's widely believed that the old adage "What is good for the G and M, is good for Mungo" no longer holds true. What this will mean for the future, few can say.

Good Company, Great Scotch, and an Apple Dumpling... All in all a Good Way to ring in the New Year.