Thomil's Random Ramblings

So, while aimlessly surfing around yesterday, I stumbled across a rather interesting video over on YouTube, one that dealt with the apparent death of the netbook, a category of computer that I have had quite a bit of experience with. Seeing an Acer Aspire One on the screen, even if it was a later model, was certainly a blast from the past for me. The video itself had a bit of a negative and dismissive slant towards the idea of the netbook as such, though I’m certainly not the most objective person to judge this, given the fact that the very first computer I bought with my own money was a netbook, namely my trusty Acer Aspire One 110L. In fact, it was this device that set me on my journey as a blogger. Granted, the Linux distribution that came with the device, Linpus Lite, wasn’t anything to write home about, but it was a nice little device, good enough to stay in use from January 2nd, 2009 until April 2012, just a few months before I made my big move to Ireland. This blue wonder, my Ac...

I’ve been fascinated by eBooks for quite some time. I’ve dabbled with the Kindle app both on my old Eee Pad Slider and on my various iPads, with the latter also seeing me try out Apple’s Books, but this never really caught on. The Eee Pad in particular was far too heavy, but even the iPads were not exactly lightweights for extended reading. The solution would of course have been to go for a dedicated e-Reader, but I never really got around to it. Plus, the original editions of Amazon’s Kindle were pretty pricey, and I didn’t see any reason for spending that money on a device that was only suitable for a single task. Fast forward to 2020 and the old rules don’t really apply anymore. In addition, Amazon recently released a new entry-level Kindle at a pretty competitive price point and so I decided to simply go for it. It took a week to get the device, thanks to Amazon’s increasingly “creative” logistics processes, but it eventually got here. Tech Specs The 2019 10th Generation Amazon Kin...

Sometimes, the best things in life really do happen by chance! While I certainly wouldn’t consider the ongoing pandemic situation to be a good thing, it has forced me to work a lot more with what I have in my own personal surroundings. The absence of any major commutes has also meant that I can spend a whole lot more time in the evenings on things that I really care about. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s just at this moment that a most unusual visitor decided to come calling. Now to be fair, C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE), as this visitor is officially known, isn’t exactly new. It had first been discovered on March 3 rd , 2020 by the Neowise program, a team that uses NASAs Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer satellite to look for NEOs, or Near-Earth Objects. Normally, WISE is used to hunt for exoplanets, but it is regularly used to hunt for comets, asteroids and other such stuff that could come close to Earth. However, it’s only since it passed its perihelion back on July 3 rd  that comet c/20...

These last few days have been kind of strange for me. I’m completely and utterly shattered, but I’ve been like that all summer, which is also the reason why there haven’t been any new articles on this blog. Lately however, I’ve rediscovered one of my old passions that I thought I’d lost for good: Reading. Yes, you read that right, pun fully intended. For a long time, I was an avid reader, counting my bookshelf as one of the most prized possessions in my home. In the aftermath of the death of my parents, this desire to read began to drift away, so slow that I didn’t even notice it. Even when I attempted to rekindle my love for reading, it didn’t quite work. I didn’t even manage to get more than halfway through a book that I purchased during my trip to Providence , and that’s been over two years now.  Recently however, that’s changed. In the last week, I’ve worked my way through two novels, and I’m halfway through a rather sizeable non-fiction book. This hasn’t so much been brought a...