Marcus Hamaker

I used to love listening to the radio on Christmas Eve because they always tracked Santa. They would give locations and the progress of Santa and how close he was to your city and it added to the magic of the night. My son is 4 years old, my daughter just turned 2 and because I am always online I did a search for the Santa Tracker for Christmas Eve. Sure enough NORAD has something there for my kids and I online.

Take a look at some of the video they put together from 2007 below.

Hope you all have Merry Christmas and for those of you who don’t celebrate Christamas - have a Happy Holiday.

I used to own a Thinkpad T-series before I got my Macbook. Being a former Thinkpad user I’d say it was one of the most solid mobile-PC platform I’ve used in my short 20-year career as a computer geek. Now browsing across Engadget I found out that Thinkpad has recently developed a dual-screen laptop in the Thinkpad W700. That to me is great news.

via Dual-screen Thinkpad W700.

“Toasty Toes is adjustable, and may be used flat, inclined, or upright as a radiant heat panel. But at 90 watts, less than a standard 100-watt light bulb, this heated foot rest uses a fraction of the energy of a standard 1500-watt space heater. In addition to being more cost-efficient, Toasty Toes is safer than a traditional space heater as it never heats higher than 140 degrees Fahrenheit. The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that space heaters, including both fixed and portable varieties, are associated with 21,800 residential fires every year. ETL listed, Toasty Toes never gets hot enough to ever cause a fire, but still delivers comfortable, radiant heat to where it’s needed most–to your feet and lower legs.”

via Ahhh… warm toes! .

“Toasty Toes is adjustable, and may be used flat, inclined, or upright as a radiant heat panel. But at 90 watts, less than a standard 100-watt light bulb, this heated foot rest uses a fraction of the energy of a standard 1500-watt space heater. In addition to being more cost-efficient, Toasty Toes is safer than a traditional space heater as it never heats higher than 140 degrees Fahrenheit. The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that space heaters, including both fixed and portable varieties, are associated with 21,800 residential fires every year. ETL listed, Toasty Toes never gets hot enough to ever cause a fire, but still delivers comfortable, radiant heat to where it’s needed most–to your feet and lower legs.”

via Google Reader (1000+).

Today, Apple announced that the upcoming Macworld Expo (Jan. 5-9, 2009) will be the last Apple attends.

On Tuesday, January 6, Phil Schiller will give the opening keynote and, according to Apple, it will be the last keynote given at a Macworld.

via Macworld 2009 to Be Apple’s Last | TheAppleBlog.

Apple has released Mac OS X 10.5.6 to customers this afternoon.

The 10.5.6 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac.

via Apple Releases Mac OS X 10.5.6 - Mac Rumors.

So you all know that I was updating to Wordpress 2.7 because I touched on it last week. I am glad I made the switch because the admin interface is really nice. I liked the old 2.6.x interface as well but the charcoal on white is very easy to look at. The layout has also been cleaned up. Seems like less on the page but all the same information is there. Better organization makes it seem much cleaner to the eye.

The image above is loaded with the Ozh Admin Menu plugin installed which I love. But the menu is still good if you don’t use it (shown below).

As you can see the menu on the left side is quite nice. The only reason I use the Ozh plugin is to maximize the area which I write in when posting. That helps with layout and design.

The upgrade went pretty much as normal. Their process is quite manual which is annoying and most likely why I don’t upgrade with every sub version. Their guides are excellent in explaining the manual process and I have never had a problem upgrading my version, it’s more a matter of reward vs. effort. This version is definitely worth it. I use a theme from Chris Pirillo so my front end layout is already pretty customized and this version didn’t break that, which is nice. It also means that it didn’t change much on the front page.

I recommend that you stick with the ‘complex’ instructions. The simple ones leave out a couple of details about how to backup that I would have probably done wrong, don’t take the chance!

Happy blogging

This is Barbara’s submission for the HP Magic Giveaway at chris.pirillo.com and geeks.pirillo.com.

Maybe it’s just me, but I believe there are many differences between the expression and characteristics of a “Geek” and a “Nerd”. Obviously, the typical nerd does not compare to the status of a geek today - but what are they?

What is a Geek? What is a Nerd? | Chris Pirillo.

According to Veit—editor-in-chief of Computer Shopper magazine from 1983 to 1988—Steve Jobs contacted him when his computer shop in New York was taking off big time. On the phone, Steve convinced him about having to check out this amazing new computer, which according to the Jobster was “insanely great” (or something like that).

Hi, Steve Jobs Here: The First Apple Tech Support Call Ever.

I have been searching around for Jaiku invitations on and off for a while and finally I came across a site that seems to be made for me If you want to try a twitter like site that is owned by Google then you should head over to http://jaikuinvites.com/ and get your invite.

In the world that we live in with twitter and other such micro-blogging services, I am really curious to see Google’s take on it. In my experience Google likes to keep things simple by offering a clean/clutter free space. This seems to be no different so far.

Once I am past the touchy feely part of the site I am curious how it will stand up to the main service, Twitter. They seem to have all the people on their site and Google isn’t helping matters much by keeping Jaiku closed for a long time, and now invite only.

But as mentioned above, you guys don’t have to worry about that because I found http://jaikuinvites.com/. Have fun and tell your friends about it. I am curious to know what everyone things. Send me a note, post a reply here and add me to your twitter and now Jaiku (both TheSleepyGeek).