shinyPlasticBag

I think i need a hobby. I’m vaguely enamored by the idea of meditation right now, inspired by Ian and his weekend morning shenanigans. I find the idea of taking time out of my day to just reflect on life in general to be quite interesting, but I hate the mystic crap associated with the concept. Maybe I just need something to fill quiet moments at home.

Usually, my idle time is spent surfing the Internet, which generally doesn’t lead to a feeling of productive relaxation. Just a few days ago I spent several hours Wikipedia surfing, which is always an interesting game, since you never know where you’ll end up. I found myself reading about old IBM mainframes and data processing and the sort of monolithic computer culture of the sixties and seventies.

I like to visual Wikipedia browsing sessions as being comprised of planet-like bodies 0 general concepts — that my attention orbits. I’d really like to see something that tracked my Wikipedia browsing in general. It’d be intriguing to see how I shift from different concepts, and how long each broad category tends to hold my interest. Right now, I’m definitely fascinated by old computer stuff.

Speaking of which, I made an unusual purchase yesterday: a Macintosh SE, which is a tiny, compact Mac from 1988. It looks like the very first Macintosh and has a magnificent 20 MiB hard drive. It’s running System 6.0.7, has a bitchin’ 3D air hockey game built in, and that’s about it. My long-term goals for the little system include replacing the hard drive with a Compact Flash card (a SCSI-to-IDE adapter should do it) and finding a way to get it online as an SSH terminal (possibly involving some sort of tiny Linux device as an intermediary).

It’s also leading me to lust for a more functional classic Mac: I think it would be a fun project to put a Mac mini inside of a classic Mac case, replacing the 9″ CRT with an LCD, of course. I think it’d be a fun project, but it would certainly be nerve-wracking to start disassembling a cute lil Mac mini for such an endeavor. Plus, both of those computer types are notorious for needing stupid, proprietary tools to disassemble. (The phrase “case spreader” seems vaguely intimidating to me.)