2012 Picture report from Hawaii number 4 · Saturday January 14, 2012 by colin newell
A subtle reminder that there are great places on the planet – peaceful, surrounded by a vast ocean, seemingly insulated from the rigors of daily life… at least for a few weeks of the year.
Photo below: The balcony at the Hale Kona Kai – Kona, Hawaii.
2012 Picture report from Hawaii number 2 and 3 · Wednesday January 11, 2012 by colin newell
A typical day in Kona Hawaii almost always involves a cup of great coffee to start your day – a swim at one of many great sandy beaches – often with shore break capable of breaking your neck – so show respect…
And the people! The people of the Island of Hawaii love their life and they love their guests.
What better gig than to live and work here – Like Dr. Shawn Steiman (photo below to the right of yours truly — the visitor…)
Shawn is doing some work with the local coffee community and we are catching up over coffee at Kona de Pele Coffee on Alii Drive, Kona. Arguably some of the best coffee to be drinking – brewed right – Hario pour over – measured and brewed to precision.
Next photo: Typical sunset off of our lanai off of Alii Drive in Kona Hawaii – this is what we look at, day after day – if you have never seen a sunset like this, you owe yourself the pleasure of the visit.
2012 Picture report from Hawaii number 1 · Sunday January 8, 2012 by colin newell
Sitting by the pool today noticed a glint in the ocean… which was around 15 feet away.
I know – begs the question: Why build a small heated pool a few feet away from a gargantuan sized salty heated pool. Who am I to argue.
While we sunned by the pool we could hear the shouts of folks in their shuttered condos watching Sunday football – I know… that does not make sense either.
Hawaii – truly a land of mystery.
The real mystery awaits you below – it caught our eye. An iridescent glow above and below the water – like purple laser beams that flashed brighter as waves of water passed over the outcropping – I am assuming a fluorescent algae bloom – honestly, I have never seen anything like it. For once, a photo does no justice.
Will try and do a photo a day to encapsulate my experience.
Below our balcony – again, inches from the Pacific Ocean. This fellow flirted with the ocean life for an hour and came up empty handed… or did he?
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Toshiba Netbook NB555D quick look · Monday December 19, 2011 by colin newell
Having acquiesced to pressure from my chief significant other (she) having grown tired of watching me hover over my Asus Eee PC 4G (and its 7” screen) like a microbiologist examining a specimen…
I finally departed mid-2007 and came into the modern times with a Toshiba Netbook model NB555D. In good time too – we have been hauling the little Asus around the World (well, back and forth to Hawaii to be exact) for many years now – running its native Fischer-Price style of Linux (Xandros if I am not mistaken…) and a handful of Live USB sticks with iterations of Ubuntu just to be safe.
I had just become fully comfortable manipulating the OS on this little sub-notebook sized unit (just installed “Leeenux” – a light duty version of Ubuntu even less bloated than Easy Peasy… The Asus Eee runs great, still does – and it will travel more – just not on the next Hawaii trip – coming up in a few weeks.
The search for a slightly better netbook was not a long one – managed to zero in on the Toshiba Netbook model NB555D fairly quickly. Simplified by the fact that I did not want another Asus (at least right away), did not want a Sony, and did not want anything running Android on a device that would be locked to that OS.
What I found kind of interesting and slightly annoying was the complete lack of any credible peer reviews of the Toshiba Netbook model NB555D – nothing. One 1 paragraph review and a you tube link. The rest were ads and zero content lazy shills with links to vendors – more of the net seems to be like that sadly.
Anyway – what of the Toshiba Netbook model NB555D? With a 10.1” LED back-lit screen and a decent size keyboard (for my large hands…) and an energy scrimping Ghz AMD processor – (superior video processing to its Intel brethren in another similar model number) – and an attractive blue shell (and an interesting finish…) I guess I was prepared to be happy from the moment of purchase.
That would not come immediately.
The Toshiba Netbook model NB555D ships with Windows 7 “starter” – but let’s call it what it is – Windows “stripped down” is more like it – but that is OK all things considered. And here is one reason why:
Windows 7 is a memory guzzler. The Toshiba Netbook model NB555D ships with 1Gb of DDR3 1066Mhz RAM – which is what the Toshiba Netbook model NB555D needs to be happy – leaving little left over for apps.
Out of the box, the Toshiba Netbook model NB555D is a slug until it gets through a series of software updates and software self optimization (A windows 7 feature – it actually “learns” some of your preferences and practices as you use it more…)
One of the first things I did was axe the “Norton Starter” that comes with it – I use AVG Free for virus protection but Microsoft Essentials (Free anti-virus) would have been a good choice too.
Next I loaded “CRAP Cleaner” – a great tool from Piriform.com (also free) and got into the start-up manager and pulled a bunch of useless utilities and “launch speeders” that accelerated the appearance of the “Login screen” from a miserable minute and a half to a respectable 50 seconds.
In a head to head with the 2007 Asus Eee 4G PC, the faster machine (the Toshiba Netbook model NB555D) actually lagged the Asus oldie in every instance.
Using Crap Cleaner really got things zipping – still slower than the much older Asus however. More on its performance after I upgrade to 2G of RAM (in a few days)… with more user comments and software tweak suggestions!
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