I like tattoos. I don’t have one, but I think they’re pretty cool. The reason I don’t have one is that I haven’t really thought of anything I’d want to have to look at on my body for the rest of my life.

I am the same way about stickers on laptops. Some folks like Coté cover their laptops with stickers.

Image yoinked from here

I’ve thought about it, but never found ones I liked enough to use.

That was until I saw the “Son of Mac” Decal on Cult of Mac. Mine showed up today.

Wow.

I’ve always been a fan of Magritte, and it should have dawned on me that the “apple” theme in his work would translate well to the Mac, but once I saw this sticker I knew I had to have it.

Image yoinked from here

Cool, huh?

Yesterday I wrote about my failing Macbook battery. While the Apple rep told me that it would take 4-6 days, a new battery was shipped FedEx Overnight and I got it this morning:

Talk about under-promising and over-delivering, this is great. And my battery stats are much better:

The best part was that in order to return my old battery, all I had to do was tear off the top part of the mailing label, which revealed a return label underneath, and drop my old battery back in the box.

Awesome.

w00t! Donnie loaned me the manga today. Now to close that gap in my classical education.

Well, not really, but my luggage did arrive at the hotel this morning, so I’m back to khakis and OpenNMS shirts.

I’ve been noticing a lot of “bag” related links on Coté’s blog so I thought I’d share my opinions on the best luggage out there.

For traditional luggage, I’m a huge fan of Eagle Creek. I own two pieces from them. The Switchback 25 is both wheeled luggage and a backpack. While I rarely use the backpack function it does come in handy when either hiking to a laundromat on long trips with a bunch of dirty clothes or navigating places with lots of stairs (such as Paddington Station in London). It comes with a detachable day pack that is very useful for bringing a small subset of your stuff on board the plane and you can then reattach it when you arrive at your destination to make it easier to lug around.

I also own a Tarmac 22 as a carry-on bag. It’s smaller than the Switchback but it is the largest Tarmac that still fits in the overhead bin. It is also expandable should I find myself with more stuff to bring home than I took.

Both bags are extremely well made and come with a lifetime warranty. I actually used the guarantee for my Switchback when a zipper broke, and outside of the cost of shipping it to them the repair was free. In fact, I ended up with a completely new bag which was a slight bummer since the model I had came with a curved handle (the handle didn’t pull straight out of the bag but instead was curved slightly making it easier to pull) which has since been changed to the standard straight handle you see on other bags.

I’ve also spent a lot of time looking for the perfect laptop bag. Outside of standard features I also had the additional requirement that it be small enough to fit inside the saddlebag on my motorcycle.

The first bag I bought was from Timbuk2. My friend Demetri owns one for his 12-inch Powerbook and it is pretty slick – nice and compact but with a lot of room for expansion. Unfortunately, the design wasn’t as pleasing to me when in came in the larger size to accommodate my 15-inch Macbook Pro. It wasn’t as “tight” feeling and seemed to flop around on my back, so I returned it (the process was very painless). To paraphrase Goldilocks this bag was too big.

Attempt number two was with a bag from Booq (I forget the exact model but I think it was a Boa). These are really nice bags with a wonderful design, but it was too tight. Once I had the bare minimum of stuff loaded into it, there wasn’t room for anything more. I’m often picking up a book or two to read on the plane and it just ran out of room. This bag was too small. It went back as well and with about the same ease as the Timbuk2 bag.

I finally found my dream bag at Briggs & Riley. The “Vertical Computer Brief/Backpack” meets all my needs. It comes with three sections: one for organizing cards, pencils, pens, etc; a cushioned center section for the laptop and cables (it is very easy to extract and replace the laptop when going through airport security) and a third section for papers, books, camera, etc. While I have never used it as a backpack, it converts very quickly.

Its vertical configuration takes a little getting used to, but I’ve grown to rely on it. Since it slides perfectly under the airline seat in front of me, having access through the smaller end means I don’t have to pull it out as far to remove things during flight. Plus it does just fit inside my saddlebag. This bag was just right.

The only complaint I have, and it is a small one, is that if you place the bag over the handle of your roll-aboard luggage there isn’t much room to grip the handle. The upside is that the vertical orientation seems to be more stable and I don’t find the rolling bag listing from side to side as much.

Anyway, in the spirit of community I just wanted to share what I’d found and hope that someone finds it useful.

Unless you’ve been away from the news for the last week, you’re probably aware that today is the 25th anniversary of the introduction of the Macintosh computer. It all kicked off with the famous “1984” Super Bowl ad.

I didn’t use my first Mac until 1986 and I didn’t buy one until 2003, but in between I often used the machines of friends or at work. Also in 2003 I rescued an original Mac that was on its way to the dump.

When Giles Turnbull asked on Cult of Mac if anyone still had an original Mac that worked, I wrote up a short history of this machine and he was kind enough to post it on his website.

I think my Mac is a little unusual in that it has been upgraded and can be connected to the Internet. You can’t really do much with it outside of FTP, but there is rudimentary support for web browsing (Through MacWeb and NCSA Mosiac) as well as IRC (through ircle). I hopped into the OpenNMS channel on freenode but that screen shot didn’t make the article.

It’s a lot of fun to see both how far things have come in 25 years, but to also realize how far ahead of its time was the original Mac.

Today is my 43rd birthday. When you get to be my age, it is just another day (although please don’t let my blasé attitude lead you to think I’m not happy to have made it another year) and I tend, now, to only focus on those birthdays that end in a zero.

Over the weekend I got not one but three video games for my PS3.

It’s funny. I have had my Playstation for almost a year and these were the first titles I’ve gotten for it. I bought it mainly as a Blu-ray and media player so I never really have played games on it (although we did borrow a few). As an old guy I tend to use the Wii (insert joke here).

I’m pretty excited to see what the state of the art of gaming has become. The first game I got was Grand Theft Auto IV, extry crispy edition, which comes with a CD with the music from the game, a duffle bag and a keychain all contained inside a safe deposit box. I got it from my friend Bob, who told me it was cheaper to by the set than just the game. Nothing says I love you like hookers and violence.

I also got the latest Tomb Raider. I played I-III on the PC and I’ve always liked these games, although they have become a bit dated. I’m eager to see how well the franchise has aged.

But the game we’ve been wasting most of our time on is LittleBIGPlanet. It is pretty much the polar opposite of GTA IV. It’s kind of silly but a load of fun, and the Stephen Fry narration is priceless.

I haven’t searched for it yet, but my guess is that LittleBIGPlanet is going to be the next big platform for machinima. With the ability to highly customize both the characters and the environment it is a natural, and while the characters don’t “talk” neither did the guys in Red Vs. Blue so perhaps that won’t be a problem.

I wanted to write about something fun on my birthday, because if my time on this planet has taught me anything, it’s just that you really need to enjoy what you do. I love working on OpenNMS, and am I thankful for all of the folks who make it possible for me to do so.

Working with OpenNMS brings me into contact with a lot of system and network admins, and I’ve noticed certain trends. For example, many have a penchant for high-end photographic equipment. It’s pretty easy to start a flamewar with this group just by asking “which is better, Canon or Nikon?”

Many also enjoy gaming. Video games, of course, are popular, but I’ve also come across pretty much every other type of game; from board games, to old-school table top role-playing to cards (I like bridge myself).

So I thought it might be cool to bring up a game I was introduced to recently. Back in November I took a vacation to New Zealand via Fiji, and in Fiji we played “Vidi Vidi” (pronounced “vindy vindy” or “vingy vingy” in the local dialect).

Vidi Vidi on Navini Island

The game is similar to pool or billiards, but it is played on a square wooden board using little plastic disks instead of balls. One disk, the striker, is slightly larger than the others, and you “flick” it to strike the other disks in an attempt to sink one in the corner pockets (“vidi vidi” means “flick flick”).

It’s a lot of fun, and when I came back to the States I went looking for a board.

I didn’t find one, but I did figure out that Vidi Vidi is based on an Indian game called Carrom. Luckily, an importer of carrom boards is close to where I live, so over the holidays we bought our very own tournament-grade board (from his scratch-n-dent pile) complete with nice strikers and wooden carrom men (or “coins”).

Andrea and Jeff playing Carrom

We’ve had a lot of fun with it so I thought I’d throw it out there in case others were interested. Or am I completely ignorant and this is just new to me?