Christian Oliver’s digital thoughts

I recently bought a Netbook, the MSI Wind U100-432 to be precise and I must say I’m very happy about it.

Granted I’m grumbling about having to use Windows XP and remembering why I love Mac OS so much. Nevertheless, the advantage of running full applications when compared with my first netbook, an early eeePC.

My setup is simple. I run Dropbox to synch a folder with the files I’m currently working on and Evernote to take notes.

I also have Firefox 3 with the same Extensions I use on the Mac (No Script being a MUST since I’m on XP) and TweetDeck to remain connected to the Twitterati.

Mostly I don’t worry about local downloads of emails since I use Yahoo! Mail and GMail mostly.

For my To-do lists I’ve been a long time user of Remember The Milk.

All this really helps me work remotely without much power requirements. I’m wondering if it would get to the point of allowing me to travel with a Netbook and leave my Laptop behind on short trips.

One very good upside of this setup is the cost. For less than $500 I have a working environment even capable of videoconferencing via Skype. This is very attractive specially when thinking of risky places like Venezuela. I would be much less worried about having this stolen than my MacBook.

To make things even more interesting, there are ways to hack this machine to run OS X. That would make it almost perfect, since an Apple version would be the ultimate.

Another very big upside is the battery life. I don’t have precise data but today it lasted the whole afternoon, even with intermittent WiFi and it even helped recharge my iPhone which almost died on me today with low battery.

On the downside, the keyboard is not the most comfortable and the Windows key mappings are a pain since I’m so used to Mac commands now. Also the screen is not so big, so really it’s only tolerable to do work on texts, small spreadsheets and small MindMaps. I wouldn’t do Photography retouching on it or other large scale documents such as Project in it. Not unless it was urgent to do so.

Yesterday I went to the MIT Forum’s Future of Wireless Event.

The audience was mostly suits from the telecommunications industry and the usual Atlanta networking crowd.

The forum itself was very TV like since it was being transmitted live to 26 other locations around the US.

Here are some of my notes. Nothing really groundbreaking or new was said though.

According to De La Vega, AT&T Invested an additional $500M in the 3G network just to compensate for the increased expectation of demand due to the release of the iPhone 3G.

RDLV: “We’re the one subsidizing the iPhone to really get it to the masses”. On why AT&T deserves part of the credit for the iPhone’s success.

On wireless bandwidth: Todays technology can go up to 14.4 MPBS. Already purchased the spectum for 4G. Will use LTE which can go to up to 100 MBPS.

Average per user bandwidth usage is decreasing as mass market adoption of the iPhone increases. First adopters had higher per user bandwidth usage.

World is drifting to LTE although some are stickin to Wimax.

Verizon is also going to LTE.

At AT&T 3G is being lunched also on 850mhz spectrum to improve the reach.

RDLV on Wifi: believe that Wifi is the unifiying force. Just purchased Wayport. Idea is to allow users to switch seamlessly from cellphone data to WiFi.

RDLV: Close to 290 million phones in the US

A whole world of machine to machine communications is comming. Sensor that allow them to know where they are and when to interact with each other. RDLV

RDLV: Would start a company to help devices network with each other and become temporary peripherals.

Many opportunities in emerging markets.

Retail channels are becoming “experience stores”, what they can’t get online.

Loopt is the killer app according to RDLV but Loopt+Twitter would be even better.

I’ve managed to be at a fit level I never could have hoped to achieve. I’m feeling better than ever and I’ve stopped “dieting” to loose weight. I now eat many more calories but I still do count them daily and also I continue to exercise strongly.

The hardest part, according to many, is keeping the weight off. Some studies show that the great majority of people who loose a lot of weight, gain it all back and even end up worse than when they started. Well, I’m determined to prevent that from happening to me. That’s why I keep setting goals to myself. The only difference is that now my goals are not really related to weight but to athletic fitness.

Setting goals makes it more interesting and challenging. That’s pretty much the way I said to myself in January that I would loose weight, now I’ve made the decision to start competing in running and biking events. Thus I will start training for the Atlanta Marathon in March. Let’s see how I do.

So, where am I now?

My weight oscillates between 152 and 155 and that’s where I want to stay. Nevertheless, my body is still changing. I guess I’m loosing fat and gaining muscle weight because my waist keeps getting smaller. When I started this effort I was wearing pants size 36 and now I’m wearing 30 loosely, I even have some pants size 29 that fit perfectly. Even my shoes have changed half a size.

I’m now exercising every day, even if only doing pushups, I do something. My routine is to do a couple of days of strength training and the rest aerobic, either mountain biking or running. Last time I ran I did 7.8 miles in 50 minutes, which is not bad at all but for the marathon I would have to be able to sustain that much longer, maybe around 4 hours for the full marathon.

You can check my status at Gyminee.com in my profile page.

Here is a snapshot of today’s numbers: