As I mentioned in a previous post, I host various websites (including this one in the past) on a MiraBox sitting behind my tv. In that same post I outlined how Globalscale screwed me by mixing releases in the sources.list. I didn’t catch it until I had an unbootable system, and I had to completely rebuild my server which took weeks. I very nearly tossed the whole thing in favor of hosting my websites on a “real computer, made by people who knew what they were doing,” but I reminded myself why I settled on the MiraBox in the first place: I like embedded stuff....

Well, how nice! Look what the UPS man hid behind my garbage can (seriously… the thing was all damp; it must have been sitting out there for two weeks). That’s pretty nice of them! It even included a note: The one strange thing is that while it’s marked for Project Sputnik (which uses a Dell XPS 13), I’m not sure I would feel comfortable carrying such a small computer with it....

At work, a large part of my focus is stereo vision. Well, a coworker and I needed to attend a three day training seminar, which we expected would be quite boring. So, we grabbed a pair of cameras, secured their baseline by attaching them to a small metal beam, zip tied the beam to a 12V power supply, and shoved the whole thing into a pelican case so we could continue working on interesting things while we were there....

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently picked up an XPS 13 at a discount from Dell for the Sputnik beta project. When I say “recently,” I actually mean about two months ago, which means this is not a “first look” post. This has been my main computer ever since it arrived, which means I have some thoughts to share. Mostly critiques, at least for this post. Hardware Design Google pictures of this thing....

My old laptop finally seemed to be on its last legs, so I began shopping. I’m the kind of guy who will do research for a month before spending $100 on a hand-held vacuum cleaner, so you can imagine how I deal with something having three or more zeros in its price tag. I started using Debian when I was just a kid, and moved to Ubuntu a few years later....