Aug 07, 1997, 3:15pm

Damnit all!

I screwed up my dates on the last rant again. It was supposed to be from the 5th, not the 4th. Oh well. C'est la vie.

So I got myself a new computer. A screaming fast computer. Fast as fast can be. Zooom. The only problem is, I don't get it until 5pm tomorrow, cuz I wanted it so blazing fast that I have to wait for one of the rilllly rilllly fast parts.

Just to jealous you all out, and to totally geek out, here's what I'm getting - It's based around an AMD K6 233 chip. I've been really wondering what chip I would use, and I settled on the AMD because when you compare performance vs. price, it rocks - you have to get one of those gazillion dollar Pentium IIs to beat it. I'm setting the chip up on the latest ASUS TX97e board, complete with all the bells and whistles, like USB, DIMM and SIMM support, flash bios, and support for Ultra ATA. Why? Cuz my HD is the new Quantum 6.3 gig Ultra ATA EIDE model - the drive with a 33mbs burst access rate - compare that to ultra-wide SCSI's never obtainable 40mbs burst, or a normal Mode 4 EIDE drive at 12-5mbs... so I'm gonna zooooom! And, to round out the "Maximum Speed Scotty!" department, I'm getting gobs of SDRAM thrown in - 128mbs worth in fact - all purring at 10 ns... compared to EDO's turtle paced 60ns speeds. Rounding out the speed demon components, is the ATI All in Wonder card I got with tons of memory and even more goodies and games.

Other stuff on this dream machine includes a new SB AWE 64 card, a 16x CD ROM (I'm gonna miss my 4x4 NEC drive) a second parallel port (I have two printers) and a very, very cool external Sysjet 1.5 gig system. I was gonna get a cd-burner too, but the Sysjet will do the trick for me. Through in all the extras like floppy, beefed up power plant, a $40 intelligent fan (that works with the ASUS mb), and my trusty scanner, printers, and Ditto tape drive, and I've got a system I can be very happy with, for oh, say, 6 months! (well, that's an eternity in this business!).

(author's note: as I add this rant to the new spiffle archive in October, 2001, from my IBM 570E Thinkpad (500Mhz PIII, 312mb ram, 30gb drive, Win XP), and I look at my desktop system (PIII 1.2Ghz, 640mb ram, 70gb total drive space, ATI All in Wonder Radeon card, 16x cdrw, dvd etc), I realize that wow... technology gets OLD fast... Now back to the old rant).

A couple of my geekoid friends have criticized my choice of the AMD chip. Well, you know what? Where I want to beat the Pentium Pros and the Pentium II is where the AMD chip beats it (or at least equals it)- in graphic applications, DOS games, and pure Win95 performance. Some of my favorite games continue to be old DOS 16 bit games, like Warcraft II, Command and Conquer, Indycars II, Nascar, Grand Prix II, etc., and the fact is, they will run much faster on my AMD chip than they ever will on a Pentium Pro or Pentium II. I might lose a fraction under win95 with top end graphics stuff like Ray Dream Designer and Autocad, but I think my choice in memory chips and the hard drive will make up for this. I think I'm gonna have some real fun for a while.

But there is a downside to this. I take delivery of the system on Friday in the afternoon. Taking delivery of a new system means I have to reformat, and reconfigure, and reload THREE systems. How does that math work? I'll tell you. First, I gotta get my new baby (I think I'll call it Spike) running with the new Win95 OSR2 I'm getting with it (with the FAT 32 disk system). Then I gotta reload all of my current programs, and other programs I don't have loaded cuz I currently don't have the room for them. Then I gotta test it, make sure it works ok. Once that's done, I gotta take this aging 100Mhz system I'm currently typing on, and reformat the poor 1.6 drive, set up windows95 on it, get the new 33.6 modem we bought working, soundcard, etc. all working smoothly, cuz this, my baby of 2 years, is going to Jeanette. So I have to do all that, then load all her program choices. I also have to back up her current computer (my old 386DX 40 from 4 years ago) and reload all her documents and stuff onto the 100Mhz. Then I gotta make sure it all works.

Sigh. It doesn't end there. Once I have my new baby working, and have Jeanette's new (my old) system up and running, I gotta take that aging 386DX40 (mind you, it's souped to the max, with 8 megs (try finding those memory chips these days!), a math coprocessor, and a pretty good video card) and reformat the 540 drive on it, load WFWG 3.11, set up a few programs on it, a few games, etc.. Why? Cuz Jean and I are giving it as a graduation present to one of her poor starving student friends. We also bought a new (albeit very cheap) 14" monitor and keyboard and mouse to give to her. I hope she likes it. Thank god I kept my copies of Word 2 and other older programs, like Corel 3, Publisher 1 and 2, Works 3 and the like. I'm giving all these 16 bit, Windows 3.xx programs away in the deal.

So the end result is, come 6pm Friday, till probably the wee hours on Sunday night, I'm going to be very, very busy. So, you won't see a rant from me, and you won't see much of me online. But next week, I'll be able to do a lot of the things I was planning to, like moving this site, designing a few new goodies for this page, and getting both Spiffle and Webmotif completed. So stay tuned.

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Mixelania

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Fiddlers Green by The Tragically Hip

Around The Bend by Pearl Jam

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Burundi and Beyond - NY Times
Great article by Peter Meehan - provided some background.

St. Petersburg Times
Side mention in an article about good machines

AP Story on Espresso
Background and information provided

NY Times - Grinders Article
Especially proud of this one - got the reporter to focus on grinders

Globe and Mail
LOL - showing bad reporting, dude says I'm an American-based site!

The Olympian, WA
Talks about my love for the El Sal Siberia Pacamara

Seattle Times - Clover
Interviewed for comments on the Clover brewer

NY Times - How it Works
Background and information for various espresso machines

Time Mag Article
Just a brief mention, article about roasting beans.

NY Times
Front page article about consumers getting into specialty coffee.

Washington Monthly
Quoted reference to what I wrote in an article at CoffeeGeek.

USA Today - Barista Jam
Intereviewed for my thoughts on what the epitome of espresso is.

WSJ Article
The Wall Street Journal has interviewed me 3 times. This is the first time my name got in a story.

Reuters Interview
Interview with Reuters, Jan 2 - this is the USA Today version.

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CoffeeGeek
Launched Dec 22, 2001, this is THE online community for espresso and coffee fanatics.

CoffeeKid Website
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enGadget
Great gadget site run by the guy who used to do Gizmodo.

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DPReview Forums`
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Daily Zen
Need my Daily Zen fix!

Jalopnik
A blog about car stuff. Vroom Vroom.

MoCo Loco
An industrial design blog. Very cool stuff.

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Beata Blog
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Riddla on Flickr
Matt Riddle's flickr account, updated regularly

Irdy Photos
Irdy, my friend from Jakharta, on Flickr

Recent Acquisitions

Canon EF 24-105 f4 L Lens
The best lens I've ever owned. Super sharp and quick.

Canon 5D
A full frame dSLR, with luscious colour reproduction.

Alzo Digital Lights
Some amazing florescent cold lights for product photography

Canon Xsi dSLR
Amazing technology and image quality in a tiny package.

Canon 40D
Latest prosumer camera from Canon - a much better upgrade than the 30D

Fujitsu P1610
Great 2.2lb computer that does most of my travel / writing needs

28mm f1.8 Lens
A great lens for closeup work and full picture photography

Foodsaver Advanced
Finally got the right tools for freezing green coffee.

Canon 50mm 1.4
Most amazing lens I've ever owned. Produces stellar photos.

Canon 10-22mm
Super wide angle (full frame fisheye) zoom for my Canon 20D