An ultra-thin 12-inch after all? Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

The announcement today from SanDisk of a 2.5-inch 32GB solid state SATA drive (via Uneasy Silence) for only US$350 is a lot more important than it looks...


The SanDisk 32G SSD
The vast majority of laptops these days use the 2.5-inch drive form factor, and this is the first affordable solid state disk that I know about that will drop right into those internal bay, without manufacturers having to radically redesign their hardware. So this really is an important step forwards, and means we're all that much closer to the much rumoured replacement for the 12-inch Powerbook that I've been wanting.

Still a "no" to mobile TV? Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

Looks like the uptake of mobile TV services is still "pathetically" low. This still doesn't surprise me (via Pocket Picks), and I don't see why it seems to be surprising other people. Nothing to see here, move along...

As seen by the FAA... Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

This has been sitting in my edit queue since the end of January, so you might have already seen Aaron Koblin's visualisations (via Digg) showing the air traffic over the continental United States and how the traffic changes with time. But if not, they make interesting viewing...

CREDIT: Aaron Koblin

Air traffic as seen by the FAA
The sweep of sunrise across the U.S. is very evident in these visualisations, but there are other interesting patterns that emerge from the data that aren't quite as easily explained. I'm presuming a lot of these arise out of the background noise due to the way the airlines schedule connecting flights, and how they route their aircraft over the course of the day?

RFC 1149 Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

For those of you who've had the misfortune to hear me bang on about transport protocols at some conference or other you'll know my obsession with RFC 1149. That'd be "A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers" for those not in the know.

In 2001 the Bergen Linux Users Group went out and implemented RFC 1149, of course we still need another implementation so that we can do interoperability tests and get the RFC into the standards track, but for enthusiasts of the standard that's just a matter of time...

Pictures taken by Vegard Engen on Saturday April 28 2001

A ping packet enroute to the remote host
Especially since it now looks like the latest developments in avian carriers (with thanks to Matthew Graham) offer the possibility of traffic shaping of packets carried via avian carrier, and to radically reduce the poor ping times of the existing implementation. Excellent news for all fans of RFC 1149, because if it didn't exist already, we'd only have to go out and invent it...

Blogging burnout Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

Long time readers might have noticed a bit of a gap since my last post, and I must admit to suffering a bit of blogging burnout. So I'd like to offer apologies for my unexplained absence, and confirm for those people kind enough to email me that yes, I'm still alive and nothing horrible has happened. Normal service, as they say, will be resumed shortly...