Wednesday, August 15th, 2007
Daily Archive
Just a general update…
Posted by Thomas on 15 Aug 2007 | Tagged as: General Ramblings, Picture, Reviews
It’s been busy.
Super-busy.
As you can see from my pictures lately, I was in beautiful Las Vegas at the Riviera Hotel.
First off, I think Vegas is really beautiful only at night. And only if you squint.
Then add the Riviera Hotel on top of that, and, well, it wasn’t the greatest.
But then again, I was there for DEFCON. DEFCON 15 to be specific. The last DEFCON I was at was DEFCON 5, so it’s been awhile.
It was definitely much larger than it was back then. I guess they had over 6000 people, including one hidden NBC reporter.
I learned quite a bit, and picked up some cool stuff. One of my happiest purchases was something that I’ve wanted since I was in college.
The Apple Newton MessagePad 120
This was one of the first PDA’s out on the market, back in the mid 1990’s. I heard about them while I was working at the college I attended, and thought that since I was making ‘the big bucks’, I’d head on down to Compusa and pick one up.
That’s when I found out that they ran over $500; a little too much for a college student/employee.
It would be a few more years before I picked up a Palm Personal, one of the cheaptest/greatest PDA’s ever released. I think I paid $200 for it, then, years later, still a lot, but it was a splurge.
Okay, back to the Newton.
What made the Newton so cool was the fact that it actually read your handwriting. Not well, sometimes, but yeah, it did.
I picked it up for only $15. Quite a difference than the $500 it originally ran for.