Here's another one from 2019 lol :-)Today's blog post is dedicated to the Ericsson R380w.  I think this may potentially be the first smartphone that I have ever seen in the wild. This phone came out in 1999 and I think it was the first device marketed as a smartphone.  While I think that connected PDAs had data devices connected to them before this, the R380w was an all-in-one device.As

Original N-GageHere's another one from the "drafts" pile from 2019 that I wanted to do a little write-up about, but...well it got lost in the blogging shuffle 😂. My original intent with this series of looking back at older tech was to talk a bit about the specs and the general reception, but since there are enough blogs, wikis, and YouTubers who already do that, why add to the chorus?  So,

Well... Back in 2019 I had started to write this post, when the Gemini PDA was relatively new, and ... well it got forgotten in my drafts folder 😂.  The images of the device pictured are that of the Gemini PDA, which is a connected PDA that aims to replicate the look and feel of those older Psion Series 5 PDAs from the late 90s. The device runs Android, and it has a slot for a SIM so

 Well... I didn't think I'd be migrating from one Mastodon server to another one so soon (I just created the account this past spring!), but here we are! 🙄 I joined this particular server because it seemed like this was where fellow academics were going after they left Twitter (or while they were co-establishing their presence on Mastodon). I should have read the prohibitions a bit more carefully

It's weird that I started writing this last summer and I am only now getting to it... let's see how much I remember 😂.OK, so last summer I watched this series.  The premise was quite simple: who's the next Hawkeye not that Hawkeye has "retired" from being a superhero? This series takes place after the events of Avengers: Endgame. It's Christmas Time in New York, and all Clint Barton

Here's another show from my sci-fi catch-up watch.  This one was on Hulu, I think, and it's a comedy about alien abductees.The series follows city journalist Ozzie Graham, played by Wyatt Cenac, who travels to Beacon, New York to write a piece on a support group called "StarCrossed," who are survivors of alien encounters. The abductees are stereotypical tin-foil-hat folks. Although skeptical at

Last year, at some point, I was going through old science fiction series that I had missed while they were on TV. I thought it would be neat to go back and watch some of them, and to some extent I still am going through and watching them.  My Space: 1999 watch has stalled a bit. It's hard some times to watch this level of camp and appreciate it with a 1960's frame of mind when we live in the 2020's...Anyway,

Wow! Almost a month since I started to comment on this and only now do I have some free time to actually finish my comments 😂.OK, I am an Apple fan. I've gotten a bit more critical over the years, but I still like their products (more or less).  I think VisionPro (AVP) is a bit rushed to market.  No one is saying the β word, and people are treating this as the product, but I honestly

 OK, this is one the last blog from my backlog with a games-related theme ;-)Not gonna lie, at the end of Assassin's Creed Valhalla I was in a "WTF?!?!" mood. I wasn't really sure I wanted to know more about Basim and his ways, but...now that there's a trailer out and we get to see Basim's origin story (and hopefully some kind of redemption arc in the modern day...) I can't wait for this game

Another one from my blog backlog.  This one is the trailer for the next Prince of Persia game, subtitled "The Lost Crown". It's been a while since I've played a Prince of Persia game, and this looks interesting. I don't often play platformers, but this looks interesting. Knowing that Assassin's Creed started off as a Prince of Persia game, I really hope to see crossovers from AC to PoP in this