The Big Red Emergency Party Button: For those moments when you just have to party.

I think the speed peaked somewhere around 700kbytes/s before I ran out of file. This is awesome. And I’m not even that close to the exchange.

I’ve been without the net for over 3 and a half days now, at home. And somewhat inevitably, it’s just when you don’t have something… It’s at the point where even dad has complained that it’s not there. Mum, sure, she sends plenty of emails, she’s even on Facebook. Dad on the other hand barely spends time on there, and yet even he’s noticed. When you consider that 8 years ago, we didn’t have the net at all, and 5 years ago we were all too happy to be on 256kbps “broadband” (yeesh, really? who on earth would call that “broad” by any reasonable measure?), the change has been pretty drastic. I could go days without touching my mobile, but without the net, I feel unplugged, disconnected from the stream of the world. ...

The Wii? Totally, totally worth it. I will say this straight up: if it’s top-of-the-line graphics and abilities you want, the Wii doesn’t cut the mustard. Its sole non-game feature that makes pretentions at being something more than a simple console is the internet access, and even that’s flaky and needlessly slow - for one, where did Nintendo manage to find a 802.11b only chip in 2008? Everything else is focused on the game, and in some ways, that’s what you want from a console, despite everything the Playstations and Xboxen are being sold for. ...

Turns out, US Customs can search and seize laptops at will: Laptops and other electronic devices can be seized [by Customs officials] without reason, their contents copied, and the hardware returned hours or even weeks later. Holee fuck me. Between this and the TSA, I’m never going to the US again.