As soon as Steve Jobs announced the 11-inch MacBook Air, I knew that they would represent the future of blind note-taking devices, so I bought one immediately. Following on this thought, I knew I would need to find a case. The Apple store didn’t even have any. Some quick searching turned up the first company to manufacture one: WaterField Designs.

The site has a friendly feel with lots of positive testimonials, so I felt good about this. I selected my make and model. I then had a bit of a difficult question. It asks you to select your orientation – horizontal or vertical. I chose the vertical orientation because it can go in other bags easier and I figured you never know. I kept trying to picture it in my mind, since I can’t see the pictures. I didn’t get it quite right, but interestingly I still feel like I made the right purchase. Most laptop cases have a horizontal orientation. The laptop sits in the case in the way you would use it. This makes the case’s width greater than its length. In vertical orientation, the laptop sits in the case on its side. This makes its height greater than its width. Originally, I really pictured and wanted a standard horizontal orientation. At first when it arrived, I felt discouraged that I picked the wrong one. When I actually put it on and wore it around, however, I realized that I may have unintentionally made the right choice. With something as light as the MacBook Air at only 2.3 pounds, a sleeker profile makes it sit nicely against the hip and leg, instead of sticking out and flopping around. I don’t know if a horizontally oriented case would actually cause this, maybe not, but either way I like it. It does also have another unintended advantage: you can charge it while it sits in the case. Actually, sleeve describes it better than a case, since the MacBook just slides into it. The inside feels like a cushion, keeping your beloved MacBook Air nice and protected. It also has a little pocket on the back for flat things, but no accessories. We’ll get back to that.

After I made my choice, I had to pick the finish. They offer leather or lead indium. As a vegetarian, I figure the less leather the better, so I picked lead indium, hoping it didn’t actually contain lead, but pretty much knowing how it would feel. I got that exactly right. It feels like a classy rough vinyl type of material. Very nice.

Next, I had to choose whether or not I wanted to add a flap. At this point the picture really started to form in my head. I thought of the crappy standard sleeve that came with my netbook. I imagined it jazzed up. Now I saw how the flap would come into play. If you don’t get one, you just get the sleeve, nothing else. I definitely wanted that, and again I guessed right. You definitely want the flap if you plan to carry this thing anywhere outside of another bag. Its size and material gives it a good weight, and it has a secure velcro snap. The inner part has a soft material as well to keep things nice and safe. Not seeing the pictures felt a little frustrating, but with no recourse I had to continue forward with no other way to go, just like Mr. Bilbo.

Now things got interesting, as it asked if I wanted a strap. Now I saw that they have a whole system to assemble your perfect case. I definitely wanted that, since I rightly figured that the sleeve didn’t have a handle. They offer two types of straps: a regular strap for $12, and a suspension strap for $22. I didn’t know the difference, but figured in for a penny in for a pound, so got the suspension strap. I guess the normal strap just has a single strap, but the suspension strap has the full deal. I didn’t realize luggage had so much to it. I love the strap – light and well-padded. I hardly feel anything when wearing it, like a friendly feather on my shoulder.

So far, I wondered where I’d put my chargers, random cables, and of course a disc of Taza Chocolate for emergencies. I figured since they had already gone this far, that they would have something. Indeed, the next step asked if I wanted a Piggyback Pouch! I love this thing. Just to go that extra mile, they offer it in a regular vinyl feel for $25, and with leather trim for $27. Again, I went with the standard $25 bag. It has two hooks on it, and they hook onto the same loops to which the straps connect. The bag has the same width as the sleeve. It hangs down and actually starts about a quarter way down the sleeve, and ends about an eighth of the way from the bottom. I just made rough estimates with my fingers, but hopefully you get the picture. If you don’t, just go to their site and see for yourself, assuming you can. The Piggyback Pouch has a zipper opening under a little flap. Inside, it has a large pocket with a smaller soft felt-like pocket with a seam along the top connecting the two. Beautiful.

That completed my selection process. The entire case cost $62.00… or so I thought. They have had so much going on – probably from nerds like me ordering MacBook Air cases – that they had some problems with their web site, and the case actually cost $99.00. They made this clear to me in an email, and of course I opted to continue. Nothing i could do but say a quick prayer to Goddess and hope for the best.

Fortunately, everything met or exceeded my expectations. Every piece has fine workmanship. You won’t find anything cheap on this bag. It won’t fall apart in the rain or anything like that. It keeps my beloved safe and secure. I don’t worry about that anymore. They really have everything well thought out. All the pieces fit together to make a simple and sophisticated package. The order arrived very quickly as well. I would definitely recommend dealing with WaterField Designs for your case needs. They have tons of cases, not just those for the MacBook Air. They just did it first, and I needed one now. I had some problems just because I couldn’t see the pictures, but I figured things out well enough, and I hope my descriptions help others. As I said with my netbook, having a good case completes the set up. Now I have a fully functional note-taker which functions beyond my wildest dreams, and a smart piece of luggage to keep it in. Glorious!

I love my netbook, but have wanted a case with a shoulder strap. The one recommended on Amazon only had handles. Friends felt similarly, and recently, one emailed me a link to the Netbook Bag Elite. I love it!

It looks more like a small suitcase than a bag, but it has the feel of a bag from having so many compartments. I can hardly count them all, but they all have a purpose. It has a small zipper pocket in the front, where I keep my newly acquired Olympus digital voice recorder, along with its accessories. Behind that, it has a cool Velcro pocket, with two perfect pockets for small devices, media cards, and the like. Each of these two little pockets has a pen holder. I haven’t found a use for this compartment yet, but I know I will. Next, we come to the small major compartment. It has a zipper which goes a little ways down on each side, securely closing it but making it easily accessible. I have all my netbook accessories in it, such as my charger, a spare Ethernet cable, and the like. It also has a smaller mesh bag on the outer wall where I keep a USB thumb drive, a USB four port hub also purchased at the same time, and a packet of href="www.tazachocolate.com">Taza Chocolate stashed away for safe keeping.

Now, we come to the main netbook compartment. This compartment has a zipper which goes all the way down the bag, effectively dividing it in half. It can open all the way if you want, but usually you don’t need to. It makes for easy packing, though. My EeePC 1000HE fits snugly in it. It feels very cushioned by all the padding around it from the different compartments. The security makes me feel better about it. The back part has a separate Velcro compartment in it as well. I keep my desk stand in it. How many compartments does that make? Ten? I had to count three times. The back has a Velcro strap for attaching the bag to another piece of luggage. The bottom has little legs to help it stand, and it has Velcro-locking handles.

Now I must discuss the shoulder strap, since I got it because of that. At first, I couldn’t figure out why the bag didn’t have the hooks for the strap on the sides, as most things do. Rather, one hook resides on the front right corner, and the other on the back left corner. This makes it rotate back over your side closer to your back, rather than just hanging at your side and getting in the way. I found this ingenious. The strap has swiveling hooks to keep it from tangling, and the combination works. The strap has a broad support for the shoulder, making the whole thing extremely manageable.

The skin of the bag feels very rugged and professional, but still plush and slightly yielding. The whole thing gives my netbook and its accessories a very compact, portable, integrated, accessible, and secure feel. I have made my netbook become my new note-taker, and this bag represents an essential component. If you have a netbook, you really should take a look at the Bag Elite. I love mine! They named it well. It will make you feel elite, and confidence is key.

I have done it! I have gotten Linux installed on my Netbook. Specifically, I used Arch Linux for the Blind. Coming from Slackware, it made a good choice, since it already has Espeak installed, and I can get Gnome working out of the box as well. I believe I may even switch my desktop over, since Slackware 13.0 couldn’t even compile the stock kernels which ship with it. They require a newer version of gcc, which I installed, but that of course has broken some other things. I feel very impressed with Arch Linux so far.

I love having a portable computing device. The blind have had portable note-takers for years. I first got my Braille ‘n Speak in 1988 or so. I used and loved that thing for over ten years, then the company merged with others and became the Microsoft of the blind community. After that happened, I no longer had a constant computer at my side tow rite things down. I tried to fill the void with crap, but nothing satisfied me.

The Netbook has arrived in full force of course, and Linux accessibility provides incredible solutions. I can even ssh (log in) to my desktop upstairs while sitting in my living room recliner, and control it pretty much as if at the console. Can you do that with Windows? One crappy note-taker costs the same as thirty-one netbooks! They provide the lock, and GNU/Linux the key. Making a note-taking productivity suite under Linux has the advantage that I can port it to whatever machine I wish no matter what cool thing in the future comes out. As long as it runs an accessible version of Linux I can rock and roll!

I can’t reiterate how great this feels. I feel rejuvenated, like part of me has come back, now that I have this new medium of expression. I feel comfortable and free. This will go very well with blogging. I have Twitter running under Emacs. I also plan to make extensive use of Orgmode. “Your life in plain text” sounds just about right!

I find that suspend works far better under Linux. I disabled it under Windows, since it locked it up and didn’t seem as stable. Linux works wonderfully, I just keep the suspend mode active when I close the lid while on DC. It uses around one percent of battery charge per hour while in suspend. Then, I just open the lid and it pops right back up.

I now have my EeePC 1000HE in a very nice configuration. I kept the original 80GB Windows partition, and installed Arch Linux on the second partition. I now have a nice dual-boot configuration, though will do 99% of my work under Linux. I even have Firefox working under Gnome with Orca. Having Linux on a Netbook rules, and I would recommend it to anyone who has the time and desire.

It just occurred to me that I didn’t blog about what happened. The Thursday before last, a freak power surge took out the drive in my desktop. I’ve had to rebuild since then, and wanted to get my Netbook functioning, since I sort of needed it. Now things will work out, I will have a rocking new setup, and hopefully I can get the data off the old drive.

Every Full Moon has its own adventures, and seems to follow a similar pattern. Skeptics will say that the full moon doesn’t feel any different, or cause people to behave differently, but many would beg to differ. I would argue that if one becomes aware of it, and if one does something to commemorate the cycle (listening to the Dark Side of the Moon while taking a salt bath, for example) then they will notice the effects much more. It seems repeatable, and thus subject to the same laws and methods as any other repeatable phenomena. It starts out feeling pretty normal, gradually escalates, then things start feeling really weird at about the halfway point, and by the end you feel ready for it to end. This full moon proved no exception, and I thought I’d just document a few of the little things I wanted to write down in one post.

The weirdness started after I took an awesome salt bath, which I love to do on full moons because a salt bath helps the body detoxify, which apparently happens during full moons. I slept for a few hours, and woke up very early (or late depending on your point of view.) I learned that Asus had just released the successor to my Netbook literally the day before I ordered mine. I felt kind of upset, and for about ten minutes, considered returning mine for the newer model. I decided not to, however, because it didn’t differ too much – 6.4 ounces lighter, an extra hour of battery life, and a new case design didn’t seem worth the hassle.

That prompted a rousing discussion about Microsoft versus Linux on a Netbook. I will not rehash the whole debate, as many have already become familiar with the various arguments. Blind people may know Windows, but having something forced on them by a monolith does not make it the best. As for the argument that the manufacturers design the Netbook for Windows, I would just say that without people with the hacker spirit, wanting to do things with their machines beyond their design, we wouldn’t have Netbooks in the first place!

After I simmered down from that, I read a rather disconcerting and poignant email from my friend Chuck Young. You can find him on the blog roll, though I doubt he will publish the article he sent me! By this time it had gotten onto about eight o’clock in the morning, and I need to take a power nap, prepare a shopping list, and meditate.

As well as declaring this the Summer of the Netbook, I also declared it the Summer of Zazen. They don’t call the hara the Golden Stone for nothing!

After recharging and getting my shopping order, it had gotten on to around three o’clock, or noon Pacific time. Ordinarily this wouldn’t matter, but today something extraordinary happened, at least in the eyes of many: Michael Jackson’s Memorial. Oh no! I feel awful blogging about this. I only watched small amounts, as I couldn’t stand hearing people going on and on about Jesus. Viewing it reminded me of viewing Twitter in the past week: lots of #moonfruits! Ha, I saved that joke for now! Things felt kind of creepy, and a kid cried. I tried to enter the mind of a Michael Jackson fan, and feel some remorse. It worked for around two minutes. I still don’t know what the scene looked like, but I heard they had a solid gold casket on stage. I kind of hoped that something cool would happen, like they would lower it down on air, or that the lid would creak open and Michael Jackson’s ghostly countenance would emerge. Alas, nothing of the kind happened, but as with the initial event of his death, I could feel the collective pull. Every channel showed it, and within minutes of it ending they had sound bytes and collages. Programs continue to run as I write this. It also sort of weirded me out that it happened under a full moon. Did they know?

As I sit here outside typing on my lovely netbook, I realize how much I love blogging under the night sky with a full moon, the cool feel of the summer air mingles with the sounds of a suburban town, and the astral light of the full moon permiates my spirit and this entry. I can sense it with my third eye. I only ever saw moonlight once in my life, when a September full moon reflected off the ocean. It looked like a glittering mirror.

Like a woman, a netbook has many layers and mysteries. I have solved two more I felt worthy of documenting as I freely write from my armchair in the living room.

Firstly, the switch on the bottom simply acts as a lock for the battery. When I first got it, I feared that it might do something catastrophic if switched, maybe switching the source of power, causing it to blow up like the train set we got as a kid. My dad never reads directions, and plugged the transformer’s wires into the “DC” terminals. Even as a child I knew what would happen, which it soon did. Not pretty! Not so with this beautiful creation, it simply acts as a secondary emergency lock.

Secondly, I wondered why I couldn’t get into the boot menu. I tried and tried to hold down escape, pressing it repeatedly, holding it down, and pretty much every variation thereof. Tonight, I learned that it requires entering the BIOS by hitting F2, then going over to the “Boot” options, and turning on “Quick Boot.” Then save the configuration, and then you can hit the escape key when booting to bring up the boot menu to boot from a thumbdrive, or so say the legends. This requires sighted help, of course, so I will let you know.

This just reinforces why I would love to sell these things to the blind, working out of the box with free software and an interface to match. We mustn’t let evil prevail!

In the meantime, I installed Cygwin while sitting on my front porch. If you want to dabble in Linux while still using Windows, I would recommend this, albeit the setup interface which one uses to add and remove packages needs some accessibility work.