Blog
Bunnies On Campus
September 21 2006
So I have been spending the last couple of days working at the McPherson Library at UVic. It’s easy to carpool with Julie, and gives me an opportunity to get away from the house and the distractions contained therein. It’s funny - yesterday I was sitting in a carrel working on my swanky new laptop, and I am pretty sure I sat in the same one, with my then swanky new laptop* , 15 years ago when I was a student here in 1991. Who would’ve thunk it.
So being here on campus, I’ve been seeing the bunnies - a feature of the geography here I had nearly forgotten about.
I am not sure where they came from, but I’d say there are more here now than there were before. I counted 9 walking from the parking lot to the library. They just hop about, munching grass, being bunnies. It’s a little weird, and oddly comforting. This has been how I have been finding most of Victoria in general. I took some video on my little camera and posted it on YouTube. You can also see it below.
* My first computer was pretty slick at the time, a Mac Powerbook 100 - the first Mac laptop Apple built. 2 MB Ram (I upgraded form 1) and a 20 MB hard drive! The pinnacle of computing, it’s been downhill ever since.
I remember that Powerbook of yours. I really lusted after it. That snazzy trackball!
By Travis on September 22 2006
That trackball was probably the best laptop pointing device I have ever used. Little keyboard buttons followed trackballs on most laptops, and they were awful. The trackpads they put on laptops these days are better, but I still find them removed from reality a step or two from trackballs. The trackball was a physical thing you moved around and that really made it intuitive.
1991 - pinnacle of computing. Downhill ever since.
By Mike on September 22 2006
The worst were those awful things that looked like pencil erasers and were supposed to be used like a joystick or something. Yeeeech!
By Patrick on September 22 2006
I still have a Powerbook 150. Needs a hard drive but still boots from a floppy. A wonder of engineering as you say. Why did Apple ever get rid of the trackball anyways?
By Allan Bergman on September 22 2006
Allan, I am surprised you haven’t found a way to jerry rig your powerbook 150 up with an ipod drive. C’mon! what are you? Lazy?
By Mike on September 22 2006
I think the trackball mechanisms got too dirty too fast. A trackpad never needs cleaning.
But I agree that both are way better than the IBM “nipple.”
TTFN
Travis
By Trackball musings on September 26 2006