Awareness: 100 pennies, the $10 bill, the Color Code

Many people describe awareness in different ways. I'm reading Trail Safe right now, and it's talking about seeing vs awareness. It talks about the military & law enforcement Color Code of danger awareness. Last week, Michael Bane talked about awareness on his podcast as having 100 pennies to spend. Motorcycle training guru Keith Code describes it as a ten dollar bill. They're all talking about the same thing, with different terms.

Attention.

My beliefs are closest to what Keith Code talks about, but it applies to more than just motorcycling. He says you have $10 to spend on your awareness. But, as you gain experience, you need to use less of that $10 for the same things. When you first start riding, you're spending a lot of your $10 to keep the bike upright and going the right direction at the right speed. You're still learning the controls, the amount of clutch needed, which pedal does what, etc. People will honk their horn instead of canceling their turn signal. However, as you gain time with the motorcycle, all these things become subconscious, allowing you to spend more of that $10 on other parts of your riding. You can't ignore those basic operations, but you spend very little on them. Professional road racers are able to adjust their line through a corner in inches, and can run the same line lap after lap. My line would vary every lap by yards.

I was driving in the mountains Sunday. We were in a hilly area, with many blind crests and turns (heavy forest and hills). It has also rained so the roads were wet. It was cloudy. As I reached each bend, each turn, each rise, each valley, I was concentrating on the road, trying to figure out where it was going next. I spent very little concentrating on my speed, yet it stayed relatively constant. My steering inputs were smooth. I was also watching for traffic (oncoming and cross), and due to a sign posted miles earlier, I was looking for bicyclists. Yet, as I peaked a rise and I saw the road straight in front of me, my passenger called out "DEER!". I was passed them before it registered what he was talking about: a small herd of deer had just crossed the road and were starting up the hillside. I would have seen a deer in the road, and I think I would have caught the movement of a deer moving towards the road, but the brown deer, slightly above my sight line, off to the side, against the clear brown hillside were completely missed until it was too late to do anything about them. It's a filter I have. I was spending less of my attention on these other inputs.


Counter example. I was riding my motorcycle on a long trip. In the mountains again. I come around a bend and see the pavement is bright red. I follow the red to see an elk carcass in the culvert beside the road. I was looking at the road, so I saw the red. I wonder if my friend and others saw the elk first?


As I said, this applies to everything. At my store, I use it to catch shoplifters, a hunter uses it to spot game, a police officer to see crimes, a teacher to catch mistakes.

Asus EEE 900 running Easy Peesy!!!

It works!!!!  Help page told me to hit esc when booting and select the USB stick.  I tried to change it in the BIOS, and that wasn't working, but this did!  A screen came up and asked what I wanted to boot off of, I selected the USB stick, and it booted Easy Peesy.  It's a simple interface, but still a LOT more powerful than default.  I'm gonna play around with it a bit before I wipe the Asus and install it permanently.  I wonder how this will effect the F9 restore option?

Asus EEE 900 MUST- KEEP- TEMPER

I'll go back to the story later, this post is current time.

I'm still trying to get better use out of this puppy.  I'm still stuck using the default dumb (easy) interface.  I thought I had outsmarted the machine, and planning on installing Easy Peesy Ubuntu, made especially for laptops, and it even lists my PC900 on the compatability list.  I followed the directions at http://www.geteasypeasy.com/.  I went out and bought a 4mb USB stick for it, downloaded and ran the installer and installed it on the USB stick, but now I cant figure out how to boot off of it.  I tried changing the bios, tried all three USB ports, but can't get it to work.

Let me step back.  There was one weird thing I did to get to the above.  I couldn't get the Asus to run the installer program, so I D/L the windows version and ran it on my desktop PC.

Gonna check the help page

Asus EEE 900 analysis pt 3: other annoyances

One thing that's annoying about the PC900 is that it has a hard time connecting to wifi. Even though it's at 100% signal, the ASUS sometimes fails to connect on startup and gives me an error. A simple click and it works though.
I'm jumping ahead in the story, but I'm wondering if it's this version of linux's problem? If I installed another version, I'd lose the simple interface (good for me, bad for dad), but it might fix the problem. I'm installing another version (Ubuntu) on a USB drive, gonna try booting with that and see if it changes anything.

The early bird gets old worms

Today, sellout.woot.com had a better version of the ASUS EEE PC900 for sale. It was a 900A at $160, 10 more than I paid. For that you get the MUCH better Intel Atom 1.6Gz proscessor and twice the RAM at 1GB. Still a 4GB drive, no webcam, and still installed with Linux.

The Atom processor is faster than mine, and uses less power, so figure 4 hours vs 3 hours of battery life on mine.



I considered buying one and giving my 900 to my dad, as I think it'd be perfect for him given the appliance nature. I may still do this and buy something else.

Asus EEE 900 analysis pt 2: Keyboard

It's been said before, but I have to say it again: the keyboard is too small. None of these post have been fully done on the 900 as I type slower on it or there are many errors. The most common errors are a single space after a period, and hitting the 9 key instead of the I key. If the lights are on and the laptop is on a table, I can go at an ok speed touch typing while looking at the keyboard, or even slower 'hunt and pecking'.

I use my left pinky to hit the Shift key, so the layout of the arrow keys and the right shift key doesn't bother ME, but I understand that putting the shift key to the right of the up arrow annoys some. I must like this part of the layout, as I can use all four arrow keys in the dark without any problems.

I miss having a separate numeric keypad. I use it a lot on a regular 101 keyboard, and I keep hitting the wrong number on the top row of the small keyboard because it's shifted one over, with the 1 key being at the far left side of the keyboard, instead of the ` key.

Asus EEE 900 analysis pt 1: DRIVE SPACE

I knew this computer would be short on drive space, but I figured I'd delete the programs I wouldn't use (e.g. Skype, Learn Chinese). There's no way to remove any icons or uninstall any programs with the 'easy' GUI.
There's a Disk Space program, and out of the box, it's 66% full. Once it's done doing updates, it's 87% full. This leaves me with 526mb to work with. There's an Add/Remove Program application, but I can't remove anything, just add a handful of selected programs, and even one can fill the rest of the drive. These programs, once installed, can be removed, but that's it.
OK, how to fix this? I found out about the Terminal/Console. This get me to a linux prompt, and I remember some of the commands I used 20 years ago: CD (change directory), LS (list). Still I didn't seem to find a directory were the installed programs were, and no way to remove them. (A week later I did finally find the programs, but I didn't have permission to delete them.) The default console is real dumb, as I couldn't even cut or paste, so as I explored and attempted fixes, plus using the undersized keyboard (great for hunt and peck, but I can't touch type with it without hitting the wrong keys all the time), I had to keep double checking my work to make sure I was typing the correct command.

I check the wiki I found, and see one of the easy things to do is change the default console. I change to one where I CAN cut and paste from another window.

One problem down.

Asus EEE 900 arrived and unboxed and observed

I was eager for the day when this was to show up. As mentioned above, this was an inexpensive computer with the specs to match: 8.9" screen, Card reader, microphone (but no web cam), 3 USB ports, undersized keyboard (90%), Wifi, Intel® Mobile 900 MHz CPU, 512MB DDR2 RAM, 4GB SSD (really?), speakers, VGA out, earphone jack, 9"x 7" x 1.5", 2.2lbs (1kg). Linux.

The package came with the computer, the battery, AC recharger, customer service sheet, user manual, and recovery CD (computer has no drive). Not much. The battery was clipped on and I charged it up while looking at the paperwork. The customer service sheet was a quick reference sheet, and the manual wasn't much better, but gave more detailed descriptions of the installed apps.

This leads directly to my first comment: it's setup to be an appliance. I was shocked that the interface was a series of tabs (Internet, Work, Play, Settings) with giant icons for the various programs. I was expecting it to be much harder to use, or at least similar to the mac or PC graphical user interface (GUI). However, this has turned into a bad thing, as I'm stuck with it (for now), and can't modify it at all (except for a favorites tab where I can have a BEST OF installed programs list).

Asus EEE 900 ordered

I've finally bought my first laptop. I'd been planning on getting some sort of laptop for a while: I bought a wireless mouse 4 months ago, and bought a external DVD/CDROM 2 months ago. I knew I wanted a netbook, but I was originally planning on getting a Samsung NC-10 at around $425. Instead, I saw a refurbished Asus EEE 900
on Woot.com for $150. There was a slightly upgraded version (2gb SSD and Windows XP instead of Unix) for $175 on their sister site, but I knew XP needed a full GB of RAM, and b0th models had 512kb.
Also, I wanted to try a unix machine to see the differences from Windows and Mac. While I TTY and use UNIX to access an old email account to this day, I haven't used unix since college back in the 80s.
Finally, I wanted to try the cheapest machine I could find to help me decide what features I liked when getting a 'real' laptop later. What features did I hate, which could I live with? This might be fun. A friend called it a hobby.
This is 180 degrees from my regular views on computers. I believe computers should be appliances, and work every time, not constantly needing attention and upgrades. This is why I don't do PC gaming anymore: I hated the 'upgrade game' I had to play whenever I bought a new game.

I ordered it and waited for it to arrive.