Real World Info Virtually

I’m really cranking them out today aren’t I ;)?

Something that struck me whenever I get into a fundamentally new type of utility / technology (Blogging, Dashboards or a new OS) is the fact that I am always interested in finding stuff for that utility or technology that will give me more information about the physical world I inhabit / physical objects I use.

Let’s take some examples shall we?

  1. My Blog – amongst the very first plugins I installed was ViperBond’s WeatherIcon. While the reasoning I gave myself “Well, now people visiting my blog know the weather where I’m at”, but that’s not the entire story
  2. My Yahoo Widgets Dashboard – amongst the Post-Its, Backpackit widgets and Day Planner I also have 2 widgets to check the weather in Singapore and Bangalore. Also, another widget to tell me my laptop’s CPU utilization and RAM Usage.
  3. My Laptop – I have SpeedFan installed which tells me how hot my CPU, Graphics Card and HDD are (right now that’s 58C, 50C and 38C respectively). Plus I have SigX running so that I can share with the world mind numbing statistics such as how busy my CPU is right now.
  4. I suppose another one is my Xplanet screensaver. But how that works is a story for another post..

I hope you see the trend here. And honestly, I have to say it’s about in some faint way satisfying the Trekkie in me (it always comes back to Star Trek doesn’t it 😀 ). I mean, just remembering the cool stuff Spock would reel off by looking at some sensors on those blinking screens has left some primeval urge in me to be able to look at a screen and know more about the things around me.

Yes, of course I could look at the window, but where’s the fun in that?

Comments are closed.