Courtney Hoskins 5/12/08 Courtney Hoskins 5/12/08

The Terminal

Only without Tom Hanks or Catherine Zeta-Jones or any comedy, drama or story of any kind... Well, the last part is not quite true. There's always a story. Even if you have to delve into the inane to find it. And I do. A lot. Six hours is a long time to have to sit at an airport.

I have to confess something: I am a total tech toy geek. It’s an illness I’ve had since childhood. When the MacBook Air came out, I wanted one. I didn’t want to pay thousands of dollars for it (and what's the point if you can't get that solid state drive), but I wanted one. I think I found a reasonable compromise.

My latest purchase is the ASUS EeePC. For $360, I get the smallest damn laptop I’ve ever seen. It weighs two pounds and is… well, look (and I have small hands):

It comes with Windows XP and (fairly zippy) wireless internet, AND, to my shock and glee, a built-in web cam and microphone (we were right over the Grand Canyon here):

The tradeoff is that it has no disk drive and an extremely small amount of storage, but for blogging and keeping up with e-mail, it's perfect. I have my iPhone (the last manifestation of my tech illness), but I’m terrified to do anything online with it while I’m in Europe- international roaming rates are… pretty high.

This should keep this blog sufficiently supplied with tales and pictures and videos throughout Cannes. As long as the free wireless I was promised is really free. I had to do some hacking to get it for free here at LAX.

Courtney Hoskins 3/10/08 Courtney Hoskins 3/10/08

Slusho laptop and demo reel...

Now that I have some of this WordPress stuff figured out... I should follow up on my "Slusho Zoom" post from earlier. My video was chosen as one of the top five entries in the competition! That means:

Freakin' sweet laptop! It also means I need to find a home for my "old" one, which really isn't that old. They have comparable features, but the Alienware wins. When rendering side-by-side, the Slusho! laptop rendered every super complex 3D frame a full minute faster. That doesn't sound like a lot, but consider that one second is 24 of said frames and that a minute would be 1440... were talking a full day!

I should also post my new demo reel:

Which I made with my new laptop. It's my first official demo reel, so I'm excited. Makes me feel "professional" for once...I have more catching up to do, but this will do for now.