Well, "ending isolation" is a typically pompous Developer thing to say, but a computer that can "withstand heat, humidity, and dust... even survive a full dunking in water" Is prety cool in my book. "Most importantly, it runs on a small amount of power, supplied by a bicycle crank generator and car battery." Could use those in Fiji...

Seems some dickhead in San Fransisco thinks she can patent the thing with her incredibly vague "idea."

Anyway, this all came up because a bicycle-powered computer was part of my original plan for Callous Computing (aka Working Class Computer), but after talking to several people I was convinced building such a thing was beyond me, so I have watered down my idea to this proposal (pdf).

But for some reason, this simple, perhaps stupid, perhaps funny little toaster idea keeps beckoning me as a better option...

an aside: I remember when I was in the real world how much student blogs annoyed me. And before that, I remember how much chatty blogs annoyed me. and here I am...