Name: Terence Wong
Location: Sydney, Australia
This picture is of me and a Sentinel from The Matrix exhibit at Warner
Bros Movie World in Queensland, Australia.
A common misconception is that people who work in IT are all nerds. In fact, in
my line of work as an Enterprise Java developer, I have met some of the most
un-nerdy people (or, you can read that to mean there are a lot of closet nerds).
I on the other hand, am proud of my nerdiness! A good example is my recent
acquisition of a Binary blue LED watch. I know that people who have seen me use
it are secretly jealous that I can tell the time from a sequence of on-and-off
LEDs! Never mind that it’s annoying to work out the time when I’m half-asleep or
in a hurry…
Although I work daily on systems that run on large business servers, my true
love in computing is at the other end of the spectrum in handheld computing.
Ever since I was young I always dreamed of having a mini computer I could take
with me wherever I went. I could not afford an Apple Newton as a university
student, so When the US Robotics Palm Pilot came out, I knew I had to have one!
The success of the Palm Pilot in kick starting the handheld industry fueled my
obsession with handheld computing and has seen me owning the following devices
within the last seven years: Franklin Rex PRO, Psion Series 5, 3Com Palm III,
3Com Palm V, Casio E100, Diamond Mako (rebadged Psion Revo+), Sony CLIÉ N760,
Toshiba e310, Palm Zire 71. I can’t even estimate how much money I have spent on
these things, as I also acquired the habit of accessorizing my gadgets with
protective cases, replacement styli, keyboards, etc.!
As you can see, I have dabbled with a few of the popular handheld OSes, but
PalmOS has always been what I go back to. People used to tell me that I should
get commission from Palm as I have influenced quite a few people who weren’t
looking for one to buy a Palm. My current PDA is a Sony CLIÉ NX80V which I enjoy
for the large screen and reasonable 1 mega pixel camera.
So a lot of you will probably be pointing out that the market for handheld
devices is shrinking. I think that this is very sad, but acknowledge that it
makes sense for most people to have a mobile phone with PIM capabilities
instead. Some day I am hoping that I will have room to start a museum of
handheld computing so that people can laugh when they see what we all carry
around with us.
I have recently become a Mac convert, and my daily driver is now a white Apple
iBook G4 12" which I have named Pegasus, the winged horse Bellerophon rode into
battle in ancient Greek mythology. Coupled with that I have an Archos Multimedia
Jukebox 20GB and Sennheiser PX200 headphones which I highly recommend.
Do not get me started on all of the mobile phones I’ve owned!
I would also like to add that I have been a long time reader/lurker of The
Gadgeteer website for over six years, since back in the days when it was just
Julie. I still remember getting a reply by email from Julie years ago and
thinking "WOW! I’ve actually communicated with a gadget GURU!". I think that
Julie and Judie do a fantastic job and are to be commended. Thank you guys!
Live Long and Prosper (yes, a lot of IT nerds like Star Trek!).
