May 29, 2003
I am a Total Geek
More accurately, I possess 31.36095% geekish qualities. Take the test yourself, unless you’re Erik.
Redesign underway
I am working on a redesign of the site’s layout and navigation, a preview of which can be found here. That page also automatically updates, just as the main page does, so if you already prefer the new look, you can temporarily bookmark the new-look page. Comments and criticisms are welcome, especially from those of you whom I did not previously email on the subject.
Oh, stuff it, StuffIt
Erik brings up a good point on using disk images, .dmg, for archival purposes, rather than Aladdin’s DropStuff or StuffIt Deluxe. I haven’t used StuffIt Deluxe in over two years, since I migrated to OS X.
I have the latest version of DropStuff, courtesy of my .Mac account (which will not be renewed later this year), but I’ve only used it once in the past three weeks (and that was to send screenshots to Lee). I cannot recall when I used it beyond that. I could have just as easily used DropDMG for that purpose, and likely will in the future.
As far as archiving goes, just make sure you’re not creating Internet-enabled images, i.e., the .dmg file expands in to a folder, and you should be good to go.
May 28, 2003
Roy retires
Patrick Roy, the best goaltender in professional hockey the past twenty years, announced his retirement today.
“I’ve had a blast. It’s been unbelievable. I’ve been so fortunate to have lived a dream and have fun for more than 18 years earning a living by playing a game I love,” Roy said, alternately speaking in English and French.
“I will remember the good days and cherish the great moments,” he said. “I’m leaving with the feeling that I’ve done everything I could to be the best.”
The 37-year-old Roy owns nearly every major goaltending record. He is a four-time Stanley Cup champion, winning two each with Colorado and Montreal. He is the only three-time winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy, awarded to the playoff MVP, and is the NHL’s career leader in victories with 551 and games played with 1,029.
He also won the Vezina Trophy, given to the league’s best goaltender each year, three times. Both of the goalies currently in the Stanley Cup Finals, Brodeur and Giguere, are French-Canadian, and looked to Roy (pronounced “Wah” for you hockey-ignorant plebeians) as their inspiration for making it in the NHL. With two Cups under his belt already, Brodeur seeks a third, while Giguere hopes to begin his own Cup-winning legacy.
Looking at what he’s accomplished, one could make the argument that, at least as far as the past twenty years is concerned, what Gretzkey was to forwards, Roy was to goaltenders. His performance dimmed slightly these past few years, overshadowed by Brodeur, Belfour, Turco, and others, but they all look to him as the greatest goalie in the modern NHL. I‘m just glad I got to see him play.
Au revoir, Patrick. Merci.
Gruber on Waferbaby
The Waferbaby Corner monkey interviews John Gruber, of Daring Fireball fame. John is his usual, subtle self when refuting the “Cult of Macintosh,” discussing the direction of Apple and the web, and sharing where he spends his time online.
Gruber gives Michael (and his software) a nice plug, as well as one for About This Particular Macintosh, though Waferbaby doesn’t provide a link to the ‘zine.
Good interview, though. John gives some good examples I will have to remember.
Rangers make history
My good friend Francisco informed me this morning that our up-and-coming Texas Rangers have made baseball history. No MLB club has ever fielded a team in one season that had three players with 500 home runs, 400 home runs, and 300 home runs, respectively…until now.
Rafael Palmeiro, Juan Gonzalez, and Alex Rodriguez take those honors, respectively, and 2001 “Comeback Player of the Year” Ruben Sierra currently stands at 278 home runs in his career, so he’s knocking on the 300-club door as well.
If we could just get some consistency out of the pitching staff, like we did during the last 7-game winning streak (which included a sweep of the playoff-nemesis NY Yankees club), this team would be contending for a pennant. For now, we have to struggle to win two just to get back to .500.
UPDATE, 6/13: Well, this was short-lived. The Rangers traded Sierra last week to the Yankees.
Why am I not surprised?
Sam Farr has done more in his six terms (about six too many) to undermine American sovereignty than former General Secretary President Klinton did in his eight years in office.
“If the U.N. didn’t exist, we’d be inventing it right now,” Farr told the San Francisco Chronicle, calling the U.N. “the only way to build up the infrastructure around the globe for the human rights, labor, environmental conditions that are fair and equitable.”
Gee, Representative Farr, just like the U.N. is doing in Iraq right now? Like it did so successfully in Vietnam? Somalia? Rwanda?
“We’ve got to do everything in our power to make the U.N. the leadership body it was intended to be. … This president has no respect for the United Nations.”
Nor should he. Representative Farr, name one conflict the United Nations has successfully mediated to a resolution that benefited all of the people involved. You have until the next election, and if you need more time, I’m sure we can give you all you need.
After toppling Saddam Hussein with the assistance of about 40 other countries who formed a “coalition of the willing,” the U.S. returned to the Security Council this month to resume international diplomacy over the issue of sanctions. On Thursday, the 15-member council appeared to smooth the rift over Iraq by passing a resolution that approved the U.S.-led administration of the country.
Yes, after the U.S. and its allies did all the dirty work, the U.N. decides it wants to play ball.
“Reform of the U.N. is impossible. The U.N. and its agencies are fatally flawed,” maintains Phyllis Kaminsky, a U.S. delegate to the Human Rights Commission and a Reagan administration official.
Indeed. The U.N. has demonstrated its ineptitude in handling the Iraq situation, including its mismanagement of the entire oil-for-food program, which did little to put food on the table of a majority of Iraqis, while continuing to line Hussein’s pockets.
Oh, and regarding your income-tax payments this year:
“Americans should take notice when pro-U.N. forces in Washington recently spent $600,000 of taxpayers’ money to renovate the kitchen of the ambassador’s Waldorf-Astoria apartment,” Snyder said. “I bet Julia Child’s kitchen didn’t cost 600 grand.”
May 27, 2003
You can always use that Ranger tab for TP…
Colonel David Hackworth (USA-Retired) reports on the sissifying of the elite Army Rangers.
While the rest of the U.S. Army has lowered its standards to the point where seasoned war vets find today’s combat training a joke and the crusty salts who fought at Anzio, Osan and Dak To refer to what passes for most training as “an invitation to get killed,” Rangers have fought lowering the training bar and have consistently turned out hardened studs whom commanders in the field would fight to get.
That is until Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, the guy who runs Fort Benning today, was told by a few recent Ranger graduates that they were turned off by Ranger School because some of their RIs were meanies and actually yelled and cursed at them and even made them do pushups when they goofed up. Others complained in writing that they’d been sleep-deprived and that the training was too difficult.
For the record, the RIs—hardened vets who know what it takes to win and walk away alive—were merely following the battle-tested Darby practices of creating maximum stress, teaching attention to detail and passing on the proven tactics and techniques that have worked so splendidly for our Rangers in a bunch of bad scraps.
Just for the record, applying for and attending Ranger School is strictly a volunteer activity, just like joining the Army itself. If you’re not being physically abused or racially slandered, what are you complaining about? The old rumination on heat and the kitchen comes to mind.
One can only hope that Eaton is retired—er, retires, soon, before he gets any of our boys killed due to ill preparation and training.
Giving back to those who gave all
Too often during Memorial Day ceremonies, we tend to overlook those who survive the men and women who sacrificed their all for our nation. Michelle Malkin takes a look at some of the different organizations that assist military survivors, along with contact information, should you wish to lend financial or other support.
May 26, 2003
Take time to remember
On this Memorial Day, please take some time out to remember those who have sacrificed all on behalf of our nation, as well as those they have left behind.
Freedom is not free.
The real Threat Matrix
Despite ABC’s upcoming fall show of the same name, the real Threat Matrix is a document the President reads each morning.
The crux of their briefings is the document formally titled “Terrorist Threats to U.S. Interests Worldwide,” or more informally, the “Daily Threat Matrix.”
[…]
The document is “a list of every threat directed at the United States in the past 24 hours,” Mueller said.
Government officials familiar with the Matrix, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described it as a daily compendium of a few pages to 30 or more. Each threat is entered in tabular format, with those considered the most severe listed first.
May 25, 2003
How many times do we have to go through this?
Yet again, in light of all the whining coming from the Demobrats over the just-passed federal tax cut:
- unconstitutional spending causes deficits
- unconstitutional spending causes deficits
- unconstitutional spending causes deficits
Did I happen to mention that unconstitutional spending causes deficits? Putting money back in to the pockets of those actually paying taxes, i.e., the top 50% of all those collecting a paycheck, does not constitute a deficit problem.
Speaking of those actually paying taxes, yes, these tax cuts favor “the rich,” if you consider a dual-income married couple with two kids bringing in around $125,00 a year “rich.” Those are the people actually paying taxes; a single-income married couple with two kids bringing in only $18,000 a year is paying very little, if any, income tax.
Stop your whining, your leftist sociocrats, and work toward cutting out those programs and departments that the federal government is unconstitutionally funding. And this goes for several members of the Republican party as well. Cut the pork, and the deficit will go down.
Speaking of bringing down the deficit, riddle me this: what was the Clinton administration doing to lead the country to better fiscal management? Clinton supporters have long pointed to how, during the Clinton administration, our federal government ran a “surplus.” Government should never have a surplus—it says either the government doesn’t have its fiscal priorities in order, or the citizenry is over-taxed, or both. Why wasn’t this surplus going toward paying down the national debt? That would have shown good financial sense.
May 23, 2003
TypePad screenshots
There are now some screenshots of the TypePad interface up at the main site, including the photo albums feature. Having just recently moved over some of my own photos, this is interesting. I may hold off on any more conversion/moving until after TypePad pricing is announced and/or it goes live.
This Friday’s Five
1. What brand of toothpaste do you use?
Colgate Total.
2. What brand of toilet paper do you prefer?
Angel Soft.
3. What brand(s) of shoes do you wear?
Rockport boots and casual shoes; Reebok or K-Swiss sneakers.
4. What brand of soda do you drink?
Trying to cut out soda from my diet, but when I do, I prefer Cherry Coke.
5. What brand of gum do you chew?
Don’t chew gum.
Last Friday’s Five
The questions, with my answers, from last Friday’s Five (which I only saw yesterday):
1. What drinking water do you prefer — tap, bottle, purifier, etc.?
Honestly, it depends on where I am. Most of the time, especially at home, I’m fine with the tap, unpurified. When I travel, even to other parts of the metroplex, unless I’ve been there before and have tried the tap, it’s from a bottle.
2. What are your favorite flavor of chips?
Tough one; I’d have to say Cool Ranch Doritos (now in a low-fat baked variety!).
3. Of all the things you can cook, what dish do you like the most?
Red beans and rice.
4. How do you have your eggs?
Scrambled.
5. Who was the last person who cooked you a meal? How did it turn out?
The Morrisses and Leaumonts; great grilled burgers and baked fries for a Sunday afternoon pool-side get-together.
May 22, 2003
PNG petition
IE/Win doesn’t fully support the PNG graphics format, and Zeldman points to an online petition that is now just shy of 7,000 signatures. (Yours truly is #6977.) Every modern web browser with the exception of IE/Win has full PNG support built in, including beta browsers Safari and Camino. Please sign the petition and let’s hope Microsoft will listen; they’ve only been promising this since IE 4.
May 21, 2003
Photos, Colophon
So I had put off two minor projects for the site for a while: a colophon, and moving all my photos from my .Mac account over to this domain. As of now, those two projects have been finished. More photos will be forthcoming, as I will likely move the photo albums from my old domain over to this one, so that everything is in one place. Permanent links to both are in the new Navigate sub-menu to the right. Enjoy!
May 20, 2003
Quote of the moment
“Following someone’s blog is like doing a TiVo season pass for a person.” —Rael Dornfest
LSU SEC baseball champs (again)
The LSU baseball team has won the regular season Southeastern Conference championship (again) for 2003, its first since 1997. LSU’s head coach has been named SEC Coach of the Year (again - though a first for current head coach Smoke Laval). Junior shortstop Aaron Hill has been named the conference’s Position Player of the Year. The Fighting Tigers finished the regular season 37-18-1, and begin play against Arkansas in Hoover, Alabama, tomorrow, in the SEC Tournament. (I wish I could come out for it, Dad!)
Looking for another SEC Tournament championship, and a berth in the College World Series, LSU has rebounded from several major injuries throughout the season to clinch the SEC championship. Geaux Tigers!
Master the Services Menu
My favorite n3rdling has a great primer on MacMerc about getting the most out of OS X’s Services menu. I’ve recently begun relying on the Services menu more myself, and Jon’s article showed me a couple of items I hadn’t thought about using yet. Check it out.
NetNewsWire Feature Ideas
One of the cool things about being an independent Macintosh software developer is that you can have more open and direct communication with your customers. Ranchero’s Brent Simmons is a great believer in this concept, and he has posted a list of possible future features for Ranchero’s flagship application, NetNewsWire.
Mavs upset Spurs in Game 1
Go Mavs! After Najera missed his first free throw in the first quarter, the Mavs combined for 49 straight free throws to help catapult them to an upset victory, 113-110. The Mavericks were down by as much as 18 at one point in the game. Dirk Nowitzki was monster on the court for Dallas, proving in every facet of his game to be Tim Duncan’s equal.
I’m not so much a NBA basketball fan as I am a Dallas Mavericks fan, and it’s nice to see them hang in there and pull this one out. Around the office yesterday, we all agreed that we wouldn’t be surprised to see the Mavs drop Game 1, having just come off their second seven-game series in the playoffs. The Spurs had an extra day of rest after knocking off the defending champ Lakers in six games.
Finally, it seems the ineptitude and need for sharper contact lenses that pervades the NHL has crept in to the NBA as well. The officiating for this game was inconsistent at several points throughout, and overbearing at others. Both sides suffered and benefited from this behavior, so many would say it was a wash. The fact is that consistency amongst those officiating is greatly needed in professional sports, and this begins at the top of the leagues’ front offices (are you listening, Gary Bettman?). Officials are going to miss things that happen on the hardwoord and ice; that’s a fact of life, and one most fans can live with. What we don’t like is the inconsistency of what constitutes a foul/penalty from team to team, game to game, series to series.
VZ VOIP
Seems our parent company is going to be installing a “next-generation tandem soft switch” in Dallas as its first step in providing nationwide Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VOIP. You may have already begun to see tv ads about this technology from Cisco, who is the leader in VOIP hardware.
Theoretically, because VOIP is faster and less expensive than conventional circuit-switched transmission, your long-distance phone bill should go down as well. VOIP works just like the various Internet applications you use daily, in that the packet-switching technology breaks down voice and data messages into many separate “packets” that can share the same line.
Plans call for these next-gen soft switches to be deployed in Chicago and Pittsburgh next, with VZ using all three to process VOIP calls.
May 19, 2003
Reloaded
[Possible spoilers] So my lovely bride and I caught The Matrix Reloaded Saturday night. My overall feelings with the film mirror Jason Kottke’s.
In addition to what Jason has to say, allow me to add the following. As much as the production touted the Twins in teasers, trailers, and the like over the past few months, they didn’t have all that much screen time. This is a shame, since they are extremely cool characters, the likes of which we hadn’t seen within the Matrix.
The first hour of the movie would have been better with about 20 minutes taken out. We get that Trinity and Neo love one another deeply. We get that Zion’s having a big party to show they aren’t afraid of the machines. We don’t need it to drag out. I actually leaned over to my wife at one point and twiddled my thumbs.
All in all, it was an enjoyable flick, but nothing mind-blowing or earth-shattering, certainly not like the first film. The freeway chase was our favorite part of the movie. I’m going to miss Gloria Foster in the 3d installment.
Open letter from the NHL
Stars’ color man Daryl Reaugh has expertly captured what we should hear from the NHL front office.
As one of my wife’s colleagues put it: “Hockey is the only sport where you can out-play your opponent and still lose.”
At this point, with three former Cup-winning Stars in the lineup, I’m rooting for the Devils, and Brodeur’s 3d Stanley Cup. Down with the team of destiny Disney.
(Thanks, Brian!)
Armey on Clinton/Lewinsky
Back on 15 September 1998, then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) held his weekly meeting with Capitol reporters. When a reporter provided him an opening by inquiring what he would do if he were in President Clinton’s shoes, the Los Angeles Times captured the conference’s atmosphere:
…the jam-packed room burst into raucous laughter as one reporter prefaced a question about the Lewinsky scandal by saying, “If you were in the president’s position…” Armey didn’t miss a beat. “If I were, I would be looking up from a pool of blood and hearing my wife say: ‘How do I reload this thing?’”
The situation would be similar in my household; except my wife knows how to reload!
(Thanks to Ricky and Snopes.)
New Cube?
I’m not one to spread Mac rumors; heck, I wrote an entire column about the dangers of rumor-mongering and how it affects Apple’s bottom line.
I’ll make an exception in this case, however, because should this rumor prove to be true, it will not affect the majority of the Mac population, and thus, will not greatly affect Apple’s bottom line in the here and now.
MacWhispers is reporting the possibility of a revised Mac Cube as the system that commemorates the 20th anniversary of the Macintosh at the end of this year, beginning of 2004. (Not to be confused with the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh released during the tenure of Gil Amelio, which celebrated Apple’s 20th anniversary.) I’m sure that like the original TAM, this will be a premium product out of the range of a majority of Mac users, yours truly included.
I adore my G4 Cube, and I’m slowly extending its life a bit at a time. It is maxed out with 1.5 GB of RAM; it enjoys a 100 GB hard drive and a GeForce3 MX vid card. The next upgrade will likely be a new processor card, bumping it to 1 GHz or higher. A SuperDrive is currently available from MCE, but I consider it to be at too high a price point right now, especially when I have access to SuperDrive-equipped Macs at work. I know someone out there may rightly point out how in the long term, I may spend as much on upgrading my Cube as I would on a new Mac, but I don’t believe that to be the case. (Unless I ran out right now and bought the PowerLogix dual-1.2 GHz proc upgrade and aforementioned MCE SuperDrive; but I’m on a budget.)
RAM continues to be relatively cheap, as it was when I maxed out the Cube. The hard drive was purchased on sale, and with a mail-in rebate. The video card was the most expensive upgrade of the three, and it was picked up on sale as well. All told, I would hazard a guess that I’ve spent around $400 on upgrading a system I got a great deal on when Circuit City was blowing out Cube floor models.
It takes up very little space, makes very little noise, and if you weren’t paying attention, you might miss it on my desk, sandwiched between my 15” Apple LCD and the shelf stereo’s right speaker (stereo and left speaker sit to the left of the display).
Though it suffered from a bit of an identity crisis and pricing issues early on, the Cube is one of my favorite all-time Macs, and I’d love to see Apple make an updated version, even as a limited-run, 20th-anniversary special edition. I just hope I can afford one.
May 18, 2003
Displaying Apache logs in NNW
Brent links to a novel proof-of-concept usage of his flagship application, showing how versatile NetNewsWire can be.
Open in new tab in Safari
Some times, the solution is so simple, we overlook it. Brent Simmons has a quick and dirty tutorial on how to get Safari to open an external links (like from your mail client or NetNewsWire) in a new tab, rather than a new window.
May 16, 2003
MT 2.63 and recent-update keys
At the same time I decided to upgrade my MovableType engine to 2.63, I donated some funds to Ben and Mena. By doing so, I received a couple of keys to plug in, so when I post something new, the site would show up in the MovableType site’s “Recently Updated” section.
I began receiving an odd error message when saving posts, after I had done all of this. I reinstalled the upgrade package. Then I removed the recent-update key; problem solved. I tried the 2d recent-update key; problem returns. I take out the 2d key; problem solved. So now I know, and I’ve let the Trotts know, so we’ll see what happens.
UPDATE, 5/19: Turns our your doofus host doesn’t have a certain Perl module installed. Obviously, I thought some time back, why would I ever use that? Thanks, Ben!
Gigabit Cube!
It appears that Jeff has the only Gigabit Cube in the world. Now if we could just get someone to make the rest of us an upgrade. Too bad Apple won’t sell the leftover Gigabit Ethernet parts from before they EOL‘ed the Cube; Gigabit Ethernet was going to be a build-to-order option.
What a killer little server this box would be, especially after you popped in a processor upgrade.
May 15, 2003
TypePad
Ben and Mena’s latest venture sounds intriguing, especially if the basic service is something that runs only $7 a month. I’d be interested in something more advanced, as I like putting up photo albums, which is an advanced feature/option. No firm pricing information just yet, and no other details, like how much space you get, how many email addys, etc.
Ben Hammersly got a sneak peek:
The features are remarkable: there is a very powerful, but extremely simple, template builder. Users can redesign their weblogs and create fully compliant XHTML pages, with out knowing what that last phrase means. There is a built-in photo album, built-in server stats, so you can see who is coming to visit you and from where, built-in blogrolling (listing the sites you like to read), and built-in listing for your music, books and friends, producing a complete friend-of-a-friend file for every user.
Final judgment pending until full details are disclosed, but it sounds promising.
iTunes music sharing
So I wanted to borrow my buddy Jim’s CD of Seussical the Musical, in light that it’s coming to town this month, and my wife and I want to take in one of the shows.
Jim says it’s loaded in iTunes, just connect to his shared music. Once we figured out that iTunes wants our IP addresses (different subnets here at work), I’m listening to John Williams - Greatest Hits 1969 - 1999 (greatest composer of the latter 20th century?), and Jim’s reconnecting with his teenage years by jamming to Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet on my TiBook.
It’s wicked fast, with no lag. This despite the heavy traffic on our corporate network and the fact that our Macs are both streaming and receiving at the same time. Apple rocks.
Taking the Times to task
So many blasting the New York Times, so little time…
The Times has now willingly abandoned its mantle as the “newspaper of record,” leapfrogging its impending technological obsolescence. It was already up against the Internet and Lexis-Nexis as a research tool. All the Times had left was its reputation for accuracy.
As this episode shows, the Times is not even attempting to preserve a reliable record of events. Instead of being a record of history, the Times is merely a “record” of what liberals would like history to be — the Pentagon in crisis, the war going badly, global warming melting the North Pole, and protests roiling Augusta National Golf Club. Publisher Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger has turned the paper into a sort of bulletin board for Manhattan liberals.
The Times says that this episode marks a “a low-point in the 152-year history of the newspaper.” For Times worshippers, this was an admirable admission of wrongdoing. But we skeptics want to know if this blow to the Times’ reputation outranked, say, the newspaper’s deliberate downplaying of the Holocaust?
Did this “journalistic fraud” exceed the Pulitzer-winning deception of Walter Duranty, the Times correspondent who explicitly lied about Stalin’s purges and forced famines? How about correspondent Herbert Matthews, who promised the world that the rebel-leader Fidel Castro wasn’t a communist, even as Castro slaughtered innocents and struck deals with the Soviets?
There’s nothing wrong with admitting that this Blair fiasco is a big deal, but no one died because of anything Blair wrote. It seems the egos of a few execs are on par with the deaths of millions.
Venerable Times columnist William Safire defended his employer and suggested that the Blair affair is allowing conservative critics to practice schadenfreude, what Germans call “the guilty pleasure one secretly takes in another’s suffering.” That’s clever and it might be true, except that the influence of the Times is such that when it fails, millions of innocent people suffer.
In the early 1930s, for example, Times Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty helped Joseph Stalin cover up a Soviet extermination campaign that claimed millions of lives, mostly in the Ukraine — and when other reporters told the truth, Duranty libeled them. In the late 1960s, the Times beat the pro-abortion drum so loudly that the Supreme Court began to listen, and the cost was many more millions of lives.
Blair’s misconduct was spectacular, but no one died because of it, so the Times has certainly had many lower points in the 152 years since Henry Raymond, a conservative Christian, founded it.
(Raymond would be turning over in his grave, as the saying goes.)
That is why this was not just an isolated scandal but a sign of moral dry rot in the leadership of the New York Times.
Again, the paper’s own account is the most damning. Far from not knowing what was going on, the Times acknowledges that “various editors and reporters expressed misgivings about Mr. Blair’s reporting skills, maturity and behavior during his five-year journey from raw intern to reporter on national news events. Their warnings centered mostly on errors in his articles.”
More than a year ago, one of the Times’s own editors wrote a memo that said plainly: “We have got to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right Now.” Instead, Blair was promoted to national news coverage.
And on it goes…
May 14, 2003
The word for today…
…is retromingent.
Courtesy of Anu’s free A.W.A.D. service:
retromingent (re-tro-MIN-jent)
adjective: Urinating backwards.
noun: An animal that passes urine backwards, e.g. raccoon.
[From Latin retro- (back) + mingent, stem of mingens, past participle of
mingere (to urinate).]
“When my turn came, I discovered that the bathrooms had been designed for a retromingent. The rest of the flight? Rather uneventful.” —Jeffrey Levine; The Concorde, Firsthand: Built for Speed, Not for Comfort; The Washington Post ; Dec 17, 1989.
“I can verify that camels are, indeed, retromingent.” —Sally Bixby Defty; Just Deserts Midnight at the Oasis Sing Your Camel to Bed; St. Louis Post-Dispatch; May 16, 1993.
Sorry, but had to pass on another retro- word. You’re welcome for the enlightenment. (And subscribe to A.W.A.D.!)
May 13, 2003
Jargonary
Can’t keep all of that techno-computer jargon straight in your head? Ever wonder what a PNG is? You need Jargonary, a shareware product for both Mac and Windows.
No affiliation with the product or author; just thought it was nice (though I think it’s overpriced at $20).
May 11, 2003
Prom Night
So I took my wife to the prom last night.
No, we didn’t go to a high school as chaperones. We went to the 2d Chance Prom that benefits the Kidd’s Kids charity. Dallas radio personality Kidd Kraddick’s charity takes terminally ill kids to Disney World each year, and this event is their primary fund-raiser.
I rented a tux, my bride bought a lovely dress that she’ll get multiple use out of (unlike most prom dresses), and we had a great dinner at Sonoma before heading off to the prom.
Half concert, half dance party, the 2d Chance Prom was a gas. Texas native Jennifer Love Hewitt performed four songs with just an acoustic guitar player accompanying her. This cutie can sing, and she was well received by the crowd. A little over half an hour later, MC Hammer and company took the stage for an eight-song set that capped off with a non-stop medley of his big hits “Can’t Touch This,” “2 Legit 2 Quit,” and “Pray.” I don’t go for the hip-hop scene, but Hammer’s set was enjoyable. It’s amazing the energy he and his crew brought to the stage.
My only druthers are with the DJ’s music selection. Way too much hip-hop/techno/dance remix stuff. We got there before 9, left a little after midnight, and there was only one slow song played the entire time. There’s also plenty of normal pop and rock out there that’s good for dancing. And whoever remixed AC/DC’s “Shook Me All Night Long” to a dance beat should be put against a wall and shot for messing with a classic rock anthem.
All in all, we had a fun time. I’ll post a pic of my gorgeous wife and I when we get our prom pics in a couple of weeks.
May 09, 2003
Rumsfeld Sorry for Embarrassing Anti-War Celebrities
You can read the full story here.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld apologized to the celebrity community for the outcome of the war yesterday at his daily press briefing. “In spite of the joy we feel at what happened in Baghdad this week, it is tinged with sadness as we know that we have embarrassed and disappointed the many members of the celebrity community who wanted us to fail.”
Dictionary for Comicholics
For thorough research of words in the world of comics, be sure to use Ka-BOOM! The Dictionary of Champions.
Dozens Dead in Chicago Meatwave
As if terrorism wasn’t enough to worry about, now we have this to contend with.
May 08, 2003
Quote of the moment
“The Christian faith is not about mere intellectual assent to a set of doctrines, but about a daily walk with this person Jesus. It’s about living in awareness of Christ risen, resurrected, and living in my life. Even though doctrine is important, wisdom in the Bible has more to do with character and the art of living. Christianity is about living out the will of God, and living abundantly.” — Rich Mullins
Is it or isn’t it? (Hint: It is…)
Brian has a good analysis and links of the infamous 9th Circuit Court’s refusal for a full court hearing on California’s “assault” weapons ban.
By definition, an “assault” weapon is one capable of fully automatic fire; full-auto firearms are illegal to own anywhere in the U.S. unless you have a Class III Federal Firearms License. The fact that a firearm may look like an “assault” weapon doesn’t make it one, despite how the news media continues to call semi-automatic (one squeeze of the trigger, one shot) firearms “assault” weapons.
I hope and pray that the Supreme Court does hear this case, and rules it as the individual Constitutional right it is. Yes, the fact is that the Second Amendment is an individual right. Read your Federalist Papers; all of the Founding Fathers believed this to be so.
Why would they place a state right within nine other individual rights? And place it so highly in status? The Second is for individuals, not the states, and not for the state.
More for Kelly
Can’t Stop Lovin’ You
Hey!
There’s a time and place for everything. For everyone
We can push with all our might, but nothin’s gonna come
Oh no, nothin’s gonna change
An’ if I ask you not to try, oh could you let it be?
I wanna hold you and say
We can’t throw this all away
Tell me you won’t go, you won’t go
You have to hear me say
I can’t stop lovin’ you
And no matter what I say or do
You know my heart is true, oh
I can’t stop lovin’ you
You can change your friends, your place in life
You can change your mind
We can change the things we say, and do any time
Oh no, but I think you’ll find
That when you look inside your heart
Oh baby, I’ll be there. Yeah!
Hold on. I’m holdin’ on
Baby, just come on, come on, come on
I just wanna hear you say
I can’t stop lovin’ you
And no matter what you say or do
You know my heart is true, oh-oh!
I can’t stop lovin’ you
Oh, I’m so twisted and tied
And all I remember, was how hard we tried
Only to surrender
And when it’s over
I know how it’s gonna be
And true love will never die
Or, not fade away
And I can’t stop lovin’ you
And no matter what I say or do
You know my heart is true, oh
I can’t stop lovin’ you
And I know what I got to do
Hey Ray, what you said is true, oh
I can’t stop lovin’ you, oh no
Oh, can’t stop lovin’ you
© Copyright 1995-2000 Van Halen
From VH’s site:
This was the first single from “Balance” and the song became the band’s 16th Top 40 single! The Ray Sammy refers to in the song is Ray Charles, who had a hit with the Don Gibson original, “I Can’t Stop Loving You” in 1962.
By far one of my favorite VH songs, right behind “Dreams.” I love you, sweetheart.
May 07, 2003
One million in one week
Yeah, I know everyone has read how the Apple Music Store has sold more than a million songs in its first week.
But Lee has broken down what that means, and the results are impressive. Better than one-and-a-half songs sold per second. I can’t wait to see Apple’s financials on this as the year progresses. My stock has already gone up about three bucks a share in the past week.
ATPM 9.05
Crikey! I completely forgot to mention that the May issue of About This Particular Macintosh has been published. Doh!
I talked Lee in to interviewing our mutual acquaintance, Jon Gales, a total Mac-head who has an awesome mobile phone site, MobileTracker.net. I’ve been relying heavily on information Jon posts for our upcoming mobile plan/handy switch when our current contract is up at the end of June.
Matthew Coates has a great article on Acrobat, PDFs, and OS X. Lee went to the National Association of Broadcasters conference in Vegas, and offers a Mac-centric perspective. Ellyn offers a fantastic column on the virtues of the Golden Rule and our online lives. The usual assortment of reviews abound.
Synergy vs PTHiTunesNotifier
So Lee asked what made Synergy worth $5 when PTHiTunesNotifier was free and did essentially the same thing. So I decided to run down a quick comparison of the two.
- PTHiTunesNotifier offers more button choices for the button controls in the menu bar (though I prefer Synergy’s choices over PTHiTunesNotifier’s)
- PTHiTunesNotifier offers more control over the layout of the track display window
- Synergy has a few more hot key options for controlling iTunes
- Synergy offers greater control over the menu bar buttons
- Synergy includes recently played tracks in its drop-down menu; it is able to remember up to the last 50 songs played (set in the number in the prefs)
- Synergy includes the Playlist and iTunes submenus (if you don’t want to use hot keys to control iTunes)
- Synergy offers button spacing control (this can be important when you have tons of stuff in your menu bar, like I tend to)
So there you have it. If you’re already using PTHiTunesNotifier and you’re happy with it, or you’re just a cheapskate, then you’re not missing much with Synergy. To me, Synergy simply feels like the more well-polished app. I like its button choices and options better, and I consider it $5 well spent.
May 06, 2003
Freedom of, not freedom from
Jon Dougherty has an outstanding piece on the Supreme Court’s recent unconstitutional ruling of the Ten Commandments display case in Kentucky.
Synergy
Michael turned me on to Synergy, a menu-bar utility for controlling iTunes, and it freaking rocks! Well worth the $5 shareware fee. One feature is the transparent floater that pops up when tracks change. Click on the thumbnail below for detail, then cruise to Wincent’s site, download, and register!
Sorry, Winblows users, but you just don’t see stuff this wicked cool in Bill’s kingdom.
InDVDiana Jones
My gorgeous mother-to-be spouse points out that Lucasfilm is releasing the Indiana Jones trilogy on DVD! Slated for release on November 4th, this will be at the top of my birthday (Dec 3) wish list.
iLoo
I wish I was making this up. From the idiot savants at Microsoft UK. (Note that the emphasis is not on “savants.”)
(Thanks, Ricky.)
And they’re such a peaceful people…
You certainly can’t blame the Israelis for decimating the Palestinian female ranks:
Each year, dozens and probably hundreds of brutal “honor killings” of Palestinian women and girls – most of whom are virtually blameless – go unreported, according to an anthropologist’s recent study.
The story is scheduled for an issue of The World & I magazine.
May 04, 2003
Those incredibly intelligent, wonderfully sensitive celebrities
“I’m getting more famouser by the day.” —Avril Lavigne
“I quit flying five years ago. Personally, I don’t want to die with tourists.” —Billy Bob Thornton
As reported in the 5 May 2003 issue of Us Weekly.
May 02, 2003
Freedom is not free: a reminder
Retired USAF Major Brian Shul delivered an address at March AFB on Veteran’s Day 2001. Powerful stuff:
Yes, I believe God has blessed this nation in many ways, although sometimes we forget just how fortunate we really are…and now, after a horrific attack on our homeland, we find ourselves embattled in a war once again. And yet, there are many who seem unsure of the response we should take. Today, we honor so many who have given their lives, in defense of this country…row upon row of tombstones, silent vigils to their ultimate sacrifice. If the dead could speak today, they would tell you that all it takes for evil to succeed in the world if for good people to stand by and do nothing. They would emphatically declare to you that you negotiate with the enemy with your knee in his chest and your knife at his throat. And they would remind you that those who forget their history, are condemned to repeat it.We are a nation guilty of forgetting these lessons. Had we learned them better, our cemeteries would be less full.
We fought a Cold War for so long, that perhaps we became weary and complacent, and when we won that war, we became soft. We indulged ourselves in the notion that the world was all-safe, and we thought a booming economy was ample substitute for a strong military. Did we really think electing self-serving politicians would make us stronger as a nation? Somehow we came to accept the notion that freedom was free. It never has been. The price of freedom has always been eternal vigilance. We need to understand that there are those in the world who would destroy us because our way of life threatens their quest for world domination.
iPod 1.3 software
While I’m very glad Apple provided us old iPod users with a way to sync and listen to AAC-encoded files, the one other feature I’m envious of, in the iPod 2.0 software on the new Pods, has to be the text notes. If I had that, my Palm handheld usage would likely drop off by fifty percent or more.
(Thanks to Lee for the link.)
I have an accent?
A couple of days ago I was talking to my little sister on the phone (okay, she’s 27, but she’ll always be my “little” sister), and she stated that I was picking up a Texas accent.
Seeing how I have long confounded people as to my origins by being pretty much accent-less, this is a trifle upsetting…
The Political Quiz Show
Brian pointed me to this political quiz, established in 1994 by Democratic consultant Victor Kamber and his Republican counterpart, Bradley S. O’Leary.
I’m a Bob Dole conservative, with a score of 35 out of 40.
Big surprise.
Take the test and leave your score in the comments.
May 01, 2003
Unexpected resistance
Ann skewers the leftists once again over the U.S. victory in Iraq:
They said chemical weapons would be used against our troops. That didn’t happen. They predicted huge civilian casualties. That didn’t happen. They said Americans would turn against the war as our troops came home in body bags. That didn’t happen. They warned of a mammoth terrorist attack in America if we invaded Iraq. That didn’t happen. Just two weeks ago, they claimed American troops were caught in another Vietnam quagmire. That didn’t happen.Now the biggest mishap liberals can seize on is that some figurines from an Iraqi museum were broken – a relief to college students everywhere who have ever been forced to gaze upon Mesopotamian pottery. We’re not talking about Rodins here. So the Iraqis looted. Oh well. Wars are messy. Liberalism is part of a religious disorder that demands a belief that life is controllable.
Apple’s music Fortune
My lovely bride pointed me to this Fortune article on the new iTunes Music Service. Obviously written for publication before the service was officially announced, it provides a great look at Jobs’ vision behind the service, and the inadequacy of the music industry in its previous and current efforts at online distribution.
A few items I’d like to address:
One thing’s for sure: If ever there was an industry in need of transformation, it’s the music business. U.S. music sales plunged 8.2% last year, largely because songs are being distributed free on the Internet through illicit file-sharing destinations like KaZaA.
I take issue with this statement, since it’s impossible to prove that illegal file sharing has had this much impact on the U.S. music biz. There is a ton of physical piracy (blanket CD copying) going on overseas, especially in Asia, that eats in to the music industry more than a bunch of geeks swapping songs online.
I have downloaded a lot of music from peer-to-peer networks, as well as some centralized sites I have access to. Some of it was digital copies of CDs and cassettes I already own. The rest was stuff I wanted to listen to before I went out and bought it. A lot of that got trashed when I realized it wasn’t for me.
I know I’m not the only one who probably spent more on music (albeit looking for sales and good prices online) because I was pulling music off the net.
Second, it seems as though hardly anyone in the music business thinks that the problem with falling sales may be attributed to the product itself. Elsewhere in the article:
For years they have been able to get away with releasing albums with two or three potential hits bundled with ho-hum filler cuts. That has been wonderful for the industry, but it has made a generation of consumers who pay $18.99 for CDs very cynical. “People are sick and tired of that,” says singer-songwriter Seal. “That’s why people are stealing music.”
Amen. That’s it right there. And we see further evidence of the music industry’s slow-to-catch-on attitude:
But MusicNet users still can’t download songs onto portable players. “These devices haven’t caught on yet,” insists MusicNet CEO Alan McGlade. Never mind that U.S. sales of portable MP3 players soared from 724,000 in 2001 to 1.6 million last year.
Hmmm. I would think a better-than-two-times annual growth, in a year, in any segment of the tech economy would be cause for consideration of said segment.
As for the service itself, I think it’s great. I haven’t actually bought and downloaded any music yet, but that’ll change any day. I’ve spent quite a bit of time searching through it and listening to samples. It’s going to change the way I buy music. It’s going to change the music business.
iTunes Music Store pricing
Lee notes David Pogue’s column on the individual song pricing structures at Apple’s new online music store. Good points all around.
Dropping out of the job market?
There is a story from the NY Times talking about a growing segment of the American population doing exactly that. Of note:
“People use the unemployment rate as some kind of gauge of the health of the economy,” said Robert H. Topel, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. But because of the number of people now outside of the labor force, he said, “the unemployment rate does not give you the same kind of information it did in the 1970’s or 1960’s.”
(A little disappointed in the Times—you do not put an apostrophe-s after a year to state a decade; just put the s after the year, as in, 1970s.)
The real gem, though, has to be this:
“I’ve been trying to find a conventional job for two years,” Ms. Leftridge said. “Finally, I’m thinking about doing a home-based business. I don’t see it as giving up. I see it as expanding my search. I ought to be able to make some money this way, and start building back my savings, in a situation where I’m not hostage to any company’s budget, to any budget.”
Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking if I get laid off. Better to be the hostage-taker than the hostage. Or something like that.