It says a lot about our nation in that too few of us think about those who have given their lives in military service, much less participate in events to commemorate them, on Memorial Day. This was what ran through my head as we drove the Maine coastline today, noting the hundreds, perhaps thousands, on the beaches of York.
To honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, I humbly offer these words from one of our greatest Presidents:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
[With thanks to KnowledgeNews for the text of the Gettysburg Address.]
World Vision is one of many non-government organizations (NGOs) providing emergency survival kits in Indonesia, as a result of the recent earthquake there. World Vision’s kits include blankets, temporary shelter, medicine and clothing. If you’re seeking to help out with relief efforts there, please consider a donation to World Vision.
Leave it to a bunch of Brits to play football with automobiles. In this case, a small fleet of Toyota’s Aygos. There was plenty of rubbin’ going on, and as we all know, “Rubbin’s racin’.”
[Via Autoblog, video requires Windows Media Player.]
When you go to see X3, sit through the credits.
It is amazingly quiet in my study when my wife’s Windows PC is powered off. My iMac Core Duo, PowerBook, external hard drive, and HP OfficeJet AIO (when it’s not actually printing) are all near-silent.
When I walked in a moment ago, and registered the quiet, being so used to the fans of the PC, I had a momentary thought of “What’s wrong?”
My bride and I have noticed a quirk of psychology regarding the consumption of milk in our abode. Based on the recommendation of friends a couple of years ago, we prefer Horizon Organic milk, and originally bought it in half-gallon cartons, since this seemed to be the largest size the stores that carried the brand would stock.
At some point, gallon sizes appeared, and we began purchasing the larger size. This is when the quirk began:
We drank less milk when we had the gallon container than when we had two half-gallon containers.
I’m still trying to figure out why this is so. As a result of our not drinking as much milk, we found ourselves reaching and going beyond the expiration dates on the gallon-sized milk, something we’d never done with the half-gallon containers. (It should be noted that milk in cartons often have farther-out expiration dates than milk in semi-transparent jugs.)
Switching back to half-gallon containers, we’re back to drinking more milk than when we purchased the gallon sizes. I’m somewhat baffled.
Amateur shrinks, have at it.
The iPatch.
This likely has made its rounds through the blogosphere already, but I just read in the latest dead-tree edition of Wired that Choose Your Own Adventure books are getting republished, updated for the 21st century.
Though he’s not old enough yet to read on his own and appreciate them, I may have to pick up these titles for my little phisch. I had a great time with them when I was eleven, though I don’t believe I was ever able to successfully navigate The Abominable Snowman without “cheating”.
What happened to all that wreckage from the Twin Towers after 9/11? Twenty-four tons of steel girders ended up in one of the Navy’s latest ships.
Good tip, courtesy of TUAW, on pairing your Apple Remote with its intended system. Very useful in a mutliple Apple-Remote-Mac home. I went ahead and paired my iMac with its remote, even though it’s the only such capable Mac we have. You never know what might be around the corner.
42 Climbers Reach Summit of Mount Everest. Note to self: “May is considered the best month to climb Everest. Climbers in Nepal have to complete their mission by May 31 before the weather deteriorates during monsoon season.”
“Elvis impersonators can relax: No one’s coming after their bespangled jumpsuits.”
Damn.
This story is encouraging me to let the little phisch have a cheap point-and-shoot digital in a few months. He loved using a Fujifilm disposable camera a couple of months back, and even framed a shot or two pretty well.
A new auction record was set yesterday when a 300 year-old Stradivarius violin was sold for $3.54 million. The former owner loaned the instrument out to violinists, and it sounds as if the new owner will continue to do the same. Someone sign me up for those concerts.
Lee’s a bit hot under the collar over Skype’s new, supposedly free, SkypeOut plan, and understandably so. I’m not sure I get Skype’s argument; I thought the whole point of their service was to be location free, to the extent of remaining within the borders of the U.S.
Something tells me my sister would really dig these lamps.
[Wave of the phin to Firewheel Design.]
Congratulations to Aram Kudurshian, developer of High Priority, who has accepted a developer position with Apple.
As is so often the case with video or film, the music totally makes the FedEx pilots drive around thunderstorm short film.
I sincerely hope JPMorgan Chase & Co. realize they just flushed $150 million.
This may have been posited elsewhere, but I think when the Power Mac G5 replacement ships, it will simply be called “Mac Pro”. You have the Pro designation separating the portable models, and they’re not going to call a tower/desktop without a built-in monitor “iMac Pro”. Apple will still want to differentiate the line from the consumer series, so it will just be Mac Pro.
So it’s all over the Mac blogosphere and online news world: the iBook replacement has been released, and as many reckoned, it is simply called MacBook.
Available in the snow white we’ve all come to know and love, as well as in black-is-the-new-black black, the new MacBook features either a 1.83 or 2 GHz Intel Core Duo processor, up to 2 GB of RAM, starts with an 60 GB hard drive, going up to 120 GB, comes with the same MagSafe power adapter as the MacBook Pro, has a 13.3-inch screen with a 1280 x 800 resolution, and can be had with either a Combo optical drive, or the DVD-burning SuperDrive. The new MacBook has a built-in iSight, and features integrated Intel graphics which shares the system’s main memory, a deal-killer for me personally.
To the joy of a lot of Mac users, Apple has now released all of its products from mirroring-only on an external monitor, as the MacBook joins the Intel-based iMac in supporting extended desktop on an external display. The MacBook can drive up to a 23-inch display through it’s Mini-DVI port, which requires an adapter for full DVI or VGA compatibility. One FireWire 400 port, two USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, Airport Extreme, and built-in Bluetooth round out the package. Just as with the MacBook Pro and iMac, a modem is now optional, external, and costs $49.
It should be noted that the black MacBook is only available with the 2 GHz Core Duo, and features a $200 markup over its white brethren; this gets you a baseline 80 GB hard drive instead of a 60 GB model. Otherwise, you’re paying extra for the alternative color. Still, I believe Apple is going to sell a ton of both, and will be hard pressed to keep black models in stock. Time will tell if the black cases are as susceptible to scratching as their similarly-colored iPod cousins.
I’d love a black MacBook in the future, but I have a problem with integrated graphics and their sharing of the system memory. It may be an irrational dislike, but it keeps my eye on the 15-inch MacBook Pro, with hope that the new MacBook signals a 13.3-inch version in the Pro series.
Johnny Cash’s Johnny Cash’s American V: A Hundred Highways is scheduled for release in July. This album comprises the absolute last recordings Cash made before his death, part of his collaboration with Rick Rubin.
[Wave of the phin to Prosthesis.]
Now all of my fellow Star Wars fans can decorate their walls with their favorite images from the movies.
[Wave of the phin to Firewheel Design.]
Professional baseball is coming to Israel, with plans to apply to be in the 2009 World Baseball Classic. The history of baseball in the land of the Bible is astounding.
[Via Newsvine.]
“Apple simplifies .Mac Web access”. So common sensical, I wonder why they didn’t think of this sooner.
“Apple actively courting the Beatles”. I like the Beatles, but I’m not exactly chomping at the bit to download any of their music from anywhere. For the sake of Apple, I would love for the iTunes Music Store to carry their full catalog; I believe, as one online commentator wrote, that the Beatles could make up any lawsuit-related losses easily through iTMS sales. Unlike myself, there are lots of people, including TUAW’s Dave Caolo, who want individual Beatles albums.
Personally, I have all the Beatles’ songs I could want on my iPod already. It’s called “1”.
“Spain Raids Stamp-Collecting Firms”
Pursuing terrorists who murder our citizens, not that high a priority. But those stamp collectors have got to be stopped.
“Asian Currencies Soar on U.S. Criticism”
Just think of what they could do with some positive reinforcement!
“Zombie master sentenced to 5 years in prison”
It’s only five years, though, so stock up on shotgun shells, and remember to always aim for the head.
“Will Film Spell Success for Starbucks?”
Is this what education has come to in America? Listen up, Starbucks, it’s “S, u, c, c…”
Dell Warns of Earnings Shortfall: “Dell warned it would miss its earnings and revenue forecasts, blaming pricing actions aimed at reviving sales growth.”
Sorry, I just had to do it again.
This little tale, which appears to be a book for children, is actually a clever evocation of what happens to a corporation when a management consultant is hired by absent, clueless senior management to evaluate its organizational structure and to effect change. Beginning slowly, the Cat proceeds to take everything apart, make a total mess and get everybody in potentially the worst trouble in the world—all at no personal cost to itself. By the time the Cat leaves, it has frightened everybody, and very little has changed except the mind-set of the protagonists, which has been forever disrupted and rattled.
Speaking of Tom, he’s authored a great paper as part of the Master’s program he’s enrolled in. Titled “Weblogs, Pamphlets and Public Citizens: Changing Modern Media”, in which he compares the citizen journalists of today’s blogosphere to the pamphleteers of pre-Revolutionary War America. I got a sneak peek during the drafting and editing phase, and I think it’s really good.
Some choice quotes:
The effects of blogs in a new media environment are twofold: Weblogs cover stories that their mainstream media counterparts, for editorial reasons or other gatekeeping practices common in modern professional media, omit or miss entirely; and weblogs also bring to bear an ever-vigilant group of diverse problem solvers that fact-check the work of many reporters and journalists in the mass-media arena. This makes the blogosphere an excellent addendum to mass media, operating as both appendix and errata to the main compendium of stories that the mass media puts into the public sphere using trained reporters and journalists.
and
As technology had advanced further, producing Really Simple Syndication (RSS), a distribution method that allows for easy and automatic syndication of new additions to weblogs, it has become possible for a consumer of media to add weblogs to their daily news diet. This allows for readers to mix and match their media, creating a new media outlet that is personally tailored to their interests and to their pursuits. Using an RSS-reader application on a personal computer, a sports fan can have a forty-page sports section and a one page local section, or a political junkie can have page after page of differing commentary from a variety of sources. The reader becomes their own editor and gatekeeper, combining multiple weblogs and conventional media sources, which have also adopted RSS, into their own personal fountain of news and commentary.
If you’ve read Dan Gillmor’s We The Media and/or Hugh Hewitt’s Blog, some of Tom’s piece will sound familiar, especially in that he cites the former as a source, but I say the familiarity makes Tom’s arguments stronger. Good work, my friend!
AT&T is torching their Cingular brand like a gang of boychiks igniting a hobo on their way home from the milk bar. From the ashes, phoenix-like, a new brand is to emerge: AT&T Wireless.
I used to be an AT&T Wireless customer. Not good memories. Cingular is such a distinguishable brand name, for good or ill, whereas for everyone I know and speak to on this issue, AT&T Wireless offers nothing but ill will. Unlike Consumerist’s Ben, I’ve had nothing but good customer service from Cingular. Yes, I realize the “new” AT&T isn’t really anything like the “old” AT&T, corporate-wise, but the bad connotations with the AT&T brand are apparently so bad, we all fear it is. Or will be.
[Wave of the phin to Tom, via IM.]
The Stephen Colbert kerfuffle, intrinsically uninteresting though it is, leads Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen to an excellent insight:
Why are you wasting my time with Colbert, I hear you ask. Because he is representative of what too often passes for political courage, not to mention wit, in this country. His defenders—and they are all over the blogosphere—will tell you he spoke truth to power. This is a tired phrase, as we all know, but when it was fresh and meaningful it suggested repercussions, consequences—maybe even death in some countries. When you spoke truth to power you took the distinct chance that power would smite you, toss you into a dungeon or—if you’re at work—take away your office.
But in this country, anyone can insult the president of the United States. Colbert just did it, and he will not suffer any consequence at all. He knew that going in.
This, it seems to us, explains several conceits of the Angry Left:
The notion that criticism—whether of the Dixie Chicks or of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer—amounts to censorship.
Claims by Democratic politicians that Republicans are “questioning” their “patriotism.”
Fears of incipient fascism.
What these have in common, aside from being totally fantastical, is that they all reinforce the image of the Angry Leftist as courageous dissenter. In truth, this country is so tolerant, indeed downright indulgent, of this sort of “dissent” that it affords no opportunity to be courageous.
Speak “truth to power” in America, and power will pat you on the head and say, “What an adorable little girl.” Some on the Angry Left could actually have the courage to stand up if they were faced with real consequences—but they are unlikely ever to get that chance. America’s almost boundless tolerance thus reduces them to the level of petulant children. No wonder they’re so angry.
I just really wanted to use the words “beleaguered” and “Dell” in the same sentence.
How do you like them apples, Mr. Dell?
I know Lee will be interested in Anil’s observations on web site comments.
Stop wandering aimlessly through that phone tree, and get a human on the line.
“This is hot.” New fan-created Firefox ad that’s really good.
Love coffee? Love cafes, but don’t want to support the corporate monstrosity? Then use Delocator to find local shops near you. And please, if you know of a local cafe that’s not listed on Delocator, add it!
[Waves of the phin to John, Paul, and John at FD.]
The May issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available.
We welcome Mark Tennent to the ATPM staff this month. Mark’s been providing us plenty of reading material over the past few months, and we felt it only fair to reward him with the glamorous and career-enhancing position of Contributing Editor. Welcome to the team, Mark!
Wes notes the Boot Camp roundup from the Mac blogosphere, while going insane with award…er, awarding. Mark gives us a double-blast of his regular column, MacMuser, raising the concern over data composting, how valuable cultural artifacts might be lost to future generations, as well as hoping that Apple’s dual boot strategy pays off.
Paul scours the web for sites you didn’t know existed, so you don’t have to. Want to discover new music, solve an online puzzle, listen to the U.S. tax code via podcast, learn how to get to a human operator as quickly as possible in a phone tree, or explore the world of cylinder recordings? Paul’s your new hero.
Chuck delves in to text parsing with FileMaker this month. Ted shares his thoughts on using ConceptDraw in your outlining workflow, as well as noting how outlining concepts are showing up in myriad applications we don’t think of as outliners.
This month’s desktop pictures selection is brought to us by ATPM jack-of-all-trades Chris Lawson. A prophead with his sights set higher—and I mean that in all of the best ways—Chris took his Canon digital SLR to Oshkosh last year for the annual EAA AirVenture. Aircraft lovers are sure to appreciate Chris’s efforts.
We learn Cortland is a James Brown fan, and there’s a lot more to Brody than meets the eye. Much more.
Sylvester opens this month’s reviews with a look at Footlights Pro 2.1. Frank Wu chimes in, noting Axio’s Hardsleeve lives up to its name. It’s the Lee and Lawson show on the fifth-generation iPod, the daring duo bringing you the lowdown on Apple’s latest digital media player. Lee also has a solo act this issue, in a look at iTunes Catalog. Finally, yours truly closes out the issue with my analysis of Datadesk’s SmartBoard ergonomic keyboard.
As always, each issue is available online, or in one of three formats for your offline reading pleasure.