MacMinute is reporting on a set of three AppleScripts for iTunes released by Trinfinity Software. I’ve downloaded them, used them, and am grateful. Thanks to the folks at Trinfinity.
Month: March 2003
Belated birthday wishes to friend and fellow ATPM staffer, Eric Blair. So what, you’re old enough to buy beer now, right? ;^)
Hope you had a great one, amigo!
This is just disgraceful. Utterly disgraceful.
Get it through your neanderthal-thick skulls, slugheads: men and women in uniform do not decide whether to go to war or not. They follow orders given by civilian commanders to do so. Focus your anger where it belongs, and respect those who serve in your place.
Gibson ruminates on how everyone now can have their own mediated persona, thanks to the meme of the weblog.
Thanks to Mark Newhouse’s article on Unix fonts, I was inspired to revisit the fonts called for in the site’s CSS style sheet. Now, OS X users should be greeted by Lucida Grande at 11 px for for the main text font. All others will see Verdana, Geneva, Lucida, Helvetica, or Arial, in that order. Lucida is really there for any Unix readers that may happen by (say hello in the comments!). If you’re a Windoze user, and all you’re getting is Arial, then reinstall IE to see about getting Verdana loaded; it’s a much, much, much better screen font than Arial, and I’m not just saying that because my site looks better in it. Others will as well.
Charles Krauthammer delivers good advice to President Bush:
Walk away, Mr. President. Walk away from the U.N. Security Council. It will not authorize the coming war. You can stand on your head and it won’t change the outcome. You can convert to Islam in a Parisian mosque and it won’t prevent a French veto.
[…]
If you must have a second resolution, it should consist of a single sentence: “The Security Council finds Iraq in violation of Resolution 1441, which demanded ‘full and immediate compliance by Iraq without conditions or restrictions.’ ”
[…]
If the one-line resolution passes, the violation triggers 1441, which triggers the original resolutions ending the Gulf War. If it fails, you’ve exposed the United Nations for what it is: the League of Nations, empty, cynical and mendacious. Mr. President: Call the vote and walk away.
Like Krauthammer says, no more dithering. Actions speak louder than words, and the UN isn’t delivering anything but empty pronouncements.
(Thanks, Rick.)
Mars bar, meet Snickers Almond. Snickers Almond, the Mars bar.
Why would a company create a product that not only competes directly with one of its other products, but is nearly indistinguishable from its established product? Or is the Mars bar going to get the boot?
From the Reach Out And Touch Someone Department:
One of the things that brought on the previous post was the review Guns Magazine did of the SIGARMS-imported Blaser R93 LRS2 tactical rifle. I had hoped to post a link to the review, but alas, it is not the feature of the month for the February 2003 issue. (FYI, it’s pronounced “blah’zer.”)
In some respects the LRS2 is your typical tactical precision rifle, with the usual accoutrements: a heavy, free-floated, fluted barrel; rear adjustable spacers to alter stock length; one-piece stock; and a fully-adjustable trigger, so you can adjust the length of trigger pull.
The LRS2 also features a novel action that sets it apart from nearly all other rifles: a manually-operated straight pull bolt. For the uninitated, on your average bolt-action rifle, after a shot has been fired, to eject the spent casing and chamber the next round, you must rotate the bolt as you pull it back. The LRS2 eliminates this need, speeding up the time to get back on target. Very nice. To quote reviewer Charles Cutshaw: “The smoothness and ease of operation of the R93’s straight pull bolt action defies description.”
Of course, priced in the $2K range, the R93 LRS2 is out of range (again, no pun intended) for most shooters. Like most things in life, though, you get what you pay for.
Something I’ve noticed from the various firearms magazines I read: their online presences suck. The various publications from Harris, for instance, only show the latest cover and table of contents, and a link to subscribe. No links to articles listed in the TOC. Nope, nothing from that issue available online. Guns Magazine fares only slightly better, giving you the feature story from each month to read. Whoever is uploading the accompanying pictures for those features needs to be fired (no pun intended); they are abhorrent. Granted, nothing would compare with the high-resolution glossies in the paper mag, but these are ridiculous.
Come on, guys, get it together. I can sort of understand not putting up anything from the current month’s magazine; you don’t want to gut your off-the-shelf sales. At the very least you should be uploading all of your back issues, with all of the articles and columns, not just the monthly “feature.” If you want to charge a nominal subscription fee, a la Consumer Reports, Playboy, et al, then go for it, but give us a chance at more content than a solitary article and a cover picture.
% unzip
% strip
% touch
% grep
% finger
% mount
% fsck
% more
% yes
% umount
% sleep
I IM’ed my wife this with the qualifier that it came from Jim and that, yes, we’re total nerds. She heartily agreed.