It will be interesting to see if the President issues a call to go back to space later this month, or next. This is very sobering:
bq. Every American who has died in a spacecraft has done so within one calendar week: The Apollo 204 fire on January 27, 1967; the Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986; and the loss of Columbia on February 1, 2003.
Perhaps NASA should take note of the above dates and scrub that portion of the calendar from any future misisons.
Naysayers should take note of a myriad of advancements in their daily lives that would not be possible without the United States’ involvement in space exploration. And I’m not talking about Tang…
Month: December 2003
XtremeMac has released their Xtremity iPod Case System. I like the ease of transition from being carried on the belt to popping it in to a car mount, to just having it on the desk. Something else to look in to when I add a new iPod to my arsenal. (via MacMinute)
Friend of the phisch Michael Tsai has been awarded an Eddy by Macworld magazine for his awesome spam-killing app, SpamSieve. I’ve been using SpamSieve since before it was first released, as a beta tester, and it’s a top-notch piece of work from a top-notch guy. Sorry, Windows users, but this spam killer works on Macintosh only. Congratulations, Michael!
What happens when your client realizes they’re running the wrong version of two commercials in all thirty-nine of their stores that have a theater setup? You spend all night pushing the new versions down to those stores. That’s exactly what happened on my third day of work, my birthday no less.
Apple wants its current commercials to be popped in to the video loops shown at the retail stores with theaters, and the latest iPod commercials (HipHop, Rock, and Dance), were either wrong or nonexistent. We received the raw footage from Apple on DV tapes in the morning, spent the afternoon capturing and cutting a new video loop, then uploaded the new loop to a staging server–all 1.2 GB of it. Then it was waiting until the stores began closing, and staggering the push across the time zones.
Crawled in to bed about five this morning, got up about noon. Standard operating procedure is nothing but support calls on the day after a big push, and I don’t know enough about the systems to take any calls, so I get a day off. Pretty simple editing in Final Cut Express, but it has whetted my appetite for more.
The December issue of About This Particular Macintosh is out. Articles of interest include Ellyn’s look at the changing face of research, part six of Andrew’s excellent design tutorial, and Ted’s continuation of his intensive outliner series. Eric has a review of the Risk game for OS X (no, it’s not from Milton-Bradely), Chris Lawson gets everyone addicted to Snood, and yours truly reviews iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual. The usual great stuff abounds.
Thinking that my iPod’s battery may be dying–it is an original 5 GB model–I’ve been looking around for replacements from third parties. The fine folks at iPodbattery.com have even elected to show you how to disassemble your iPod to make the battery swap. Kudos!
If you really want to get the most out of your web code, and don’t have a Mac, please, please, please use this.
Karl Dandenell reports to Ric Ford on MacInTouch that Virtual PC 6 is not supported on Power Mac G5s. There is potential hope in that Microsoft states in the tech note they are working on G5 support for the application. This avoids a Retrophisch™ “I told you so” moment for the time being. After all, how long did it take Microsoft to bring HALO to another platform?
I think most people would agree, with the possible exceptions of decade birthdays (30, 40, 50), that year-to-year, they really don’t feel that much different on their birthday. It’s only when you compare, say, your thirty-third birthday to your twenty-third birthday that you “feel old.” Likewise for yours truly.
This birthday is a bit different, however, and that is completely due to my four month-old son. Maybe it’s just psychosomatic, but being a new dad does bring with it certain feelings of getting older. Not that that’s a bad thing. No, not in the least. Becoming a dad is one of the greatest things that’s ever happened to me, and if that brings with it feelings of growing older, then that’s fine by me.
In the mean time, if you’re so inclined, I’m always open to the receiving of presents and swag. 😉
In the most recent Macintosh Daily Journal, Matt Deatherage & Co. take Information Week to task over their recent PC Vendor poll and rankings. MDJ correctly points out what’s really behind the buying decisions of most corporate IT managers:
IT buyers list many important factors, but when Apple meets them, they ignore them because Apple is not the “standard.” The most important consideration for IT buyers is not cost, customer service, quality, reputation, or proven technology, even if the magazine’s survey said so. The most important factor is that the PCs be Intel-compatible so they can run Windows, but no one wants to say that because it makes them look inflexible. Windows is the elephant in the middle of the room, and rather than talk about it, InformationWeek made up reasons why Apple doesn’t meet criteria when it obviously does. It’s hard to see how that is information, even if it does come out weekly.