Noting that Dan provides the main link to Archie McPhee, I can tell you I have seen, in person, the Librarian Action Figure. The toy store on the town square in Jackson, Wyoming, had this very figure in stock when we were there the first week of June.
Yes, for a split second, I wanted to buy it. That was how long it took me to see the Albert Einstein action figure sitting on the shelf behind the Librarian. I didn’t buy Albert, either. But my son got a die-cast, red VW Nu Beetle to fling around our wood floors.
Month: July 2005
I echo Jeff’s sentiments. In Windows-world, I recommend Firefox; for the Mac, Safari or Camino.
I am pretty ambivalent with regard to Lance Armstrong. Like a majority of Americans, I’m not a gearhead, unlike my pal Dan (who needs a new blog title). I did cheer for Armstrong when he battled back from cancer to win the Tour de France. I booed him over essentially choosing his career over his family. Like the large majority of professional athletes, Armstrong is nothing more than someone you can admire for his professional achievements, but should be avoided for pretty much anything else. Via the aforementioned Dan, an interview with the latest Armstrong biographer, Dan Coyle, confirms this:
VN: What is your personal take on Lance Armstrong?
DC: As his teammate Jonathan Vaughters once told me, there’s a pattern with Lance: he gets close to people, and inevitably something goes haywire. I must admit, the closer I got to him, the less I found myself admiring him. Now that I have distance again, I find myself admiring him more. Let me put it this way – he is a good hero for my 10-year old son, but I wouldn’t necessarily want him to date my daughter.
VN: One former teammate once described him as “one of the unhappiest men I’ve met.” Do you think Lance Armstrong is happy?
DC: He is more driven than happy. As Floyd Landis puts it in the book, “Lance doesn’t want to be hugged, he wants to kick everybody’s ass.”
Armstrong may not want to psychoanalyze himself, but I’d be happy to do so. From the myriad things I’ve read here and there about him, I would say Lance is a poster child for why involved fathers, or father-figures, mentors, are so important in a child’s life. In some ways, Lance is scared to love because he didn’t get that love only a father can provide. He has a void in his heart that he has only been able to fill with his desire to dominate and win in the sport of cycling.
Personally, I think I’d rather be around someone who’s happy.
Six Apart announced an update to the TypeKey service, one of which is that you can now choose to remain logged in to TypeKey for up to 2 weeks. For those of you who may have held off registering with TypeKey because you hated having to log in every couple of hours to comment on someone’s blog, now you no longer have that excuse.
I use TypeKey registration for my blogs, though it is not required. Should you choose to comment without signing in via TypeKey, your comment will simply remain in limbo until I approve it. TypeKey registration is simple, fast, and free.
For one who was born and grew up in the small towns of the Midwest, there is a special kind of nostalgia about the Fourth of July.
Somewhere in our [youth], we began to be aware of the meaning of [important national] days and with that awareness came the birth of patriotism. July Fourth is the birthday of our nation. I believed as a boy, and believe even more today, that it is the birthday of the greatest nation on earth.
The day of our nation’s birth in that little hall in Philadelphia, [was] a day on which debate had raged for hours. The men gathered there were honorable men hard-pressed by a king who had flouted the very laws they were willing to obey. Even so, to sign the Declaration of Independence was such an irretrievable act that the walls resounded with the words “treason, the gallows, the headsman’s axe,” and the issue remained in doubt.
[On that day] 56 men, a little band so unique we have never seen their like since, had pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Some gave their lives in the war that followed, most gave their fortunes, and all preserved their sacred honor.
What manner of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, eleven were merchants and tradesmen, and nine were farmers. They were soft-spoken men of means and education; they were not an unwashed rabble. They had achieved security but valued freedom more. Their stories have not been told nearly enough.
John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. For more than a year he lived in the forest and in caves before he returned to find his wife dead, his children vanished, his property destroyed. He died of exhaustion and a broken heart.
Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships, sold his home to pay his debts, and died in rags. And so it was with Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston and Middleton. Nelson personally urged Washington to fire on his home and destroy it when it became the headquarters for General Cornwallis. Nelson died bankrupt.
But they sired a nation that grew from sea to shining sea. Five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep, three million square miles of forest, field, mountain and desert, 227 million people with a pedigree that includes the bloodlines of all the world. In recent years, however, I’ve come to think of that day as more than just the birthday of a nation.
It also commemorates the only true philosophical revolution in all history.
Oh, there have been revolutions before and since ours. But those revolutions simply exchanged one set of rules for another. Ours was a revolution that changed the very concept of government.
Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by the people, with no powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by the people.
We sometimes forget that great truth, and we never should.
–Ronald Reagan, 1981
Today is the fourth of July, not the Fourth of July. That is not the holiday we celebrate in the United States today. Today we celebrate our Independence Day (Crikey, did I just quote a mediocre alien invasion movie?), when our Founding Fathers declared finished the document that would become our Declaration of Independence from England. So wish your fellow Americans a Happy Independence Day when you see them, and thank God for the blessing of having been born in–or having the privilege of becoming a naturalized citizen of–the greatest nation on the face of the Earth.
“Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” –Inscription on the Liberty Bell
“I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.” –John Adams (1776)
“[T]he flames kindled on the 4 of July 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them. … The Declaration of Independence…[is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man.” –Thomas Jefferson (1821)
Happy 229th Birthday, America!
This past Wednesday, a pair of Verizon FiOS line crews were at the house, physically laying the line from the switch at the street up to a new connection box they installed on the garage side of the house. The guys in the crew were super-nice, answering my questions and indulging my curiosity. I got a “tour” of the street-side box from the tech who was knee-deep in it, so my inner geek was satisfied. They did an above-average job on keeping the disturbance to my yard to a minimum. We should go live with our new fiber optic connection on the 7th!
The July issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available.
The issue kicks off with some amusing, original artwork from former staffer Grant Osborne. I need to pester him for some high-resolution copies to use as desktop pictures. Crikey, but did we get a lot of reader e-mail last month. Keep those e-mails coming, folks. We love interacting with our readers!
This issue marks a milestone, as we move from what has been our traditional publishing method for many years to a new system. Michael explains it all in a fascinating look back at our old publishing methods, and the transition to the new one. Having had a front seat to the development process, looking at alpha and beta publications over the course of a couple of weeks, I can tell you that Mr. Tsai poured a lot of effort in to our new publishing system, which should allow ATPM more flexibility for the future. On behalf of the entire staff, thank you, Michael!
I agree with Ellyn’s take on the Apple-to-use-Intel brouhaha, and wish her well on her upcoming Jeopardy appearance! Ellyn also notes a worthwhile project wherein you can “adopt” a serviceman: Books for Soldiers. My personal favorite program is Adopt a Sniper; snipers have different equipment needs than most other soldiers, beyond simply the difference in arms. Yet the inflexibility of the military’s purchasing process precludes snipers from getting a lot of this more flexible and specialized equipment before they are deployed. Kudos to the individual citizens who have banded together to help provide what the most cost-effective warriors in our services require. (One shot, one kill.) And thanks to Ellyn for pointing out another program supporting our soldiers I was unaware of. I’ve got some books winging their way to the Middle East very soon.
Sorry for that tangent; let’s veer back on track. Angus Wong delivers an introspective look at the Mac’s history and current market, in light of the recent move-to-Intel announcement. Paul Blakeman offers up his iBook love story. We welcome David Blumenstein as a full-time ATPM staffer, and he reciprocates the love with a look at podcasting.
Charles Ross has a great FileMaker database How To, and Marcus J. Albers goes Dashboard widget hunting. We are pleased to offer desktop pictures from ATPM reader Mark Montgomery. Thanks for the guitars, Mark! My favorites are the Dobro and the Rickenbacker. Cortland’s parents come for a visit, and Frisky’s freeware pick this month is MacMAME.
Chris Lawson has a pair of speaker reviews, and Matthew Glidden explore’s graphic design aid Curio. Paul Fatula gets to know Wacom’s Graphire Bluetooth edition, while David Zatz compares headphones from Pro Tech Communications and Sennheiser. Finally, Andrew Kator details vSpace Master 2.0, a 3D/VR presentation system.