Maybe not so much verbatim, but in spirit.
Month: August 2005
Tim Brayshaw has a great tip on combining the use of Quicksilver with Mac OS X 10.4’s Dictionary.
[Via TUAW.]
Today, I’ve spent time listening to some old tunes that have recently found their way in to my iTunes library. In the course of cleaning up a small portion of the CD collection, and putting some up for sale, I spent some time sucking CDs into MP3s. Currently tripping the bytes fantastic is The Cult’s Sonic Temple.
As I’ve said before, I like the look of iChat. So when I made the switch yesterday to Adium, so I could use both the AIM and Google Talk (viz: Jabber) protocols at the same time, I began a hunt to have Adium replicate the look of iChat. If you feel similarly, I’ll save you some time.
First, don’t download the official Adium client. Instead, download Metal Adium X by Mike Barca. That will give you the metal look for the chat window(s) and the Contacts list, as well as Aqua-y goodness for progress bars, etc. As he explains on the Metal Adium site, Mike updates the app within 24-48 hours of a new release of the official Adium client.
Second, download iChadiumMod, so your message view will have the iChat-style balloons. Next, be sure to change your sound set to “iChat” in the Events preferences. Finally, you’ll need a new Dock icon. There are a few iChat replica icons on Adium Xtras, but I didn’t want an exact duplicate. I’d like to be able to tell my apps apart, thank you, so I went with the iChat Adium derivative.
Looking at my chat setup now, I can’t help but wonder if this is near to what iChat would look like with tabs:
I’m sure Steve would have the tabs at the top, a la Safari, but otherwise, pretty darn close, no?
If you’re an Accordance user, and aren’t on the OakTree Software e-mail list, there is a free seminar on getting the most out of the company’s flagship product coming up in September:
Saturday September 24, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Todd Academic Center — Room 114
Dallas Theological Seminary
3909 Swiss Ave., Dallas, TX
Refreshments will be provided, though you’re on your own for lunch. You are encouraged to bring your own laptop to follow along with. E-mail Dr. Helen Brown for further details and to RSVP.
Jon reports that Google Talk has gone live. The IM product builds on Gmail accounts and the open-source Jabber IM service.
I’m already up and running on it with AdiumX, so I guess iChat will be taking a hike, and my fun balloons won’t be used in the future. (Can anyone point me to a reasonable substitute for Adium?) If you want to jaw via Jabber courtesy of Google, use my site name at gmail dot com, but you have to have a Gmail account to play along. Let me know if you’d like an invitation via the e-mail address noted in the previous sentence.
Chuck Hagel, Senator, Nebraska-D:
“We should start figuring out how we get out of there,” Hagel said on “This Week” on ABC. “But with this understanding, we cannot leave a vacuum that further destabilizes the Middle East. I think our involvement there has destabilized the Middle East. And the longer we stay there, I think the further destabilization will occur.”
Follow the good Senator’s logic with us:
1. The U.S. toppling of the Hussein government in Iraq, and construction of a democratic republic in same, destabilizes the Middle East. (Funny, we thought the fact that a mad dictator known to have invaded his neighbors and gas his own people would have contributed to the already destabilized Middle East.)
2. A continued U.S. presence in Iraq destabilizes the Middle East.
3. If the U.S. pulls out, there will be destabilization in the Middle East.
So according to the good Senator from Nebraska–who cannot be questioned because he has “absolute moral authority” as a Purple Heart-receiving Vietnam veteran–we’re damned if we do, and damned if we don’t, so we may as well damn millions of other people while we’re at it.
What the hell is wrong with people like Senator Hagel, that they wish to condemn millions of people to (a) the constant worry that the dictator’s secret police will whisk them off to a torture room (Saddam’s Iraq), or (b) sudden U.S. withdrawal will plunge them in to a hard-line Islamofascist government (Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, Iran)?
The arguments over whether or not we should have gone in to Iraq are over, people. It’s done. There is no time machine, we can’t go back and change it. (And if we could, would you really? Can you honestly say the Iraqis are worse off now than under Saddam?)
It would be nice to bring most of the troops home. (Note, I did not say “all”. We should always maintain a presence in Iraq as we move in to the future.) However, we can not wholly withdraw overnight and allow the fledgling Iraqi republic to implode. The future of the United States is, for good or ill, now tied to the future of Iraq, and for the sons and daughters of both nations, we owe the Iraqis our continued support.
[Prompted and inspired by today’s Best of the Web.]
At the time of its writing, many of the Founding Fathers opposed the Bill Of Rights being included in the Constitution because the enumeration of certain rights–which are restrictions on the federal government–might tempt the government to trample on those not spelled out.
The compromise drafted to satisfy the opposition became the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. The Tenth states The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
This meant that whatever was not in the Constitution or amended into it, was in the power of the states to decide. And while this amending was done as required some seventeen times after the Bill Of Rights was ratified, today, changes have simply been declared by the courts, often resulting in the trampling the founders so feared.
Liberal courts aided by their legislative and media counterparts are perverting the Bill of Rights one by one. With the exception of quartering federal troops in private homes, almost all of the first ten amendments have been twisted and deformed, sometimes with the help of “moderate” Republicans.
Like the March of Dimes’ victory against polio in the U.S., civil rights organizations can claim victory as well. At one time, black Americans did not enjoy the same constitutional guarantees as other Americans. Now we do. Because the civil rights struggle is over and won doesn’t mean that all problems have vanished within the black community. A 70 percent illegitimacy rate, 65 percent of black children raised in female-headed households, high crime rates and fraudulent education are devastating problems, but they’re not civil rights problems. Furthermore, their solutions do not lie in civil rights strategies.
Civil rights organizations’ expenditure of resources and continued focus on racial discrimination is just as intelligent as it would be for the March of Dimes to continue to expend resources fighting polio in the U.S. Like the March of Dimes, civil rights organizations should revise their agenda and take on the big, non-civil rights problems that make socioeconomic progress impossible for a large segment of the black community.
For the record, Dr. Williams is a black American, lest anyone accuse him of racial bias. (Which, no doubt, he’ll be accused of anyway.)