Tivoli’s latest iPod accessory

It’s a shame that at the time I reviewed the Tivoli Audio iSongBook, there wasn’t the black version. Such is life.
Now, Tivoli has the unusually-named iYiYi coming in the fall. Billed as a digital home entertainment system, the iYiYi doesn’t look to have many more features than the iSongBook, but it does have a deeper casing. This means it’s not as portable as the iSongBook, but will likely sound better, since the iYiYi will be capable of delivering deeper, fuller bass sounds, one of the areas in which I found the iSongBook lacking.
[Wave of the phin to Uncrate.]

This is how you remind me

I like iCal’s alarm features, but there is one feature request I have: I’d like to have both an e-mail sent and have an alarm message pop up on screen. For now, it’s an either/or proposition, and which one I select depends on the type of event I need the reminder for, and when said event takes place. Having the option of setting both types of alarms covers all of the bases.

Miscellany

Oh, if true, a tabbed Finder would rock.
(Yes, I am aware Path Finder has this functionality already.)

* * *

You may have seen Seurat’s “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of LaGrande Jatte”, not realizing what a masterpiece of impressionist painting it is. My first exposure to it, and I’m betting for lots of children of the ’80s, was thanks to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Now, the famous painting has been recreated by those crazy cheeseheads.

* * *

It kind of sucks that the 1.0b1 version of a piece of software has crashed more on me in two days of use than the alpha verisons have in the past year. Update: I guess I wasn’t clear in my above disappointment. For those keeping score, I’ve “downgraded” to Adium X 0.89.1.

Part of a conversation with a fellow parent

Cookei IM conversation

How do I love thee? Let me check the pitch count

In an IM conversation earlier this evening, a friend was telling me of a conversation he had had with an acquaintance. The acquaintance could not understand my friend’s love of baseball, and I thought his answers were worth sharing:

It’s the thinking man’s sport, to me. It’s the game within the game. Where a team sport can have one hero. Where great hitting teams can get crushed by great pitching. Where no-name guys with sub-par careers can make history by pitching a no-hitter, and the greats who pitch seven no-hitters.

The game of inches and 90 feet, strange-shaped ballparks with short porches and high walls.

Where fans root for the opposing hurler because he pitched a no-hitter against their favorite team.

Well, except in New York.

Where players come back out for a curtain call.

Batboys, batmen, batwomen.

Batgrannies.

Where a regular $40 baseball shoots up to $1 million just because some guy hit it for his 500th homer.

Where caps first got their bills bent, and a player can go from goat to hero in the span of an inning.

Where there is no clock and you play until the tie is broken, but the home team still has a chance to win.

Where the managers dress just like the players and aren’t called coaches.

And umpires put on the armor, too.

Where fans are so much a part of the game, they can even affect a play, like robbing a flyout into a home run or turning a triple into a ground-rule double.

Where a guy’s speed turns a triple into an inside the park home run. Where teamwork can create two outs on one pitch, and, on the rare occasion, a triple play.

Where sacrifices are also a statistic.

And it’s the only American past time that another country made into their present time: besiboru … Japanese baseball.
Why do you love it?

A quick note on my past

exes and email IM

Marriage is where it’s at.
At least for me.

Mostly baseball miscellany

Sometimes, it seems like the Starbucks growth pattern really is this bad, doesn’t it?

* * *

Texas Rangers All-Star Michael Young became the 10th-fastest MLB player to reach the 1,000-hit milestone, cranking off a single in the fifth inning yesterday. Last year’s AL batting champ continues to impress, and remains one of our favorite Rangers.

* * *

I should also note that while my little phisch will see a game on the tube and remark, “Baseball!”, he’s not to the point where he knows players’ names.

* * *

LSU athletics director Skip Bertman was inducted in to the College Baseball Hall of Fame. Topping Bertman’s impressive accomplishments are the five NCAA championships he led the LSU Tigers to, making them the dominate team of the 1990s.

I can still remember where I was and what I was doing when the Tigers won the first championship in ’91. I was at my hometown church, in the gymnasium, buffing the floors, while my bride-to-be was cleaning the kitchen. Starting in high school, I took on the janitorial duties there as a part-time job, and the once-a-month gym floor buffing happened to take place the weekend of the College World Series finals.

Congratulations, Coach, and Geaux Tigers!

Adium 1.0b1

I note with amusement my pal Damien’s post on TUAW regarding the release of the 1.0b1 version of Adium, in which he writes, “Please note that this is still in beta, though I was using it last night without any significant problems presenting themselves.”
I realize TUAW’s audience includes many non-geek types, who are happily using iChat, and haven’t yet discovered Adium, but it still brought a grin to my face to see a somewhat boilerplate beta-warning line for software that, while technically still in development, has been very stable–for me, at least–over the past year I’ve been using it. This is the first version I’ve seen with the 1.0 moniker attached to it in any form.
If you don’t use the voice and video chat features of iChat much, you should check out Adium (new beta). It supports multiple chat protocols (AIM, Yahoo, MSN Messenger, Jabber (Gtalk), ICQ, IRC, and more…), has a logging feature I have found most useful in finding URIs or other bits of info I forgot to note elsewhere, and is open source, so there’s no proprietary lock-in, if that’s something you’re concerned about.

Miscellany

I would pay good money to see “The Running of the Congressmen.”

* * *

You know the Oprahfication of America is out of control when Cookie Monster is reduced to introspection.
McSweeney’s:

Me love cookies. Me tend to get out of control when me see cookies. Me know it not natural to react so strongly to cookies, but me have weakness. Me know me do wrong. Me know it isn’t normal. Me see disapproving looks. Me see stares. Me hurt inside.

* * *

You, too, can help Cory Doctorow remove his Apple tattoo. I join Gus in snickering.

Another Firefox benefit

Blake Ross gives yet another reason to consider Firefox over Internet Explorer:

People ask me, “Well, gee, if IE7 is starting to catch up to Firefox, and if they’ve got their hand back in development right now, and eventually they might actually catch up to Firefox in terms of features, what’s the benefit of using Firefox? Why are you guys still around if you say that your only goal is just to make the Web a better place?”

My answer to that is, how much can you really trust a company that five years ago completely left you abandoned? If they do, in fact, succeed in taking back some of the market share that Firefox has gotten back from them, who’s to say that they’re not going to disappear again? My issue is not so much at a product level, it’s at a company level. How do you trust a company that left everyone out in the cold for five years?