">'); win.document.writeln(''); win.document.writeln(''); }
 

The Indefinite Article.

Friday, October 31, 2003

Tables vs CSS

I saw the below interview when reading this: Tables vs CSS

Interesting Interview Re: CSS

So far, I think the footer at ms150.org works okay, but I still havn't found an elegant CSS solution for putting images in text that works with IE...
An Interview With Mike Davidson of ESPN (Part 2): "Positioning footers is a huge Achilles heel of absolute positioning. It is ridiculous that you cannot embed three absolutely positioned columns within a master div and then position a footer below that master div. This is a well known problem of absolute positioning and there are a few workarounds, none of which are very elegant."

ADC Compatibility Labs, Cupertino

ADC Compatibility
Labs, Cupertino

Paul, you should bring Paper Lantern in to test compatibility. Cupertino is right up the road in California, right?

Success!


Holy Smokes they bought it!

My brother and I just got back from our meeting with the editor and art director of the mag. They wrote us a check then and there! Also, the meeting was funny because my brother had just gotten back from a dental appointment and half his face was numb so he couldn't really talk very well and every tim he would try to interject it sounded really funny. funny ha ha.

Anyhow we celebrated by getting some kick-ass chicken schwarma at the lebannese bakery down the street. Thanks again for your help! Who knew you could actually get paid for staying up until 4:30 am every night for 2 weeks hunting down semi-colons and apostraphes...

Taggart: Picture Problem

Taggart,
a URL would help. In general, if the img height and width selectors are greater than the image, then pixelization can occur.

{Update:}
Oh, I get it, nevermind...

The Haunted SUV



Todd, I think that you should get an engineer from Disney to install the same mirror technology in your truck that they use in the "Haunted Mansion" (you know, the one where you look in the mirror and between you and the other person in your car there appears to be a horribly disfigured or othewise scary ghost/zombie/undead creature). Imagine how funny it would be the next time the neighborhood youth kid guy checks his hair in the morning! It would be a lark!

Oh shit, did I just say just use the word 'lark'? Dear God.

Also, you could make up a story about how the SUV is haunted by the mangled souls of the Automobile and Oil company executives who were responsibile for the earth wreckingly poor gas mileage of said autombiles. Also, the SOB who came up with the term 'Sports Utility Vehicle' would be known to haunt the truck too. But he would only come out on the 5th full moon of every month.

Also, thank you everyone for taking the time to look at the fahrenheit demo for me. I really, really appreciate it!

Also, I should mention that both the images and and article body html (fonts) are data imported from past issues

Also,

Happy Halloween!

My gosh, i'm crying...


Todd, that was the most beautiful website ever. My gosh....and that isn't even saying anything about the photographs. my gosh, i'm stunned.

I noticed that too...


Paul: I noticed the images too, but figured it wasn't all that important since it was just a presentation piece. I figured what was really important was the functionality of it. It worked nice for me.

Todd: Sorry i wasn't around last night. I, once again, had a headache from hell. I slept in the car on the way home and was in bed by 9.

Taggart: Another apology goes out to taggart for missing adolph these last couple of days before he takes off for austin. I wasn't able to get the disks to him to drive to austin for those of you who are interested in upgrading to 10.3. I just upgraded my sister's computer last night (archive and install) but wasn't there to see it finish. I put disk 1 in the computer and had my sister finish the rest.

go here


this is a really interesting photography site. you should go see it.

?????



I saved these screen shots at size and hopefully they will convey my problem.
The quality of the images need to be ramped up. While looking at the pages full screen the images went fuzzy.
Either I made sense or I just made myself look like an ass.

cars as mirrors


i do pretty much the same thing every morning. i drag my ass out of bed, take a vitamin (because diana loves me) drink some water, urinate, head downstairs to make coffe. since i make a point of being 'in my chair' by 8:00 i frequently have my last cigarette just before 8:00 out on the front porch. every morning a young man, presumably a high school student, follows the sidewalk in front of the house down to the bus stop. he invariably comes to a halt in front of the large, curved rear window of my truck, checks his hair for a minute or two, then continues on his way.

this amuses me.

paul : fahrenheit looks very good. everything works/appears intentional. if i had any complaints they would be minor, like the numerous type styles used for different articles. good work.

adolph : you are a punk.

posted with paper lantern.

Thursday, October 30, 2003

Fahrenheit Preview


If anyone has a couple of minutes please checkout this site for me and let me know what you think / if there are any glaring bugs or problems.

I am presenting it tomorrow, along with the admin section which you are welcome to browse as well.

Thanks!

Also, the archive, i saw u,and classified sections are disabled.


Valid XHTML 1.0! <------------- Getting this was a major pain in the @#$@!




Valid CSS!

Mommy

Carol you are such a generous mommy to all your babies -- we're all lucky to have you with your gigantic heart and amusing ways. Aren't you exhausted? I think for Christmas you deserve a relaxing spa get-away ... maybe Killy should take a collection ;>

Latest From DThree


Check out Dave's first political cartoon. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated

Coming to Austin


Killy
Since Adolph is Coming to Austin manana is it possable for a copy of
.3 to make it to Austin for the lot of us.????

View From Post Oak Tower

I had a 8AM morning meeting at 13th floor office in Post Oak Tower 1, which is just north of the Galleria. The conference room has a pretty nice view of Houston towards the Med Center. In the middle of the picture, in the far distance, you can see the profile of St. Lukes.

Amber - BOOKS

OK
so I haven't really read much lately - don't have too much opportunity for this - what with tending to baby and hubby - for e.g. - last night I came home with a terrible headache - baby was hungry - nursed him - i went to the bathroom - when I emerged - baby wanted solids - I made him some potato and eggs and some steamed veggies (carrots, broccoli, cauliflower) - hubby wanted eggs too - made eggs for hubby - lil sis in law wanted some food too - made her some eggies - finally sat to finish feeding baby while hubby ate - then i got to eat baby's leftovers and an egg for me - then we made a run/walk to the fabric store - i am turning my husband into a frog for halloween and as per usualo - am waiting until the absolute last minute to make his costume - have no idea how i'm going to turn 2 yards of green felt into a frog suit - but tonight will be interesting - anyway - got home - baby was tired from the exciting jogging stroller ride and exploration at the fabric store - gave him a bath and managed to wrestle him into slumberland shortly thereafter - so my evening was over before it even started - so no time to read
except when I travel for work
I found myself in the bookstore falling all over my red wheeled suitcase at the airport - trying to find a book that my boss recommended to me a long time and I couldn't remember the author's name or even the title - and it had been on the bestseller list for a while and who knows how long ago that was too - so I ended up picking up a book called - The Piano Tuner (forgot the author) but it was a National Bestseller - I selected this book because it didn't seem silly or goofy and had to do with someone in a war and all sorts of other interesting stuff
but I never finished reading it - because in the first few chapters, there were two deaths - both babies
I had just left my little boy at home for two day separation and was not able to stomache these stories
so I can't tell you if it was a good book or not

I did read a fun book though a while back - the devil wears prada - ha - it was just a fun read and made my life story seem so much easier

by the way - i finally remembered which book my boss recommended - the davinci code - which i recently ordered from barnes and nobles - i'll tell you all about it when i get it

California Dreamin'

Paul, I love that book Things Fall Apart .. we had to write term papers on it in one of my english classes in high school and a good friend of mine turned in a paper with a yam -- the paper had just one sentence on it -- "Here's your damn yam, Okankawa!" -- I couldn't believe he did that -- best of all, the teacher laughed so hard she decided to give him an A for originality.

Any other recommendations, Paul?

By the way, I've been meaning to ask what part of Cali. you're in 'cause I have a friend, a beautiful Indian girl from Trinidad, who has very bravely decided to pack up all her things and move to cali to start a plant nursery ... she doesn't know anyone there but it's always been her dream ... so, anyway, maybe you could offer her some insight on places to go, etc.?

Things Fall Apart


Amberina et al, I know that you specifically made the book recommendation request to the ladies but I just finished reading Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and I think it might fit the bill- seeing as it is thought-provoking and easy to carry on the subway...

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

re:Garden


Holy Moley those are some humongous sunflowers! I have seen "Little Shop of Horrors" so I am naturally afraid of huge plants. But, since you and Anthony probably provide a loving and caring environement I am sure that there is not too much danger of the sunflowers becoming gargantuan people eaters.

Also, do you roast the seeds?

Garden

the amazing upload thingy...


is just that. truly amazing, and a welcome addition to the blog. would you be interested in setting one up for the cupid lady? i am handing off as much responsibility to her as i can, and if she can upload all of the thumbs...


posted with PaperLantern

uploaders and sharing scanners/devices??!!!




My gosh! That (device sharing) IS totally cool. If only a couple of us lived to together so we could try this out...even next door in the same apt complex. geez...

Image Uploader

"Article Image Update Has Failed Horribly!":
Is this just simple file uploading? Is there automatic image scaling a-la ImageMajic? I just tried to upload the first image in my iPhoto library, a 2.5 meg jpeg. This looks interesting.

Share digital devices via Image Capture

macosxhints - 10.3: Share digital devices via Image Capture
This is insane!

Re:Posting Images


I think that Amber may be looking for a way to post images that are not already on the web, so I put this script up on chairjockey. Use it to upload an image file. It will respond with the html you can copy/paste into your post.



Distiller for that...


You would have to use distiller in order to get a multi-page pdf like that...illustrator is funky that way. I remember one the scientists in the physics dept. made an entire poster on illustrator (! 4'x6'!). i had serious issues getting that one to print correctly....it was near when i first started, (almost two years ago) so i can't remember how we resolved it.

There was also the issue of why when you make an 'artboard', say 5x5, it sits on a dotted line that measures out the width of a standard piece of paper? I talked to colin about it...he just tries to ignore it.

Multipage Illustrator Documents

I followed the instructions here: Multipage Illustrator Documents
But wasn't able to use Mac OS X's print to pdf feature to get a multipage pdf. Each time I got a pdf with the second page (of a two tiled area art-board).

Posting Images

If you see an image that you would like to post, right-click or (Mac) control-click on the image and open the image in a new window. The web address of the image should be in the address bar at the top of the window. Copy that image location. It should look kind of like:

http://www.somewhere.com/somelocation/somefile.jpg

To put the image in your blogger post you will type the following into your post:

<img src="http://www.somewhere.com/somelocation/somefile.jpg" align="right">

You can modify the alignment of the image by using align="left" or align="center" or just leaving the alignment out. The important part of the tag (tag: the part between the < and > signs) is the img, meaning image, and src, meaning source.

Illustrator Question


I am setting up a document on illustrator and would like to have a workspace with multiple pages. How do I set this up? So far I see only one page, and if I go to Document Setup and click on Tile Full Pages for or Tile Imageable Areas it doesn't seem to do what I would like .... Any clues?

Attaching Photos?

Is there a way to attach a photo to view on the blog that's not posted somewhere on the web? I can't seem to attach the sunflower photo :(

Sunflower

Check out Anthony under our 7' sunflowers this summer. When are ya'll coming to visit, btw? Maybe we should have a group reunion in NYC one day -- wouldn't that be fun! We're going to Jamaica in January -- I'm looking for recommendations for sight-seeing from anyone who's been there .. also, book recommendations from the chics out there -- a novel maybe something thin enough to carry on the subway -- thoughtful, funny, provocative, inspiring, etc.?

Opening the keyboard...


I don't think i took any pics of opening the keyboard. Carol bought the wrong mouse so i returned it. They didn't have any wireless pro mice at the physical store, so i have to order it online. Maybe sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Taggart: i opened fontbook, created a new set and added 'classic sans' fonts from todd's fonthole folder he gave me so long ago. Worked fine.

so i created another set, classic serif, and proceeded to add those....no go. Same with scripty, corroded and weird....for some reason won't let me import anything else...dunno why yet.

Photoshop seems to work fine. No problems there. Even istop motion seems to launch fine. And, of course, paul's gold master version of 'paperlantern' works like a dream.

iPod Unpack Pics

iPod Unpack Pics
Forgot to post these. Dot mac was acting screwy when the day I got it and took these photos.

Killy,
Do you have unpack photos for that coolio keyboard and mouse I haven't seen yet?

Homage


In homage to adolph who is so fond of 'opening the package' pictures:

Font-tastic

have you played around with the font managment thingy?

I went ahead and did it...


I upgraded the powerbook this morning while i worked on Dr. G's RSNA poster: Image-Guided Percutaneous Biopsy of Mediastinal Lesions: A Review of Various Approaches.



It's really perky. Mail launches a lot faster. Even my most hated i-app, iphoto, launches and works faster too; although, i did recently archive and erase a lot of my photos so it's hard to say what it is. Expose is just WAY TOO COOL to even describe. Haven't tried any of the big apps yet except for InDesign, and only to look at something specific.

TODDTo answer one of todd's concerns, yes, expose does take over the fuction keys that normally control the pallettes in InDesign. I haven't looked for a solution to that yet. I'm sure they can be changed.

UPDATE: YES. THESE CAN BE CHANGED EASILY. expose has it's own tab in system preferences.

Voting System Follies

Slashdot | Diebold Chases Links To Leaked Memos
The latest corporate "intellectual property" scramble is Diebold chasing students for papers scattered into the internet. Reading about this I visualize Keystone Kops and evil mustached lawyers employed by Diebold chasing after hacky-sacking students who have picked up dollar bills a Diebold ATM machine has spewed out; the instant they catch up with any student there is another around the corner waving a miraculously multiplied dollar bill. Another bill, and another, there are more copies than originals and they are all the same.

Along with that I'm thinking about politicians giving concession speeches. What happens if a politician thinks he (or she) lost and gives a concession speech, but it turns out that they won? Is the concession nullified? Does the conceding politician nullify an election by giving the election to someone else, who effectively wasn't elected?

Teh Album Leaf Website

The Album Leaf
Nice work Paul. Looks slick. The text colors of the visited slides seem a bit subtle for my old eyes/crappy LCD/Mac gamma though (see right).

What Apps Does Panther Break?

MacSlash | Ask MacSlash: What Apps Does Panther Break?
Killy, have you installed yet? How is Flash/Fireworks/Photoshop/Illustrator doing? Quark in classic?

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

Site Launch: www.albumleaf.com


My brother Scott and I just launched www.albumleaf.com. He had done the flashedy flash flash site for them eariler, but we just revamped the whole thing so that it uses xml as a data feed. We also provided an php based admin interface so that the various sections of the site can be updated with ease.

The Album Leaf's music is also worth a listen to. Its ambient, sit-down-at-the-conert and swoon type stuff. They have been having some success recently, including recording collaborations and tours with icelands's Sigur Ros.

You can check out the site here. The data also renders as an rss feed.

Teh Radnesses!

PowerLogix Products - Cube Enclosure

"A Quick and Baby Blue Assault Mission"


re:Pakistani Army Recruitment Video


This video is clearly superior to even last year's Oscar winner for "Best Army Recruitment Video". In fact, considering the length, I think this one could be up for "Best Epic War Film/Song".

I was particularly impressed by the subtle references to such popular films as "Gladiator" (scene: hands brushing over tall grass), "Saving Private Ryan " (scene: Amphibious river landing in rubber raft), and "A Hard Days Night" (scene: the three friends riding off on elderly man's bicycle whilst elderly man chases after them).

I would like to see a recruitment video for the Pakistani Navy


Pakistani Army Recruitment Video

Dosti Song
Greetings from the bizarro-world. I thought this kind of thing went out in the eighties.

Killy


Since I was so nice and helpfull and instrumental in the recovery of your camera could you please please please make a disk image for me.
Fast User switching is a must in my household.
You could send it Via 1st Class Trudeau to 616 W St John.
?????????????

DateLens Calendar

DateLens Calendar
It would be cool to do this in a Flash app that reads iCal files...

On the truck and coming to daddy(ies)


So here it comes. I'm going to install it on both the imacs tonight. i think my sister will get a kick, plus it will provide another platform for testing. Who else is going to want to partake? should i try and make disc copies with classic first?

Monday, October 27, 2003

I was waiting for this...




I heard the news, but had no idea of the 'scope' of the fires. wow.

Burning Boogers

Hey Paul,
With all that soot in the air, what are your boogers looking like?

Forks in versioning content management

Google Search: fork
A fork is when a single original is edited twice, making two distinct new versions from the original. I've been considering what it would take to make a versioning content management system. I think important features of a content management system include:

  • Versioning
  • Embargo/Expiration of content (the arrival and departure of a content item should be able to be controlled chronologically)
  • Context Awareness (content items should be aware of what contains them and what is linking to them)
The tricky part I'm thinking about now is forks in versioning. Maybe I should just ignore forking at the data storage layer? How could the application layer intellegently deal with forks within the same content item?

Hmm., Nukes

As you can see, the Nukes engine has a notion of versioning. This feature is not present in the original PostNuke engine. The persistence engine of JBoss uses a feature that increments the version and it keeps old versions as long as you want them. This way you can rollback in case you missed something. This is very useful as you work on a live web site. Also, the makeProd toggle enables you to select which version will be publicly displayed to your visitors.
I wonder what that looks like at a database level.

If the people want it...


Can i help it if people want to look at Jennifer's wedding more than bikini clad waterskiing pictures?

Give the public what the public wants!

Disk Usage On Chairjockey



  1. public_html/tcs 41.38 Meg

  2. public_html/killy 12.62 Meg

  3. public_html/adolph 11.69 Meg

  4. public_html/david 3.07 Meg

  5. public_html/paul 1.35 Meg

  6. public_html/colin 0.01 Meg

  7. public_html/taggart 0.01 Meg


Total Disk usage: 80.15 Megabytes
Remaining Disk space available: 219.85 Megabytes

Todd comes in first place with an astonishing 41.38 Megabytes worth of files in his www directory. Is this where he stores his favorite waterskiing photos?

Also, Todd, please put up a decent splash page.


Here are some more statistics:

Listing directories with at least 0.01% of the traffic, sorted by the amount of traffic.
#reqs: %bytes: directory
------: ------: ---------
756150: 50.40%: /killy/
90505: 24.54%: /tcs/
23787: 15.31%: /adolph/
5895: 4.12%: /david/
5586: 3.98%: /paul/


Meow!


Panther will be here tomorrow. If anyone wants to help offset the cost, the total was $81.

Once i get it, I'm going to intall it on Pinky-Winky and see how it works out. I don't anticipate too many problems; most people on macintouch are pretty stoked about it.

speaking of ordering...


i ordered us 200 more megs of storage at chairjockey.com (for the low price of $48). so i order you to send me some cash. please do not mail fish OR chips. why don't we just migrate the blog there so we can get rid of those ugly banner ads?

and i do not hate waterskiers, some of them are very nice people, i hate photographing them while charring in the sun.

Adolph, when and where will you be in town this weeked? need a place to crash? will your reservation be for one or two? lemme know, i should be able to hook you up.

Sorry...


sorry, taggart, but today is my sister's birthday. I would love to hang out, but we're having a little get together at the house for her. A fresh Red Snapper is sitting in lime juice right now, and a strawberry marbled cake is sitting on a warming rack waiting to be 'iced'. But if you really wanted to take me to lunch, i would like that. I'm placing the order for Panther today, and Adolph is paying me in 'Fish and Chips'. So maybe we could make it a group lunch.

how long will you be in town?

In other news...



Poor paul stuck in soot.

Adolph has tiring weekend.

Colin teaches drawing cause Laura is sick of it.

Killy buys four new tires for his car

Todd hates waterskiers

40 people dead in Bagdahd

If anyone listened to NPR this morning a letter from a soldier recently returned bashes the media for reporting on the chaos in Iraq, "...but what about the schools we've rebuilt?" he asks.

Coming To Take Pictures


Heading to Houston this afternoon.
Anyone want to Hang out.
Adolph.
Killy.
Anyone.????
The house is off Memorial Dr. in the Memorial area.
around Bingle and Voss.

Tre Weirdness.


I was looking at Macrumors and thier post about dailytunes.comS which basicaly functions as a site that recommends music that you can buy from the itunes store. One of the bands they recommend is The Post Service, which is on the Subpop label. It is in fact on the itunes catalog along with Mudhoney, but the rest of Subpops catalog of bands is absent.??

Sunday, October 26, 2003

Just Like the Showdown


As the fires have crept closer to San Diego the smoke has gotten worse, the sky darker, and the light weaker. There is no fresh air to be had. Everything is covered with soot, and everyone's eyes are burning. Its just like being at the Showdown on a Thursday night.

Our house is full of refugees. Among them is Josh whose flight to Lima, Peru was cancelled because an air-traffic control tower had to be evacuated. There is also my brother's girlfriend Rachel and her two cats and dog. She got here just before the city shut down the freeway out to her house.



BOoks

Books Taggart Recommends:
Jarhead.........Anthony Swafford
In Harms Way.........Forgot the Author but subject is the sinking of the uss indianopolis
Into Thin Air............john Krakauer.
or the lighter fair where nobody dies except his mother.
Me Talk Pretty One Day.......David Sedaris.
or if you are getting ready for christmas he as a collection of such stories.
Have Fun Roasting Marshmellows.

This morning, here in Pompey

I awoke this morning to the creepiest of mornings. The time (adjusted for daylight savings) was 8:30 am, and my room was still dark. A sudden fear gripped me that perhaps my beach plans would be spoiled by rain. I stepped out on the front porch,which faces east, to investigate and saw a really beautiful sunset.

I watched in confusion for a few moments as the sun set in reverse- climbing the sky from east to west. I also noticed that the front-porch, which always kind of dirty, was this morning truly filthy, covered in about a 2 centimetres of dusty dirt. Extending my observation to the street revealed that the entire street looked filthy, and all the cars looked filthy too, and all the plants, mailboxes, roofs, and windows were filthy. Even the litter piled up in the gutter looked dirty.

My brother stumbled out of his room at this time and I told him to come out on the porch and take a look. He said "a fire, a really big fire." I had been thinking "alien invasion, finally an alien invasion." I got online to check the news and read about the humongous wildfires that have erupted around Los Angeles.

So now, an hour later the sky is still dark, and the light is still orange. The sun is a perfect red orb: lidless like the eye of sauron

Saturday, October 25, 2003

A book...but one i haven't read


I've heard good things about this book from several people, but I haven't read it yet. Maybe you could give this one a try.

A Moveable Feast


I just finished reading A Moveable Feast, Hemingway's memoir of his life in Paris during the early twenties. It certainly was an enjoyable read as you can hardly find a more interesting setting than Paris in the twenties, or a cast of characters more fascinating than Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce, etc.

I am now, however, bookless and desperate. Anybody have a recommendation?



Curosity...


I can install Panther and still keep all my apps and stuff, right? I won't have re-install everything will I? My gut tells me that it'll just install on top of everything and keep everything in order, but i have to ask to quell that 10% of me that isn't so sure.

Friday, October 24, 2003

Mexico?


Sorry colin, i don't think that far ahead, but i guess anything is possible. Carol ALWAYS wants to go to mexico. We'd go for the weekend if it were up to her.

Adolph: so how was the reading?

Killy and carol are you going to Mexico?

Hey putz,

are you and your capable and lovely wife making plans to go to mexico this coming summer?
If so maybe we all could go together.

give a call.

Considering...


I'm considering buying it with the education discount. I'm pretty sure i can buy two software titles with my education discount a year, but i'm not sure. In any case, i believe that would bring my total to $69.

I'm with adolph on this one. I'm not interested in upping my OS quite yet. I'll prolly just read about it for a week or two before i break down and buy it. Or maybe my co-worker will have bring by his CD for me so i don't have to buy it.

Speaking of, i saw a g5 in the hallway today and a fat cinema display headed for the sixth floor.

By the way, adolph: There is an update for Keynote 1.1.1, but you have to have upgraded to 10.2.8 to use it. I'm not sure what it addresses, but you may want to look into it. I know you want to use key for your presentation (in december?)

Bookmarks at Mac dot com

The new bookmarks feature is pretty sweet.

Austin

Yes definitely will be here.....and there.
My schedule for the week is.

Sat. Drive to Houston (tentatively)
Sun. Drive to Austin
Mon Drive to Houston
Tues Drive to Austin
Mon Drive to Houston
Tues Drive to Austin
And if you did not know I was in Houston on Tues and Wed
and Tues and Wed of the week before that.
GGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEEZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Austin

David Sedaris

Jealous. I love David Sedaris in a completley non-gay way. I read Me Talk Pretty One Day
while on the way to the Bahamas. I nearly made the plan crash I was laughing so loud and hard.
Turns out that it would the last time I would laugh during that whole trip. If Liz didnt have to work tonight I would buy tickets and be there for the 8 pm show.
Damn Damn Damn

Re: Who Got IT?

I don't think anyone has it yet (of us, that is). I'll prolly pick it up this weekend, although Killy may work on the academic discount angle. My machine has become more of a worker bee over the year, so I'm probably not going to throw on a new OS until I've been reading Macintouch for a week or so. In any case, Amber and I are seeing David Sedaris this evening, so I can't make it to the Apple Store for "Night of the Panther."

I considered racing down Memorial Drive to the Galleria (not seriously). On the other hand, I'm really not all that hot to go to an Apple Store chock full of Mac-geeks, so I'm glad I have an excuse not to go (seriously).

This weekend I'll be staffing the Kemah and Houston MS Walk, so I won't be just dying to upgrade OSes anyway.

Speaking of, Taggart, Todd, I plan to head to Austin early next weekend, Friday afternoon. Amber will join me later in the day. Are you guys going to be around?

Who Got IT?

Who has 10.3? How can I get a copy? Who should I make the check out to?
and for how much?

G5 Space Roller-Skate

Of course, only someone from Japan could pull this off. I'm not sure why they wanted to cover up the handy shelf on top.

The future...


Now what would REALLY be nice is if adolph and i could 'see' each other's playlists from our ipods.



and imagine if we could 'beam' over songs much like one might beam over their personal information from one palm to another. and it wouldn't have to stop at songs; selected contacts could be beamed over, as well as 'notes'. it won't be long.

speaking of notes: yes you CAN see bbedit text files. word files too, i'm sure.

A hasty decision

It was a hasty decision last week. I saw a CompUSA blowout of 30 gig iPods for $250. I thought, eh, why not? I could probably turn around and Ebay it for more. Tracking Info

Re-write???




paul: so does this mean that you're going to have to re-write paper lantern for 10.3?

HELP!


ORIGINALLY WRITTEN LAST NIGHT AT 11:15 P.M.

update sorry, adolph. i had updated the firmware and failed to restart. so i did. and it works just fine now. as a matter of fact, i'm using the wireless keyboard right now!

adolph: having trouble with the wireless keyboard. i was under the impression that i had bluetooth on this computer, but it seems to be telling me that i do not. I don't want to believe that, however.

Could i just be crazy? In the network tab in system pref's there is a bluetooth modem adapter, but that's all i see. do i need an additional bluetooth adapter? i remember at one time 'turning off' bluetooth since i didn't use it. before, the bluetooth icon on the top right was just kind faded out, but now it has a squiggly line through it... is it just disabled? when i click on the icon, it says...Bluetooth: Unavailable.

Another questionably funny story...


The first day carol left, i made my way to work as usual. I had a full day and by the time the day ended i was ready to get home and face the baby by myself. I got in the car and followed our normal route home: holcombe, the buffalo spwy, bissonet, edloe, 59 south HOV lane, exit williams trace....

Carol called me as i cheerfully headed home...

C: Hey, are you home yet?

A: No, I'm on the HOV lane just passing westpark...

C: What are you doing on the HOV lane?

A: oh my god...i am so stupid...

Packing Peanuts or Rice Cake?





Apple shipped the wireless keyboard in a much larger box than necessary, so it was filled with packing peanuts. When i opened the box many of the peanuts spilled out, but i managed to get all of them up before the baby could get to them, or so i thought.

Well, adolfo iv managed to find the ONE peanut that i didn't pick up. Carol was playing with the baby in the living room - they were crawling around with each other until carol was tired. He stopped in front of the tv and just sat there with his back to her. He was suspiciously quiet.

When she went around to inspect what he was concentrating so hard on, he had mauled the packing peanut into about 30 smaller packing peanuts, with 20 or so in his mouth.

Thursday, October 23, 2003

Back, Back, Back and more Back


What a good Thursday this turned out to be, even if i DID forget my glasses at home. Usually, this results in a tolerable headache by 11:00 and an untolerable migraine by the end of the day.

Fortunately, this didn't happen - just a slight 'tolerable' head pounding all day. Had a great breakfast, an even better time at conferences and a good printing run of posters. To top it off, i get a call right after conference letting me know that the powerbook was in, wife called to let me know she was getting on a plane, and someone placed a reasonably large order of prints from Jen's wedding.

Adolfo's smile was priceless when he saw his mother he hadn't seen in two days. He was sitting in the sink getting a bath when we walked in the door...

Carol had one last dinner to expense that counted on her 'business trip' so we headed out to Outback for steak. Killito was exceptionally happy to be with both his parents.

daddy deserved a break after the last two nights so i headed out to the cafe for a cup of tea and some blogging...

Powerbook Dimensions


12"



15"



17"



Waitaminute...

Killy,
That image is of a 15 or a 17, not a 12. Did you upgrade?

Pretty Cool: ITMS Link Maker

I think Paul made a mention of it before. Pretty nice stuff.

It'll be here this afternoon!

The punk is on his way back home! And so is Carol! What a great thursday this is turning out to be.

Wednesday, October 22, 2003

Carol: iPod Auto Solutions

This month's Mossberg Report covers various options and considerations to making your iPod work with your car.

The World According to Garp


I just finished reading The World According to Garp by John Irving. I really enjoyed this book. It is often funny and sometimes beautiful. My favorite part of the book is actually an episode from a short story written by the main character. The story is called "The Pension Grillparzer" and I think you can get from iTunes here.

Rumsfeld memo...kinda interesting waht answers they might come up with

Below is the full text of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's memo on the war on terror:

October 16, 2003

TO: Gen. Dick Myers
Paul Wolfowitz
Gen. Pete Pace
Doug Feith

FROM: Donald Rumsfeld

SUBJECT: Global War on Terrorism

The questions I posed to combatant commanders this week were: Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror? Is DoD changing fast enough to deal with the new 21st century security environment? Can a big institution change fast enough? Is the USG changing fast enough?

DoD has been organized, trained and equipped to fight big armies, navies and air forces. It is not possible to change DoD fast enough to successfully fight the global war on terror; an alternative might be to try to fashion a new institution, either within DoD or elsewhere � one that seamlessly focuses the capabilities of several departments and agencies on this key problem.

With respect to global terrorism, the record since Septermber 11th seems to be:

We are having mixed results with Al Qaida, although we have put considerable pressure on them � nonetheless, a great many remain at large.

USG has made reasonable progress in capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqis.

USG has made somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taliban � Omar, Hekmatyar, etc.

With respect to the Ansar Al-Islam, we are just getting started.

Have we fashioned the right mix of rewards, amnesty, protection and confidence in the US?

Does DoD need to think through new ways to organize, train, equip and focus to deal with the global war on terror?

Are the changes we have and are making too modest and incremental? My impression is that we have not yet made truly bold moves, although we have have made many sensible, logical moves in the right direction, but are they enough?

Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?

Does the US need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists? The US is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions.

Do we need a new organization?

How do we stop those who are financing the radical madrassa schools?

Is our current situation such that "the harder we work, the behinder we get"?

It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog.

Does CIA need a new finding?

Should we create a private foundation to entice radical madradssas to a more moderate course?

What else should we be considering?

Please be prepared to discuss this at our meeting on Saturday or Monday.

Thanks.

Marine Flatulence

Aye, Captain, it was a Giant Sea Fart that took the unsinkable Mullet Forthright.

G4 iBooks?

That plastic is going to get hothothot, however, a slot-loading drive and other improvements are going to make it a real contender to the PB G4 12". I think the only difference, other than the case, is going to be the PB G4 12"'s more extensive video capability. Seeing a PB G4 12" run a 23" Cinema Display at the Apple Store the other day was pretty compelling. Additionally, Bluetooth is a build-to-order option rather than built-in.

If you have an older Powerbook G4, sell if you are thinking about it, because the value is fixing to fall through the floor. The only things the older titanium PowerBooks have over the iBook G4 are weight, screen-size, PCMCIA card slot, larger potential RAM capacity, and spanning video capacity. All of these are good advantages for the right consumer, but most older titanium PowerBooks are slower, have slower motherboards, have smaller hard drives, etc.

First Panther Arrival Pics

Panther Arrives
I'm surprised there weren't pics of unwrapping the box from them shipping materials. Oh, the state of Mac tech-lust photography is slipping....

This American Life


Thanks Todd, for sending me this link to an episode of NPR's This American Life right before I was heading off to bed. There is no tranquilizer quite like a sickening report on the erosion of civil liberties.
I recommend that all of you listen to this story; just do yourself a favor and listen to it during the day and on an empty stomach!.

Tuesday, October 21, 2003

This is the sound eyeballs make...

M-A-Double L-O-W-Double E-N

Has anyone heard of Electric Rain?

Electric Rain - Swift 3D Vector Solutions for Macromedia Flash

ungroup young man.

colin


if you ungroup the items first, (shift+apple+g) then apply the color to them they will change for real.



Who wants to see my monkey?

Organizing Information

Dave Weiner writes about the structure of directories, and I think, how the hell do you do that? Essentially, a directory is composed of like-formed objects that have information and links to other objects of inforamtion and links.

Directory Object

  • Information about object.
  • Links to other related objects.
  • Dynamic links to objects that have referred to an object.

Anything else? A directory kinda sounds like a weblog...

Petanque || Bocce = Fun


So there weather is ridiculous here so I found myself at the beach the other day playing a game of Bocce and swilling Tecate until the sun went down. When I was in France, the silly Frenchmen would gather about the same hour and play Petanque, a close relative of Bocce. In retrospect, I think what we were playing on the beach the other day really was Petanque and not Bocce, seeing as we did not have a true "court" set up, and the only real differences between the two games are that true Bocce requires a "court", with backboards and such for bank shots, and in Bocce you must roll your ball. I guess there are spelling and pronunciation differences between the two games too. See below for a real explanation of the differences.

At any rate Petanque/Bacce was really a whole lot of fun. Its like playing horshoes/marbles with miniature holeless bowling balls.




Petanque vs Bocce from www.petanqueamerica.com

We are often asked what the difference is between bocce, the Italian bowling game and petanque.
First of all bocce balls are larger and solid, about the size of a grapefruit, colored (green & red are popular), and generally made from resin or wood. Petanque balls are the size of an orange, hollow, and always made from metal. Bocce has different variations as to court size and layout. The court should be smooth and flat; some rules call for wooden sideboards to make it an enclosed area. Petanque can be played anywhere; most players actually prefer an uneven terrain to make it more challenging. Bocce players mostly roll their balls, petanque players tend to lob them in the air. The counting of points and game tactics are very similar between the two games.
Conclusion: petanque is more flexible, and the equipment is easier to carry around.


dogs are barking and the black bird is eating the remainder

to all the bloggers.

Hi.

nothing to say in the way of technological advancements. I have a mechanical pencil that has been my medium for progression.

Does anyone have this illustrator 10 issue. when selecting a group of objects or type and changing the color, it changes in the tool pallet but the actual color of the object remains unchanged.

poop poop bam.

love colin.

Monday, October 20, 2003

Teh Radnesses!

Nostromo SpeedPad n52
Man, I was just checking on the Belkin website, thinking about getting a different mouse for home and bringing my current home Belkin up to the office, and low and behold, a new Speedpad is out! Those folks at Belkin must have been busy over the last few months, what with new iPod accessories, this and more coming out. I think the n52 is going to make a worthy upgrade to the n50. More buttons, looks like it will fit a hand and different sized hands better, another row of keys, better position for the special function lights, and two additional thumb buttons. They could probably change their driver to make a half keyboard out of this thing now. I guess the question about the n52 is: Is there going to be an upgrade to the Nostromo n30 Game Mouse?

7-Eleven Unveils New Hot Beverage Station

7-Eleven Unveils New Hot Beverage Station:

"At 7-Eleven's new 'hot beverage stations,' customers will have a choice of more than 1,300 combinations . . ."

. . . all of which tasted the same to Authur Dent.

iRiver iHP-120

iRiver iHP-120 - Performance - MP3 players - CNET Reviews:

"Files transfer to the player via USB 1.1 at a brisk 0.79MB per second, while transmission over USB 2.0 clocked in at 2.98MB per second--fast enough to fill the 20GB capacity in less than two hours, which is average for that faster connection."

Heh, "brisk" USB....

Paper Lantern


Does is work..................................

Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir

And we thought El Presidente was a religious nut::
1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategise and then to counter-attack.

Sunday, October 19, 2003

i am tired and i am going to bed.

paper lantern test one. i just added a line to see if i could.

neat!

Killy

If you wrote the great american novel it would begin with
"I woke up with a terrible headache..."
which would be plagiarism because the
GREAT English Novel "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
begins with Arthur Dent waking up with symptoms not quite unlike yours.
but seriously you have more headaches than anybody I know.
take a freaking analgesic

Sunday morning....


I woke up with a terrible headache and cotton mouth. I had two beers last night with Adolph after not having so much beer at one time in such a long time. In that respect i am feeling old, old, old.

In addition to that, i think i'm just barely holding off a bug that seems determined to make me sick.

Adolph and i started up a game of AOE just after we got back from Ernie's last night. The game: deathmatch, population 200, post-imperial age, spanish vs. the chinese. i took a good portion of the map pretty quickly and picked up the two relics in my area. Adolph seems to be holed up in the bottom of the map pretty good. He's got a wall of towers at every entrace point. He has so many in fact, that it must be that he's mined all the stone, used it all up and built a market to buy stone with the gold his relic's are generating.

My strategy, so far, is to just kinda eat away at his towers forcing him to build more and spend more gold, not to mention up the price of stone so high that he can hardly afford it, and attack his most expensive (but most effective) units: his cannoneers (those little guys that push those cannons around). Anything made of stone, i attack. I took out one of his outlying castles, while losing about 5 trubuchets. At 2:00 a.m., we saved and exited.

This game is going to last a long time. Ultimately, the chinese don't have the tools for a direct assault on spanish towers and walls, so a more patient assault is needed. i can wear him down, provided of course that he doesn't attack.

Looking at the way the map is...he hasn't very many attack options. The avenues out of his domain are thin corridors. A large attack force would be chopped up if he tried to send them through that.

It's going to end up being a long game.

Sometime this afternoon we're heading to St. Lawrence's annual bazzaar.

Also: i'm turning my computer in for repair this evening, so i won't be around til Wednesday (the projected return date.)

Saturday, October 18, 2003

iPod D'Carol


Pretty Sweet!

Speaking of itunes...


Paul, don't you have some itunes scripts that you wrote to clear out multiple tracks and stuff? if you did can you post those? i remember having them on the blue-mac, but that one has since been put back into my sister's hands.

Quality is vogon poetry

paul: I'll tell you what is intolerably cruel: promising a fix to paper lantern and then having a dead link to it! could you fix the link please? oh, and here's that old error msg i was getting:



adolph: i'll prolly get to your place around 7 or 8, tonight.

killy, fortunately this is a server (i.e. not my fault!) error message.

Didn't Dent Like Vogon Poetry?

I haven't had time to test out the new software yet, Paul. Will d/l soon. On the other hand, other than testing it out, I can't see it besting the web browser pop-up in usability. I don't even use NetNewsWire, even though I paid for a license. For something that would appeal to Adolph, maybe look into this. Basically, a much of the album and album metadata are searchable though a web service. Building a very lightweight app that used that dataservice to come up with iTunes Music Store results with results from sing365.com and Google's web service would be really useful.

Intolerable Cruelty


If you liked The Big Lebowski or Fargo or Raising Arizona or any of the other great Coen Brothers films then I recommend that you do not waste any money on their latest effort, Intolerable Cruelty. It was crap. I mean, remember that scene about Vogon Poetry in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

And I qouth:


"Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe.

The second worst is that of the Azagoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode To A Small Lump of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve- book epic entitled My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.

The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England in the destruction of the planet Earth."



This is pretty much how I felt whilst enduring Intolerable Cruelty. It was so horrible. horrible. horridly horrible. Like soapy eggs.

Quality is Job 1


I would like to aplogize on behalf of the Quality Assurance team here at Paper Lantern. It turns out that that a couple of the new hires were watching season 4 of South Park instead of uploading the proper version of the app. Needless to say we have made a few changes in the organization, and to the benefit of all QA will now be a top-priority here. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please, oh please give it another shot !

Errors! Failure!


I created a new blog and tried to post to it and got this error. What is this?

for some reason, whenever i try to type in html code, it actually doesn't allow me to type at all. I suspect that the keystroke shift+open bracket disables my keyboard or something...it's weird. cause once i try to start the img src tag, it won't let me type...at all.

when i asked 'what's this?' i meant to include a screenshot of the error i got. i'll post it with regular blogger later.

new weirdness with every version, huh? are you keeping track of all these updates on the 'readme'?

paperlantern ver 1.2


paperlantern ver 1.2
is up and running then?

Blogger API does not support titles...but...


Killy, the Blogger API does not support titles. All it allows you to do is transmit a single string representing the entire contents of the post...

Some implementations of the Blogger API (MovableType, for example) will take the first line of the body and turn that into the title. As you noticed, Blogger.com, does not do this.

However, since you are my #1 customer I have modified my code so that the text you enter in the title field will be enclosed in <h2> tags and combined with the body so that it will appear like a title when published...

I also added: Syntax Highlighting

Download the update: here





Friday, October 17, 2003

the titles that i am putting into the title field in paperlantern are not appearing on the blog...

paul? support?

Adolph:You have to buy an ipod.

Carol, following her usual routine, nursed the baby to sleep at around 9. Since then, i've been installing the ipod software, loading up music, isync-ing contacts...etc... What a beautiful piece of machinery it is. I mean, i've seen holly's and wasn't all that impressed with it...but this one..

jeez...i can't let go of it -- and i guess a lot of that has to do with the fact that carol is asleep and isn't hogging it...she's taking it with her this weekend while she goes out of town to visit a cousin, so this is the only time i'll get with it.

again, adolph: buy an ipod. you won't regret it.

taggart thank you thank you thank you. Call me when you get into town tuesday.

Thanks Killy...

For trying out my app . I think I figured out why it ahem crashed the first time you ran it. I fixed the error. Sorry you lost what I am sure was a beautiful post.

Anybody else have any problems with it?

Let me know because I am going to send it off to Apple and demand that they give me a job.




�To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.�

-Teddy Roosevelt 26th President of the United States




Driving Miss Meagan

Enjoy. I would rattle off a couple of great places to stop and enjoy but I have a feeling that the trip is going to be a Slam Bam Thank you Mam kind of cross country marathon.

carol the baby and i made our way to the st. lawrence catholic church pumpkin patch.
prolly one of the most beautiful days houston will see this year (although, today and this weekend it going to be pretty good too, i hear.)

paul: it's a nice little app. i enjoy writing in it. the interface is clean and umassuming. Where are the drafts saved to?

oh, ok. they just appear in the sidebar under drafts....i wonder why that didnt' happen the first time? i saved it, and even got the success! window. does it save it to a particular place that i might be able to try and retrieve the old post i lost on the crash?

paperlantern

paper lantern ver. 1.so-so

Well, it seems that paper lantern creates a folder on the root of your profile (users/killy/paperlantern) and has a file in there called paperlantern.db. I thought maybe this was my draft, but i can't open it for some reason...

any help?

so much for that shit...

using paper lantern...typed up a long and beautiful post...

saved a draft!

launched itunes to listen to nina simone as i worked. CRASH! as i typed. restart.
No problem, i thought, i saved a draft. Wasn't there when i returned. Paul, keep your wares of doom to yourself.

Paper Lantern Version 1.0


Download your copy of Paper Lantern (523 KB) today! This simple blogging tool makes it easy to post message to any blog that supports the Blogger or Metaweblog APIs, including For Whom The Blog Tolls!. In fact, this version comes pre-configured for your convenience, so to start blogging all you have to do is go to the Preferences pane and fill in your username and password. Then you'll be all set to blog away!

Paper LanternVersion 1.0 sports the following features:
- Spell Checking: For those of us whose spelling is no good.
- Save As Draft: For those of us who like to carefully craft our poorly spelled posts
- Work Offline : For those times you really want to blog but the caf� you are at doesn't have free wifi
- Update Post: Perhaps the most useful feature of all for those of us who even after spending hours carefully editing and spell-checking still manage to publish an error and type-o ridden post.

Paper Lantern is 100% pure Cocoa, written in Objective-C. It sports a SQLite database (Objective-C wrapper provided by blackholemedia.com) and uses Apple's WebServicesCore framework to handle XML-RPC calls.

Thursday, October 16, 2003

The Meagan Files

meagan is leaving the backwoods of georgia. she recruited both taggart and i to fly to ga and drive back with her along with all of her belongings. i think i answered too quickly, cause i think i've been selected...

sometime in november (14th) i'm off to Georgia. what a blast that'll be!

TAGGART: PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO CALL HOLLY AND MAKE ARRANGEMENTS TO GET MY CAMERA FROM HER BEFORE SHE LEAVES FOR MIAMI FOR FIVE WEEKS.

I POD YOU POD WE ALL POD for IPOD

After spilling out the ducks for the POD first thing I would do would be to throw out the crummy little ear buds it comes with
and pony up the bucks for some nice headphones.............
My Top ten recommendations are.
1.Grado SR60's, I swear to the God of Rock and Roll that these are the best headphones made on the planet. They are around 60 ducks so they are not Cheap BUT.....they are the open air type so Carol can listen to her 40 gigs of mp3 while at work almost full blast and still hear the phone. They are SUPER comfortable allowing you to wear them for hours.
I know Carol being the Audiophile she is will appreciate them.

2. Coming in at number two.......a very distant number two because the SR60's are so awesome. are the Sennheiser PX100's they too are the open air kind with great sound and good comfort..........I will say that they are vastly more CONVENIENT to travel with....they fold up into a case the size of an eye glass case. but they are not as durable as the Grados. They are on 40 ducks however sweetening the deal.

3. The PX200s also manufactured by Senheisser. They run a little over 50 ducks. They are the closed in Cans with mufflers. Being closed in they loose a little bit of their fidelity but still sound respectable. Another draw back of the Cans is that you cannot hear what is going on around you with them on. Which can be a good thing but not while at work. They do not sound as good as the Grado's or it's open air brethren the PX100s and are more expensize the latter but cheaper then the former.

Okay I only have three REAL recommendations.

SELL! SELL!

Adolph: I don't think the 'job' would protest too much if you simply told them what you needed to get the job done. I mean, i have a feeling that whatever Adolph says (as far as computers/software is concerned) goes.

I can't say much about the Macromedia suite (i could never get the hang of flash anyway), but i can say that i have really enjoyed working with Indesign on the pc at work. I can't do much comparing to Quark since i've had barely and opportunity to use it, but aren't the os x reviews on it terrible?

Would it really be that hard for your print house to print an InD doc?

i wonder who would pony up the bucks for your laptop first? todd? taggart? i think taggart would prolly jump at it first. How much would you sell it for?

speaking of things to buy, with a merit increase on the way i decided to buy carol her very belated birthday present: an ipod. it just seemed like the right time. plus, she wanted one REAL BAD.

As the tech turns

But Taggart,
iPods hold their value pretty well. If you sell and then upgrade you aren't out too much money. Some people prefer the version 1 and 2's because of better battery life, cheap battery replacement, full size firewire connector, etc.

I'm wondering what the specs are on the recording, if you can just plug any old microphone in the slot and if you can monitor at the same time you are recording.

Angry Ipod

Kind of upsetting that they are leaving 2nd gen Ipods cold.....
Liz's (ipod) isnt even a year old.................
really pissing me off.
oh well.
As much as I enjoy the ipod I am thinking that if I buy a digital player myself it will be the beosound 2 from Bang & Olufsen.

iTunes and Rendevous for Windows

MacRumors.com - Live Apple Music Event Coverage
From IRC:

chandler: people thought they would never add it until hell froze over
chandler: he says this has happened
chandler: yeah, it's iTunes for Windows
chandler: crossfading between screnshots
arn: cool, not lagged anymore
chandler: full thing - same program
chandler: iTunes for windows he says is the best windows app ever written
chandler: runs on XP and 2K
chandler: says it's the "best jukebox on windows"
*** Mudbug became a #MacRumors operator.
chandler: compare with MS and MusicMatch
chandler: people want to encode with MP3, not proprietary
*** Mudbug became a #MacRumors operator.
chandler: MS can't; MusicMatch is crippled
*** maradong became a #MacRumors operator.
chandler: MS won't let you burn MP3 cds, MM is crippled
*** Mudbug became a #MacRumors operator.
chandler: can even burn DVDs on windows
chandler: MS won't work with iPod, MM will let you put your own but not bought music, iTunes is seamless (of course)
chandler: MS or MM won't let you share among computers
*** Mudbug became a #MacRumors operator.
chandler: rendevous on windows too

There is that...

I guess that I could get the job to pay for it. More than a solid thousand in software would probably be a tough sell to folks who are used to not using anything more than the version of Office that their PC came with.

You know, Killy, you don't know how right you are. On the other hand, I think I aught to lat least get a year out of a computer before I pass it on. If this came in in February, it means it is barely nine months old! The new cheaper 1ghz 12 inch w/ dvi out is pretty compelling though.

Paul, you are so right about Macromedia's non-Flash kit. I use Fireworks less and less because it doesn't cut the mustard and uses a lot of processor. Even though they are heavyweight apps, switching between Illustrator and Photoshop comes pretty naturally. One drawback to InDesign, as I understand it, is that it has relatively poor imposition tools. This is going to be important to me because our print house is still a Quark 4/5 shop. Sending raw eps or pdf will the print mechanism.

Latest iTunes update:

Photo Storage - $99 Accessory. Connects to bottom of iPod. syncs with iPhoto. 

arn: - $49 Microphone and speaker, syncs into new version of iPods. Record 670 hours.

I agree with Killy...


the MS Society buy you the Adobe Creative Suite.

I think that InDesign will be much more useful than Dreamweaver. And Illustrator is just as good as Freehand. Furthermore you will probably never use Fireworks, and as for Flash, well, there is always SVG.

But I suppose you will really need Flash, so maybe you could get them to buy you Flash MX 2004? Or will just the upgrade work?



i think...

you should let the ms society buy the adobe suite for us...ahem, i mean YOU, and you should spend your fat promotion on a supercharged 15" powerbook. you can sell your 12" to taggart/todd/paul for just enough to cover a full house party at your place. we can get a keg, and have it catered by the pappas bbq people, and hook up all the computers for a game of team AoE. We can use whatever is left over to fly colin and kris gholson in for the weekend. What a time it would be!

and then you get paid AGAIN in two weeks!

Software Considerations

I've been considering getting legal and buying Macromedia's Studio MX 2004, but in taking a close look at my needs, I'm realizing that having a Quark replacement is important. I still produce the rider manual in-house, which is a pretty big job requiring an actual layout application. So with that as a requirement, Adobe Creative Suite seems to be the more compelling product. What do you guys think?

Wednesday, October 15, 2003

FOR WHOM THE BLOG TOLLS

Carol,
The Belkin TuneCast is a seperate dongle that fits in the headphones jack of the iPod and requires batteries. It has four preset channels you can use. The Griffin Technology iTrip is better integrated with the iPod, fitting right on top, drawing its power from the iPod and using software on the iPod to tune itself to a clear channel, with a range of one hundred channels. I think the iTrip is the clear winner, although you may be better off overall with a tape adapter.

Exporting DVD's

ffmpegX
It seems like not too long ago that I was experimenting, "ripping" CD's. Step One: Connect my stereo to my Mac IIsi...then after recording an aiff, downsampling it to that new format mp3. A song took all day. It wasn't feasible. It wasn't until I had a 8500 that mp3 became truely feasible, even then, it wasn't until I had an iBook that I really started encoding my collection.

Now that music is mastered, so to speak, it is time to start playing more with video. These early utilities to re-encode dvds into mpg remind me of those early days of mp3.

what's the difference

between griffin and belkin for the ipod
aren't these both FM Transmitters?

Matador on iTunes!

Yum, Yo Lo Tengo, Belle and Sebastian, lot's of cool stuff in the What's New, along with a lot of John Coltrane.

Tuesday, October 14, 2003

Cupids and Cowboys


Todd and I finally finished cupidsandcowboys.com.
Now comes the fun part: maintenance!

Monday, October 13, 2003

i don't know

i have no idea where my website is, taggart. really.

i think maybe i meant to start all over again, and i erased everything in a rage, but as it goes with fits of rage: i don't remember a thing.

holly's #: 512.507.4451

Killy

Where is your website?

Hey Guys

I will be in Houston Wed and Thursday.....maybe we can have dinner.
I will then come back on Monday thru Wed of the next week.
Nobody posts to the blog anymore.....what is everybody doing?

Friday, October 10, 2003

Latest from Dthree



a dthree production

scottsdale, az

Now currently outside of phoenix.
we arrived last night and will spend the next two days here.
I will never need be reminded that I dont want to live in the desert.
whether it be palm springs or scottsdale.
staying at the keirland westin resort.
a rather nice hotel I must say.
brie qeusadillas ( I have absolutley no idea how to spell that) are not that good
if you are in a fancy schmancy place that may be offering them for 18 dollars do not order.

Report From St. Louis



Got into Saint Louis about six hours ago. My grandpa and I had a hell of a time on the freeways just getting to LAX, and then an even more hellish time in the 2 hour line to get through the security checks...

To answer Taggart's query, the fine weather in California is definitely not worth this...

But all went well and we arrived in town just in time to go out to dinner with some of my grandpa's crew members. Over ravioli and red wine I heard a bunch of great stories, including a good one that featured my grandpa accompanying a Scottish lass home, and then having to walk 2 miles through (what a nervous Bobby described as) Edinburgh's worst hood. Fortunately my grandpa survived the trip through hostile Scottish gang territory, only to be shot down on the next mission....

I am writing this from the downtown Marriot, which does not offer free access...but when the clouds uncover the moon just a bit somebody's wireless network shows up with just enough strength to let me get connected. There was no DNS service, but with a little help from my old man's cell-phone I was able to google up the IP of a nameserver ...

Wednesday, October 08, 2003

Palo Alto

Currently in palo alto........
third hotel in as many days with only one more hotel to go.
At this point no amount..................wait a sec....Mark just confirmed we are going to ALASKA in January.............prepare to meet the
coldest brown guy ever.
sorry.....again NO AMOUNT of free coffee creme brulee or designer toiletries can save me.......
I miss my wife very much......
Cal-E-fourn-YA is a weird messed up land.
Arnorld is Gov.
I just saw a add in the paper for a 1300 sq foot 2 bdroom 1 bath house for 715,000 dollars........
The weather is nice.......but is it that nice....??????
is it quanitfiable...........
against the stress of paying 1200 dollars a month for a 600 sq ft apartment with window units and carpet........
Get me out of here.

See: Amercan Splendor

Hou Citysearch Link
Saw it last night. Lovely film. Movie is about Harvey Pekar, a file clerk from Cleveland who spawned a series of comics and graphic novels about his life. The name of the series was American Splendor.

American Splendor the movie establishes deep pathos that is transcended through personal expression. It makes me want to see Crumb again because I think I like it better than Crumb.

The movie is also interesting for its multiple layers of narrative. What is fiction, what is fact, how is the fiction sometimes a truer portrayal of life than the mere facts? When I walked out of the film I felt enhanced by it; I felt that the film shared Pekar's world-view in such a way that I could use it too.

How is this different from a good episode of Seinfeld? Maybe no different. Maybe just an hour longer; maybe just dealing with people a little more real than a Manhattan comedian; maybe more sophisticated.

Schwarzenegger is Governor of California!



This is unbelievable!

Tuesday, October 07, 2003

saw it, have it, did it, need to check it out!

Read: Stiff: the mysterious life of cadavers. It's really funny-in a non-sick in the head way.
saw: Lost in Translation-LOVED IT! Want to see it again!
have: Moon safari-since '98! collect 'em all! listened to it on my trip to Rio-now whenever I listen to it I think of my trip-it's the best part.
registered to vote for anybody but Bush
need to check out friendster-is it addictive? My friend wanted to use it to get a date.
Ghandi huh? Have you read the latest Dalai Lama book? The art of happiness (or something). (it makes it sound as if he's a recording artist!)

if only...

the same were true for organic fruits and vegetables, plasma tv's, mercedes, and healthcare. he must have been high when he (andy) said this...

k.

Truisms

Daring Fireball: Dell's Dud: "Andy Warhol said:
What%u2019s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the president drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke and, just think, you can drink Coke too. A Coke is a Coke, and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the president knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it. "

Read:Watch:Listen:Do:Don't


read ---> Ghandi: His Life and Message For the World by Louis Fischer
watch ---> Lost In Translation
listen ---> Moon Safari - Air
do ---> register to vote
don't ---> get addicted to friendster

Monday, October 06, 2003

I thought...

this might be a nice reference particularly for adolph and todd who use flash a lot more often than anyone i know.

Sunday, October 05, 2003

sugarland update

i found it!

i found a cafe in sugarland with free wifi maybe 3 or 4 miles from the house. no major streets.

carol and i had a halloween family portrait done. i'll post the photo on wednesday.

Friday, October 03, 2003

True Love Waits

I bought the "True Love Waits" album off of itunes.
Es Pritty Goed.

Thursday, October 02, 2003

Investigating Leaks

In "Investigating Leaks" the New York Times writes:

Congress specifically barred prosecuting a journalist who got the name of a covert operative from a government official. Consistent with that, the Bush administration should not use the serious purpose of this inquiry to turn it into an investigation of Mr. Novak or any other journalist, or to attempt to compel any journalists to reveal their sources.

What if the journalist was lying, as in the case of the New York Times "journalist" Jayson Blair? What if the journalist writes that it came from the White House, but in fact it came elsewhere? How can you take an investigation seriously if it turns a blind eye to half of the story?

anyone noticed?

has anyone noticed the blogspot advertisement up on top for 'css tutorials' and 'quinceancera's'? i know we talked about his once before, and paul tried to get ducks to appear up there...did that ever work?

hot naked girls hot naked girls hot naked girls hot naked girls hot naked girls hot naked girls hot naked girls hot naked girls hot naked girls hot naked girls hot naked girls hot naked girls hot naked girls hot naked girls hot naked girls hot naked girls

interesting interview with Wes Clark



interesting interview with Wes Clark

Please post informative/interesting articles about candidates for presidential election, getting informed is a pain in the #@$ but if we work together it could be a little bit easier

The site

adolph: the site looks nice! but i did notice some typos and just weird sentence structure on a page or two. and what a great

logo

!

wasn't this supposed to be done monday, though?

Wednesday, October 01, 2003

Lots left to do...

...but ms150.org for the 2004 Tour went live today.

87000000000/292222166

Google Search: 87000000000/292222166 , $87 billion from 292,222,166 people for 24,683,313 people, minus some for the contractors...


I'm a little bit boggled by this. President Bush wants to take a little less than $300 from each American man woman, child, infant, elder, and give more than $3,500 to each Iraqi. That's some pretty compasionate conservatism. Way to boost the economy Mr. President!

crazy stuff.

man, wacky stuff.

i think it was tuesday that it all began. i needed to make some space on my startup disk (zippy) so i located uneccessary files, trashed them, then emptied the trash.

almost.

the 'emptying' dialogue box came up then i got the GREY SCREEN OF DEATH. again and again and again. after much monkeying about with batchmod, in terminal, and a brief foray into voo-doo, no success.

so i reinstalled the system. couldn't log in. repaired disk, permissions, nothing. logged in as a different user. SUCCESS! but i could not access any of the files in 'my' home directory. figured out how to enable the root user from the log-in screen. backed up a few things, the really important ones, crashed again on empty trash, never to return.

short story long, i spent most of the day yesterday reformatting my drive, reinstalling software, and cursing.

if anyone is curious 'fsck' is terminal for 'run the dik repair utility'. it doesn't work any better.