...more recent posts
The problem with a wireless mouse is that it can run out of charge. Skeptics maintain that even the possiblity of being locked out of your system while your mouse recharges defeats any gains from cutting the cord. I think I agree, but I still want a cordless mouse. So what if it came with a USB mousepad? The wireless mouse will work anywhere, but when used on the pad it will draw power (and recharge) through contact with that surface. This way you could never run out of power. The worst that could happen would be that you'd have to temporarilly use it on the pad if it lost all it's charge (that's assuming you didn't always use it on the pad anyway.)
On October 9th Larry Lessig will finally get his chance before the Supreme Court, as he argues Eldred v. Ashcroft. In light of the present geo-political situation you might be forgiven for not taking the issue of copyright term extension very seriously. But assuming we don't blow ourselves up, or wind up in a global police state, this issue will be very important. Wired has some good coverage. Business Week has a nice summary as well. The future is being decided (too bad this Supreme Court is doing it.)
Unbelievable optical illusion (via kottke.)
My stomach was giving me some problems this week, so I decided to cut out my copious coffee intake. Three days without java. Surprisingly easy.
Last chance to stop the war in Iraq?
Simple fix to increase TiBook airport range. Too good to be true?
Here are some scans of the sidekick (t-mobile branded danger hiptop) brochure.
Just back from 24 hours on Fire Island. I'm liking that place more and more. Lots to catch up on now.
Update to 10.2.1 went without incident. Can't say I notice any astounding improvements. Update to iTunes 3.01 was not so smooth. Afterwards I couldn't connect to the internet (from the terminal, through Mozilla, through mail, etc...) Rebooting from the installer CD and running the disk utility to fix permissions solved the problem (again, like after the iCal incident.) Like a lot of other people I'll add my complaint about the required restart after installing iTunes. How could this be necessary?
Janet took me to see Ricky Jay at Second Stage Theatre in Times Square. He's a "sleight of hand artist" (don't call him a magician.) The show was good. I think if you could see him do just card tricks in a smaller setting he would be even more impressive. What he did of that was great, but I thought the larger, more prop bound tricks didn't work out as well. Still a very fun evening. You sure wouldn't want to gamble with this man.
In a minor coincidence MB and I had just rented Heist on DVD (w/ Gene Hackman.) So so movie, but it did feature Ricky Jay in a large supporting role. I didn't realize until he walked on stage, at which point he looked very familiar. Both Heist and the show I saw were produced by David Mamet who is evidentally a big fan of his.
Afterwards we went to Blue Fin, the strange tourist trap / high end restaurant right in Times Square. Really nice design. We stuck to the monster raw shellfish tower so I can't really comment on the food (the shellfish was good though.) Midtown is like a whole different world (d'uh.)
Went to a funeral service yesterday for my friend Roman. He died a few days ago.
Without going into it too much, I wanted to mention this sad event. He was a good friend, for many years, and I will miss him greatly.
Sony Ericsson has delayed release of the P800 mobile phone. Originially slated to be available by the end of this month, the phone should now be in stores "before Christmas."
The Danger Hiptop (to be sold first as the T-Mobile Sidekick) should hit the streets October 1.
Been playing with NetNewsWire lite, the very popular free RSS news reader. Pretty cool. I tried once before (with a different reader) to get into the whole RSS feed thing, but I found myself more comfortable just surfing my favorite sites in a browser. I like to see a site displayed with the layout meant for that site. Still, I can see the benefit of RSS. If you had tons of sites you had to keep up with this would probably be very handy. If I get into it more I'll make RSS feeds for our pages here. Wouldn't be very hard.
I know I read yesterday about a container ship setting off radioactive detectors at the port in Elizabeth NJ (right across the harbor from NYC.) Apparently officials sent it back out to sea where it is under surveillance until they figure out what to do. But today I can't find anything about it except for a mention on Debka. Anybody know anything?
I haven't mentioned David McCusker lately. I still read him all the time. His page is so interesting, although I can't pin point exactly why. The software he is working on is cool, if a bit beyond what I'm capable of understanding. But it's something about how open he is with his struggles. Both with his work and his life. It's rare that someone can talk about their personal struggles and have it sound like they are trying to help you in some way, rather than merely unburdening themselves. I respect him a lot.
He used to write quite a bit about his wife Lisa. They have two kids. Like any couple it seems they have some occasional problems. It was very interesting to be able to listen in (if only from one side) on another couple going through what all couples go through. But some of her friends were reading it, and I guess it was making things even more complicated, so she asked him to stop writing about her. I struggle with this too, although from a different angle. I definitely don't write as much about MB (or as a result myself) as I would like. It just doesn't seem entirely fair. At least in light of the fact that I know she doesn't want me to. This hinders how much I can reveal about myself. Yet this might be a good thing in the end. I don't know. But I was sure sympathizing with David when he was going through that (hmm, I can't find that material on his site now.)
Now lately his coding project (his big, for himself project, not his day job) is going through a process of refocusing. He threatened a few times lately to throw in the towel all together. Instead it looks like he has settled on a significantly scaled down goal. Now I can sort of almost see what he's doing. A hypercard clone. Or cousin. Or something. Hypocard maybe it will be called.
I never played with the original hypercard, but I understand it a little. Very cool stuff. Apple still sells it, but without any real push. Seems like it hangs around (it's very old) because the small group that does still use it is fanatically devoted. A lot of people got their first "that's so cool" exposure to computers through hypercard. ("You mean even I can build computer programs?") It's a very easy to use, visually oriented system for creating data storage and retrieval structures. Or something. Right up my alley I think. It's powerful and intuitive. Tough combination to find. I'll have to wait and see what David means by clone (or "cousin") but I'm very excited by the prospects. I'll definitely be trying to understand any tools he produces. Hopefully it won't be over my head. Lately it's sounding like maybe it won't be.
I'm usually aware of the people who make the tools I use (say, PHP, or MySQL.) But I use a particular tool because it works for me, not because of who created it. This case might be different though. I can tell by the way he talks while he's been designing it. I will try to use David's creations because I figure they'll work well, but also because I think they will teach me something. And maybe not just about computers. I really hope he keeps going.
Maxtor announces 320 GB hard drives.
Amazing, for sure. But is this the way to go? On a serial ATA spinning at 5400 RPMs? I want the drives to get faster as they get bigger or else it's not that great. How would you ever back that thing up? How long would it take? I think I'd rather have a raid array of 4 80 GB drives.
Still, it's amazing how fast they are scaling these drives (in size if not speed.)
200 dpi flat screen monitor from Viewsonic. 9.2 million pixels with a native resolution of 3840x2400. $8000. Oh my god. This is the same screen IBM was showing last year for $20,000! (via gizmodo)
Just downloaded and installed the brand new iCal (iEnough iwith ithe inames ialready!) calendar application from apple. Runs great but it seriously borked the rest of my system. Now no other programs - including the finder - can find their preferences. Serious bummer. I can't even get on line from that machine. That is what you get for installing something on the first day.
I've been really enjoying the Townes Van Zandt CD Live at the Old Quarter.
I do my daily surfing from the links in the left hand column of this page. But of course I also have a huge list of sites bookmarked in my browser. I keep new sites there for a week or so and see if I keep going back. If I do then I add that site to this page. Gizmodo: the gadgets weblog has made the cut.
We've been getting a lot of hits from the TurnitinBot. This comes from the Turn it in site which provides anti-plagiarism services to educational institutions. I don't get a real happy feeling from them so I blocked their robot. I'm not exactly against them, I'm just not for them enough to give them so much bandwidth (they are second in total requests to the much more lovable googlebot.) If anyone else here wants to debate this move, feel free to speak up. (Or if you have any other candidates for blocking...)
I live about a block from the Williamsburg bridge and this creates a good bit of noise. The worst offender is a particular kind of truck. It's the size of a regular 18 wheeler, but instead of the standard container, these trucks carry the large sized dumpsters you see at big construction sites. The reason they are so bad is that the dumpster is not firmly attached to the bed of the truck. If the truck goes over a bump the dumpster can actually be bounced up into the air. That's not the bad part though. It's when it comes back down into contact with the truck. Ouch. I mean loud. Like a bomb. A particularly loud one happened last night while I was asleep. In one moment I sprung out of bed and covered the few steps to the window absolutely sure another building had been brought down.
Things like this make me realize I am constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's not overwhelming. I can go about my life. But deep down I expect another event. Not logically, but in my bones. I still don't have an adequate expression for what I felt watching the towers fall. I can remember the whole thing perfectly. I can still feel what I was feeling at that time. I just can't describe the feeling in words. Even to myself. It's not english-able. And I think this makes it stay with me. It's as if, since I can't say it, I have to live it over and over.
I wonder if it will always be this way?
Blogs hit Doonsbury. (I guess this is what is being blogged in the strip, if you're not up on such things.)
Of course I'm much too busy (*cough*) for such things, but I have some friends who are absolutely mad for the game Snood. I seem to remember them playing on OS X, but it must have been running in Classic or something because yesterday I saw that a beta for the OS X version is now available. I can't even figure out how to play, but that's probably for the best. Only problem I noticed in my brief try was that you can't get to the top menu bar to quit (command-q will do it from the keyboard though.)
Viridian design contest winner: The global civil society laptop. Really cool prototype. Don't expect to ever see this. (via the Xeni Jardin boing boing side blog)
In audio world news: Logic platinum released for OS X.
Back from a nice weekend with my mother on Cape Cod. The monitor on my iMac has apparently died and this is making me very unhappy. More later when I return to normal. Good to be in NYC.