More Headliners

"30,000 Elvis impersonators may be out of work" Please, God, please, God, please, God... "Rise in Revenue Helps Cingular Wireless to a Profit" In other news, rain makes things wet, and the sun gives off light. "Colombian Police Train Rats to Find Mines" Because apparently finding cocaine is just too easy. "Ohio Restaurant Wins Best Restroom Award" With floors so clean you could...no, we won't go there. "Indonesians Evacuate As Volcano Rumbles" I wonder if Volcano fights fair, or does he use brass knuckles, chains, and knives?

Headliners

"Astros Replace Miller With Borkowski" Borkowski? Is that a Polish beer? "Biffle: Girlfriend's Spat No Big Deal" "Heck, you should see it when she sneezes!" "Teen Gets Boot Camp for Angering Judge" Does this judge dislike Mac users or something? "Hamas Government Strapped for Funds" In the bomb department, however, they're running a surplus. "Will Smith Crashes Bar Mitzvah" I wonder if he has to take a class to get that off his record. "Scientists Observe the Brain 'Shutting Off'" Was Al Gore speaking?

Miscellany

Dan Benjamin's cats have the best expressions. I need to take more photos of our pride.

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Because white guys lip syncing rap is funny. [Via the aforementioned Mr. Benjamin.]

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Thank God the NHL playoffs are here. I've enjoyed the new rules this season, but has anyone else felt like this first, post-lockout season has taken forever?

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Why do celebrities feel compelled to give their children names said children will be complaining about to their therapists decades from now?

Let's keep the phones off during flight

Word is that Air France is going to experiment with the use of cell phones at 30,000 feet. Leave it to the stereotypically rude French to encourage rude behavior. One of the many reasons smoking was banned on most airplanes was that it was quite simply rude to your non-smoking neighbor seated two inches to your left or right. Talking on your mobile phone falls in to the same realm of common courtesy. It's annoying enough that people are already on the phone while the plane is taxiing, much less popping them open the second the aircraft stops at the gate. I certainly don't want to hear about the business deal you're on your way to transact (and I'm quite certain your employer and/or client wouldn't appreciate others knowing about it, either), and I definitely don't want to hear about Uncle Rosco's mole removal. I think the current regulations regarding mobile phone use are fair and reasonable. Sometimes, it pays to have common courtesy enforced, and air travel is one of those times. [Wave of the phin to inFlightHQ.]

Firefox Flicks

While I think it's probably the third-best browser for Mac OS X, I would have to say Firefox is the best browser for those who insist on using Windows. Some of the more rabid Firefox fans are making their own commercials for the browser. Give Me The Soap is my favorite. [With a wave of the phin to dealnews.]

Miscellany

Dan Wade has too much time on his hands.

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Gavin Shearer:

If I were Sony, or Toshiba, or HP, I'd be freaking out right now.

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I cannot begin to express how broken up I am over the fact that Michael Jackson has to restructure his debt. Oh, look, something shiny...

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It's about time. Pooh is certainly more deserving than most of the blithering glitterati that populate the Walk. [With a wave of the phin to the Firewheel boys and John.]

There and back again

Since leaving yesterday at 6:40 AM, and arriving back home today at 3:40 PM CST, I've driven 1,122 miles, spent 17 hours in a vehicle, and spent $106 on gas for the minivan. Whew.

Dressing for success

I knew about Dress for Success, because my wife's donated some of her business clothing to them before. Now, for men, there is Career Gear. If you have business suits still in good shape you no longer wear, consider donating them to these non-profits, and help low-income men and women move up the ladder. Who knows, you may see your suit again, on someone else!

Miscellany

It's too bad I have no design experience nor web programming skills. The guys at Firewheel Design sound fun to work with, and they're about fifteen minutes away in Southlake.

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Dan needs some of this furniture in his pad.

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Cableyoyo's new Pop is a good idea, but most folks I know with iPods keep them in some sort of case.

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What happens when you shove an iPod Shuffle in to a NES controller?

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[With waves of the phin to the Firewheel Design blog, and Macsimum News.]

You boys <em>are</em> kidding, right?

Look, I'm just as much of a word nerd as Jim, Erik, or John, but gentlemen, with all due respect, this has to be the dumbest idea for a boycott I've heard in a while. Besides, I get better customer service from Walgreens than I do from CVS, so I'll pass on this particular boycott.

On my birthday in history

You know, if it weren’t Lee, and it wasn’t about history, I’d ignore this meme. For one, I don’t utilize Wikipedia, and two, I don’t usually go in for Internet memes. However, since it did come from Lee, and it is about history, on December 3d: Events - 1805 - Lewis and Clark Expedition mark their explorations from the Missouri River overland to the Columbia River on a pine tree.
- 1818 - Illinois becomes the 21st U.S. state.
- 1973 - Pioneer program: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter. Births - 1368 - King Charles VI of France (d. 1422)
- 1826 - George McClellan, U.S. Civil War general (d. 1885)
- 1970 - Christian Karembeu, French international footballer and World Cup winner (had to include someone born the same year as I) Deaths - 1888 - Carl Zeiss, German lens maker (b. 1816)
- 1894 - Robert Louis Stevenson, British writer (b. 1850)
- 1919 - Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French impressionist painter (b. 1841) Due to the facts that (1) as previously mentioned, I don't like Internet memes, and perhaps more importantly, (2) Lee and Lawson have already tagged pretty much anyone I would, I'm going to be a nice guy and let this die here.

Boot Camp

When I was in ROTC, our drill instructor told us... Sorry, wrong boot camp. And we didn't really have a drill instructor, since the drilling was done by the uppperclassmen. And there was never something called "boot camp" for ROTC. Anyway... The web is ablaze with the news of Apple's Boot Camp. (Not to mention Wall Street.) When I first heard the news--from my non-geeky wife, no less--I admit feeling a little sour. It's one thing for hackers to find a workaround because Apple's now using the same underlying hardware as the latest and greatest Windows machines, but to actually support it? Blessedly, reason soon took hold. As I went about my day, mulling this over in the back of my mind, I came to look at this development as a good thing. Yesterday afternoon, looking through some of my feeds in NetNewsWire, I saw I reached conclusions similar to those of people I know and trust. Michael sums it up perfectly:

[P]eople would have found a way anyway, so it’s better for Apple to make it work right and take the credit than to pretend it isn’t happening. Amen. This is no third-party hack that could wipe out your entire system. This is a straight-from-the-source solution. (That could wipe out your entire system; but the odds are more in your favor with Boot Camp.) Tom has a couple of theoretical examples of how the dual-boot nature of Intel Macs can benefit Apple. I would have to agree with Erik, however, in that if I were to run Windows on my Mac, I would rather have it in the vein of Virtual PC, where I can switch in and out of the different OS environments with a keystroke. As Welch noted on the MacJournals-Talk list, having to quit everything in one environment and boot in to the other one gets old if you have to do it more than two or three times a day. Even then... As for me, I have a XP box five feet away, on my wife's desk in our study. It's the PC I built for her, and I have my own account on it. The reason I have this iMac is so I don't have to put up with such nonsense such as the USB driver we wrestled with earlier tonight on her machine for an IR receiver. Then again, why would I want to pass up the chance at something like seeing the blue screen of death on my iMac? That's just aces.

Miscellany

Waterfield Designs has a padded carrying case for the iPod Hi-Fi that allows the use of the system while remaining in the case.

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Lost your iPod? Check craigslist to see if someone's found it.

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Further proof that RSS is everywhere.

Miscellany

To get back at phishers (as opposed to a phisch), use PhishFighting. It's certainly a much better use of CPU cycles than looking for aliens that don't exist. [Via IM from Lawson.]

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Lee has no sense of adventure.

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Memo to Skip Bertman, Director of Athletics, Louisiana State University: in the future, Final Four-bound teams are not allowed to come back to Baton Rouge prior to the semi-final game. Apparently, there's something in the water that results in "chucking", better known as "the shooting of bricks". It was painful enough watching the men's team lose the game last night due to their inability to put the ball in the basket (as opposed to UCLA's winning by making it difficult for the Tigers to do so), but the ladies seemed to have the same problem tonight against Duke, a team which was making it difficult for the Tigers to put the ball in the basket. Two shots at a championship, two shots blown. Kudos to UCLA and Duke. There's always next year. And it's baseball season.

ATPM 12.04

The April issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available. You'll notice (hopefully) a new look to the publication this month. Simon Griffee put in time working on the design, and put in time with my and Michael's tweaks. Thanks so much, Simon! As Apple celebrates thirty years as a company, it seems more and more notable online personalities are joining the ranks of the Switchers, and Wes has a complete round-up. He also notes the booting-XP-on-Intel-Mac solutions running around the 'net, but we're not going to allow such blasphemy to darken our door, much less come inside for dinner with the family. Reader Heather Isaacson took advantage of an abundance of offline time to concentrate on her art, and now wants to build a web site to sell it from. Alas, her old Mac wasn't up to the task, but she perseveres in a heartwarming tale of old Mac love lost, and new Mac love found. We feature a double-shot of Mark Tennent this month, as he first delves in to how "Copyleft" software such as Firefox is changing the world's perception of copyright, then does a little ego-surfing via Google. We also have a double-shot farewell from Tom Bridge, who is stepping down as an ATPM Contributing Editor. This would be the part where I'd get all weepy and emotional over a staffer's departure, but I talk to Tom practically every day, and I don't see that changing, no matter how much he might like it to. Tom likes the new calendar creation in iPhoto, and I believe I'll be utilizing this later in the year for the annual family calendar featuring our little phisch. Tom also reviews the TV Mini HD, a ready-for-primetime (provided you get good antenna reception) "Mac TiVo". There are a pair of other reviews, with Paul weighing in on Password Retriever (not impressed), and yours truly getting my backup groove on with SuperDuper! (very much impressed). Consequently I have realized I'm not one of those guys who can really pull off a "getting my groove on" sort of line, but it's late and I don't feel like coming up with anything else, since my muse tucked itself in after a nightcap about two hours ago. Cortland learns there’s no accounting for taste, as desperation sets in for Chad while Angie may find that love is even closer than she thinks. Finally, this month's desktop pictures are of the English Lake District, courtesy of Mac user Andy Bannister. Andy's work is remarkable; I spent hours on the site looking through photos. Thanks, Andy, for allowing us to showcase part of your portfolio. As usual, the new and improved ATPM is available in three fruity flavors for your reading pleasure.

Put AutoPairs to work on your Intel Macs

Late last night, I received an e-mail from AutoPairs developer James Walker. James and I had exchanged some messages previously regarding AutoPairs working on Intel Macs. Now, he has discovered a workaround. 1. If you have a PowerPC Mac, which I do in the form of my PowerBook G4, copy the System Preferences application from that Mac to your Intel Mac. In my case, I copied the AutoPairs pref pane from the PowerBook as well, putting it in ~/Library/PreferencePanes. 2. Rename the copied System Preferences application. I renamed my copied app to "SysPref PPC AP config", so I would know at a glance what it's sitting on my desktop for. 3. Launch the renamed application. 4. The AutoPairs pref pane showed up and I was able to click on it to activate it and open its configuration window. Quitting, I switched to BBEdit, and tried out some parentheses and quotes, and it worked like a charm! Thanks, James!

A gift from God

Much happiness coursed through the phischbowl last night when we learned of the arrival of Brennan. Our sincerest congratulations to our friends Jim and Lissa, and all our best to Lissa for a speedy recovery.

Common Name, Uncommon Valor

There have been many acts of heroism in the Iraq War and continuing liberation that have gone under- or unreported by the media. One such underreported act is that of Paul Ray Smith, the only Medal of Honor winner of the conflict. Sergeant First Class Smith gave his life near the Saddam Hussein International Airport on 4 April 2003, defending his comrades and the wounded in a nearby aid station. Ralph Kinney Bennett has the story.

Double down

For the seventh time in the history of the two tournaments, one school will have a team in both the Men's and Women's NCAA Final Four: LSU. GEAUX TIGERS!!!

Beatles, meet the Cluetrain

Damien Barrett:

Sesame Street taught me to understand the differences between similar things, but it also taught me that greed is bad and that underestimating people is a mistake. I would love to see the statistics on the little search box that Apple Computer includes in their iTunes program. How many people do you think are searching the ITMS every day for Beatles music to buy? I'm willing to bet it's a very large number. Every day that Beatles music isn't available for sale on the iTunes Music Store is a day that you lose. Get a clue and release your substantial and popular music library to the iTunes Music Store and stop beating that dead legal horse. Few, if any, of your customers care about the name of your record label or that it's similar to the name of a popular computer company.