PNG petition
IE/Win doesn't fully support the PNG graphics format, and Zeldman points to an online petition that is now just shy of 7,000 signatures. (Yours truly is #6977.) Every modern web browser with the exception of IE/Win has full PNG support built in, including beta browsers Safari and Camino. Please sign the petition and let's hope Microsoft will listen; they've only been promising this since IE 4.
Photos, Colophon
So I had put off two minor projects for the site for a while: a colophon, and moving all my photos from my .Mac account over to this domain. As of now, those two projects have been finished. More photos will be forthcoming, as I will likely move the photo albums from my old domain over to this one, so that everything is in one place. Permanent links to both are in the new Navigate tabbed menu at the top sub-menu to the right. Enjoy!
Quote of the moment
"Following someone's blog is like doing a TiVo season pass for a person." --Rael Dornfest
LSU SEC baseball champs (again)
The LSU baseball team has won the regular season Southeastern Conference championship (again) for 2003, its first since 1997. LSU's head coach has been named SEC Coach of the Year (again, though a first for current head coach Smoke Laval). Junior shortstop Aaron Hill has been named the conference's Position Player of the Year. The Fighting Tigers finished the regular season 37-18-1, and begin play against Arkansas in Hoover, Alabama, tomorrow, in the SEC Tournament. (I wish I could come out for it, Dad!) Looking for another SEC Tournament championship, and a berth in the College World Series, LSU has rebounded from several major injuries throughout the season to clinch the SEC championship. Geaux Tigers!
Master the Services Menu
My favorite n3rdling has a great primer on MacMerc about getting the most out of OS X's Services menu. I've recently begun relying on the Services menu more myself, and Jon's article showed me a couple of items I hadn't thought about using yet. Check it out.
NetNewsWire Feature Ideas
One of the cool things about being an independent Macintosh software developer is that you can have more open and direct communication with your customers. Ranchero's Brent Simmons is a great believer in this concept, and he has posted a list of possible future features for Ranchero's flagship application, NetNewsWire.
Mavs upset Spurs in Game 1
Go Mavs! After Najera missed his first free throw in the first quarter, the Mavs combined for 49 straight free throws to help catapult them to an upset victory, 113-110. The Mavericks were down by as much as 18 at one point in the game. Dirk Nowitzki was monster on the court for Dallas, proving in every facet of his game to be Tim Duncan's equal. I'm not so much a NBA basketball fan as I am a Dallas Mavericks fan, and it's nice to see them hang in there and pull this one out. Around the office yesterday, we all agreed that we wouldn't be surprised to see the Mavs drop Game 1, having just come off their second seven-game series in the playoffs. The Spurs had an extra day of rest after knocking off the defending champ Lakers in six games. Finally, it seems the ineptitude and need for sharper contact lenses that pervades the NHL has crept in to the NBA as well. The officiating for this game was inconsistent at several points throughout, and overbearing at others. Both sides suffered and benefited from this behavior, so many would say it was a wash. The fact is that consistency amongst those officiating is greatly needed in professional sports, and this begins at the top of the leagues' front offices (are you listening, Gary Bettman?). Officials are going to miss things that happen on the hardwoord and ice; that's a fact of life, and one most fans can live with. What we don't like is the inconsistency of what constitutes a foul/penalty from team to team, game to game, series to series.
VZ VOIP
Seems our parent company is going to be installing a "next-generation tandem soft switch" in Dallas as its first step in providing nationwide Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VOIP. You may have already begun to see tv ads about this technology from Cisco, who is the leader in VOIP hardware. Theoretically, because VOIP is faster and less expensive than conventional circuit-switched transmission, your long-distance phone bill should go down as well. VOIP works just like the various Internet applications you use daily, in that the packet-switching technology breaks down voice and data messages into many separate "packets" that can share the same line. Plans call for these next-gen soft switches to be deployed in Chicago and Pittsburgh next, with VZ using all three to process VOIP calls.
Reloaded
[Possible spoilers] So my lovely bride and I caught The Matrix Reloaded Saturday night. My overall feelings with the film mirror Jason Kottke's. In addition to what Jason has to say, allow me to add the following. As much as the production touted the Twins in teasers, trailers, and the like over the past few months, they didn't have all that much screen time. This is a shame, since they are extremely cool characters, the likes of which we hadn't seen within the Matrix. The first hour of the movie would have been better with about 20 minutes taken out. We get that Trinity and Neo love one another deeply. We get that Zion's having a big party to show they aren't afraid of the machines. We don't need it to drag out. I actually leaned over to my wife at one point and twiddled my thumbs. All in all, it was an enjoyable flick, but nothing mind-blowing or earth-shattering, certainly not like the first film. The freeway chase was our favorite part of the movie. I'm going to miss Gloria Foster in the 3d installment.
Open letter from the NHL
Stars' color man Daryl Reaugh has expertly captured what we should hear from the NHL front office.
As one of my wife's colleagues put it: "Hockey is the only sport where you can out-play your opponent and still lose."
At this point, with three former Cup-winning Stars in the lineup, I'm rooting for the Devils, and Brodeur's 3d Stanley Cup. Down with the team of destiny Disney.
(Thanks, Brian!)
Armey on Clinton/Lewinsky
Back on 15 September 1998, then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) held his weekly meeting with Capitol reporters. When a reporter provided him an opening by inquiring what he would do if he were in President Clinton's shoes, the Los Angeles Times captured the conference's atmosphere: bq. ...the jam-packed room burst into raucous laughter as one reporter prefaced a question about the Lewinsky scandal by saying, "If you were in the president's position..." Armey didn't miss a beat. "If I were, I would be looking up from a pool of blood and hearing my wife say: 'How do I reload this thing?'" The situation would be similar in my household; except my wife knows how to reload! (Thanks to Ricky and Snopes.)
New Cube?
I'm not one to spread Mac rumors; heck, I wrote an entire column about the dangers of rumor-mongering and how it affects Apple's bottom line. I'll make an exception in this case, however, because should this rumor prove to be true, it will not affect the majority of the Mac population, and thus, will not greatly affect Apple's bottom line in the here and now. MacWhispers is reporting the possibility of a revised Mac Cube as the system that commemorates the 20th anniversary of the Macintosh at the end of this year, beginning of 2004. (Not to be confused with the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh released during the tenure of Gil Amelio, which celebrated Apple's 20th anniversary.) I'm sure that like the original TAM, this will be a premium product out of the range of a majority of Mac users, yours truly included. I adore my G4 Cube, and I'm slowly extending its life a bit at a time. It is maxed out with 1.5 GB of RAM; it enjoys a 100 GB hard drive and a GeForce3 MX vid card. The next upgrade will likely be a new processor card, bumping it to 1 GHz or higher. A SuperDrive is currently available from MCE, but I consider it to be at too high a price point right now, especially when I have access to SuperDrive-equipped Macs at work. I know someone out there may rightly point out how in the long term, I may spend as much on upgrading my Cube as I would on a new Mac, but I don't believe that to be the case. (Unless I ran out right now and bought the PowerLogix dual-1.2 GHz proc upgrade and aforementioned MCE SuperDrive; but I'm on a budget.) RAM continues to be relatively cheap, as it was when I maxed out the Cube. The hard drive was purchased on sale, and with a mail-in rebate. The video card was the most expensive upgrade of the three, and it was picked up on sale as well. All told, I would hazard a guess that I've spent around $400 on upgrading a system I got a great deal on when Circuit City was blowing out Cube floor models. It takes up very little space, makes very little noise, and if you weren't paying attention, you might miss it on my desk, sandwiched between my 15" Apple LCD and the shelf stereo's right speaker (stereo and left speaker sit to the left of the display). Though it suffered from a bit of an identity crisis and pricing issues early on, the Cube is one of my favorite all-time Macs, and I'd love to see Apple make an updated version, even as a limited-run, 20th-anniversary special edition. I just hope I can afford one.
Displaying Apache logs in NNW
Brent links to a novel proof-of-concept usage of his flagship application, showing how versatile NetNewsWire can be.
Open in new tab in Safari
Some times, the solution is so simple, we overlook it. Brent Simmons has a quick and dirty tutorial on how to get Safari to open an external links (like from your mail client or NetNewsWire) in a new tab, rather than a new window.
MT 2.63 and recent-update keys
At the same time I decided to upgrade my MovableType engine to 2.63, I donated some funds to Ben and Mena. By doing so, I received a couple of keys to plug in, so when I post something new, the site would show up in the MovableType site's "Recently Updated" section. I began receiving an odd error message when saving posts, after I had done all of this. I reinstalled the upgrade package. Then I removed the recent-update key; problem solved. I tried the 2d recent-update key; problem returns. I take out the 2d key; problem solved. So now I know, and I've let the Trotts know, so we'll see what happens. UPDATE, 5/19: Turns our your doofus host doesn't have a certain Perl module installed. Obviously, I thought some time back, why would I ever use that? Thanks, Ben!
Gigabit Cube!
It appears that Jeff has the only Gigabit Cube in the world. Now if we could just get someone to make the rest of us an upgrade. Too bad Apple won't sell the leftover Gigabit Ethernet parts from before they EOL'ed the Cube; Gigabit Ethernet was going to be a build-to-order option. What a killer little server this box would be, especially after you popped in a processor upgrade.
TypePad
Ben and Mena's latest venture sounds intriguing, especially if the basic service is something that runs only $7 a month. I'd be interested in something more advanced, as I like putting up photo albums, which is an advanced feature/option. No firm pricing information just yet, and no other details, like how much space you get, how many email addys, etc. Ben Hammersly got a sneak peek: bq. The features are remarkable: there is a very powerful, but extremely simple, template builder. Users can redesign their weblogs and create fully compliant XHTML pages, with out knowing what that last phrase means. There is a built-in photo album, built-in server stats, so you can see who is coming to visit you and from where, built-in blogrolling (listing the sites you like to read), and built-in listing for your music, books and friends, producing a complete friend-of-a-friend file for every user. Final judgment pending until full details are disclosed, but it sounds promising.
iTunes music sharing
So I wanted to borrow my buddy Jim's CD of Seussical the Musical, in light that it's coming to town this month, and my wife and I want to take in one of the shows. Jim says it's loaded in iTunes, just connect to his shared music. Once we figured out that iTunes wants our IP addresses (different subnets here at work), I'm listening to John Williams - Greatest Hits 1969 - 1999 (greatest composer of the latter 20th century?), and Jim's reconnecting with his teenage years by jamming to Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet on my TiBook. It's wicked fast, with no lag. This despite the heavy traffic on our corporate network and the fact that our Macs are both streaming and receiving at the same time. Apple rocks.
Taking the Times to task
So many blasting the New York Times, so little time... Ann Coulter:
The Times has now willingly abandoned its mantle as the "newspaper of record," leapfrogging its impending technological obsolescence. It was already up against the Internet and Lexis-Nexis as a research tool. All the Times had left was its reputation for accuracy.
As this episode shows, the Times is not even attempting to preserve a reliable record of events. Instead of being a record of history, the Times is merely a "record" of what liberals would like history to be--the Pentagon in crisis, the war going badly, global warming melting the North Pole, and protests roiling Augusta National Golf Club. Publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger has turned the paper into a sort of bulletin board for Manhattan liberals. Jonah Goldberg: The Times says that this episode marks a "a low-point in the 152-year history of the newspaper." For Times worshippers, this was an admirable admission of wrongdoing. But we skeptics want to know if this blow to the Times' reputation outranked, say, the newspaper's deliberate downplaying of the Holocaust?
Did this "journalistic fraud" exceed the Pulitzer-winning deception of Walter Duranty, the Times correspondent who explicitly lied about Stalin's purges and forced famines? How about correspondent Herbert Matthews, who promised the world that the rebel-leader Fidel Castro wasn't a communist, even as Castro slaughtered innocents and struck deals with the Soviets?
There's nothing wrong with admitting that this Blair fiasco is a big deal, but no one died because of anything Blair wrote. It seems the egos of a few execs are on par with the deaths of millions. Marvin Olasky: Venerable Times columnist William Safire defended his employer and suggested that the Blair affair is allowing conservative critics to practice schadenfreude, what Germans call "the guilty pleasure one secretly takes in another's suffering." That's clever and it might be true, except that the influence of the Times is such that when it fails, millions of innocent people suffer.
In the early 1930s, for example, Times Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty helped Joseph Stalin cover up a Soviet extermination campaign that claimed millions of lives, mostly in the Ukraine--and when other reporters told the truth, Duranty libeled them. In the late 1960s, the Times beat the pro-abortion drum so loudly that the Supreme Court began to listen, and the cost was many more millions of lives.
Blair's misconduct was spectacular, but no one died because of it, so the Times has certainly had many lower points in the 152 years since Henry Raymond, a conservative Christian, founded it. (Raymond would be turning over in his grave, as the saying goes.) Thomas Sowell: That is why this was not just an isolated scandal but a sign of moral dry rot in the leadership of the New York Times.
Again, the paper's own account is the most damning. Far from not knowing what was going on, the Times acknowledges that "various editors and reporters expressed misgivings about Mr. Blair's reporting skills, maturity and behavior during his five-year journey from raw intern to reporter on national news events. Their warnings centered mostly on errors in his articles."
More than a year ago, one of the Times's own editors wrote a memo that said plainly: "We have got to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right Now." Instead, Blair was promoted to national news coverage. And on it goes...
The word for today...
...is retromingent. Courtesy of Anu's free A.W.A.D. service: retromingent (re-tro-MIN-jent)
adjective: Urinating backwards.
noun: An animal that passes urine backwards, e.g. raccoon.
[From Latin retro- (back) + mingent, stem of mingens, past participle of mingere (to urinate).]
"When my turn came, I discovered that the bathrooms had been designed for a retromingent. The rest of the flight? Rather uneventful." --Jeffrey Levine; The Concorde, Firsthand: Built for Speed, Not for Comfort; The Washington Post ; Dec 17, 1989.
"I can verify that camels are, indeed, retromingent." --Sally Bixby Defty; Just Deserts Midnight at the Oasis Sing Your Camel to Bed; St. Louis Post-Dispatch; May 16, 1993. Sorry, but had to pass on another retro- word. You're welcome for the enlightenment. (And subscribe to A.W.A.D.!)