Photoshop 7 tip
I'm a complete Photoshop novice, often getting FranX or Lee to walk me through stuff. One observation I thought I would share about Photoshop 7 running in OS X: when working on a JPG (and maybe any file), be sure to not have that file selected in the Finder. I had clicked on the JPG in question in the Finder (column view), and the Finder was previewing the pic. Photoshop no likee this. As soon as I clicked to another pic in the Finder, Photoshop saved my changes to the JPG.
Baker Bros. redux
So, on my own for lunch again. Three bucks in my pocket. Sure, it's enough for fast food--McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's--but I'm not eating at the first two, and I don't want fast food. Need some place to use the debit card. So I figured, back to Baker Bros. This go-around, I had the Texas Star and black bean soup. The soup was good, but nothing spectacular. I've had lots of black bean soups that tasted just as good. Some worse, and few that tasted better. Of the two, I think I prefer their baked potato soup. The Texas Star sandwich was also good, but messy. Of the two, I'll stick with the Kentucky Club. Ok, no more Baker Bros. this week! Really.
Slide show screensavers
Looking for a little help from the retrophisch readership (all 3 of you): I'd like to create a slide show-style screensaver, like those that come pre-installed with OS X, but I don't want to use the .Mac Slides Publisher to do it. I know I can just point the Screen Effects pane to a folder of pics, but it tends to limit the number of pics to five. And I'd like to provide the screen saver as a download to other OS X users. Of course, I'm looking to do this cheap and easy, so recommendation on products such as iScreensaver Designer, PhotoCircus, or any others would be appreciated.
USB 2.0 already on new Macs?
Hyok Ki Chung thinks so. Quoted on Macintouch, Chung analyzes a Korean news article:
While browsing a Korean Mac magazine site, I found this interesting article. It's about the USB 2.0 controller chipset on [Power Mac] MDD 1.25 and 1.4 motherboards. According to this article, the controller is made by NEC, model number uPD720101. The article is in Korean, but basically what it describes is the NEC USB 2.0 controller. It also mentions the driver, saying that Mac version is not available yet. It looks like we already have USB 2.0 built-in. I guess it's just matter of time. Hopefully Apple will add the driver to an updater soon.
Obviously, Apple doesn't want to really push USB 2.0 right now, not when its own FireWire technology is picking up more steam, and the second iteration of that technology, FireWire 800, has hit the market on just-released systems. Perhaps I have just bought the Apple line, but USB for me is for small peripheral usage: keyboards, mice, my CF card reader, my little Canon scanner that barely gets used. For the "heavy lifting"--my external drives, tape backup, iPod--FireWire is the way to go. Not to mention that you can't use USB, 1.1 or 2.0, to boot a Mac as an external drive to another Mac, better known as FireWire Target Disk Mode. UPDATE, 9:50 pm: Ric updated with follow-up from Kevin Purcell:
But examining the Apple Hardware Developer notes [Power Mac G4 Developer Note], you can see that these PowerMacs only expose two USB ports which means the USB 2.0 port in the chip is not connected to any PHY or external connector on the Power Macs. Only the low-speed/full-speed ports are connected. I don't expect to see a software update. Apple probably just bought these because they meet their spec (an OHCI controller) and they needed a 2 or 3 port USB solution.
So, maybe wishful thinking...
Preschool Pacifism
"Welcome to the new preschool curriculum: play dough, finger painting and pacifism 101."
Macintouch does XML
Ric Ford notes that he is experimenting with a XML feed for his renowned Macintouch site. Plug this in to NNW, boys and girls:
[www.macintouch.com/rss.xml](http://www.macintouch.com/rss.xml)
Aw, no more Saddam money for Palestinian terrorism
Saddam Hussein was providing about US $1.5 million a month to various Palestinian agents and supporters, and now that money channel is cut off. And none too soon. Let's get this straight: 1. The PLO began as a terrorist organization, and continues to be a terrorist organization, directly or indirectly threatening the security of the state of Israel. 2. Israel is not "occupying" any piece of land it did not rightfully gain as the result of the wars launched against it since the modern Israeli state came in to existence in 1948. Wars Israel did not provoke, did not seek out, but wars Israel won nonetheless. If you have a problem with the fact that Israel owns the Gaza Strip and other areas, then point your questions to Jordan, Syria, Egypt, the PLO, Hamas, et al. I'm not saying the Israelis are blameless in all of this, and their overall treatment of the Palestinians could be better. But the fact you have to remember is that the Palestinians, as well as most other Arab nations, are not interested in an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. They have wanted, since 1948, and to this day, the utter annihilation of the state of Israel and the Jewish people. That's their idea of peace in the Middle East.
Still no Saddam/terrorism ties, right?
It may have taken 18 years, but the U.S. has captured Abu Abbas, the mastermind of the 1985 Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking. Abbas is wanted for the murder of wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer, who was dumped overboard still in his chair. U.S. troops and the intelligence community are also seeking out Abdul Rahman Yasin, wanted for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Yasin is yet one more terrorist known to have gained "asylum" in Saddam's Iraq.
New York Office Space
I don't live in New York. Don't work in New York. Plan to never, ever live or work in New York. Yet I found this article by Joel Spolsky, on searching for office space in NYC, fascinating. (via Glenn)
Tax Day Desktop
Not sure what compelled me to suddenly share what my desktop looks like, but here it is:
Baker Bros. = Yum!
My buddy FranX is celebrating five years of service with the company today, at a special lunch for folks in his division who also qualify. So I was on my own for lunch. As I pulled out of the parking garage, my Jeep politely informed me that I had 17 miles to go before the tank went dry (theoretically). So I rolled over to Costco, gassed up, then decided to go try the Baker Bros. American Deli. It sits across the parking lot from the Genghis Grill Kelly and I frequent, and we have long talked about trying it out. It was delicious. I had the Kentucky Club and a cup of baked potato soup. Two enthusiastic thumbs-up. It is a little on the high side for lunch, $11 for the above plus a iced tea, so it's certainly not a place I'll go each week. However, the food is excellent, and a couple of visits a month is not out of the question. Retrophisch™ Recommended!
No multiple flag flying in Peoria, AZ
bq. "In the midst of the War in Iraq, the City of Peoria, Arizona, has declared war on the First Amendment by ordering one of its citizens to cease flying his American Flags." This is so incredibly sad. So as Brian says, it's ok to burn a hundred flags, but not to fly them?
We told you so?
U.S. Marines have uncovered what is believed to be weapons-grade plutonium.
U.S. Marines have located a complex of tunnels underneath an Iraqi nuclear complex--apparently missed by U.N. weapons inspectors--discovering a vast array of warehouses and bombproof offices that could contain the "smoking gun" sought by intelligence agencies, reported the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. [...] Chief Warrant Officer Darrin Flick, the battalion's nuclear, biological and chemical warfare specialist, said radiation levels were particularly high at a place near the complex where local residents say the "missile water" is stored in mammoth caverns. "It's amazing," Flick said. "I went to the off-site storage buildings, and the rad detector went off the charts. Then I opened the steel door, and there were all these drums, many, many drums, of highly radioactive material."
More proof of an increasingly incompetent and irrelevant U.N.? Or perfectly innocent?
This underground discovery could still test to be perfectly legitimate and offer no proof of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. The CIA encouraged international inspectors in the fall of 2002 to probe Al Tuwaitha for weapons of mass destruction, and the inspectors came away empty-handed.
Time will tell as the materials are tested.
And he works because...?
So I just found out that the attorney in the office next to my wife's is worth, combined with his mother, nearly US $4 billion. The Schaefflers are in a 5-way tie for the 83rd spot on Forbes' World's Richest People 2003 list. We're both stumped as to why he would waste time pretending to work at a law firm in Dallas. Me? I'd be planted on a beach on Kaua'i.
Fun with spammers
This isn't necessarily an anti-spam measure; it's more along the lines of revenge. From the latest Dilbert newsletter comes this reader gem:
Here's a fun hobby of mine: When I get e-mail spam that includes an 800-number, I save the number for later. Then when one of the hundreds of Nigerian scam e-mails hits my e-mail box, I reply enthusiastically and give the 800-number of the spammer as my own. I feel that people in the DNRC have a responsibility to introduce A-holes to each other.
Daring Fireball Double Whammy
Gruber's last two posts are right on the money. First is his PR-speak to English translation of Quark's press release about QuarkXPress 6. Of note:
We are plowing full steam ahead under the delusion that our users want to use a print-oriented page-layout program for web design. By placing extra emphasis on these unwanted web features, we hope to distract your attention from a certain upstart page layout application, which is focused squarely and solely on page layout.
He really lays in to John C. Dvorak, though, on Dvorak's latest rants regarding Apple and Intel.
This point cannot be emphasized strongly enough. Apple is a computer hardware company. Selling hardware is how Apple generates most of its revenue. Their operating system software may well be the best aspect of their computers, but that does not make them a software company. Anyone who claims that Apple could simply switch to being a software company and make up for lost hardware revenue by selling additional software doesn't understand how the company operates. During the brief period of time when Apple licensed the Mac OS to other manufacturers, their revenue tanked. Too many people bought cheap clones from PowerComputing and Umax instead of higher-priced Macs from Apple, and the licensing revenue didn't compensate for the lost hardware revenue. The situation may well have been good for Mac users, but it was terrible for Apple's bottom line. No matter how badly people clamor for it, Apple is never going to release a version of Mac OS X that runs on standard Wintel PC hardware. Whether it's possible or not, it isn't going to happen. A frequent comment regarding this rumor is something like "I'd love a version of Mac OS X that ran on my PC." Sure you would, you cheap bastard. Apple's Switch campaign is an attempt to get PC users to buy thousands of dollars of Apple hardware, not hundreds of dollars of Apple software.
In addition, pay attention to the fact that Microsoft and Apple are indeed separate companies with separate goals, and thus should not be lumped in to the same industry "group" that analysts and reporters always lump the two in to.
Liberation
Iraq is free from Saddam's tyranny.
War Zone Entertainment
It never ceases to amaze me how people can find ways to amuse themselves, even during times of danger, blood, and death.