Smart punctuation lives
When you're a type nerd like me (never would guess that from the monospaced logo for the site, would you?), things like smart punctuation matter. Things like having curly quotes, full em dashes instead of two short dashes, and nice ellipses. You know...ellipses. So thanks to John Gruber's SmartyPants plugin for MovableType, you should now see pretty "quotes," full--I said full--em dashes, and proper ellipses... Thanks to Lee for the setup assist.
SpamSieve 1.3
Michael has released SpamSieve 1.3, which is more resilient than ever to spammers' tricks for obfuscating words. In addition, you can now use e-mail addresses in the system Address Book as a whitelist, so that messages sent from those addresses will never be marked as spam. Michael continues to optimize the app, greatly reducing the overall memory usage as well as launch and quit times. A complete list of changes can be found at the above link. SpamSieve requires Mac OS X 10.1 or later, and supports Emailer, Entourage, Eudora 5.2, PowerMail, and my personal favorite, Mailsmith. It's only $20, it's shareware so you can try before you buy, and it nips my spam problem in the bud. Give it a whirl, and support a shareware developer.
SmartyPants
Well, Gruber has released SmartyPants 1.1, and Lee's using it. I suppose I've been mulling over its use long enough. Buckle up, smart punctuation is coming to a retrophisch.com near you.
Dude, you're going to jail!
You know, this explains so much about the persona of "Steven the Dell dude."
Daily bread
"The tongue that brings healing is a tree of life, but a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit." —Proverbs 15:4/NIV, verseoftheday.com
Exercising rights
"Americans are a people who have realized a dream of freedom, who have taken it from an abstract hope and turned it into a living reality. What made this possible was a founding generation that understood the essential principles of liberty, and acknowledged from the very beginning that the basis for human justice, human dignity and human rights is no more--nor less--than the will and authority of our Creator, God. "The importance of this principle is definitive, because it allows us to understand that since we claim our rights by virtue of the authority of God, we must exercise our rights with respect for the authority of God. "This truth becomes a sound foundation for discipline in our use of our freedoms. It becomes a bulwark against the abuse of our powers. It becomes also the ground for our confidence that, when we claim those rights, and when we exercise them, we do not have to fear the consequences, because we are a people who exercise our rights in the fear of God. "This means that as American citizens, we can have confidence in our capacity, ability and character to take care of our own families. We can trust ourselves to raise our own children, to direct our own schools, to run our own communities and states, to do honest business together, and to generally take care of the things that need to be done for our nation and its people." --Alan Keyes
Online library
Anu of the A.W.A.D. list is now gleaning example text from books found at Questia, an online library. It is a subscription-based service, though you can search for free. It appears, from the comments, at least, to be a real boon to researchers of all levels.
Eddie who?
Speaking of the Stars, I think Marty Turco is well on his way to ridding us of the ghost of Ed Belfour. Taking his team to the Finals and winning a Cup will definitely do it. Turco has just been monster in goal this year, and with the team's win over the Kings yesterday, he extended his personal unbeaten streak to 14 games, tying the franchise record. This is something Mr. Belfour was unable to do during his tenure here. Turco anchored the West's defense in the 3d period of the 2003 All-Star Game, and performed brilliantly. Belfour's days at said contest are well behind him. This is not to say that Ed Belfour was not appreciated by Stars fans, nor that he didn't deserve to lead Dallas to a Stanley Cup win. Simply, time has caught up with the Eagle, and as he has moved on, the Stars have shown that their minor league system can produce the same kind of high-caliber goaltending Stars fans are used to. Perhaps best of all, Marty doesn't come with the off-the-ice, emotional baggage Eddie was infamous for. So thanks for your performance, Eddie, during your stay in Big D, but Marty's the future, and the future's bright.
Why IS a team from Dallas in the Pacific Division?
Daryl Reaugh sums up a lot of my feelings on why the Stars are in the wrong division.
Tax food for thought
Jim shared via email:
"As income tax time approaches, did you ever notice that when you put the two words 'The' and 'IRS' together it spells 'THEIRS?'"
1.2 GHz Cube
Bill Fox fans the flames of my gear lust with his review of the PowerLogix 1.2 GHz single processor upgrade for the G4 Cube.
Updated Xserves, new Xserve RAID
Apple announced today updated Xserves, as well as the new Xserve RAID. The new servers feature up to dual 1.33 GHz processors, up to 720 GB of storage, FireWire 800, dual Gigabit Ethernet, optional 2 GB Fibre Channel, and unlimited client licenses for Mac OS X Server. The new Xserve RAID is a 3U rack-optimized enclosure that offers up to 2.52 TB--that's terabytes--of storage, dual 2 GB Fibre Channel ports, full redundancy for continuous uptime, and powerful remote monitoring. The Xserve base price drops to $2,799, and the Xserve RAID pricing starts at $5,999. Apple is certainly looking to kick some butt in the enterprise market!
Furthermore
Last night, I picked up my pre-ordered copy of "Furthermore" by Jars of Clay, their 2-disc studio/stage compilation. Faithfully ripped via iTunes, I'm now listening to the studio disc, mostly re-recordings (as opposed to remixes), with 3 new tunes. One of my favorite tunes from their last album, "The Eleventh Hour," is the title track, and the re-recording of that song is fabulous, all acoustic. A decidedly different take of "Liquid" is intensely introspective and worshipful, causing one to take pause even in the middle of work. A solid addition to anyone's JoC library. [alternate purchase link]
Transmit 2.3
Panic released an updated version of their FTP client today. Mostly a bug-fix release, it does include an oft-requested feature: a preference that allows the user to define what the app does when a file is double clicked. From my limited beta-testing of this release, it remains solid and adequate for my GUI FTP needs. (I tend to use Terminal most of the time.)
Virex 7.2
My favorite antivirus application has been updated. .Mac subscribers should log in and download the new version, which includes an automatic virus definitions update feature.
Happy Birthday, Mr. President
Former President Ronald Reagan is 92 today. Major retrophisch well wishes to President and Mrs. Reagan.
Glad I don't read Salon
Michael notes that Salon has adopted a new pay-or-click-through-multiple-ads model. Might be worth it for some, but I never thought Salon was worth much when it was free.
Baked PowerBook, anyone?
A colleague just sent me this link to a baked Apple. Please note that there are links at the top of the page to more pictures other than those immediately displayed. What frickin' rocks is that the PowerBook still boots and they've installed Mac OS X 10.2.
Death of the floppy, redux
Four and a half years after Apple declared the floppy disk was dead with the introduction of the iMac, the rest of the computer industry is finally starting to follow suit. Dell, of course, is “innovating” ahead of the other PC box companies. I truly love this quote:
“What Dell has done, I expect every major vendor to do in the next 12 months.”
This from Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, a technology consulting firm in San Jose. Where was Tim four and a half years ago, when it was Apple announcing it was removing the floppy disk drive from its systems, beginning with the then-new iMac?