April 2004 Archives

Perhaps it's due to an e-mail from yours truly, perhaps simply something that's been in the works for some time. A couple of weeks ago I dropped an e-mail to Margaret Cho's webmaster, Edward. Margaret Cho has a blog that didn't have an XML feed. Until now. Edward has returned my e-mail telling me there's an XML feed as of five minutes prior to his sending me that response. Three cheers for Edward! The feed can be found here.

Sorry for the recent inactivity. Life has been particularly interesting as of late.

This is why using stock photos is a bad thing. You end up with photos of things that aren't what you mean them to be. For example, photos of coffins of the NASA space shuttle Columbia's crew being mistaken for dead soldiers from Iraq. Ah the media. We all must love the media, and how much they screw everything up.

Many people have reported that after updating their software for their airport cards to version 3.4 their signal strength has dropped. I noticed the same, so I ran some tests. Signal strength has not actually dropped, but the gauge showing how many bars of quality has. So this brings up two real possibilities. Either there is a bug in the software in the calculation of how many bars should be displayed, or the calculation of how many bars should be displayed has simply changed. Either way the signal strength has not changed. If anything, it has improved due to some software tweaking on Apple's part. So don't panic.

I swore I wouldn't write anything controversial. I shouted from the roof tops that certain things I would just keep my mouth shut about. But I can't not talk about this.

Before me is an article which I have read twice in disbelief. Twice have I read it and now I simply have to write. This article is about the columbine shooting, and some of the motivations behind it. The real motivations.

The article displays a suicide note from one of the shooters. It's more profane than I'm interested in displaying here, so you'll just have to see it in the article. Don't worry, it's toward the top and hard to miss.

The article and the suicide note together illustrate better than I ever could some points I've in the past made. Childhood teasing is a problem, folks. Kids are more cruel than even Adolph Hitler. That's what they do. Their brains have a bit of difficulty grasping higher levels of humor so they ridicule for amusement. I've seen it before. I grew up living it. Every class has their kid who it is cool to pick on. I was that kid.

Before I go on, I must state that in no way am I making excuses for or justifying the actions of these shooters. This was not right. Period, end of story. There is no excuse, there is no justification. Be clear on that.

Continue reading "Behind Columbine"

I have to be honest with you. I did not know that part of the reason Apple hadn't put the G5 into their iBooks and PowerBooks was heat and power related, but my prediction holds. I don't believe they'll rev the G4 units again. It's been about seven months since the last rev, and I would imagine that if we wait another seven we'll have G5 notebooks. I wonder what we'll be up to in the desktops by then, though.

I understand that Apple is trying to focus on portability. That's great, and it helps a lot for multiple reasons. First of all, as I see it, the fifteen and seventeen inch PowerBooks are very much desktop replacements for almost any user who isn't a total power user. I'm talking about video editors here, and really they can probably get away with using one too.

When I see portability being improved, I see servers being improved. With their xServe taking up only 1U of rack space, I see these servers as having similar heat issues to the notebooks. I see the inception of a dual G5 xServe as a sign of improved power and heat.

So I maintain my prediction that the next rev of Apple notebooks will have G5 processors.

PulpFiction is a new RSS reader for Mac OS X. While I'd like to try it and then write a review for you, I'd rather point you at this review because I don't think I can do much better. I'm definitely going to try it out. The interface is beautifully clean, and I really like it very much. At this point in time, I use NetNewsWire Lite which I like very much. Still, this looks like it could well be better, and if that's the case, I want to use it!

Jim Cantalupo, CEO and chairman of McDonald's, died today at sixty years of age of an apparent heart attack. I can't help but wonder if a new CEO will bring something new and "exciting" to the fast food world.

Ray Bradbury, author of The Martian Chronicles, has commented on today's real life Martian chronicles. This article talks briefly about his response to space travel. He seems for it, indicating that however apocalyptic his book may make him out to appear, he does seem to have faith that exploring space and Mars is the right thing to do.

So it looks like Apple is going to improve iBooks and PowerBooks again. What I find interesting is that they're sticking with G4 processors. This is probably going to be the last time; G5s will be next I'm sure. Sources apparently have reported faster G4 processors, larger hard drives, and better graphics cards. Good stuff. I wonder if there will be any more physical changes, such as different motherboards. If so, we may be looking at a new type of memory that needs to be used and a drop in laptop memory prices as well. How nice would that be?

Saint Germain is an acid jazz band which I have just recently discovered. Seems like they've been around for some time, and their repertoire is vast. I have to admin, I'm really enjoying this band! I have two albums, Tourist and Boulevard. Anyone who likes acid Jazz should pick them up.

What I've found is that there's a lot of complexity in their music to be heard if you look for it, but if you just let it sink in it's a fun band to listen to superficially too. Subconsciously you will hear all sorts of wonderful undertones. Their tempo is compelling but not so much so that your attention is drawn from whatever you're doing; I find it music that I can draw inspiration from during my work while not being pulled away from my work and not being bored with the music.

So there you go. A little musical review.

This is appalling. Really. Ever get the feeling that an anti-republican ad this bad might have been placed by a republican to make democrats look bad? Any way you twist it, media attention like this is bad news. But hey, the candidates et al condemned it and they deserve credit for that.

Which is probably a good thing, when you think about it. But my favorite part of this article is where he says he upholds the beliefs of Abraham Lincoln and thinks Bush deserves re-election. Bush. Mr. Anti-Equal-Rights. Yeah. Pay attention to what you're supporting, Senator.

So Janet Jackson and Saturday Night Live decided to spoof the breast flash which we've all heard so much about. This skit comes just as it was finally slowing down on the news. It's a bit frustrating. It also smells of a desperate act. By having her do the skit herself, we open ourselves to thinking she might be doing this to try to help things blow over. If someone else did it, it would be seen as more of a humorous imitation. Whatever it is, it's annoying. Just let it die already.

Watched Hellboy tonight. The way I see it, that film was a high budget B movie. I can't say I really enjoyed it. It was just kind of annoying, really. Most of the jokes were bad, the action was pretty poor... it wasn't a great movie at all.

One of Apple's Mac OS X's best selling points was the lack of virii out there to attack it. But that's all in the process of changing. A very interesting vulnerability was recently discovered by Integro. Rather than write all about it, I'd like to direct you to this Q&A which is very detailed. I don't think I can explain it much better.

The first internet trailer to Spiderman 2 looked terrible. I had no desire to see the film. I had no desire to watch the trailer ever again. I imagined it as a terrible piece of junk. Then I saw this. Faith restored. Film looks awesome! I'm really looking forward to this one now. I'm going to enjoy it.

We all watch the video clips that surface online. The weird little jokes, the strange digital enhancements, the close-ups of Janet Jackson's piercing. But every once in a while, something real sneaks into the mix. A video of a man committing suicide after his girlfriend broke up with him has appeared online.

This is not a joke, people. It's out there. I ask you, please don't encourage this stuff. The jokes are all in good fun. Some of them, many of them, are totally tasteless. But they're still jokes. This isn't one of them. Help put a stop to it.

Since January, random forms of technology in a Sicilian village have been spontaneously combusting. At first, police thought it was a prankster. They have since witnessed a combustion and decided to hang that theory.

So now we get to deal with all of the possible causes that people will come up with; all of the weird theories that people will see. Is it aliens? Ghosts? Perhaps Skynet has taken over!

Okay, I've held my tongue and held my tongue and held my tongue. But Gmail just keeps having more and more problems. So it started with the privacy agreement. People are worried about the fact that Google will keep their mail even after they shut down their accounts as "a service." That's a privacy issue. They're worried about using orkut cookies, google cookies, and gmail cookies all together for law enforcement or spying.

And now there's a trademark dispute. Seems that another company has been using the name Gmail for their e-mail services for two years. A small company, but widespread enough to have reached into about eighty countries.

Come on, Google, do your homework. Why are you in such a rush all of a sudden?

I thought we'd been through this. Password sharing will get you into lots of trouble. You'll get arrested and the like. But hey, I suppose every country has to figure it out for themselves. It's Canada's turn! Who's next?

I watched The Rundown today. It was an okay action flick. The Rock even does an okay job acting in it. Kudos. The plot line was uncreative, but still not terrible. Acting, again, nothing amazing but still not terrible.

Definitely an unremarkable film, but a fun one for what it is. Mindless action, anyone?

Last night I rented and watched Reign of Fire. I want my money back. This flick was boring and cliche; it had no interesting plot hooks or exciting action. I grant the writer some credit for being creative. I can't think what it could possibly be based on. But that's the best I'll give this one.

Isn't this rather neat? Okay, terribly malicious, but kind of neat. Admit it! So all a cracker has to do now is get a mac or a linux / unix machine, install an SMTP server on it, configure it properly, which is, of course, improperly, and then they send an e-mail from the guy they want to attack to as many addresses as they can, and then all of the bounces hit the target. Now get four or five mail servers you can do this from in colo.

Look, a full mailbox doesn't bother a user much. But you fill the mail queue on a server, and that server becomes super slow. You can do some serious damage with this one. I'm impressed.

Administrators, double check your servers. Make sure your server can't be used to do this by accident. Because now there are people out there looking for open relays in the hopes that they're configured this way, and when they find one they'll use it.

How many years has Bill Gates been the richest man in the world? Why do I ask? Because he's not anymore. Ingvar Kamprad, founder of the IKEA furniture chain, has about six billion dollars more than Bill Gates.

Maybe I'm a silly person, but I'm pretty sure that kind of wealth hits the point where the only point to having more is to say you have more. Give me a million dollars and I'll probably spend it in my lifetime getting myself set. Give me two million dollars and I'll do my best to have myself and any kids and family I may ever have be set for life. I could probably do it with one million. I know I could do it with two million. But I'm sure my line is destined to work.

That's okay, jobs build character!

I just finished reading Shadow of the Hegemon by Orson Scott Card. This is book six in the Ender series.

Orson Scott Card talks about Isaac Asimov as an inspiration, someone who took him away from the world in which he lived and showed him another world, a grand world, and yet still a version of the world in which we all live. Orson Scott Card is, then, my Asimov.

Reading his novels has taken me away from my life and transported me to another version of Earth. I fantasize about what it would be like to live in that world, to interact with those characters. I can feel myself thinking as them, being ready to say the things they say before I read their speech. For me, this is the mark of an amazing author, one who can flesh out a world that appears real and characters the reader feels like they've known all their life. To me, reading Orson Scott Card's books is a profound experience.

This book was no exception to that rule. It comes with my highest of recommendations.

When I was younger I went to some nearby fair with a summer camp and they had a ride called the gravitron. I thought it was great. You would get in and stand against the wall, then the thing would start spinning fast. Faster and faster, until the gravitational forces pressed you against the panels of the wall. Then the panels would go up and down while you spun, to illustrate that you were stuck to it. For fun, people would pose. We'd get upside down, or side ways, or whatever.

A few years later, I went to another fair and found another gravitron. I got on quickly, and quickly decided to try turning side ways again. It was fun! Of course this time the operator was a little harder on rules, and asked me to leave. I was pretty upset and hurt at the time, but years later I laugh it off. I got asked to leave a ride for breaking the rules? Wow! Who'd have thought that would happen?

Anyway, now I understand why the rules are in place for this thing. Apparently a gravitron broke open and flung three people out. Now I don't think this is due to rule breaking. I also don't think these people would be any better off right side up than upside down. But it is a good reason for people not to be messing around on this thing, and an even better reason for people not to be on this thing. I think I just lost my thrill for this ride, after all these years of not being on one.

Okay, I admit this means little to me in the here and now, not having cable and all, but when I do have cable, and when I've had it in the past, The Simpsons was one of my favorite shows. In fact, it's been one of my favorites for years. So it really saddens me to hear that they're on strike over a silly pay dispute. It's not all of them, but it's enough of them to take the show off the air. After the years of high quality low brow television these actors have provided, I think they're due for a raise. Don't you? I know it's a lot of money, but it's not like that's anything new for television actors.

Tigger has been accused of fondling a woman and her daughter's breasts. Well, a guy in a Tigger suit at Disney world. Okay, I'm not passing judgement. But the suits are about four inches thick. What would be the point? Its not like he could feel anything. And the hands are probably a good foot long. Giant suits, these things. Stuff happens by accident. Really. And to wait eight days before making the accusation? Statute of limitations?

And I don't mean public display of affection, folks. Meet the PowerPod. Hey, at least Apple is consistent with naming schemes, right? iBook, Powerbook. iPod, PowerPod! This thing is Apple's answer to the Compaq Ipaq as far as I'm concerned; video conferencing enabled, wifi enabled, nice little LCD, and you can even type on it. But wait, there's more! this thing comes in 20, 40, and 60 gigabyte models to hold even the most extensive of mp3 collections.

I am impressed. Honestly, though, they're starting to cross the line into "Well, why not do... ?". For example, why doesn't this thing have bluetooth? In a world where bluetooth is becoming that much more popular, and where Apple computers come with built in bluetooth, why not include it here? Encourage those car stereo makers to start putting bluetooth in there. Use a wireless method to sync to that laptop of yours instead of plugging in a FireWire cable. Let people type with their bluetooth keyboard and navigate with their bluetooth mouse if they feel like it.

Today is my blog's first month anniversary. Isn't that convenient, how I started on the first of a month? Now I just have to remember what month! Anyway, I doubt I'll be doing anything like this again until a year, maybe only six months.

I never knew I had so much to talk about, but I've found something almost every day. In fact, every day except those that I was not in town. I'm pretty proud of that. Proud of that and all the stuff I've managed to write. I'm not much of a writer, but I think I've done well here.

On March 12 I started running a hit counter. At the moment, just before publishing this entry, there are 685 hits. From here on out, I will not be talking about the date. But I feel like that's pretty good for one man's site about nothing linked to by only one person. Maybe some day I'll make that number visible, but mostly I just enjoy looking at it. It's at the top of the source code for the main page.

Every month my right column will get longer. I'm looking forward to seeing that. I feel like the site will look better when the side columns are long enough to match the middle column better. Maybe I should be writing these entries as extended entries, but why make you load another page? It's not like I write novels, and since I don't use any graphics I don't see a speed issue.

Any how, the left column is harder to grow. I won't link to sites I don't regularly visit, and some of the sites I regularly visit just don't fit with the theme of this blog. If this blog even has a theme. But the point is that I want more sites to visit and more links on this blog, so leave me a comment and I'll read your site. And I'll probably like it, because anyone who managed to find me probably did so through a mutual friend. And then I'll link to it and read it regularly. Nice how that works!

While I don't plan on posting this until the morning, I want to write this now.

I just arrived home a little bit ago from watching Jersey Girl, written and directed by the great Kevin Smith. Let it be known now that I am a big Kevin Smith fan, and enjoy every title released by View Askew thus far. I was a bit skeptical and thought the trailer to this film was awful. But I had faith in Kevin Smith and he pulled through, showing the world that he can write a serious film. I really enjoyed this film, and was able to emote and relate to it. It was good stuff.

A very notable and star littered cast includes George Carlin (who's home page can be found here) as Bart Trinke. I was really impressed by this comedian's role. While it still screamed George Carlin, it was far from as in-your-face as he usually is. Still, very well done and strongly enjoyed.

The rest, quite honestly, don't interest me nearly as much except to state that they did a phenomenal job and I'm very glad to have watched this film.

I don't feel like I wasted my money or my time. That's rare when seeing films these days.

What have you done this time? George W Bush has now accused Cuba of having biological weapons. George, let me read you a bed time story. It's a fable. The boy who cried wolf. Ever hear of it?