Dreamed I caught a ride on a giant pachyderrm. It was white rather than grey, with fine (for a pachyderm) hair just long enough to grab onto. The amazing thing about it was how smooth and fast it could run. We cruised through the Serengheti at what must have been 70mph, and there was hardly a bump in the ride, like that old commercial where they moyle performs a circumcision in the back seat of an El Dorado or whatever. The beast was gigantic – I was 20 feet off the ground sitting on the back of its neck, so the view was spectacular at that speed. It was hot and the air blew through my hair as fast as we ran. There was a winding dirt and sand road that snaked through the desert for miles on end and this was our course. The only hard part was going over walls – the pachy would sort of go sideways-backwards and would shift all over the place – hard to hold on.
Fresnel Mac
The folks at Ahleman have created The ElectriClerk, a 1988 Mac SE driven by a 1927 Underwood typewriter, with a Fresnel lens hovering over the screen for added period effect. I’m thinking Naked Lunch here, or something from Brothers Quay, or Jan Svankmajer (if Svankmajer characters used modded Macs, that is). They even created a prop brochure to go with it. If you’re looking for a DIY project just slightly more feasible, try making your own lava lamp.
Asiago Becomes Manchego
After all these years, I’m still naming all my hard drives after cheeses. Ran out of space on the 80GB MP3 storage drive (Asiago) and went to see what the biggest ones on the market today are – didn’t end up going that high – got a Maxtor 120GB, named it Manchego (Amy comes up with the best cheese names), copied the collection over. Swapping out drives in OS X is as easy as it was in BeOS – plug in, initialize, use – no formatting. Remembering it wasn’t that long ago when it seemed remarkable that storage was approaching $1/MB. Now we’re nearly at $1/GB.
Bummed to find that iTunes doesn’t store those ratings in ID3v2 tags, as I thought it did – those were in the library file. So lost many moons of track ratings. Sent Apple some rasty feedback on that one.
MovableType as CMS
Preparing a database-backed site for J-School students to produce election-night coverage, and it occurred to me that I might not be giving MovableType enough credit as a generic publishing solution rather than pure blogging tool. With some deeper modifications to templates, removal of comments and calendaring, rearranged permalinks etc., there’s no reason MovableType can’t function as a full CMS. The Categories feature plays perfectly for creating “Departments” for the site. So far so good, but there are two problems with the scenario.
Continue reading “MovableType as CMS”
One-Button Mice and Babies
I used to be among the haters of one-button mice. Then the Mac came. I decided to live with one button for a while and see how it worked out, see what all the religion was about. Surprised myself how easy it was to make the transition – I never miss the right button anymore (took a couple months to stop missing it). Then the baby came. Babies change the mouse game, not because the kid wants to use the box, but because he gets thrust into my hands almost as soon as I get home — Amy needs a break. That, in turn, means I get a whole lot less machine time in the evening than I used to, and the time I do have is mostly surf time, not typing time. Surfing one-handed with a one-button mouse, holding the baby in the other arm, am disabled – not able to open links in a new window, not able to reveal the desktop with a quick keystroke, etc. May have to go two-button again after all. Apple — consider the children!
Bad American
Woody Harrelson: I’m an American tired of American lies . Nice parallax with this piece on being a “Bad American” by Ted Nugent, although it turns out that Nugent did not actually write the piece ascribed to him. I part company where “he” (and others) resist the notion that the Constitution is a living document. The same “rigid” Consitution once called a black man 3/5 of a man. We got rid of that bit when our culture and our minds changed, didn’t we? The Constitution is not immutable. Somehow I don’t think The Framers had the likes of the Beltway Sniper in mind when they guaranteed us our right to own Personal Laser Cannons.
Reverse Lens
Absolutely insane – one super-condensed portrait of how parts of the Middle East view America, Christians, Jews, and the conglomeration of multinational corporations. In essence, “Every McDonald’s burger you buy goes to support the globalizing economy that buys the bombs that come back and kill us.” The centerpiece is a mutilated baby on a hot dog bun. Surreal, crazed, and frightening. Full-size image here.
Eagle Vomit
Learned tonight that many Tibetans consider eagle vomit a great remedy for poisoning, and had to wonder what one does after accidentally swallowing Himalayan Hemlock… run around trying to trap an eagle and coax it to regurgitate in a cup?
Would not have thought it possible, but there you go: Captain Beefheart’s “Golden Birdies” impeccably rendered in glorious … MIDI!
Who benefits from a war with Iraq?
Pure lust: This dude had a BRAND NEW ’66 Bonneville for sale – as in, brand new – engine’s never even been kicked over. What would you do with a bike like that? Could you NOT turn it over? It seems perverse not to ride it, but impossible to not give it a kick.
Excellent tool for comparing blogging software side-by-side – review up to five weblog tools simultaneously.
In light of recent events, what an unfortunate name for a refreshing drink.
Joni Mitchell has some scathing words – says she’s
‘ashamed’ to be in the music business. I know what she means about her 3-year-old granddaughter grabbing her crotch while dancing – I’ve seen it too, and don’t disagree with her for blaming MTV.
“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”
– Hunter S. Thompson
Once again, thanks to Phil Franks for being my surrogate eyeballs.
How Small Is Miles?
How small is Miles? If I put his heel at the base of my palm, his knee doesn’t even come up to my top knuckles, that’s how small.
(Click)
Dreams Do Come True: Journaling in HFS+
According to this article at eWEEK, Apple is preparing to release OS X 10.2.2, aka “Elvis” in the next few weeks. Elvis will feature an optional fully journaling filesystem, which can be enabled from the command line. For those of us migrating to OS X from BeOS, this is huge news – Be’s BFS was one of the operating system’s crown jewels (full journaling was only one of BFS’ selling points). Unfortunately, journaling is expected to slow OS X down 10-15%, which was not true of BFS. Prayers are being answered, one at a time…