Tilting at windmills for a better tomorrow.
Australians skew census by naming Jedi as their religion.
iRumors.net has posted a rumor that Apple may be working on their own Rendezvous-based MP3 home stereo device. If this turns out to be true, I may be glad I didn’t pounce on the SliMP3 a while ago.
What is it about the word “kernel” that tempts people to spell it “kernal?” This seems to be one of the most commonly misspelled words I’ve seen in the past few years. It’s so common in fact that sometimes it seems like it’s misspelled more often than it’s spelled correctly. But why just this word? Why isn’t “computor” also a common misspelling, or “memary” or “motherbored” or anything else? Why just “kernal?”
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A P.S. to a piece of old email I just happened on:
BTW, the Command, clover, or splat key was originally called the “feature” key. The symbol is used on European maps to denote features, except in Finland where it means “campground”.
When I first heard that our birthing classes were going to require eight 3-hour sessions, I wondered how we could possibly fill that much time talking about the birthing process. Now that the 6th class has passed, I know.
For example, tonight we learned that if you have a problem with overflow while breast feeding, you can fix it with cabbage leaves. Take a fresh cabbage leaf and slip it into your bra like a lettuce cup. After about one hour it will have wilted and can be replaced with another. Lather, rinse, repeat until breasts disengorge. Ancient Chinese method, confirmed by modern western science wizards!
Not everything we learn is so whimsical, but it really is amazing how much there is to learn about something I’ve more or less taken for granted my whole life.
You know when you’re on hold waiting to tallk to someone at the bank, or phone company, or whatever, and the robot lady voice asks you to enter your account number followed by the pound sign? And then 10 minutes later the person comes on and asks for your account number? And you say, “I just typed it in!” And they say, “I’m sorry sir, I don’t have it in front of me.” You know what I’m talking about?
I can understand how this could happen from time to time, but it’s, like *all* the time!
Why is betips down today? Now my cheapthrills image from last night’s post isn’t working. Urgh.
There was this record store in SLO when I was growing up — baald knows it — Cheap Thrills. I can’t describe what a profound effect that store had on me… not your typical cut-out record store. Actually it’s still in business, but in a different building with no remaining redeeming qualities.
Every quarter Cheap Thrills put out a new wall calendar, always with art by a different local artist. I have a collection of about 20 of these, all different, all rolled up for the ages. There was one that was a forever favorite – Spring 1978 – this floppy astronaut standing on the moon looking towards you, in a sort of Robert Crumb hand, if R. Crumb drew in more detail. If you look closely at that hockey puck / biscuit thing in his hand, it says “Pay Attention” (you can’t see that in this pic). There’s something else funky about the image. Something that your parents never got around to seeing because parents don’t notice that kind of stuff. That was what was cool about it. Only teenagers ever dug the secret detail.
(click for larger version)
In 1986 they re-released the same calendar, but with the secret detail missing. What is it?
“But if that light’s under a bushel, it’s lost something kind of crucial…”
I’m finally going to get around to framing the 1978 one. Been meaning to for ages.
When you bring MP3s from one iTunes 3 machine to another, the Play Count attributes are preserved. This means the Play Count is stored as ID3 data, not in the iTunes database, as I had thought. And this in turn means that iTunes is using ID3v2 rather than ID3v1, even though there’s no preference for ID3v1 vs ID3v2.
I’m actually not very interested in the Play Count data, though it’s kind of cool to have a Smart Playlist consisting only of tracks I’ve never played before. What I actually am using that I didn’t expect to is the star-rating system. When tracks come through that I really dig, I give them 4 or 5 stars. A Smart Playlist aggregates these, and I can use this playlist as a source for quick compilation CD gifts, etc. Likewise, poorer tracks get 1 or 2 stars, and a “worst tracks” playlist lets me quickly cull deadwood for archiving or deletion. You can set ratings quickly by Ctrl+clicking iTunes in the dock.
baald says: “Google supports many languages, such as english, french, croation, etc. It also supports Elmer Fudd.”
Well, we weren’t really sure whether we wanted too much influence on our baby naming decision, but finally decided what the hell, and posted a baby naming poll at babycenter, where Mike works. Please vote. We reserve the right to totally ignore public opinion ;)
Speaking of baald, he recently picked up this amazing 3-CD compendium of Burt Bacharach tracks – baby, this music is huge!
“Don’t send him off with your hair in curlers, he may never return….”
Finished building an online Journalism Job Bank including a complete editing and publishing back-end, 30-day auto-expire with overrides, 3-part submission/edit/expire process, generation of a weekly email feed that gets sent to other jschools… all in PHP/MySQL. Very fun project. My boss has been doing all of this by hand for ages. I just automated this task away from him.
The ORA community came through with the golden answer – the reason for the slow lookups from some machines was that HostnameLookups was set to On in httpd.conf. Turning it off made the site as fast to visit from Macs as from PCs. The question now is, why are Macs so different in this respect?
“Humble Pie” may quite possibly be the best band name ever. Either that or “Foghat.”
My blackness is deep.
How deep?
Deeper than Atlantis.
Deeper than the sea floor, travelled by the mantis.
– X-Clan
If you’re in doubt about angels being real
I can arrange to change any doubts you feel
Wait till you see my Gidget
You’ll want her for your Valentine
Your gonna say she’s all that you adore
But stay away, Gidget is spoken for
You’re gonna find, that Gidget is mine