POTD

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I made a mess of so many things today. I really need to bow out for a while.

Duh

Ah. Very smart. Nothing like pissing off customers.

Poop

My chair at work smells like poop.

POTD

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Friends of the High Line announced that construction is beginning; real fences will go up to prepare for reconstruction. The unused elevated train line, snaking from 33rd Street to Gansevort Street will undergo renovation and reconstruction to turn it into a unique public space.

I'm so glad I had a chance to wander around the High Line in its "wild" state. I'm sure the new park, scheduled for completion in 2008, will be spectacular, but there was a certain urban decay charm to the dilapidated High Line.

Did You Mean...

I'm not sure what this says...

...but I'm going to start working "verfügbar" into conversation.

I Surrender

"As another French publication printed the cartoons, Mr Chirac said any subject matter that could hurt other people's convictions should be avoided."

Am I the only one who muttered "pussy" upon reading this?

Experiment

Brooks Jensen at LensWork is doing the "post-process my image" experiment. He posted three of his photos (JPEG and DMG) and is asking people to photoshop them (scroll down to the "Begin the Beginning" entry). The photoshopped images will be included in the extended version of LensWork (to which I subscribe).

Give it a shot. I was rather uninspired by the three images, but I took a crack at the abstract one.

CD

This mashup CD is pretty good. The Killers vs. The Clash got me.

This sounds brilliant, by the way, with iTunes' "Crossfade playback" turned on and set to zero seconds.

BL

Ladies and Gentlemen: we have blacklists.

TG

Teddy Girls: Great photos of post World War II England.

POTD

Remember way back around 2002, when everyone discovered 'blogs? ("I just started a blog. Have you seen my blog? Isn't blogging the best!?") Everyone was creating them, then going to all sorts of inappropriate places with their laptops. Conferences. Product launches. Funerals. Round table discussions.

And instead of paying attention, they'd be nose down, click-clacking away on a keyboard.

If you looked over, annoyed at the noise of four fingers typing, and asked, "what are you doing?" you would inevitably hear, "I'm blogging this!" As if that made their antisocial behavior somehow more acceptable.

All those douchebags? They bought cameras.

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Everywhere I go, people are carrying (and using) cameras. Conferences. Restaurants. Funerals. Concerts. And not sophisticated cameras with fast lenses; they are carrying point-and-shoot cameras with the flashes popping all over the place.

You can't go anywhere interesting without having a couple dozen people snapping photos. A bunch of people popping flashes at annoying, inappropriate times. As if capturing the moment on a compact flash card somehow validates their existence.

And I'm sick of it.

I realize that I run the risk of being one of these people. I don't want to be one of these people. So I propose that we start bringing water bottles to events. When the cameras start getting annoying, lets squirt these people with some water, like so many ill-behaved cats.

Fridge

I woke up this morning with an urge to clean my refrigerator. So I did.

POTD

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Last night's fun.

Yikes

Sitting at your desk, watching a vendor's developer debug their product can be one of the following:

1. Frightening
2. Confidence inspiring

I'll leave you to guess which is happening today.

Dumb

Imagine if Americans went apeshit like this every time someone burned a flag. There would be no embassies for any country left anywhere in the world.

Hoax

"I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council. How do you think that makes me feel? Thirty-one years in the United States Army and I more or less end my career with that kind of a blot on my record? That's not a very comforting thing."

I'm glad this new information is surfacing, but, respectfully, this is way past a hoax.

And this is one of the things that just kills me about the last six years.

There are so many people like Lawrence Wilkerson, both in and out of the military, people who worked their whole careers in service to the country, who are now painted by this broad brush of "intelligence failure." So many people who make personal sacrifices, who pass up lucrative private sector jobs, who do their best to walk the many fine lines in the intelligence business. They are all, to an extent, brought down by a small number of ideologues who have the ear of the President and Vice President.

What we have done is a shameful disservice.

Whiners

Good God. Mac people can be such whiners.

[Bernard Becker] Well, if Classic Apps don't work on Intel Macs, this is the end of everything ever done in HyperCard, the Application that was promised to ship with every Mac forever.

It also means the end of our application, and 3000 Mortage Brokers who use it, as well as hundreds of users inside major banks.

Apple never made HyperCard native, so HyerCard, and every stack ever made, will not run on any future Macs. That's sad.

[MacInTouch Reader] Lack of classic means no Hypercard. As I run my life on Hypercard, that means I'm done with new Macs. And so is my business, with its 5 employees each with Macs, running everything on Hypercard. Luckily, there are vast quantities of old Macs out there, running stable high quality software to do everything I need. And, no more upgrade hassles! Life is good.

I, rather unfortunately, know way more about Hypercard than a normal person should. Hypercard was introduced with version 6 of the MacOS. System 6, people. It had not been updated since version 2.2, introduced in 1992. 1992! Hypercard 3.0 does not count. That was vapor at its best.

MacOS X was introduced in 2001 -- nine years after Hypercard entered its long, last sleep. No mater how hopeful were the Hypercard loyalists, the introduction of OS X, an entirely new OS, should have been a clear indication that Hypercard was finally and utterly dead. Even so, thanks to huge effort on Apple's part, Hypercard (and many other ancient MacOS applications) run well enough in the Classic environment.

But, Good God people, if MacOS 9 is dead, surely you should start thinking about alternatives to Hypercard.

Fast forward to 2006, five years after OS 9 died, fourteen years after Hypercard died, and people are still complaining that Hypercard stacks won't run, this time on a computer with an entirely different processor architecture.

Let it go. The software is dead. There are plenty of alternatives. Take your "I won't buy any more Macs" bullshit and go away. If you are bitching about a product that hasn't been updated in fourteen years and hasn't been available for two, you are probably such a cheap bastard that you were unlikely to buy new hardware in any case.

Hard Livin'

tooth/tatoo=0

One In a Million, Doc

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RIP: Grandpa Al

RIP: Grandpa Al