New Digg Intro

Both Liz and I are huge fans of Diggnation with Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht. Check out the proposed new opening sequence for the weekly podcast here.

Old iBook

Old iBook
Originally uploaded by Mot.

Sophia absolutely loves computers, especially notebooks. Much like somebody might buy their child a baseball mit or a violin, I really want to buy my daughtewr a Mac. I thought getting her one of the old clamshell models might be perfect. Low End Mac has several of them for less than $300 US. Is that still too much to pay for a computer for a child who is barely 15 months?

De Ja Vu: Bad Day

The running theme in my blog is that I have bad days. Or maybe it's becuase I only feel like blogging when I have a bad day.

Liz is very, very pregnant and very, very miserable. She wants Bella out of her as soon as possible. I can't blamer her, poor thing looks like she's constantly uncomfortable. She has trouble breathing. She's always fatigued. She has trouble standing up. Hey, I think I might be pregnant!?!

I haven't had a chance to listen to any good podcasts lately. I went over to Scott's last night to record some vocals for a tack he's doing call The Tomorrow. I gave him a slightly different artistic directly.

Sometimes I really like working with my iCurve and wireless keyboard and other times I really like working on my 17" PowerBook as a notebook. Tonight is a good example. I'm taken it down off of the iCurve twice to use it as notebook, only to put it back on the iCurve and grab my wireless keyboard.

Speaking of using my PowerBook - Liz did a nice job fixing the broken Tab key. I don't know why she goes out of her way to do things that are going to cause me to lose my sanity?

It's approximately 11:08pm and I'm tired. I know I'm going to have a challenging day tomorrow. And to think that I was going to ask for the day off. And then I was going to ask for Wednesday off, but now I don't think I'll get any day off. Oh well.

Tough Week

This was a very tough week, both work and home.

I enjoyed hanging out with Damon and Ephrain on Wednesday night - even though I'm not really into Margaritas.

I can't wait to hang out this weekend. I want to stop by the office tomorrow to finish a few things, but I think I'll spend some quality time in my bed this weekend.

My law and order addiction is still going strong. I downloaded Dick Wolf's new televisions how, Conviction, from iTunes, but I haven't had a chance to watch it yet.

President's Day

One of the small perks of working in a bank is having all of the federal holidays off.

The best part about today is being able to sit on the couch and watch Law & Order until I couldn't take it anymore. Liz and I are becoming quickly obsessed with that show since we started watching it a few weeks ago. It's awesome to find a show that you enjoy so much after it's been on the air for 16 seasons - there is no shortage of new material for the late-adopter.

iTunes is now offering downloads of Law & Order episodes! I haven't downloaded any as of yet, but It think that is probably forthcooming.

Thoughts on David Irving

I'm intrigued by the case against David Irving. Here is a very controversial figure who is going to jail, if I understand correctly, for simply stating that he doesn't believe Hitler ordered the holocaust and many facts commonly accepted by the public about the holocaust are not true.

I don't think something like this would happen in the United States. Either because 1) Somebody that scholarly would never hit the mainstream media and probably wouldn't attract that much attention or 2) because our legal interpretation of the 1st Amendment is such that an American citizen would only face the public indictment of his peers and escape the any repercussions of the legal arena.

Either way, not to say he speaks the truth or he is lying, I've never been to any of the concentration camps, I've never been to Auschwitz - how do I know they really exist? I know that seems a bit far fetched, but stop and think about all of the things we commonly accept based on convention and not evidence.

Podcast

I bought a Logitech USB microphone yesterday and started playing with Garageband's podcasting scheme. It took me a while and several mistakes but I ended up with a semi-good sounding podcast introduction. Since I've always been interested in radio this is a really cool way for me to have my own show with my own content. Hopefully I will have something woth publishing very soon.

Cold Sweat

Today, around 4:45 p.m., I unexplainably broke out in a cold sweat. I started shivering, felt nauseous, my heart started palpitating. I was on a phone call with a prospective client. What do you do? I started to rationalize just hanging up the phone and calling back later (maybe tomorrow), telling him that I don't know why we lost our connection. But I hung in there, and started feeling better in about five minutes. I still don't know what that was about.

I had dinner with my grandmother tonight. She made vegetable and beef soup. Not my favorite, but it is still a very good soup. I really enjoyed the jalapeno cornbread.

I've been using Saft v8.2.5 for about a day now and so far I'm pretty pleased with it. Now Safari has almost all of the functionality of Firefox plus the inherent benefits of being a native Cocoa application operating within Mac OS X. The only function that I'm missing at this point (besides the speed, that's a moot point) is the ability to search Flickr, Technorati, and Odeo all within the browser's search field. I still need to poke around Pimp My Safari to find out what other goodies I can use to make Safari a much more powerful application.

43 Things

As part of my personal look into Web 2.0, I checked out 43 Things. I love the concept behind this site. Essentially, we are all measured by our accomplishments, be it at work, in our marriage, personal lives, at the gym, etc. This web site focuses on people writing down what they want to accomplish, keeping a journal about it and reminding them that they want to accomplish it.

As somebody who is a sucker for good motivational content, this is very intriguing, because there is no pearly-toothed guru to despise. You pick your goal, you stick with it, you update your blog, you let people know when your done.

Toothaches and iTunes

I think I might be coming down with a toothache...shit! I've got a nagging pain irritation in the upper-right corner of my mouth. I think I've had it before and it has gone away. I'm hoping the same rules apply to this episode as well. If not, I guess I'm due for a visit to Dr. Galaviz anyways.

More and more I'm looking to iTunes for my core entertainment. I've been addicted to podcasts since I first heard of them, but I've always had a fascination with talk radio. Also, I enjoy anything that might teach me about computers, Mac OS X, Web 2.0 (yes I use that term), etc.

Safari v. Firefox: Round 2

Not that long ago I posted an article about why I use Firefox over Safari - and why I felt bad for doing it. Well, it's been a while and even though I haven't made the switch back to Safari officially yet, here are the main reasons why I'm thinking about it.

Pimp My Safari has given me information on some tremendous extensions and plug-ins (what's the difference?) that will compensate for some of the functionalit that Safari misses.

Something that I really like in Firefox was the search feature. I'm not talking about the text field in the upper-right corner where you can search Google. I was talking more about being able to find a single keyword in a large page of text. In Safari, the command was Command + F, this brought up a separate little window (much like Windows) and you typed the word or words that you were looking for. This either found it or it didn't. Firefox had a nice feature that when you used the same command (Command + F) it opened a status bar at the bottom of the window and you could start typing a word or a phrase. The great aparat about it was that it searched as you typed and could even be used to navigate the page. If the word "Start" was a link, all I had to do was start typing the word until the link was highlighted, than press [Enter] to activate that link.

By installing SIMBL and than the plug-in FIWT (Find It With Typing), Safari gives me the exact same functionality, and, dare I say it, even better. With FIWT, I don't even have to press Command + F, all I have to do is make sure that any text boxes are highlighted than just start typing. A status bar will appear on the bottom of Safari and start searching for the word. The same [Enter] command works just like in Firefox.

Finally, I'm going to download Saft V8.2.5 for the small price of $12 USD. Saft is described as "...the vital extension for Safari, with more feature than you can shake a stick at." What are some of the features being peddled? Some of the few that caught my eye were "Full-screen browsing", "Always open browser window in tab", "Control-1 to 9 to popup bookmark menu or open bookmark", "Control-drag to scroll page", "Customizable Google search field", "Sidebar (Add plugins for google search, RSS feeds, etc)", "Growl support", "IDN spoofing detection warning and blocking", "Tag rearrangind with drag and drop (also works between windows)", etc.

The main reason why I would prefer to work exclusively out of Safari instead of Firefox is the close integration Apple has provided for all Cocoa applications and Mac OS X. I like that if I need to define a word to make sure I'm using it correctly, I can use the Command + Control + D . Or if I want to email a picture, a page or a portion of a page, I can use Command + Shift + I. And I want to save something in a cool, unique way, I can use Command + Shift + Y to move highlighted text to a Stickie. This is excellent example of how native applications will always have indigenous integration over any 3rd part app that might be out there. It would be great if Mozilla had different binaries to be ported over for different OS builds - but I think that would be asking a little too much.

The one that Firefox will always have over Safari is a much cooler icon!

Size Difference

Triton is my 12" PowerBook 1.5GHz and Tautog is my 17" PowerBook 1.67GHz. I've been using Tautog with an iCurve and Apple Wireless Keyboard and Mouse for some time, so really it just acts like a screen. Now that I've been working on Triton for some time, using Tautog (which is the one I'm writing this post on) is like driving a bus. Not that I'm complaining. Having ALL of this screen real estate is really nice, but I still like the fact that I can pick up Triton with one hand and he'll fit in my bag withoutu any problems.

I spoke with Scott this evening. I'm still trying to get him to buy a PowerBook. Obviously, it's a major luxury to be able to go out and buy any computer, especially when there is not an immediate need for it. But as any Macophile will tell you, not having a Mac around is a cause for alarm and buying one ASAP would be grounds for pilfering junior's college fund if necessary.

Where's the Meatball?

I told Liz that the name of the new PoweBook was going to be "Triton". She asked why. I explained that i wanted to have a running theme where I name all of my computers on my network after submarines. The Apple computers will be US Subs and and Windows boxes will be named after German U Boats. I think any Linux machines will be named after Finnish vessels because of Linus Torvalds.

Anyways, Liz starts laughing, she tells me her first thought when I told her the computers were going to be named after subs was "Meatball", "BLT", "Club", "Cheese Steak". Ah, God, I love my wife.

Refurbished 12" PowerBook

My new refurbished 12" PowerBook showed up tonight. I was really excited until I opened the box. Than a little bit a dissapointment set in.

Firstly, I found out that 12" PowerBooks do not have backlit keyboards. Grant it, this is not a major issue, but it was something that I really enjoyed having on my 17" PBook. I thought "Oh, Sh!t" when I looked on the F9, F10, and F11 keys and didn't see the symbols denoting "more light", "less light", and "backlite on/off". I thought I got gipped on not getting the latest Rev 12", but I searched the Apple Support discussions boards and found another guy asking about the keyboards on the smaller PowerBooks.

The biggest dissapointment, by far, is not getting Mac OS X Tiger. The computer came installed with Mac OS X 10.3.7. This is a major downer. I'm used to all the functionalit that Tiger has - specifically Spotlight. Safari is a little bit of a downer when I can not use Tabs to help my browsing. So even though I saved quite a bit of money on the hardware (and at this point I'm assuming that I did get the latest hardwar) I'm going to have to go out and buy Tiger for $129 USD. I was going to use that money to max out the RAM.

I briefly looked over the cosmetic details of the book when I took it out of the box (it did not come in a brand new apple box, but a brown corrugated cardboard box labeled with "Apple Reconditioned Product". I don't think I saw anything wrong with it, but I'll make sure to do a once over on it again tomorrow - in direct sunlight.

Despite the loss of an illuminated keyboard and Tiger (which I'll upgrade tomorrow), I think I'm happy with my new smaller, lighter PowerBook.

I'll post some pictures soon

Waiting

I should have sprung for the extra $18 for expedited shipping on my new PowerBook, but I thought because there was no hurry, I could just wait. Well, it turns out I forgot that I'm totally impatient about these types of things. So now I'm checking my order status 3 or 4 times a day and cringing when I look at at the estimated arrival date so far in the future.

I'm still debating on what I should do with my old Gateway desktop. I was going to fix fix it up and install XP and/or Vista on it. But now I'm thinking about installing Suse Linux on it. But than I'm also thinking about selling it on eBay and using the proceeds to add more RAM to my two PowerBooks. (My 17" has 1GB and the new 12" comes with a stock 512MB)

I spent this morning at Starbucks, Barnes & Noble and Best Buy. I found more than a couple of books that I wanted to buy at BN (e.g. Hacking the Xbox: An Introduction to Reverse Engineering).

As usual, I saw about a thousand things at Best Buy that I categorize in various stages of "want" to "need". I really like Belkin's new F5U237 Hi-Speed USB 2.0 7-Port Hub. I saw a picture on Flickr where somebody has stashed a USB hub underneather their PowerBook being supported by an iCurve.

Other than that there isn't too much to report about this weekend. I would have like to have spent more time working on my Mac OS X/Unix page, but I wasn't feeling too well due to allergies. Hopefully this upcoming week will be a little better.

Porn Star Names

I'm sure most people have heard this equation, but if not, let me tell you how to figure out what your God-given porn star name would be if you were a porn star, assuming you're not.

You're first pet's name + The name of your street = Porn Star Name

So according to this equation, my porn star name would be Topper Seacomber.

"Excuse me, Topper, we're going to need you on the set in five."

PowerBroke

So now that I plan to go back to school and finish my degree program in Finance, I thought I would get an ultra-portable notebook computer. For the purposes of this blog post, ulta-portable is a screen no bigger than 14" and weighs less than 5 Lbs.

I've been teetering back and forth between the 12" iBook G4 and the 12" PowerBook G4. The obvious difference is that the PowerBook is more powerful right off the bat, constructed a little better and looks a lot cooler. The downside of the PowerBook is that it is $500 more expensive and I would be devastated if anything happen to it; conversely, the iBook is only $999 and constructed of polycarbonate plastic (think bullet proof windshields).

What finally made my decision today was when I called 1-800-MY-APPLE and talked to Corey. He told me they had some of the latest revisions of the PowerBook G4 12" on the refurbished rack. Since they were the models from the most recent upgrade late last year, they couldn't have been owned that long, five or six months tops. And they were selling them refurbished with iLife '06 at essentially the same price as a brand new iBook.

I immediatly gave Corey my credit card number, got an order confirmation and now in approximately seven days (shorter if I know Apple) I should have a shiny new aluminum 1.5GHz 12" PowerBook delivered to me.

It is going to be so nice to be able to take my own personal computer with me on trips without having to pack Bengay to rub on my shoulders at the end of the day. Especially when you add the fact that most of the time I'll be traveling with my work IBM Think Pad T42 Lenovo (which is probably the best Windows laptop out right now).

I'll post some pictures of my new computer when it gets here - probably on Flickr.