Wikipedia is good for a great many things, one of which is finding out what kind of stuff happened on your birthday. It's always interesting to find that you share a birthday with famous people, or that you were born on the same day as a strange world event. I share my birthday with a particularly eclectic list of famous people, including Engelbert Humperdinck (but not the one you're thinking of), Rocky Marciano, Al Green (but again, not the one you're thinking of), Dr. Phil (sadly, the one you're thinking of), Gloria Estefan, Tim Hardaway, Mohammed Atta (Wikipedia helpfully points out that he died in 2001), Clinton Portis, and Johann Pachelbel (may his Canon in D forever haunt his eternal sleep).
Who was born on your birthday?
Friday, November 30, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
Clarification
There seems to be a little confusion about my previous post, both here and at the ugly green blog from which the idea came. We're not saying you have to show that you're idle, unless you also can't be bothered to set away messages. And we're not saying you can't set yourself "Away" when you're actually there, as long as that means "Don't bug me," not "I'm too lazy or forgetful to take off my away message."
Mainly, the people who need to be cursed at are the ones for whom "Available" could mean anything from "I'm bored to tears and dying to chat" to "I'm frantically typing the last page of my term paper, which is due in 14 minutes" to "Actually, I left for vacation four days ago." Throw me a bone.
Mainly, the people who need to be cursed at are the ones for whom "Available" could mean anything from "I'm bored to tears and dying to chat" to "I'm frantically typing the last page of my term paper, which is due in 14 minutes" to "Actually, I left for vacation four days ago." Throw me a bone.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Dear IM people
Found on the blog with the most astounding ugliness-to-insightfulness ratio I've ever seen: Dear IM people (link contains profanity).
For the exciting conclusion, click the link above.
Dear people who leave yourselves logged in on instant messenger, but don't have your preferences set to mark you idle/away after 5 or 10 minutes of inactivity, so that it always looks like you're there when you're not:
For the exciting conclusion, click the link above.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Leopard Miscellany
Here are some little-mentioned features I've noticed in OS X 10.5 ("Leopard
"). I read a ton of Leopard previews before its release, and a bunch of reviews after it hit the streets, and I was still surprised by these features. Maybe they'll surprise you, too.
1. Dashboard Stickies can now be moved by grabbing them in any open space, i.e. either above or below the text you've entered. In Tiger, you had to click near or at the top in order to drag them. Did that drive anyone else nuts? (Unfortunately, the default text is still the "better-than-Comic-Sans-but-that's-about-it" Marker Felt.)
2. iChat's tab implementation is awesome. Specifically, I love that it gives you little previews of what's been typed in the inactive tabs, which I didn't see anyone mention in their Leopard (p)reviews:
At first, I was a little bummed that they didn't offer tabs on the bottom of the chat window, which takes up less horizontal space and is how I was using tabs via Chax. But the side-tabs allow you to see many more contacts in one window, and it also makes a perfect space for displaying those white preview bubbles.
3. Another cool iChat tweak is the "Add Buddy..." interface. Instead of browsing your Address Book, which wasn't bad but was slightly confusing the first time you tried it, now you get a nice form that auto-completes using the information stored in Address Book. You can look up a buddy by username or first/last name, assuming you've already added him or her to your Address Book. It also allows you to drop the new buddy right into any group you want. And as always, you can add information or new contacts to either application (iChat or Address Book), and it will instantly change the other application's information. This screenshot doesn't quite do it justice, but it gives you an idea. The "Account Name" field filled in only after I typed the "u" in my last name (there's another Scott A. in my contacts):
One more thing about iChat: it only auto-replies once per chat. Another long overdue change.
4. When dragging a window from one "Space" to another, you can approximate the part of the screen it will land on by dropping it in a particular part of that "Space."
5. iCal got some nice boosts. Aside from the long-overdue elimination of the huge-ass drawer that popped out of the side for event edits, I'm pretty sure they darkened the "current date" square in month view. I'm not 100% certain, but the fact that I can actually see it leads me to believe they did:
Also, the mini-calendars of upcoming months look fantastic:
6. In Safari, when you highlight an unlinked URL, now you can choose to open the link in a new window or tab from the contextual menu, whereas previously you had to open it in the current window or tab. Score!
7. Did you know that you can crop images in Preview now? No need to open iPhoto or Photoshop. I cropped the previous screenshot using Preview, not yet having reinstalled iLife since my "Erase & Install" of Leopard. You can also make basic adjustments to the contrast, saturation, etc. It appears to be the same "Adjust" panel iPhoto uses:
Well, seven seems like a good number. There you have it: a handful of mostly pleasant Leopard surprises. Notice anything else cool? Leave a comment!
"). I read a ton of Leopard previews before its release, and a bunch of reviews after it hit the streets, and I was still surprised by these features. Maybe they'll surprise you, too.1. Dashboard Stickies can now be moved by grabbing them in any open space, i.e. either above or below the text you've entered. In Tiger, you had to click near or at the top in order to drag them. Did that drive anyone else nuts? (Unfortunately, the default text is still the "better-than-Comic-Sans-but-that's-about-it" Marker Felt.)
2. iChat's tab implementation is awesome. Specifically, I love that it gives you little previews of what's been typed in the inactive tabs, which I didn't see anyone mention in their Leopard (p)reviews:
At first, I was a little bummed that they didn't offer tabs on the bottom of the chat window, which takes up less horizontal space and is how I was using tabs via Chax. But the side-tabs allow you to see many more contacts in one window, and it also makes a perfect space for displaying those white preview bubbles.
3. Another cool iChat tweak is the "Add Buddy..." interface. Instead of browsing your Address Book, which wasn't bad but was slightly confusing the first time you tried it, now you get a nice form that auto-completes using the information stored in Address Book. You can look up a buddy by username or first/last name, assuming you've already added him or her to your Address Book. It also allows you to drop the new buddy right into any group you want. And as always, you can add information or new contacts to either application (iChat or Address Book), and it will instantly change the other application's information. This screenshot doesn't quite do it justice, but it gives you an idea. The "Account Name" field filled in only after I typed the "u" in my last name (there's another Scott A. in my contacts):
One more thing about iChat: it only auto-replies once per chat. Another long overdue change.
4. When dragging a window from one "Space" to another, you can approximate the part of the screen it will land on by dropping it in a particular part of that "Space."
5. iCal got some nice boosts. Aside from the long-overdue elimination of the huge-ass drawer that popped out of the side for event edits, I'm pretty sure they darkened the "current date" square in month view. I'm not 100% certain, but the fact that I can actually see it leads me to believe they did:
Also, the mini-calendars of upcoming months look fantastic:
6. In Safari, when you highlight an unlinked URL, now you can choose to open the link in a new window or tab from the contextual menu, whereas previously you had to open it in the current window or tab. Score!
7. Did you know that you can crop images in Preview now? No need to open iPhoto or Photoshop. I cropped the previous screenshot using Preview, not yet having reinstalled iLife since my "Erase & Install" of Leopard. You can also make basic adjustments to the contrast, saturation, etc. It appears to be the same "Adjust" panel iPhoto uses:
Well, seven seems like a good number. There you have it: a handful of mostly pleasant Leopard surprises. Notice anything else cool? Leave a comment!
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Debating The Year of Living Biblically
A great back and forth exchange between A.J. Jacobs, agnostic Jew and author of The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
, and Matt Labash, the potty-mouthed Southern Baptist Weekly Standard columnist.
They are both highly entertaining writers, which makes it worth reading even if you don't care about the subject matter. But the subject matter is wide-ranging and really fascinating: behavior vs. belief, faith vs. doubt, Old Testament vs. New Testament, Jerry Falwell vs. Tinky-Winky, Angie Harmon vs. Jessica Alba, and more. You can read the exchange in six short parts here.
, and Matt Labash, the potty-mouthed Southern Baptist Weekly Standard columnist.They are both highly entertaining writers, which makes it worth reading even if you don't care about the subject matter. But the subject matter is wide-ranging and really fascinating: behavior vs. belief, faith vs. doubt, Old Testament vs. New Testament, Jerry Falwell vs. Tinky-Winky, Angie Harmon vs. Jessica Alba, and more. You can read the exchange in six short parts here.
Two Steps to a Better Leopard
Over the past few days, I upgraded my computer to the latest version of OS X (10.5), commonly known as Leopard. It is great, but this is not a review. (What would be the point of that?) My purpose is much humbler:
Two Simple Steps For Making Leopard Better
First the dock: much has been written about how the new 3D dock was re-imagined to look like a reflective shelf. This was a point of consternation even before Leopard shipped. Possibly at the nudging of a popular Mac blogger, Apple made a different dock for users who place their docks on the side, rather than the bottom, of the screen. But as we all know, people who put their docks on the side of their screen are unnatural. I'm pretty sure there are Levitical laws against it, in fact. So if you want the cleaner, 2D dock without becoming ceremonially unclean, here's the way to do it:
1. Open Terminal. (Use Spotlight or find it in your applications folder.)
2. Get over your fear about Terminal. Yes, this is for nerds. But all you have to do is copy and paste, so don't be scared.
3. Copy the following line, then paste it into terminal and hit return.
defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
4. Now restart the dock by typing this line and hitting return.
killall Dock
There you have it. 2D dock at the bottom. (I'd give a hat tip for this tip, but I've seen it in so many places, I wouldn't know where to give credit.)
The second tip is about the new Leopard feature called "Stacks." In Leopard, anything that lives to the trash can side of the dock divider—items such as your documents folder and downloads folder by default, but anything else you've put there, such as your applications folder—become "Stacks" and as such behave differently than regular folders. Their behavior is also a sore spot for lots of Mac nerds, but the one thing you absolutely must change right away has nothing to do with what happens when you click the Stack. This is a fix for a most bizarre user interface decision, perhaps the strangest thing I've ever seen Apple do.
By default, the stacks look like whatever the first thing in your stack is. So if it's your applications folder, which is sorted alphabetically, there's a good chance it looks like an Address Book icon. If it's your downloads folder, it probably looks like...well, whatever the last thing you downloaded was. Maybe a disk image. Maybe a photo. Who knows?
This is such a turd of an idea that I can't even bring myself to rant about it. Besides, I'm here to help, not complain. The solution is to get an image that looks like what the stack is, not what is inside it, and then rename that image so it forces its way to the top of the list. You could, for example, find an image of an Applications folder, name it 0000.app, and put it in your Applications folder.
But a cleaner, cooler looking solution was provided by a Japanese user, and it's been making its way around the web. It is essentially a set of semi-transparent icons that look like bins. They're named appropriately already, so all you have to do is download them and drag the appropriate icon into your stacks. Then your stacks will have useful visual cues to tell you what they are—instead of deceptive visual clues that not only don't tell you what they are, but in fact tell you they're something they are not. To download the set of icons, go to this page and click "DRAWERS Icon #1." (Hat tip for this trick goes to this person.)
Here's an image of my dock that will show you both tips in action (click to enlarge):
And don't forget that if you haven't upgraded yet, you can buy Leopard from Amazon and line my pockets with untold pennies.
, commonly known as Leopard. It is great, but this is not a review. (What would be the point of that?) My purpose is much humbler:Two Simple Steps For Making Leopard Better
First the dock: much has been written about how the new 3D dock was re-imagined to look like a reflective shelf. This was a point of consternation even before Leopard shipped. Possibly at the nudging of a popular Mac blogger, Apple made a different dock for users who place their docks on the side, rather than the bottom, of the screen. But as we all know, people who put their docks on the side of their screen are unnatural. I'm pretty sure there are Levitical laws against it, in fact. So if you want the cleaner, 2D dock without becoming ceremonially unclean, here's the way to do it:
1. Open Terminal. (Use Spotlight or find it in your applications folder.)
2. Get over your fear about Terminal. Yes, this is for nerds. But all you have to do is copy and paste, so don't be scared.
3. Copy the following line, then paste it into terminal and hit return.
defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
4. Now restart the dock by typing this line and hitting return.
killall Dock
There you have it. 2D dock at the bottom. (I'd give a hat tip for this tip, but I've seen it in so many places, I wouldn't know where to give credit.)
The second tip is about the new Leopard feature called "Stacks." In Leopard, anything that lives to the trash can side of the dock divider—items such as your documents folder and downloads folder by default, but anything else you've put there, such as your applications folder—become "Stacks" and as such behave differently than regular folders. Their behavior is also a sore spot for lots of Mac nerds, but the one thing you absolutely must change right away has nothing to do with what happens when you click the Stack. This is a fix for a most bizarre user interface decision, perhaps the strangest thing I've ever seen Apple do.
By default, the stacks look like whatever the first thing in your stack is. So if it's your applications folder, which is sorted alphabetically, there's a good chance it looks like an Address Book icon. If it's your downloads folder, it probably looks like...well, whatever the last thing you downloaded was. Maybe a disk image. Maybe a photo. Who knows?
This is such a turd of an idea that I can't even bring myself to rant about it. Besides, I'm here to help, not complain. The solution is to get an image that looks like what the stack is, not what is inside it, and then rename that image so it forces its way to the top of the list. You could, for example, find an image of an Applications folder, name it 0000.app, and put it in your Applications folder.
But a cleaner, cooler looking solution was provided by a Japanese user, and it's been making its way around the web. It is essentially a set of semi-transparent icons that look like bins. They're named appropriately already, so all you have to do is download them and drag the appropriate icon into your stacks. Then your stacks will have useful visual cues to tell you what they are—instead of deceptive visual clues that not only don't tell you what they are, but in fact tell you they're something they are not. To download the set of icons, go to this page and click "DRAWERS Icon #1." (Hat tip for this trick goes to this person.)
Here's an image of my dock that will show you both tips in action (click to enlarge):
And don't forget that if you haven't upgraded yet, you can buy Leopard from Amazon
and line my pockets with untold pennies.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Greg Boyd, Osama, and Loving Our Enemies
Greg Boyd, whose writing on the nature of God is "must-read" material (start here
), has posted two very interesting entries to his blog in the past week. They are well worth reading, provocative in the best sense of the word.
The first post is "Washing Osama's Feet." It details the outcry over a conference advertisement poster that depicted Jesus washing Osama Bin Laden's feet.
The second post is "The Worst Heresy Imaginable!" This one is about how the law of love, even and perhaps especially loving our enemies, is the highest calling of any Christian.
Challenging stuff—please give it a look.
), has posted two very interesting entries to his blog in the past week. They are well worth reading, provocative in the best sense of the word.The first post is "Washing Osama's Feet." It details the outcry over a conference advertisement poster that depicted Jesus washing Osama Bin Laden's feet.
The second post is "The Worst Heresy Imaginable!" This one is about how the law of love, even and perhaps especially loving our enemies, is the highest calling of any Christian.
Challenging stuff—please give it a look.
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Saving time
Every time I try to figure out how daylight savings time will affect me, it's like that scene in The Princess Bride where one wine glass is poisoned, and the guy has to try to figure out which one it is. "But you would have known that I knew that you knew, so I can clearly not choose the glass in front of me!"
So it's "fall back, spring ahead," and that's easy enough to remember, but wait—does that mean when I wake up tomorrow at 7:00 a.m., it will be light outside again? Or does it mean that when Abel goes to bed at 8:00 p.m. tomorrow, it won't be dark yet? Or both?
Speaking of Abel, how is this going to affect him? Will he wake up early, or rather when he wakes up at the usual time, will it feel early? Or late? Er...I guess it will feel the same, but the clock will be different. Is it a good or a bad thing that he's up an hour past his usual bedtime because he fell asleep in the car today?
And this is all because of farmers, right? How exactly does this help them? After all, there's still the same number of minutes of daylight per day; no amount of governmental trickery could change that. So why make them change their clocks and all their routines? If it's half as confusing to them as it is to me, it probably costs them more time than it "saves." Of course, I have a master's degree and most of them don't, so it's probably not nearly as confusing to them.
All I want to know is whether and how how much tomorrow is going to suck, or rule. Is that so much to ask? Why is this so hard?
So it's "fall back, spring ahead," and that's easy enough to remember, but wait—does that mean when I wake up tomorrow at 7:00 a.m., it will be light outside again? Or does it mean that when Abel goes to bed at 8:00 p.m. tomorrow, it won't be dark yet? Or both?
Speaking of Abel, how is this going to affect him? Will he wake up early, or rather when he wakes up at the usual time, will it feel early? Or late? Er...I guess it will feel the same, but the clock will be different. Is it a good or a bad thing that he's up an hour past his usual bedtime because he fell asleep in the car today?
And this is all because of farmers, right? How exactly does this help them? After all, there's still the same number of minutes of daylight per day; no amount of governmental trickery could change that. So why make them change their clocks and all their routines? If it's half as confusing to them as it is to me, it probably costs them more time than it "saves." Of course, I have a master's degree and most of them don't, so it's probably not nearly as confusing to them.
All I want to know is whether and how how much tomorrow is going to suck, or rule. Is that so much to ask? Why is this so hard?
Friday, November 02, 2007
Congratulations, Red Sox fans
...you've got this guy on your team:
(AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Now, if that ain't something to be proud of, uh... well... yeah, I guess it's good he has a nice fastball.
(AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Now, if that ain't something to be proud of, uh... well... yeah, I guess it's good he has a nice fastball.
Obsession with great design
John Gruber of Daring Fireball nails it in an article today about why Apple fans are Apple fans. He suggests rightly that "much of what gets chalked up as devotion to/obsession with Apple is, in fact, devotion to/obsession with great design, and there’s an utter dearth of rival PC or handheld gadget makers that value design as Apple does."
It's a short, interesting article—worth clicking through to read.
It's a short, interesting article—worth clicking through to read.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
30 seems like a lot
Saw this ad on Facebook tonight. Being extremely happily married, I don't need to meet any women, of course. But even if I were single, 30+ would seem overwhelming to me.
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