October 2003 Archives

Everyone I know who has an iPod struggles with is car connectivity. There's lots of very imperfect solutions out there, FM broadcasters, cassette tape adapters, but none of them work that well. Someone's finally come up with a solution, the ice>Link:iPod. From their web page:

ice>Link:iPod is the ultimate car kit for your Apple iPod. iPod audio is routed through your head unit's CD changer port and keypresses including FF & RW are passed from your head unit (and steering wheel controls in suitably-equipped vehicles) to your iPod resulting in safe control of your iPod while driving.

Combine it with a nice holder for the iPod and you'd have a great solution for listening in the car.

News story of the day:

Girls pummel man who exposed himself

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (Reuters) -- A man described by authorities as a known sexual predator was chased through the streets of South Philadelphia by an angry crowd of Catholic high school girls, who kicked and punched him after he was tackled by neighbors, police said Friday.

Rudy Susanto, 25, who had exposed himself to teen-age girls on as many as seven occasions outside St. Maria Goretti School, struck again on Thursday just as students were being dismissed, police said.

But this time, a group of girls in school uniforms angrily confronted Susanto with help from some neighbors, police said.

When Susanto tried to run, more than 20 girls chased him down the block. Two men from the neighborhood caught him and the girls took their revenge.

"The girls came and started kicking him and punching him, so I wasn't going to stop them," neighbor Robert Lemons told The Philadelphia Inquirer. [CNN]

And the lesson here is: don't mess with those Catholic high school girls. They're nothing but trouble!

So I'm thinking of showing some anime this weekend. Anyone wanna come by and watch tomorrow night (sat)? If there is enough interest I'll plan something.

First, a little background. With IPF, your lungs don't process oxygen real well, which means that any form of exertion can leave you gasping for air. One thing that helps make things easier is being in shape. The more in shape you are, the less oxygen your body needs to get things done. As a result, one treatment they recommend is something called pulmonary rehabilitation. I'd gone through it around one and a half years ago and had kept up on exercising since, but just not with the same intensely and as a result I'd slowly slipped into worse and worse shape. So Last month when I saw my pulmonologist, I asked about going again and he agreed that is was a great idea and set things up for me to go again.

Before rehab starts, I have to go through a few tests just to get a baseline for how in shape I am and make sure that my body can handle exercise. The one I like the least, the pulmonary stress test, was yesterday. It isn't that the test is that bad, it's just kind of uncomfortable and annoying. First they wire you up to monitor your heart. Then you climb onto a stationary bike and hook you up to the oxygen. This entails them first putting this thing your head to hold the oxygen tube in place while you are cycling. There's a part that is a band that goes around your head, and then a piece of metal comes out from it to hold the oxygen tube right at your mouth. Next they put a clamp on your nose, so you can only breath through your mouth. You get a clip on your finger to read your oxygen, and they take your blood pressure. Now it's time for the actual test to begin.

Now you start pedaling. You first start off slow, with almost no tension, for three minutes to warm up. As you pedal, they also take your blood pressure every minute and ask how you are doing. After three minutes of pedaling, the tension on the bike slowly increases. And then you just pedal until you are either out of breath or your legs can't do it anymore, then they cut the tension and you cool down and it is over. Then they rip all the pads off for the heart monitor and you can go home.

I did pretty well yesterday. I went for 8 minutes and actually wasn't too wiped out by the end of it. Though, afterwards I felt ravenously hungry and had the munchies bigtime. I wonder if they are related some :). Now, I'm off to finish my coffee and take a nap.

Last last night I read on a mailing list that Hal Clement had died, and I found confirmation of it this morning. Somewhere I have a book of his stories published as 'The Best of Hal Clement'. I probably still have it sitting around in a box someplace. But I really enjoyed his SF. So here's a big thank you going out to him for his work.

Hal Clement Dies

Harry Clement Stubbs, who wrote science fiction as Hal Clement, died in his sleep earlier today, October 29, 2003, at his home in Milton, Massachusetts.

Born in 1922, Clement was a high school school teacher whose fiction gained a reputation as quintessential hard SF -- science fiction firmly based on established physics, chemistry, and astronomy. His novels often depicted highly imagined alien worlds; the most famous was Mission of Gravity, set on a heavy, fast-spinning planet where the force of gravity is several times greater at the poles than at the equator. His last novel, Noise, was published earlier this year. [Locus online]

The SFWA has has a bit more information on him, as does the Wikipedia (updated already amazingly). I may have to pick up his most recent book.

You'd think it would be common sense. You don't stash your drugs where something could happen to them. Or someone might easily stumble upon them.

Boys and moms OD on ecstasy mash and tea

October 29 2003 at 01:45PM

London - Two four-year-old boys and their 21-year-old mothers unsuspectingly consumed up to 40 ecstasy tablets hidden in a kettle when one of the mothers used it to make tea and instant mashed potatoes, Britain's Daily Mail reported on Wednesday.

The boyfriend of one of the mothers, who are twin sisters, was to appear in court on Wednesday near Manchester in the north of England charged with possession of controlled drugs.

The four victims, Patricia and Joanna Wilson and their sons Leon Wilson and Nathan Read, were taken to hospital after sharing a snack at teatime on Monday. [IoL]

Here's another tip. Don't store your pot in the fireplace or the oven.

Tonight was Wednesday night and I was opening down at the club. It went pretty well, but I felt kinda wiped out by it. I think I'm a little overtired and stressed. I've got a stress test I have to do tomorrow before starting in on pulmonary rehab again. They hook you up to sensors of various kinds and have you ride a stationary bike. I'm not looking forward to it at all. It's just kind of uncomfortable and I am way out of shape. And then I have to run over to see my therapist right after that.

On the plus side, I ran into an old acquaintance tonight that I hadn't seen in ages. So I got to catch up with her and talk about lung stuff. I'm sure I rambled on a bit too long about all that fun stuff. So all in all it was a good night, even if the guest DJ hadn't shown up by the time I left.

I'll post more about last night tomorrow after I've slept.

First we had the War on Drugs, then the War on Terror. Next up, the War on Pr0n. Because it's not like there are any other more pressing issues in the country, right?

Yogi Berra: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." [Quotes of the Day]

retroCRUSH has a list of the 100 scariest movie moments. Some of these are scenes definitely scared the crap out of me when I saw them, now I'm trying to think of things that I think should have been in there that aren't. Though I think #90 should be higher up. Some of those kids movies had scary scenes. I always used to hide behind the couch when watching The Wizard of Oz

I was looking at all the CDs I've been ripping and have decided on a new project I want to try. I want to set up some kind of streaming server that randomly grabs music from my playlist and broadcasts it. Then I want to make a simple web interface so that I can 'request' songs. So while it's random I can just request a song and it will show up within the next 30 min, kind of like a custom radio station.

Of course the next thing to do would be to find a way to share this with friends. You could share bandwidth costs with a few people and only let those people in. And only give those people access to the web server for requests. Have everyone contribute music to it so that you have a nice big collection of stuff. It would also have the bonus of exposing everyone to things they may not have heard of before. The thing I wouldn't want to do is just have it open to anyone. Once you do that things like bandwidth cost becomes a much bigger issue.

As I think about this I'm realizing that there are all kinds of wacky things you could do. You could have it so that people could give a song a thumbs down, and if 80% of the users give it a thumbs down it doesn't get played (and the thumbs down time out after like a month).

Almost done re-ripping all my CDs. It looks like it will take two storage boxes to hold them all. Not too bad actually. It just means I'm going to send some stuff down to CT with my parents next time they stop in. The other bonus? I've got an extra shelf worth of space for DVDs, so everything fits again now (now I just need to update my dvd page).

I don't think I'll ever be able to think of cows being milked the same way after seeing this. And I just might have some very odd dreams or nightmares.

My next big project is to set up Quicktime Streaming Server so that I can start doing DJ sets online again. Since getting out to the clubs is a bit more difficult for me these days. Of course I also need to get a new mix done. I just need to pester a friend of mine to let me use his Final Scratch for a few days.

Mark Pilgrim has a nice multipage writeup of What's New in OS X 10.3 Panther. I've read through the first few pages and it's a nice writeup of the features. If you're still wondering and wondering what's different this is probably a good read for you.

One of everyone's favorite popup advertisers is filing for bankruptcy.

X10 files for Chapter 11

The company that only last year billed itself as the world's largest online advertiser has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

X10 Wireless Technology, which marketed its Net cameras through a vast campaign of Web pop-under advertisements, made the filing on Tuesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Washington.

...

Advertisement Banners is by far the company's largest creditor, to the tune of $3.9 million, according to the filing. X10 owes Los Angeles law firm Sheppard Mullin Richter Ham $667,412; Microsoft $459,264; Yahoo $346,128; Google $69,984; and America Online $55,413. It also owes $95,047 to Overture Services, which was recently acquired by Yahoo. [ZDnet]

Available now from suncoast.com.

You know you want it. It's only $199.99.

Niels Bohr: "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." [Quotes of the Day]

From someone's LJ I read (I can't remember whose), and in a blatant effort to generate more traffic, a link to a article at viceland.com that hopes to find out which is better for your skin, cum or moisturizer. I wonder if I could use this as a pickup line.

Today on my way home I got a chance to listen to This American Life on NPR. While I don't get to listen to it as often I'd like, it almost always affects me in some way when I listen to it. For those of you who are not familiar with the show, here's a brief description of it from their web page:

One of the problems with our show from the start has been that whenever we try to describe it in a sentence or two, it sounds awful. It's a bunch of stories--some are documentaries, some are fiction, some are something else. Each week we choose a theme and invite different writers and performers to contribute items on the theme. This doesn't sound like something we'd want to listen to on the radio--and it's our show.In the early days of the show, in frustration, we'd sometimes tell public radio program directors that it's basically just likeCar Talk. Except just one guy hosting. And no cars.

It's a weekly show. It's an hour. Its mission is to document everyday life in this country. We sometimes think of it as a documentary show for people who normally hate documentaries. A public radio show for people who don't necessarily care for public radio. [This American Life]

A few years ago I was swinging by McDonalds early on a Saturday afternoon and had the show on. I'd just finished listening to a story about Dishwasher Pete, when the Ira Glass, the host, interviewed John Perry Barlow. At that time I really had no idea who he was, but as I listened to his story I found myself completely drawn in, and by the end of it I was in tears. I was a complete wreck. All this while sitting in line waiting for to get to the drive-thru window. I'm sure the girl working there must have wondered what the heck was wrong with me when I pulled up. I remember pulling into a parking spot and just taking a quiet moment to collect my thoughts (You can listen to it here). Other times the show has had me laughing so hard I thought I was going to drive off the road (two words: flaming squirrel).

Today I got to hear John Perry Barlow again on a repeat, and it affected me almost as much as it did the first time I heard it, which inspired me to write something about the show. Sometimes the power of radio still surprises me. If you haven't listened to the show before you should give it a try. It's one of the best things on the radio these days. And they have most of their shows available to listen to on their web site in realaudio (I recommend starting out listening to the show that has the squirrel story). Or, you can get a better copy from Audible.com.

Phew. After a bit of bashing I got my scripts for my moblog back up and running. As things compile more cleanly in Panther I'll replace the older versions of things I'm running. But for now it works well enough to have pictures showing up again. Yay!

Way back in July of 2002 Jon Udell wrote an article over on webservices.xml.com titled Control Your Identity or Microsoft and Intel Will that covered setting up your own mail client certificate. I remember liking the idea of digitally signing email and looking into getting one at the time, but I was using a mail program that didn't support S/MIME at all. Fast forward to now. Apple releases Panther and the mail program supports S/MIME. After a bit of fiddling around I figured out how exactly to get a certificate and got it all set up. It was a bit confusing since I wasn't sure if I was doing things right at all. Today someone pointed me at a page that has directions for setting it up, accomplishing what I'd planned to to all along. So, if you're interested in setting one up, you should check out Using encryption and digital signatures in Mail. It's actually not too difficult to set up with those instructions.

I actually think that Apple should offer secure certs for .Mac customers. It would be a kickass feature.

Being a bit of an anime geek I have a bunch of soundtrack CDs from Japan. iTunes handles them just wonderfully. Even CDDB seems to have pretty good results (many times in japanese). But every once in a while I run into a CD where the information in CDDB is in some strange character set that I can't identify. When this happens I usually check over on FreeDB.org to see if they have better information (which they do much of the time). Today I discovered some great scripts for managing my track listings and looking them up on FreeDB.

Dave's AppleScripts for iTunes has tons of useful scripts. I found one called something like FreeDB to iTunes via Safari that worked amazingly. It pulls the tracklisting from a FreeDB page and pastes it into iTunes.

Though what I'd really like is for iTunes to support using FreeDB, since they seem to be a big fan of open source projects.

Walt Mossberg had a nice article in the WSJ recommending Panther.

If You're Getting Tired Of Fighting Viruses, Consider a New Mac

By WALTER S. MOSSBERG

For consumers and small businesses, the burden of using Microsoft Windows just keeps getting heavier. After growing easier to use for several years, Windows PCs have taken a giant step backward because they are so insecure.

Windows is riddled with security flaws, and new ones turn up regularly. It is increasingly susceptible to all kinds of viruses, malicious Trojan horse programs and spyware. As a result, Windows users have been forced to spend more of their time and money supporting their computers.

Almost every week, they are supposed to install patches to the already patchy operating system to plug these security holes. And every few months, it seems, Windows users must quake in fear as some horrible new virus is created by the international criminal class that constantly targets Windows.

But for consumers and small businesses, there's a simple way out of this endless morass: Buy an Apple Macintosh computer. There are no viruses on the Macintosh's excellent two-year-old operating system, called OS X. And the Mac is a terrific computer -- as good as, or better than, Windows for the typical computing tasks important to mainstream users.

It isn't impossible to write a virus for the Mac. The system isn't impenetrable. Mac users should still use antivirus software. But any virus or security problem that does emerge on the Mac is likely to be much less serious than the Windows security crisis. "Mac OS X hasn't had any viruses since the OS was launched," says Bill Rosenkrantz, the head of Macintosh products at Symantec, the big antivirus firm. "It's more difficult to attack the Apple system than Windows." [Personal Technology from The Wall Street Journal]

It's a nice article. I do like that he does say that the Mac isn't impossible to write viruses for. But a lot of its user level security comes from not letting a user change major system files without putting in a password. In some ways that is the core of the issue. The Microsoft/PC world is one where people are used to there being one user. This has changed some with things like the NT and server product lines (and I think maybe XP too?), but even then so many people I know are logged in as administrator all the time.

OS X, with its roots in unix, is designed as a multi-user system. And people know by now that you just don't do your day to day work as 'root' (the name of the primary admin user under unix). Because that's just dangerous and you can do really bad things to yourself (ask any sysadmin for their best stupid thing they did as root story, we've all got one).

Also, I liked that Mossberg mentioned that the Mac and OS X may not be for everyone. This I certainly believe. I was in the Apple store a week or two ago and some woman wanted to buy an iBook because she'd been told they were great. But she had to run a few Windows programs on it that weren't available for the mac so would have to get VirtualPC. Even though it would have meant losing a sale, I do think the sales person should have listened to what kind of software it was and seen if there was a good mac equiv and also how much she was going to use this software. If it's what she's going to be running 90% of the time, then she should really go the PC route. On the other hand, the Mac is a lot more compatible with the Windows world than most people think. You can connect to networked drives on a Windows box, join a Windows Domain, you can use Word. And there is a ton of software out there produced by smaller developers that just plain rocks.

Anyways, be prepared for a bit more Apple geeking from me in the next few days. I'm sure there will be lots of interesting news as more people start using Panther.

Even though I'm currently not working, weekends still seem to feel like weekends. Mostly because there are actually people around. This weekend I'm working on ripping/boxing up more CDs. I've got one box full already, pretty cool! I'm also taking the time to go and think of interesting playlists. For instance, I have one that picks 50 random tracks that I haven't listened to since ripping. And then I have one that's recently played tracks that I haven't rated. This means I get to also go through and rank things and recheck their tag information as I listen to them.

Also, at the Apple store last night I grabbed the Sony cassette adapter they sell so I can listen in the car. It seems to work pretty well. At least it is much better than the FM tuner thingy I had before. Now I want to track down this cool doohicky from Belkin to hold my iPod.

Also, TechTV has been touring around the US with a home technology show that has been showing up in various malls. Today they're in Worcester, so I'm thinking of driving out to take a look, since I love seeing new tech stuff. I actually really want to see any HDTV stuff they may have. And Morgan and Cat are going to be there. Oh yeah, and Adam too (but he doesn't have a blog. Now, if I could just get my moblog code working everything would rock. I'm heading out around 1:15ish for this and will get back when I get back.

So I turn 35 in just over a week and I'm really not quite sure how I feel about it. I didn't have a hard time with turning 30, so didn't expect to think much about aging till I hit 40. But I've been finding myself thinking about turning 35 a lot. It's actually been bugging me quite a bit. It feels like much more of a big step than turning 30. I'm sure everything will work out okay, but I am definitely fighting the whole getting old thing. I'm sure there's a chunk of it that comes from various health issues. I have definitely been more aware of my own mortality of late.

And, to add a bit of lightness to this post, and in the spirit of internet begging, here's some things I'd love to get for my birthday:

• A Shonen Jump Subscription
• A RadioShark
• Gift Certificate at the Apple iTunes Music Store
• Anything from my Amazon.com wish list
• Anything from my ThinkGeek wish list
• Either a new 15" Powerbook G4 with a superdrive or a Powermac G5 (with a superdrive)

I'm still trying to figure out just what I'm going to do a week from Sunday to celebrate this year. I'm hoping to make it as childish as I can though. I hate growing up.

Been a kind of unmotivated few days. Though am slowly getting things done. I find myself distracted by my CD re-ripping a lot. I think once that project is done my brain may reset some. Of course, then I have my old picture scanning project. I'm wondering how I'm going to fare this winter. I kind of hate it when it starts to get too cold. It can be the perfect trigger for coughing.

Tonight I'm going to be uber geeky and swing by the Apple store for the release of Panther. Anyone else in the Boston area hitting the Cambridge store?

Snow? What the hell! Snow in October is just not allowed. I'll sue!

Since there's now a fairly easy way for people on Windows to listen to music in AAC format, I've decided to re-encode all my mixes in that format. So, gone is the mp3, and in is the AAC. To listen you can download iTunes from Apple (though I think there are also plugins for Winamp also). You can grab the mixes on the DJ page as usual.

Yesterday, Emilily and I took a long excursion out to western MA to check out the leaves and visit a few locations (I'll do a write up with pictures tonight hopefully). But on the way down to Hartford to have dinner at my parent's we passed this building in Springfield. Of course now I'm curious as to if the building is an old jail or something. I think it would be so cool to own a jail. You could re-model it and rent out the space to people. Imagine having an art studio there? Or maybe a dance club. The possibilities are endless! I'm assuming jails must be pretty expensive though, so I don't think I could afford it.

From the mind of the great Halsted, this week's Sunday Suck-All (to make up for not remembering to post the Friday Fuck-All). The theme this week is petty, so here goes.

1. Name something petty you look for in a mate. Likes cheesy old TV shows.
2. Name something petty you have picked a fight over. Being late to a movie. One of the few times I fought with my ex-gf it was over her being late to a movie. And she couldn't stop laughing at me because I never seem to get mad about anything.
3. Name something petty you want to change in the world. Hot Dogs and Hot Dog Buns should come in standard matching amounts.
4. Name something petty you want to change in yourself. Better Lungs! (is that petty? hmm.)
5. Name something petty you would like to change about someone you know. You are allowed to keep his/her identity secret. That they didn't have that magic ability to always call when I can't get to the phone.

Oh well, I'm not sure how petty some of those are, but there you go.

If you're running OS X, you should hop on over to Ambrosia Software and check out iSeek. You know how Safari has that nice Google search field up in the corner. Well, iSeek gives you a search field up on your menu bar. And you can define any of a number of different search services in it. Type something in, hit enter and it brings up the query in your default web browser. There's also a nice key-command to jump to it no matter what you are doing. I've been playing with it for a few and I have to say I really like it.

Mark Twain: "The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." [Quotes of the Day]

I just haven't been feeling that inspired to write much for the last few days. But, I feel that changing a little bit. Right now I'm installing Panther Server on my B&W G3 to give it a test spin. The sysadmin side is pretty excited about this release. Apple's using a lot of the tools that I tend to install on unix systems when I set them up (like postfix and apache for instance), and supposedly it's with a nice little GUI interface. I'll be sure to report some on it in a few days. Also, if you're a Mac owner I highly recommend you grab a copy of Panther when it comes out this week. I have to say it's a pretty kickass update. Expose is now the thing I can't see living without.

Tomorrow I'm off to do a bit of leaf peeping, along with checking out my old high school, which tends to look beautiful this time of year (well, heck, it's almost always beautiful out there). I may see if any of my old teachers are around.

Ever wonder what kids today would think about the video games we grew up with? Well, the folks over at EGM decided to find out. They showed kids games like Pong and Donkey Kong and the E.T. game. Some of the best comments are in response to Donkey Kong.

Tim: Mario dies way too easy. Oh, grab the umbrella. Those are cool. Unfashionable, gay, but cool. Oh, 300 points. That's it? All you get is points? That's lame. Can't you do something with the umbrella?

Tim: They just put totally random stuff here for points. Oh, you've got an umbrella. You've got a purse.

John: Watch out, Tim—fire. It's smarter than you think.

Tim: It's strange that fire moves in this and has eyes. Oh no, the fire's coming. It's going to eat you. Are these barrels alive, too? Everything's alive. And Donkey Kong's mouth is made of pluses. Look: Plus, plus, plus, minus. They're trying to teach you math by brainwashing you.

Brian: How can you die from a fall of a whopping 3 inches?

Kirk: He's only an inch tall. He's a little short fat guy who eats way too much pizza.

EGM: Who's that chick Mario is rescuing up there?

Brian: It's Princess Peach.

Kirk: It's a hooker.

Niko: She looks cut in half.

Tim: Oh wow—she's one of those pole dancers.

[EGM]

One other cool feature in the iTunes music store. Celebrety playlists. So you can see Dave Brubeck's playlist, or Stings, or any of a number of different artists.

First Thing. iPod. 336,000 sold last quarter. Market share is 31%. Today they are making it even better. Voice Recording. Device from Belkin. You can record 670 hours on a 40 GB ipod. You can also use it for photo syncing. Syncs with iPhoto. And there's a new iPod ad comimg out tonight.

Next, iTunes. Talks about what they've done with it. "It's good karma." They've sold over 13 million songs in less than 6 months. Sell around 600,000 songs per week. Nielsen says iTunes market share was 70% of all legal music downloads last week. Now, the next generation of iTunes. New features:

• More Music. 400,000 by end of the month.
• Signed up over 200 independent labels.
• Audiobooks on iTunes music store from Audible.
• Over 5000 books.
• Includes Public Radio
• Gift Certificates
• Allowance - You can set up an allowance for your kids.
• One more feature... that people never thought would happen until hell froze over...
• iTunes now runs on Windows. Same interface and everything.
• "Probably the best windows ap ever written."
• Runs on xp and 2000. All the same features as the mac version.

He gives a demo on Windows. It's so funny watching Steve. I have to admit he's a great salesman. Even if sometimes I think he sounds like someone on an infomercial. (but wait... there's more...)

Right now I'm posting from one of the iMacs at the Apple store while I wait for the show to start. There's a few people here, though not as many as for things like MacWorld. If I'm able to split my attention I'll post updates as I see them.

It's like a big PDA for kids, except it's for games. It's the Pixter 2.0. This thing looks so damn cool. It's even got wireless so they can talk with other Pixters. The page over on Amazon has a bit more information on it. I want to get one for my nephew I think. And maybe one for me too.

How come they couldn't have keen toys like this when I was a kid?

You may not have realized it, but I was sitting two cars back for about five minutes before you even pulled up. I was waiting for the person who pulled out to put her stuff in the car and then pulled up closer, at the same time that you pulled over to try and get into that spot. I was not trying to be an asshole. Though you wouldn't even open your window to discuss it. You were just content to back up until you were just about touching my car and sit there.

And I wasn't even going to play the disabled card. Even though I'd been trying to find a spot within a block of me for an hour and was starting to get a bit frustrated. Ugs, I hate street cleaning day. It brings out the best in us. And I forgot how hellish it can be when school is in session.

Be careful who you shake hands with. They may be a penis snatcher.

Suspected Penis Snatcher Beaten to Death

BANJUL, Gambia (Reuters) - A 28-year-old man accused of stealing a man's penis through sorcery was beaten to death in the West African country of Gambia, police said.

A police spokesman told Reuters that Baba Jallow was killed Thursday by about 10 people in the town of Serekunda, nine miles from the capital Banjul.

Reports of penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, with purported victims claiming that alleged sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear in order to extort cash in the promise of a cure.[Yahoo! News]

The report goes on to say that because of this many men in Serekunda are afraid to shake hands. Now the big question is this. Can't they just like, look and see that it isn't really gone?

Scoble asks "Why do Bloggers prefer Macs?" and offers a few different ideas.

So, I've theorized a few reasons why BloggerCon attendees overwhelmingly were Mac users.

1. Corporate culture. (The early days at Apple and Microsoft and why it matters even today).
2. Attendees came from certain self-selected niches. (Press, creatives, academics).
3. The "think different" factor (Apple vs. Microsoft marketing).
4. Apple's "sharing" culture (donations to schools).

[The Scobleizer Weblog]

I actually think there's one other factor. The four above are some of it. But there are some other things going on. First, OS X and its Unix roots. This was one of the things that initially attracted me. I come from the Unix world initially and I was really curious about what Apple was doing. At this point I've been immensely happy with what they've done. This is probably the second most stable computer I've owned. The first being an old MSDOS box I had years ago. OS X has attracted other people like me. I know a lot of sysadmins who have them now. It's like having a portable workstation with you that has all the tools you're used to. It's also familiar to anyone who's been doing web stuff on a unix box running Apache. It even comes with apache all set to go.

I think Apple is going to start to turn things around a bit. I don't think they will ever necessarily be as big as MS. I don't think they need to be. But I do think you're going to see more and more people looking at Macs as a real option instead of just something for graphics people.

Be prepared. For the next couple of weeks I'm sure there will be lots of computing news about Panther, the next version of OS X. For those of you who are running Jaguar (OS X 10.2) and wondering if this update is worth the $129 pricetag, I have to give a big big YES.

So what's so great about it? Even though it's just going from 10.2 to 10.3 Apple has really crammed a lot into this release. Now there's a lot of stuff on their list that I think should have been there to begin with, but there's a lot of other stuff there too. One thing they seem to be doing is paying attention to the unix world. Here's just some of the apps that i've noticed on OS X client (some of these were there before I believe, but I know others weren't.):

• fetchmail
• procmail
• postfix
• python
• ruby
• tcl

One feature I've been liking is in Mail.app's support of S/MIME. I now have a certificate and sign all my emails with it. I've even tried out the encryption features of it and it's pretty keen. The other is Expose. Expose is a program for working lots of windows on your desktop (read the above link for a much better explaination than I could give). When I first read about it, I thought it sounded a little unimpressive, like just another kind of application switcher. It that, but it's probably one of the best ones I've used, it's just too cool.

For a roundup of a bunch of other cool things, check out this article over at O'Reilly's MacDevCenter about 10 cool in Panther.

I'd like to send a big THANK YOU out to my friend Emilily (btw, her most recent post about school is great). Yesterday she came over and helped me clean and do laundry in exchange for dinner and taxi service from me. I hate asking for help, but can cope with it a bit more when I can offer something in return.

Also, a secondary THANKS goes out to Ethan, cause he helped out immensely by giving her a lift home cause I was almost falling asleep on the couch after the movie.

I'm still alive. I haven't gotten 'the call'. I've just been busy dealing with real life. I'm hoping to have a bit more time this weekend to post because right now I have safari open with a whole bunch of things I want to post about.

Babe Ruth: "I have only one superstition. I touch all the bases when I hit a home run." [Quotes of the Day]

Seen over on The Shifted Librarian, a site with some of the coolest pictures of carved pumpkins from the folks over at ExtremePumpkins.com. Some of them are genius.

(Here's the first in some semi-random thoughts that have been running around in my head since BloggerCon.)

The blogging world has many different levels of technical expertise. You've got bloggers who are programmers, teachers, lawyers, writers, kids and doctors. The only thing they really have in common is that they feel like writing things and just throwing them out to the world to read. Unfortunately, the tools aren't always the easiest for people to work with. I was talking to Jenny Levine during the sunday's aggregator session and showed her I was using NetNewsWire and she mentioned that her mom (I think) had tried to use it and had a hard time with it. At first I was a bit confused by this. I've been using NNW for a while and find it quite easy and intuitive. But then again, I know how all this stuff works. I know what a news feed is, I know what to look for to find it. For people who don't use this stuff as much a lot of this may be a mystery.

I think one big issue is that blogging comes from from the technical world. As a result, many of the tools are functional but not necessarily user friendly. I've found that I am much more willing to deal with slightly kludgy ways of doing things when a technology still isn't that mainstream. Take RSS for instance. If a person who is new to blogging sees a page with the orange xml icon they're not going to have any idea what it is. If they click on it, they may or may not see something useful depending on the browser they are using. Some aggregators require you to put in the url to the RSS feed, some will look for a link to the feed in the home page if a web site's URL is used. Radio offers a mechanism to subscribe to feeds that have the little xml coffee cup icon. Less technically savvy people tend to get confused when having all these options. I actually like the way Radio handles it a lot. And I think it wouldn't be difficult to code support for something like that into most aggregators, if you can get the various developers to agree that this is a good idea (and that's a whole other topic for later). For me I think that a lot of these tools are quite good, but I do realize that they aren't always that obvious to other people who aren't as into computers as I am.

I'll give one more quick example. Radio Userland. For the beginner, it isn't too hard to set up. You run the program, register, and you've got your own blog that is hosted at Userland. The problem comes when you decide you want to personalize your page more. I think Radio's biggest weakness is how it handles blog templates. You end up needing to work on a number of different files to change your home page. There's the main template, that is used for everything but the home page. Then there's the Home page template. Then within each of those templates you have day templates. And then there are item templates which format the individual posts. Radio is quite powerful, at its heart is a pretty neat CMS system. But I think it is just too much for most people. Most would get a lot more out of something more simple.

One thing I'm always afraid to do is underestimate users. I've been a sysadmin and done user support for ages and they constantly surprise me. So I'm also wondering: Is this really a big deal? Are things good enough as they are?

Btw, if anyone wants a copy of the music that was playing on Friday night at the Hong Kong let me know. My mixes are down at the moment, but I can make them available fairly easily.

I've been writing a bunch of random thoughts in my outliner about stuff that's been percolating since BloggerCon. There were so many very smart people there and so many ideas flowing around it was almost overwhelming at times. As a result it's taken me a few days to get some of my thoughts in order. The first post will be showing up in about an hour and is some random thoughts about blogging tools in general. Then I'll have another one about passion and egos (that hopefully won't ruffle any feathers).

Disclaimer. I'm writing a lot of this standpoint from someone who is a fairly technical person, but not really a programmer. I'm fairly unix/OS X-centric these days, so while I'm aware of some of the blogging tools for windows I'm not THAT familiar with them. Oh, and I'm lazy, so I like blog tools that let me be lazy.

I just got in from bringing my parents to the airport. They're going to France for the week and were leaving from Boston. It sounds like they've got quite an amazing trip planned. As a result though, I've been busy most of the day. But now that I'm finally home I'll have a chance to catch up on reading news and blogs and maybe make a post or two.

I decided to head home after lunch instead of heading back to BloggerCon. My parents are coming up tomorrow and I'm taking them to the airport so I need to get my car cleaned out a little bit more and take care of some things that I won't have time to tomorrow. If people are doing any kind of dinner tonight I may try and head out to something.

I've also started writing up some thoughts that may or may not become an actual essay about BloggerCon and some of the stuff I observed there. Overall I think it was a worthwhile weekend, but there were parts of it that for me were a little bit weak. Though this was also the first event like this, so some of that is to be expected.

I crawled out of bed this morning with just enough time to swing by Dunkin Donuts for a large coffee and to make it to Halley's Session. The session was really great, though the part of it that I found really interesting was the whole issue of how much control your employer should have over what you do in private.

Currently I'm in Jon Udell's session on aggregators. It's pretty interesting. Lots of good ideas. I may publish some of my notes on it later. And right now we're talking on IRC about where to get lunch.

William James: "The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it." [Quotes of the Day]

I'll have more to post later, but I mostly enjoyed things. There were some slow bits in the middle, but it was an interesting look into how other people use blogs. Big thanks to Heath for carrying my laptop bag back to the car, it was an immense help. Also, check out his blog for some good transcripts from today. I'll be back after the dinner I'm going to (mmm Dali), hopefully with some more pictures.

From CNN:

President Bush pens a poem

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Laura Bush says her husband is a poet even if, uh, Americans don't know it. [CNN]

Narutaru has definitely taken the place as one of the most fucked up shows I've ever seen. The show is just so strange and brutal. I just saw episode 11 last night, and am hoping to catch 13 tonight. Episode 12 was also one of the few anime episodes I've seen where I felt really really uncomfortable and kind of queasy while watching.

(Crossposted from my anime blog.)

(Also corrected. Ep 12 was the one that messed with my brain)

We're in the middle of the education panel right now. It's pretty interesting, though a lot of this just isn't quite as interesting to me. In other news, the networking is still screwed up due to someone having internet connection sharing turned on over on their PC. It is nicely intercepting DHCP requests so that I don't even hit the Harvard network. Thankfully someone else has gotten an airport network running.

And if I find the person with the DHCP server I'm gonna give them a good talking to.

As I'm waiting for things to start I'm browsing around my site to make sure things are working okay. I noticed the last ten searches for my site looked like this:

• gunparade march download
• "tiny snow sugar fairy"...
• adam's family tv pictures
• ergonomic keyboard pirates
• flash animation fucked up
• badgers mushrooms snake
• alfredo "big blue disk"
• galaxy angel episode pict...
• fucked up animation

I like that people are hitting my site by searching for "fucked up animation".

There's been an interesting set of articles over on ICv2.com about anime being sold at large chain stores.

The first post about it was last month with an article about anime at Best Buy. The author felt that this signaled the end of the specialty retailer. This prompted a number of posts from people discussing the issue. In the end what it is really showing is the power of some of these large chain stores.

When a vendor sells a Sailor Moon box set (take your pick) to Best Buy and they RETAIL the $149.99 box set at $98.99 (my local price), I cannot compete with them with a net cost of $93.00.  If I have to offer to sell it the item at a loss (yes, a loss after all carrying costs are attached) then why on earth would I WANT to sell their product.    Pricing a $150.00 SRP item at 98.99 turns the perceived value of that item to $98.99 and makes us look like criminals when we try to charge SRP.  We have to carry most of these type items to maintain an edge in overall selection, but if Mike and/or Media Blasters honestly believes that they could compete in their market under similar circumstances, then they should wake up. [ICv2 Talk Back - Daniel McAbee]

For me this is something that is about more than anime. It's about supporting smaller local businesses.When I buy my anime from Tokyo Kid in Harvard Square. Yes, they pretty much sell everything at list price, but they also have a selection that blows away just about every chain place. They also have more anime related stuff, an extensive collection of soundtracks, rentals, toys, etc. And they know me when I go in and will suggest things to me based on stuff they know I watch (and they offer me water if I'm coughing a lot that day). In the end they're usually the first choice for me if I can get in there easily. Here's hoping they stay in business a long time.

And one last note about places like Best Buy. Their selection is mediocre. I have browsed through their selection a few times and it always seems really spotty to me, like they don't pay attention when they don't have all the DVDs for a series. Blah.

So things start up in a bit. I was exhausted last night so I crashed early (or maybe that's my body just wanting to get on a normal schedule). Went to a get together at the Hong Kong last night for people who were already in town for BloggerCon. Got to meet Adam Curry, which was neat. It's so weird seeing and meeting some of these people who I've read about snippets of things in their lives. And I left early because I had a horrible headache.

I'll be online from the conference and I'm thinking of turning on my web cam, since I haven't in a while.

Does anyone out there have a CD of my mix Spring? i can't seem to find my copy of it and I was looking for someone who had a CD of it that I burnt that I could copy.

Seen over on a friend's LJ, here's a link to The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae). From the abstract:

On 5 June 1995 an adult male mallard ( Anas platyrhynchos ) collided with the glass façade of the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam and died. An other drake mallard raped the corpse almost continuously for 75 minutes. Then the author disturbed the scene and secured the dead duck. Dissection showed that the rape-victim indeed was of the male sex. It is concluded that the mallards were engaged in an ‘Attempted Rape Flight’ that resulted in the first described case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard.

Last night Emilily and I went to see Under the Tuscan Sun. I have to say it was really good. I didn't really know much about it going into it, but had heard that it had gotten amazing reviews. I give it a definitely thumbs up. The other cool thing is we went to the cool fancy movie theater. It's got a bar and a restaurant, and if you order your food at the bar they'll deliver it into the movie theatre. It was kind of odd sitting in nice seats, drinking a beer, having a buffalo chicken wrap brought to my seat and then watching the movie.

I was walking around today and kept thinking of taking pictures to post, and got an idea. I'd ask everyone else what I should take a picture of. So put in your requests, and as long as it isn't anything too obscene I'll see what I can do!

Addition: I meant pictures I take with my phone. Just remember, Bloggercon is coming up this weekend so if there is anyone there you want to see a picture of let me know.

SFGate.com has a great article about Apple and their packaging.

And you open the gorgeous black box and lift the white cardboard inside flap, itself adorned with clean offset typeface declaring "Designed by Apple in California," and you are confronted with what is quite possible the most thoughtfully designed and pleasing packaging you've ever seen, not like you care about this stuff and hey it's all just Styrofoam and garbage anyway, but still.

Cables wrapped in elegant tight slots on the sides. Small manual and paperwork in the center. All clean and clear and meant for optimum visual and tactile experience. Lift out the top half of the foam and there's the computer itself, solo, centered, encased in beautiful eminently touchable sleek aluminum, a subtle tech-fetish object par excellence, wrapped in delicate foam padding and not cluttered with crap and not requiring you to do anything but lift it out and peel back the sheath and stroke the silver metal and turn it on.

And there it is. The welcome screen. An exquisite downtempo chill soundtrack and the world "Welcome" swimming over the monitor in a number of different languages and you think, what the hell is this? Where's the pain? Where's the hassle and the misaligned factory molding and the broken keyboard and the 3,000 setup steps and the sense that I'm drowning in a sea of programmer jargon and plastic waste and ubergeek hell? [SFGate.com]

This is one of the first things I noticed when I bought my first TiBook. Everything was perfect. The packaging was beautiful. Everything was right there when I needed it. It really was great to set up for the first time. This is definitely one of the reasons Apple stuff costs a bit more. But I think I prefer it. Opening up the box to my iPod was definitely more cool than trying to cut open a blisterpack wrapped walkman (when will someone realize that everyone HATES that type of packaging). With Apple it boils down to attention to detail. They think of the little details that are so often missed. It's hard to not become one of those Apple fanatics after using one for a while.

My favorite feature in iTunes is the Smart Playlist. iTunes lets you create dynamic playlists based on just about any information stored with the track. I ran into this blog post from over on Boing Boing where people are sharing how they use their playlists. The one I do the most is of things I haven't played in more than 6 months. it helps keep things fresh.

I keep forgetting to post here, but tonight has the potential to be a pretty kickass night at the Lounge. Tonight we're teaming up with the folks downstairs to bring you Seb of Son Kite upstairs (and Son Kite downstairs). Seb is going to be playing some downtempo stuff upstairs, so it should be pretty keen. I'll be opening up of course. I think I may drag out the sandwiches track. Here's the details.

::::::10012003::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

   Changmian and DubCoast Present
+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+
|T|h|e| |A|n|a|l|o|g| |L|o|u|n|g|e|
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   "the relaxed side of things"

Tonites Special Guest:
DJ Seb [Son Kite] Sweden

DJ Seb, better known as 1/2 of Son Kite will be performing a down tempo
ambient groove set in the lounge tommrow night.

Seb has produced such down tempo CD's such as 'chillosophy - number 2'
availible from DIGITAL structures (which I personally own and suggest you
add it to your own collection).

Be sure to arrive early to catch this special appearance in the lounge.

Admission is Free Before 11p

:::::::::::::THIS MONTH:::::::::::::::
oct. 8th: Frantic [Mashed Potatoes] MA
oct. 15th: Kaotik - [Audio Dream Control] MA
oct. 22nd: Mus-ok [www.mus-ok.com] (live performance)
oct. 29th: Crook [elements-dnb.com, c4m] (experimental electro)

Resident Selectors:
Special Pete (DubCoast)
Gregory Blake (Changmian)
Peter Ellis (ttb)
Pete Yagmin (Changmian)

The Analog Lounge
Every Wednesday, Upstairs @ Vertigo
126 State St. Boston, MA
617-723-7277

10pm - 2am
21+ with Positive ID/No Dress Code
$5 cover (After 11p)

More info:
www.changmian.com (upcoming guests and map)
www.vertigoboston.com (club info)
www.miscon.net
www.dubcoast.com

Hope to see you all there!

For the first time in over a year. I forgot about the first of the month. Maybe before bed.

So I'm pretty much done with phase one of my RSS project for Individual.com (The url to the site is http://www.individual.com/, we're working on making it so http://individual.com/ also works). The initial goal is to have custom feeds of news based on topic. So, I have a few feeds that I use right now in NetNewsWire. One issue that's sitting in the back of my mind right now is that some of these feeds are huge. I currently have them set to only work give the news the past 24 hours in the feed, but even then it's a few hundred articles in the course of a day. For users of things like Radio, this could be complete overload. One solution I thought of was only including the last n stories and have that be a value people can set. Lots of interesting things to think about here. Oh, and if anyone wants to test this out, drop me a line and I'll get you set up to use it (warning, it is more than a bit kludgy at this point). The picture on the left is a snapshot of one of the topics in NetNewsWire.

A while back there was a bunch of stuff floating around about the iTunes music store and independent labels. Is there any word on what's up with that these days? Has it started? Is it still going to start? I've been trying to find stuff on it and haven't found much.