Following on from yet another "OMFG!! Terrorists!!!!1!" overreaction to innocent circumstance, John Cole over at Balloon Juice says something that just needs to be said.

"It is absurd. You are safe. I am safe. This nation is safe. Quit being such a damned pussy. All of you."

Sorry folks, had a bit of blogapthy (blogatrophy?) of late. Got a few thoughts on simmer, I'll get back in the groove soon.

Funny post on my pal Sasquatch's blog.

I see stupid people...

I think there's a temporal anomaly (good Star Trek term that) in our bedroom.

We have digital clocks on either side of the bed and yesterday when I was turning in I noticed my clock was some two hours faster than Kathy's. Thinking I'd just muffed setting the alarm or something I set it back to the correct time. Woke up this morning and overnight my clock had gained over 20 mins.

It's quite a few years old but I didn't know digital clocks could just go batty like that.

Unavailable for comment.

As I've mentioned before, I've been doing some serious culling of my iTunes collection of late. 'came time last night that I thought it's been a good long while since I've backed up my collection to the external; a trusty Maxtor II 250GB. Called Cortera BTW. Yeh I know, it's a geek pun but fellow Halo fans might get it, especially when you learn my iPod goes by the name Cortana...

For this I use a very nice freeware app produced by LaCie (thanks LC!) called SilverKeeper. It's a really good backup/sync tool that (unfortunately for me) does just what it's told. You can probably guess where this is going...

So here I was, plug in the external disk, fire up SilverKeeper, select source, destination folders, sync, then go.

Notice anything wrong with the above? I didn't.

Until about 20mins later when my MacBook Pro threw up an alert that it was critically short of disk space. WTF!? Check available space on the boot disk and sure enough it's at 0kB available. Several expletives later and I realise what I'd asked SilverKeeper to do. Do a two-way sync with my neatly pruned live iTunes collection folder and its bloated, weedy counterpart on the external. So now I had an iTunes folder with ooh a couple of thousand tracks in there that it a) didn't need, and b) didn't know about.

Aw crap.

First things first, the Mac is out of space. Step 1, stop that sync from trying to further roger it, step 2, free up some space pronto: Bad Things happen when a Mac (or any computer for that matter) has so little free space that it can't wiggle its toes.

After doing some quick deleting of some easy candidates (large downloads) I could afford the time to take a closer look. Here's where a brilliant app by the Omni Group comes in called OmniDiskSweeper. This critter does a simple job very well: it tells you exactly where your disk space has gone. Highly recommend it. Oh and by the way, do take the time to check out Omni Group's other products. They're seriously cool people, and do some mighty products.

OmniDiskSweep quickly identified a few candidates that took up a lot of space, and thanks to that I saw I still had a full install of Myst IV Revelations on disk (some 7GB) from my trip to the Gold Coast so deleting that gave me all the breathing space I needed to have a look at the debris.

So now I was faced with an iTunes folder on my internal disk that had many, many more large files in it that iTunes didn't know about. Craaaap...

I decided at that point to just leave well enough alone and leave it 'til morning (cue Chief Wiggum with loudhailer: "Back slowly away from the keyboard and no-one has to get hurt.") Geek that I am, the solution came to me in the wee hours of the morning.

The answer is iTunes itself.

Here's what I did:

1. Hook the MBP up to a drive with lots of space. Enough to take my entire collection. In this case it happened to be my work machine: an old Power Mac G4 which happened to have a large disk, booted into target disk mode. For those of you who don't know what that means, if you boot a reasonably current Mac with the T key held down it suddenly pretends it's nothing more than an external hard disk. Cool eh?

2. Hop into iTunes, then tell it (Prefs->Advanced) that its iTunes collection resides in a folder on said external hard disk. It'll take a little while to update its library database at this point.

3. Move everything iTunes knows about (but critically nothing else!) by choosing Advanced->Consolidate Library. Takes a long while but after this you'll end up with a perfectly accurate file representation of your iTunes collection.

4. Grit your teeth and delete your original iTunes collection!

5. Create a new iTunes collection folder to replace the old one, then do the opposite move, ie. change the collection location (as in step 2) back to the original location and (as in step 3) consolidate the library. Again, takes a long while.

After this, walk away, hands in pockets, whistling innocently.

Okay look, I'll have to say I didn't originally pick this album for this week, I'd another in mind. Thing is I was doing my usual evening half-hour rate/cull thing in iTunes to try to get my collection under control.

And then I hit this track.

And I cranked the volume and listened (as I tend to do with this track.)

I'll have to admit here that I haven't listened to all of this album. Ever. (Sorry Pink!) But there is one track on this disc that alone that is just goosebump-inducing in its gutsiness (is there such a word? There is now), eloquence, and Rebel Without a Cause beauty. As is Pink's way. She evokes a I Will Not Take Shite From Anyone, and yet manages to perfectly depict the petals, the fragrance, along with the thorns.

Just awesome.

The track? Who Knew.

This is one of those tracks that sound better the closer you listen to it (like many of Pink's tracks it's more subtle than you'd think) and the louder you can make it (good, LOUD speakers are a must!) In fact I used it as a good sound check on the various rigs here: MacBook Pro audio cranked way up with gen 4 iPod earbuds, Logitech 2.1 powered speakers on the gaming Mac, the Pioneer mini stereo that Kathy's Mac Mini powers (a.k.a the Little Thumper.) All at floor-vibrating volume. The Pioneer won by a small margin, but I may need to play this track again at higher volume to be sure.

Pink, you rock.

Tags: AotW

So let's say you're the Premier (equivalent to Governor for those of you who drive on the wrong side of the road) of Queensland. Let's also say that you really don't like having to deal with all those pesky little local government bodies - especially when they won't let you have your way. What do you do? Why force a "reform" and tell vastly different councils that they have to amalgamate into one "super council."

Let's say the people don't want that.

Let's say some councillors - publicly elected representatives of said people - vocally oppose the move.

Let's say that protest rallies are held, formal objections are sent in by the thousand, but the Premier ignores all this.

Let's say that councillors start making plans to hold a referendum on the issue to let the people be heard, but the Premier threatens to sack any that use local government funds to hold same.

Now, let's say that the Prime Minister weighs in on the issue, offering Federal funds for a referendum should the councils want to proceed (the PM and the Premier are on opposing political parties so this could be viewed as a stunt, but still...)

Let's then say that the Premier and his cohorts then ram the reform legislation through parliament using their majority numbers, making it law. Oh, lets also add an amendment saying that any councillor holding any referendum on the issue, regardless of circumstance or funding source will be immediately sacked.

Does that sound like dictatorship to you? It does to me.

It's not the first time he's done this either. Do some searches on "Traveston Dam", and the Queensland water grid.

Mr. Beattie, I'm sorry but I think you just sealed your political fate.

[not to be confused with the excellent iTunes add-on SRS iWow.]

So yesterday Apple did their much anticipated Apple Event (AppleScript geeks like me will likely cackle away at that term) and introduced a knock-your-socks-off gorgeous whole new iMac.

Were I not addicted to their MacBook Pro line I'd be slapping down plastic for one right now whether I could afford it or not (read: I cannot.)

There were other releases during that event that also caught my eye. The Mac Mini line was quietly refreshed with faster processors. It's curious. These little Mah Jong tiles are just so cool and functional and yet The Steve gives them at best grudging acknowledgement. A stay of execution if you will. Rumour is that he hates them. And I just don't understand why. Kathy uses one. They rock.

Long. Live. The. Mac Mini.

Another two updates caught my eye: iLife 08, and iWork 08. iLife I don't use that much so wasn't really compelling for me, but what really got my attention was iWork. It's all growed up! Pages >= M$ Word, Keynote >= M$ Powerpoint. This much we knew from the previous version, but there was a facet missing, and they added it:

Numbers >= Excel.

So, I must admit it's only now I've changed my thinking of iWork as being a poor [wo]man's AppleWorks (may it rest in peace, and ClarisWorks before it) but as a serious contender/replacement to the current Mac version of Office. And that's no mean feat. The MacBU division of M$ really knew what they were on about - and really grokked Mac. Hats off to them. But the new iWork suite is really something special. It is built for intel Macs[1], it 100% groks the Mac, and (I don't know whether this is new or not) it has jaw-dropping compatibility with M$ Office docs.

This is something new for me. In times past I would always, say, fire up a new version of OpenOffice or NeoOffice and eagerly hope this was the version that would handle Office documents. They would always do an admirable effort, but with compromise. One key trip point I'd frequently hit is the handling of multi-column docs.

OO (and probably NeoO) would have kittens with these. And in an 'I need to be compatible' world of a Mac-unfriendly environment, this is a deal-breaker. So, I ended up using M$ Office for Mac.

Until now.

Earlier this evening I zipped my M$ Office folder and assigned ownership of relevant docs to their relevant iWork counterparts.

Let's see how this works out; I'm hopeful.

[1]- BTW, may I add my vote to bitch-slap the guy who asked at said AE why Macs didn't sport the oh-so-classy 'Intel-Inside' sticker - so doesn't get the whole Mac Thing. Update: MacUser listened again to the Q&A and identified the guy. Have a listen to the audio of that moment (link on the article), it's quite a laugh.

You've heard me rave before about Yazoo and I hope you've taken the time to have a good listen. That was arguably the some of the best work that the combination of Vince Clarke and Alison Moyet ever did. Vince headed off in his own direction (more on this in a later episode) but Alison went right ahead and did a solo effort. And. It. Rocked. As a teenager I spent many an evening falling asleep listening to this album. Hunt this album down and make up your own mind.

Tags: AotW

If you know me at all you'll know that for over 20 years I've been an avid Thomas Dolby fan. Yes, I know what you're probably thinking "Oh wait, that Blinded by Science guy." Well, yes he was that gentleman but he was - no is - far, far more than that one poppy single. You'd just need to listen to any of the other tracks on The Golden Age of Wireless to know that this gentleman has far more depth than a soundbite. Nine albums and some 20+ years, he's still going strong.

Okay so why does this rate as an AoW? Well, the more you listen to it, the more eloquent you realise this gentleman is, and you appreciate the depth of what is at first glance Just Another Eighties Album. Though it was released in 1982, this is a work I'm in awe of to this day - and it's not just a nostalgic thing.

To understand what I'm going on about you need to have a good, close, intent listen to this.

Tags: AotW

Oops, sorry dear readers (yes, both of you) I've been a little slack in keeping up the hen scratchings here. Guess I should put it down to trying to cope/adjust with the whole non-smoking thing. Not that I'm struggling with it you understand, just that one of the challenges is keeping distracted.

The good news is that I've no doubt I can handle this. I've not got close to wanting to go out and buy a pack of cigarettes, and I haven't got overly cranky at work (yet. )

When I walk past someone just lighting up I don't stand nearby and breathe deeply, I just walk by feeling a little pity that they're still a slave to the habit. I'm still hacksawing my way through my chains but I'm on the way...

I've found a few effective techniques that help keep any twinges at bay. First is an obvious one, the most bitey chewing gum I can find, second, vegetables. Any crunchy fresh ones you can get hold of do, but I tend to go for carrots and sliced capsicum. Another really effective one is - believe it or not - old English style pickled onions. You know, the sharp, sour ones that makes delicate petals' eyes water. One or two (or three or four; love them) and I'm one craving spike over.

The really good news is that I'm already noticing real improvements. I can breathe much more easily, my sense of taste and smell are really sharpening up, and I feel I have more energy than before.

I can do this. I must do this. I will do this.