Skimming through my daily bookmarks I had one of those did-I-really-see-that moments when closing a tab. Thankfully Firefox has a nifty re-open tab feature so I could go back and take a closer look at the front page of MacUpdate.

Not sure how that happened, but w00t!

Tags: w00t!

Set up a smart mailbox in Mail this morning (they’re the email equivalent of iTunes’ smart playlists) to save skipping around folders which catching up. The ruleset was as basic as it gets: show me any message that isn’t in trash or sent that I’ve received over the last week. Worked fine, and I caught up the 50 or so messages that had arrived overnight.

Mail, it seems, had more in store for me:

Now I know I’m a bit of a hussy when it comes to subscribing to email lists’n’all, but really...

Tags: lolwut?

If you use cmd-tab to switch processes and you’re getting really peeved by CoRD opening the remote host’s Start menu as a result, open a (Mac OS X) terminal, do this:

defaults write net.sf.cord SendWindowsKey 0

...and walk away going ‘nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.’

Saw this mentioned on Reddit, it’s a blog entry translating an article from a Norwegian newspaper. Worth a read, and if it’s true (and it likely is) it says a lot about the man, methinks.

Seeing as how I look after the uni’s postmaster account I occasionally run across some interesting bounces. This one came from an Italian site and didn’t look like a boilerplate MTA message, so go go gadget Babelfish:

Which gets you:

Geez, some people take their email seriously.

Get down! Get down again!

Tags: comedy

Techspansion, also known as a guy by the name of Tyler, have closed their doors today.

Tyler wrote, and actively supported some of the best apps I’ve seen on the Mac; the two I used, iSquint and VisualHub were (IMHO) best-of-breed. They are/were video transcoders providing a really simple, effective way to move almost any type of video over to many other formats including iPod video, and AppleTV. If/when they break in a future OS update, they’ll be sorely missed.

Thanks, Tyler, for an outstanding effort; best wishes for you and whatever mountain you choose to climb next.

Tags: sniff!

So, you have the words commit and its derivative committee.

Why are they opposites?

Colour me... confused.

We watched The Devil Wears Prada last week, very good movie, but an awesome (and perfectly placed) cover of Seal’s Crazy snuck into the soundtrack. I had to search the credits to see who it was, turns out it was Alanis Morissette.

Better quality sample at iTMS.

Oops, mouse just slipped on the buy button.

P.S. Had a disturbing thought when listening to this for the 238th time that day; Celine Dion could probably also do a respectable cover of this... because we already know she’s fracking amazing...

Tags: w00t!

Mis-typed a URL in Firefox yesterday and ended up at one of those registry ‘we’re going to park every single possible permutation of this other common domain name’ pages. No big deal except it also wanted to add one of their RSS feeds to NetNewsWire for me. Um...

So, thanks, NetRegistry for showing just what a classy operation you are and saving me time when I next register a domain or pick a webhost by ruling yourself out.

Tags: schmucks

Here’s a interesting method for shielding yourselves from those door to door salescritters.

It turns out that we’re not the only ones who despise this practice (not the people, mind, they’re just doing what they do because they couldn’t get a job at Maccas...) and a couple of organisations are trying to mobilise an opposing force. It’s simply a door version of the good old No Junkmail sticker.

The Consumer Action Law Centre in Victoria is trying to push for door-to-door badgering to be discontinued, and the good people at ShopAround will even send a sticker out to you free (I’m guessing Australia only.) In case you’re thinking that’s too much like a free lunch, it makes sense when you realise that they’re in the electricity and gas supply comparison game, and guess what sort of companies most frequently doorknock? Sounds like a more than fair deal to me.

It’ll be interesting to see how effective it is.

Tags: Marketards

Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Tags: w00t!, Arrr

Before I start, let’s get this pic out of the way:

Read today in the state tabloid (and it is a tabloid these days) that the Office of Fair Scamming Trading is going to allow door to door sales critters to knock on doors until 8pm. Why? Because businesses are whining that the Do Not Call register (which doesn’t work anyway, yes I’m looking at you, 02 8xxx xxxx spammers) is hampering their efforts to get in our face.

Hey Marketards. Listen. If we want to buy something, if we want to consider buying something, we’ll do our own research and make the call. Want to rule yourself out of that process, fine, send your door to door critters and start your badgering. Be sure to tell us your company name when the door is closing so we know not to conduct business with you.

Our home is sanctuary. It’s where we spend time relaxing, letting the world go on without us. I’m sure we’re not the only ones.

Don’t. Just, don’t.

Tags: Marketards

So the LHC ring is down to < 5º K (an awesome achievement in itself, if you ask me) and they took it for a spin the other day. Experiments continue and the really noteworthy collisions will occur in October, maybe sooner.

Tags: comedy, LHC

Meet my MacBook Pro’s trusty travelling companion:

That’s a wireless Mighty Mouse right there. One of the most handy and yet frustrating peripherals Apple came out with. IMHO it beats the pants of any Logitech mouse¹. It’s wireless, it’s really miserly on batteries, it’ll track on pretty much any surface, it has squeeze buttons (cuteness would be if someone did an app that made a mouse squeak when you squeezed them!) and a really nifty - and very smooth - two axis scrollball.

And there, [both of] my dear readers, is the angst. See how small that thing is and how close the tolerances are? Well, you could just imagine how sensitive it is to grease and grit. Things start out okay but after a few weeks I found myself having to clean it more and more often. Oh, and cursing at it for being recalcitrant in scrolling. I’d followed Apple’s recommended cleaning procedure, which would work for a short time, but it was always a case of doing battle with it the very next day. Kei Ishii on TidBITS Talk recommended a simple, and yet very effective technique. Flip the mouse over, then rub the scrollball all kinds of directions on plain white paper. What this does is leave nice greasy tracks on the paper, but more importantly, the scrollball feels like new afterwards. Seriously, like new.

Thank you, Kei!

Unwilling to comment on relationship with paper.

1. Yes, I know, Logitech do nice kit too, but until they start producing grown-up, non-receiver-dongle-needing bluetooth rodents, I’ll pass. If you have to take up a USB port for a receiver dongle, you may as well just stick with a wired mouse. All current Macs have bluetooth built-in, use it.

Ahem. Sorry. Pet peeve.

Tags: Mighty Mouse, Apple

Original creator unknown; it’s been floating out there a while.

Tags: comedy

RapidWeaver’s grammar checker on the previous entry.

fight! fight! fight!

Tags: comedy

Another gem I stumbled upon in my iTunes culling.

That’s Brisbane outfit George doing Special Ones. Katie Noonan has a gorgeous voice, and her vocal training really comes through on this track.

[hint] Crappy built-in PC speakers need not apply. [/hint]

Cleaning out some bookmarks, here are some oldies but goodies...

and of course, the XP version...




Some excellent comparisons of Liberty City in GTA 4 and NYC here.


and let’s finish with something special...

Awesome piece of work, this.

Tags: w00t!

iTunscillation: verb - the act of wandering through your iTunes collection and wildly varying each tracks rating depending on your mood at the time of listening.