Oh man, these are cool. I sure could use every flavor of these new MacAlly retractable cords. The FireWire one is ultra cool, and I sure have been needing an RJ45 (network cable) one for a while too.... [check em out] [ 1/10/2003 06:07:59 PM ] [ ]
The new [Beautiful Assassins] stuff sounds pretty darn good, everyone should grab "Hellbent" and shake their various groove thangs.
And yes, for those that noticed - changed some stuff with the Google searching on the blog.... and I'm going to post a "how to add a Google search to your blog" thing soon. [ 1/10/2003 05:56:52 PM ] [ ]
Khan's saga began when he and Azmath boarded a flight at dawn on Sept. 11 in Newark, bound for San Antonio. The men, who shared an apartment in Jersey City and had recently lost their jobs at a newsstand at the Newark train station, were traveling to Texas to live with friends and take up new jobs. Khan said it was his first trip outside the New York area in eight years of living in the United States. But when hijacked jetliners struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that morning, U.S. authorities ordered all air traffic grounded. The plane carrying Khan and Azmath landed in St. Louis, and they decided to finish their journey by train. The following day, near Fort Worth, "my humiliating ordeal began as soon as the four officers barged into the Amtrak train and began searching my luggage," Khan recalled. "I was shocked and asked why. One of them curtly replied, 'Disturbing behavior.' " When the officers discovered Khan and Azmath were carrying about $5,000 in cash, black hair dye and box cutters -- similar to those believed to have been used as weapons by the Sept. 11 hijackers -- the two men were handcuffed and taken into custody. "We were singled out. It was based on racial profiling," Khan whispered softly, his hands trembling.
No, had nothing at all to do with the fact that you carried a large amount of cash, hair dye, and box cutters on an airplane and a train. Nope, not at all. If the Pope was stupid enough to do that, they would have detained him too, dipshit. [ 1/10/2003 12:59:34 PM ] [ ]
Thursday, January 09, 2003
Amazon has the Danger Hiptop (t-mobile calls it the Sidekick) for down to $50 after rebates now! Hmmm maybe I'll get one now... it's got a camera, AIM, email.... all that good stuff! T-Mobile Sidekick with Camera Attachment... [ 1/09/2003 11:24:05 PM ] [ ]
In September of 2002, the top 5 U.S. music distributors and 3 music retailers accepted a fine of $143 million in penalty for fixing prices on CDs and screwing consumers. This fine is not going to the government -- it's going to you. All claimants will recieve between $5 and $20, depending on how many respond. (If too many respond to make it financially feasible to mail the checks, all monies will go to charities.)
All you have to do to get your $20 back is fill out this form: [here] [or here] Me, I largely stopped buying CDs long ago. In fact, when I got my car 2 years or so ago, I had them remove the CD player and put in a tape deck so that I could plug whatever mp3 player, etc. I wanted to into it easily. In the past 3 years I've bought maybe 5 CDs retail (I've bought more than that directly from indie labels like [posi]). But before I got tired of paying $17 for a CD I would be tired of soon enough, I collected 120 or more CDs bought from Tower, etc. Think about it. $20 sure isn't enough to make up for my losses! [ 1/09/2003 11:53:10 AM ] [ ]
Amazon now has the WSB24 Linksys 802.11 signal booster for their [WAP11] and [BEFW11S4] access points for sale.... keep in mind that buying $100 worth of antenna will generally get you better range than this will. It's still putting out through a 2.5dbi to 5dbi antenna, so that power you're paying extra for is going to waste! Order it here... [Wireless Signal Booster for Linksys...] [ 1/09/2003 01:41:24 AM ] [ ]
Wednesday, January 08, 2003
Super Duper Cool: BeOS 5 Pro on CD for less than $20! Not only did I find that Purplus still has BeOS Pro, but right now they have an excellent deal on it: $17.56 For the CD (No Manuals) For both PowerPC and Intel (note: won't work on PowerPC machines G3 or newer) Free shipping on orders over $15 (so you get it USPS Priority mail for free!) You can check it out [here]
If you really want a manual, [The BeOS Bible by Scott Hacker] is better than anything Be provided, and in fact for a while The BeOS Bible and BeOS were bundled together. Get it while you can! BeOS is still the most cutting edge, well thought out piece of software around.
OK, [FoneBlog] looks pretty cool, at least in concept....
FoneBlog is a comprehensive software system that allows mobile phone users run personal websites (called "blogs") by sending pictures, text and soundclips from their phone.
At least I think that cameraphones are going to be a killer app. Anyone with a brain should have known that WAP would not get far (and it sure didn't) if only because of the limitations of a phone keypad. A cameraphone is a lot easier for people to grasp. [ 1/08/2003 04:03:02 PM ] [ ]
Find the range of your wireless network... [signull technologies] has a nice little online program for figuring out your range. Check it out [here] To get accurate results, you need to know the actual transmitter power of your card or accesspoint in dBm, not mW. You can look up most cards and access points [here]
Note also that receive sensitivity is also very important on both the AP and the client card. There's a good comparison of various cards and their receive sensitivity [here] [ 1/08/2003 01:43:20 PM ] [ ]
Tuesday, January 07, 2003
Ooooo..... the AppleScript team kicks ass. I wish that in my company, groups communicated... and enforced the RULE OF GOD as well as they do. They already have a page of [Safari AppleScripts] up.
So far, I'm not diggin Safari too much I'm afraid, Chimera is still my browser of choice. But for some things I might have to use IE for normally (banking sites, etc. that ass-sniff yer browser), Safari is going to be my secret weapon. The AppleScriptability is very cool though, Chimera could do well to emulate it. If I had free time, I would build the scripting into chimera myself. [ 1/07/2003 11:04:11 PM ] [ ]
I managed to find the manual for enGenius's AP, which not only uses a slotted PCMCIA card for the Prisim chipset (ie you could put one of their 200mW cards in there, probably), but has a decent web-based interface and can act as either an AP or a bridge. Pretty cool, and justdeals.com has them for $80. They're supposedly pretty durable, so if you want a nice 802.11 bridge to play with, [go get one while you can] (they list for $300 or so elsewhere).
So you for $20-$30 less than a bridge from someone like Linksys, you could hook up your PS2, Xbox, TiVO, etc. wirelessly into the rest of your network with decent range :) [ 1/07/2003 08:54:33 PM ] [ ]
New Mac Stuff....
New PowerBooks The new [powerbooks] released today have some cool stuff. A 12" and a 17" were both released (mine is 15). The 17 seems too big - my 15 is already too big for most bags. The 12 seems too small to be practical (though should be real popular in Japan). The cool stuff, though, is: 1. [FireWire 800] Double the throughput of the original. While no devices yet will really push 800mbps, this are the first machines to carry FireWire 800, which itself is significant. 2. [AirportExtreme] Apple has now embraced 802.11g, which is cool. Better range and security than 802.11b, and backwards compatible, now "g" will be mainstream. BUT Apple's new Airport Extreme internal card is mini-PCI, NOT PCMCIA, so you can't put it in older machines like my PowerBook G4 that's all of 3 months old. 3. GeForce 4 graphics. These are the first PowerBooks to have nVidia chips (which usually run too hot for powerbooks). 4. Bluetooh So my fairly new powerbook is already very outdated :(
New Software [Keynote] looks like PowerPoint without all the useless crap MS tries to convince you you need. Apple's X11 implementation looks pretty rad, I know lots of geeks will be wetting their pants over it.
Safari: Yet Another Web Browser (and how to turn off the Metal appearance in safari)
So Apple released the first beta of their "Safari" browser today. Unfortunately, like all their other recent "iApps", it uses the "brushed metal" look introduced with QuickTime Player 4. This use of the metal appearance actually violates Apple's own Jaguar Human Interface Guidelines:
Mac OS X version 10.2 provides developers with a new ?textured? window appearance (see Figure 5-4). This window style has been designed specifically for use by?and is therefore best suited to?applications that provide an interface for a digital peripheral, such as a camera, or an interface for managing data shared with digital peripherals, such as the Address Book application. This appearance may also be appropriate for applications that strive to re-create a familiar physical device?the Calculator application, for example. Avoid using the textured window appearance in applications or utilities that are unrelated to digital peripherals or to the data associated with these devices.
Well, it turns out that Safari looks a LOT better without the silly brushed metal look! Here's how to turn off the heavy metal in the browser...
Make a backup of your Safari before trying this! 1. Control-click on Safari to bring up the "Show Package Contents" contextual menu. 2. Navigate into: Safari:Contents:Resources:English.lproj: 3. Open "Browser.nib". You will need the most recent MacOS X Developer Tools package to do this! 4. In the window marked "Broswer.nib" select "Window" and hit shift-command-i to bring up the Inspector. The last item in the inspector is a checkbox "Textured Window". Uncheck that, save, and quit.
Now start up your modified Safari. Now it looks like it should!
The coolest thing about Safari... Safari already has a pretty well fleshed out ScriptSuite - while it doesn't even support Open URL yet, it seems, it does have a Document class that let's you get the current URL in the browser from AppleScript or JavaScript. I've been wishing Chimera could do that for a LONG time for some of my little hacks for doing Blog posts and editing HTML. Now if only the rest of Safari's scripting support worked.... [ 1/07/2003 01:36:14 PM ] [ ]
Sunday, January 05, 2003
Well, at least I'm not the only one surrounded by fricken idiots....
