January 29, 2004
Comments Working
It was pointed out to me that all comments on this weblog were being rejected by MT-Blacklist. I've fixed the configuration problem, and comments should be working again.
January 28, 2004
Just wondering...
If you hook an iPod up to a Mac using USB 2, does the iPod icon contain the USB icon instead of the Firewire icon?
January 26, 2004
January 25, 2004
The Future of Movies
The future is here: ASCII films streamed over Telnet. Try telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl for Star Wars: A New Hope.
January 24, 2004
20 Years of Macintosh
Today is the 20th anniversary of the introduction of Macintosh. MacMinute has a roundup of coverage across the web.
Update: Andy Hertzfeld, a member of the Macintosh team, has created Folklore , which contains a number of anecdotes about the development of Macintosh. Very interesting. (Via NSLog(); )
January 21, 2004
ITMS RSS Feeds
You can now create your own customized RSS feeds at the iTunes Music Store. You can choose to see new releases, most popular songs, newly added songs, and more. You can also select the genres you're interested in. Cool!
Greenspun on Dean
Phillip Greenspun tears apart Howard Dean 's issue positions.
It would appear that a thoughtful voter could easily write off Howard Dean as a non-entity after spending 30 minutes at his Web site.
I have to agree. Sure, Dean's got a weblog , an RSS feed, and is drawing on the Web for grassroots support. To some people that instantly makes him great. But I disagree. It doesn't matter how much social software you use - I'm not going to support you if your ideas are bogus.
January 20, 2004
ACM and IEEE Publications
It would really rock if ACM and IEEE provided RSS feeds for their publications. Unfortunately, I can't find any feeds, even third-party feeds. IEEE at least has an option to receive email notification of new articles. Still, it seems like someone must have written a scraper to produce RSS feeds for ACM and IEEE publications. Anyone have a lead?
January 19, 2004
Weekend Gaming
This weekend I spent a considerable amount of time playing computer games. I started out by playing Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time , which is a very fun game. The character animation and environments are amazing. I remember playing the original Prince of Persia on my Mac, and Sands of Time perfectly captures that style of gameplay in a 3D environment. I'm about half done with Sands of Time.
The other game I played was Halo. I'm only on the second level (the levels in Halo are long), but so far it has been fun. The ship environments are repetitive, and occasionally I lost my way simply because all of the hallways looked the same. However, the outdoor environments are gorgeous and offer a lot of room for tactical maneuvering. Halo doesn't seem to have much of a story, but the mission design and enemy AI make it enjoyable.
Phil has informed me that Need for Speed Underground has a drifting mode, so I might have to try that game next.
January 15, 2004
Crazy Hosting Deal
1&1 Internet is offering a crazy deal right now - 3 free years of hosting. The plan being offered normally costs $29/month. It sounds too good to be true, but I checked out the forums at webhostingtalk.com , and it appears to be legit. I'm in the process of signing up right now (waiting for the email with my account info).
Bigger Disk
LaCie has announced their Bigger Disk - 1 terabyte of storage in a 5.25 inch form factor. Firewire and USB interfaces. $1200. <Cartman>Sweet.</Cartman>
January 14, 2004
Racial Attractiveness
Interesting Question of the Day over on Erik's blog:
Are you as physically attracted to members of other races as you are to those of your own?
I've provided my answer in the comments for that post.
Apple/HP iPod Deal
John Gruber has some lucid commentary about why the Apple/HP iPod deal is possibly the biggest news coming out of Macworld San Francisco, even though it wasn't mentioned in Steve Jobs' keynote.
January 13, 2004
Economics of Entrepreneurship
I have a feeling my Economics of Tech Innovation and Entrepreneurship class is going to kick ass. First of all, the class is in a very nice classroom (too bad the building that it's in was shot up last year - there will always be a stigma). More importantly, the instructor seemed to be an excellent lecturer, and was well organized. The structure of the class sounds appealing. One class per week will be lecture, and the other will be discussion or an activity. The class has about 25 people, so we should be able to have some good discussions.
Then the professor started talking about the textbook, and "what I was trying to accomplish with it." I looked closely, and saw that he was an author of the book ! I think this will be my best class this semester.
January 12, 2004
New Banner Picture
I've changed the banner image for this blog. It's a photo I took this afternoon outside of the library. On the left, you can see the funky-shaped Peter B. Lewis Building . That's where my ECON class is tomorrow.
Turing Machine
I had my first class of the new semester today - EECS 314 (Computer Architecture). I have not been looking forward to this class, primarily because I have heard lots of negative things about the professor. Today, the third or fourth slide in his lecture was about Turing machines. The first thing the professor said was, "I have to admit, until this morning I did not know what a Turing machine is." Groan. If you're not a computer scientist, then you probably don't know what I'm talking about, but every computer scientist should know what a Turing machine is, especially a professor. I try to keep a positive outlook on classes, regardless of what I've heard from other people, to avoid self-fulfilling prophecy. Still, after one lecture, I don't have high expectations for EECS 314. My classes tomorrow should be better.
Habeas Spam
I noticed a few pieces of spam showing up in my inbox today, which is very rare, since I use SpamSieve . Michael Tsai (author of SpamSieve) has posted an explanation for this. Spammers are now putting Habeas headers into their email. Habeas has threatened to sue anyone who does this, so we'll see what happens. For now, you can just disable Habeas support in SpamSieve.
David's New Blog
David has started his first blog , over on LiveJournal.
January 11, 2004
The Boys Are Back In Town
I'm back in Cleveland for the spring semester. I got back yesterday and unpacked most of my stuff. Then we went out to Tommy's for dinner and milkshakes. Today we watched the Eagles vs. Packers NFL playoff game. It's great to be back amongst so many geeks. I'm also looking forward to the start of classes, although that may sound strange to some people. A few weeks off is nice, but I need to be kept busy, or I start major slacking. Furthermore, I don't expect this semester to be a death march (my schedule is lighter than usual). Right now my major worries are getting ready for my independent study meeting on Tuesday and a job interview on Wednesday.
While writing this entry, I started thinking of the song The Boys Are Back In Town by Thin Lizzy (as evidenced by the title of this entry). I don't have this song in my collection, so with a few clicks I purchased it from the iTunes Music Store. That's the 7th song I've purchased from ITMS. During the Macworld SF keynote, Steve Jobs said that the top ITMS customer had spent something like $24,000. That's insane, but ITMS does kick ass.
SmackDown! Tickets
I ordered tickets to WWE SmackDown! at Gund Arena yesterday. The final head count was 5 - David, Andrew, David's brother and sister, and me. We got tickets in the lower level, so hopefully we'll have a good view of the ring. With 5 people we should be able to do some pretty big signs. I'm thinking C-E-N-A-!. Signs are a big part of any WWE event, and I plan to take quite a few, most of which will be humorous or non sequitur. I remember one guy at a pay-per-view had a sign that said "Chewbacca Fur President". I can only hope to attain such greatness.
If you have any sign ideas, post them in the comments.
iCal RSS Feeds
Tonight I was setting up my calendar for the upcoming semester, making sure that all my classes were entered, holidays noted, and special events recorded. I started thinking that it would be nice to have an RSS feed of my calendar, so I could quickly glance at my schedule during my morning aggregator pass. Then I noticed that PHP iCalendar has RSS support. I created a password-protected directory on my web server (since my calendar contains some events that I don't want to broadcast to the world), uploaded PHP iCalendar, and set iCal to publish my calendars using WebDAV. NetNewsWire supports HTTP authentication using URLs of the form http://user:pass@site.com, so I've now got my calendar in my aggregator. Cool.
Lingerie 101
Lingerie101 - a man's guide to lingerie. Don't know a chemise from a babydoll? This is your site. Each week an article is posted about a different piece of lingerie.
(Note: Although I didn't see a link to it, an RSS feed is available.)
January 10, 2004
Advanced Programming in the Mac OS X Environment
The title may be a a take on Richard Steven's well known work , but the content on Amit Singh's Advanced Programming in the Mac OS X Environment site is original and well done. Lots of interesting details here about the Mac's boot procedure, kernel, filesystems, and programming enviroments. Recommended for Mac geeks.
January 09, 2004
SmackDown! at Gund Arena
WWE SmackDown! will be taping at Gund Arena on February 3rd. Tickets go on sale tomorrow at 10am. David, Andrew, and I have discussed buying tickets, and I'm trying to nail down the details now. If anyone else wants to go, let me know.
Ecto
The first public beta of Ecto is now available. Ecto is the successor to Kung-Log, which is the tool I use to add new entries to this weblog.
Cheesy Bean and Rice Burrito
Do not eat the new Taco Bell Cheesy Bean and Rice Burrito, unless you like foul tasting shit. Sure, it may sound good, but we're talking about Taco Bell-quality ingredients here. Now, if Chipotle had a cheesy bean and rice burrito...
Notacon
Froggy just announced Notacon on cwru.general.
It's "not a 'con". Well, it kind of is. But it isn't. Kinda. Sorta. Not really.
It sounds like it's going to be a cool event, and if anyone can pull this off, it's Froggy and his staff . Spread the word about Notacon!
Sidenote: I didn't know it until tonight, but Froggy has a blog .
Spring Classes
The spring semester starts on Monday, so now is a good time to post a list of the classes I'll be taking:
- EECS 314 - Computer Architecture
- EECS 391 - Artificial Intelligence
- EECS 600 - Computer Security
- ECON 369 - Economics of Tech Innovation and Entrepreneurship
I also want to do an independent study or senior project, and I have a meeting with a faculty member next week to discuss project ideas.
January 07, 2004
KotOR Completed
I just finished Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic . It's one of the best games that I've played in a long, long time and the best RPG I've ever played. The game contains an incredible amount of content - it took me around 37 hours to complete, and I didn't take on many of the side missions! There are also many decisions to be made in the game which earn you light side or dark side points, which further extends the depth of the game. If you have a PC or XBox, you need to play this game.
I'm glad I completed the game before school starts again - this is definitely the kind of game that hooks you and makes you forget all about doing that homework that's due tomorrow. :-)
January 05, 2004
Review: In Search of Stupidity
I finished reading In Search of Stupidity , a Christmas gift, a few days ago. It was a very enjoyable book, although I expected no less with a recommendation from JoelOnSoftware . It was especially interesting to me, because not only was the analysis new to me, but so were the historical situations. Being a Mac geek, I've read a lot of books about Apple and the Macintosh, such as the Mac Bathroom Reader and Insanely Great , but I don't know much about the origins of the PC industry. In Search of Stupidity filled me in on companies like Ashton-Tate, Borland, and MicroPro, and their faded glory. I also learned about IBM's bungling of the PS/2 and OS/2, which means I should be able to engage in more conversations with Phil. :-) The analysis in this book was fascinating, particularly when you see just how stupid some of the decisions made by these companies were. For example, it seems obvious that you don't want to sell two products that do the same thing at the same price point. Yet, this has happened multiple times in PC history, ruining companies. This book makes a good case for the position that in order to succeed, you don't have to be smarter than everyone else, you just have to be less stupid.
MythBusters
Tim watched a few episodes of MythBusters on the Discovery Channel this semester in our suite lounge. I never paid much attention, but it seemed like a pretty decent show, so I set my ReplayTV to record it. After watching a couple of full episodes, I'm hooked. One of the recent myths they examined was exploding CDs in high-speed drives. The myth was "busted", but it was fun to see high speed power tools used to destroy CDs. Another recent "busted" myth was cell phones causing gas station fires. Recommended addition to your PVR.
