Archive for December, 2005

Zen and the Art of Coffee Carrying

Thursday, December 29th, 2005

Another one of life’s little mysteries: One day, you can carry a cup of coffee as if it were sailing along without causing even a ripple. The next day, you fight the cup in order to keep it steady and not drip coffee on your shoes.

In other news, things are exciting again but I can’t blog about it. If you’ve spoken with me personally, you know what’s going on. Needless to say, it’s resulted in extra work and less blogging time. However, I’m finally taking some time to go out photo shooting on Monday, so I’ll hopefully have a pretty picture to post soon.

iPod nano

Thursday, December 22nd, 2005

I got an iPod nano the other day (an early Chanukah gift) and it’s love at first listen. My first impressions:

* It’s small. Yeah, yeah, you know it’s small — but until you hold one in your hands, you can’t appreciate it’s actual smallness.
* It fits perfectly into my jean’s change pocket.
* You can’t beat the industrial engineering. No visible screws or fasteners, a shiny metal back, smooth plastic front and rounded corners make it a pleasure just to hold.
* On the negative side, the plastic is already scratched — the reports are true. This isn’t something that bothers me too much. Since I opted for the white model, I suspect any scratches are less noticable than if it were black.
* The backlight is *bright*. At night, it’s blinding.
* Podcasts (if you can find ones of decent quality) are great and can be a nice change of pace from music.
* The scroll wheel looks great and is nice for navigating long lists, but I have some issues with the interface. Maybe I’ll delve into that in a later post.
* Is there such things as ear buds that actually stay in your ears? Apple’s ear buds are so-so in that department.
* It’s got Solitare!

Since I won’t cycle with headphones (people who do must have a death wish), I am now tempted to take the bus so I can listen to my new toy. There goes my exercise.

Make Money Quick! Improve Your IQ Overnight!

Wednesday, December 7th, 2005

According to [this article](http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/12/07/googleusers/index.php?lsrc=mwrss), Google users are richer and more net savvy. Make [Google](http://google.com) your home page today!

Intel Macs: Not a Panacea

Monday, December 5th, 2005

This [article in the NY Times](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/business/yourmoney/04techno.html) about “thinking tools” for the Mac contains the following misperception:

Others may follow next year, when Apple Computer begins producing Macs based on Intel processing chips like those that PC’s use. That change will make it easier for software vendors to create both Mac and PC versions of their programs…

Intel-based Macs will do no such thing (although I’m sure Apple doesn’t mind this kind of press). The truth is that the CPU inside the Mac doesn’t matter one bit because software developers must write their programs to two different OS APIs (that’s Operating System Application Programming Interfaces for my less technical readers). In other words, you need to write different code for Windows and Mac OS no matter what kind of chip they are running on. And, for most software, the type of chip doesn’t affect the code at all.

This mistake doesn’t affect the main point of the article, but it misleads the reader to think their favourite applications will soon find their way to Mac or Windows. Uh uh.

Cows are Female

Thursday, December 1st, 2005

Go and watch the [Barnyard trailer](http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/barnyard/barnyardlg.htm) and help me out. Aren’t cows female? Why do all those cows talk like men? Am I too much of a literalist?