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  • 1 min read

[ETECH] Reasonableness

A memorable quote (from George Bernard Shaw)

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him… The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself… All progress depends on the unreasonable man."

  • 1 min read

Rosie O’Donnell has a blog

Another sign that "something big" is going on here. It seems like not a day passes but that there's another article in either the Boston Globe or the New York Times about some aspect of blogging. Latest example, Need Some New Luster? Try Rosie O'Donnell's Method: Create It by the Blogful.

"Ms. O'Donnell's Web log, "formerlyrosie," began appearing late last month and is described as at the top of the page as "The unedited rantings of a fat 42-year-old menopausal ex-talk show host married mother of four."

Not that I am a fan one way or another, but, who would have thunk!

  • 1 min read

Switcher’s Log, Part 5: Man does this machine scream.

For those who are following this narrative, this is a continuing narrative of my experiences after having switched from Windows XP to Mac OS X. One of my big concerns before switching to Mac was that it was going to be sloooooow. Of course this is an unfair comparison, between:

  • a 2GHz Pentium on a 2 year old Dell with 1 Gig of Memory and

  • a brand new G5, 1.8 GHz x 2 (dual processor), with 2 Gigabytes of memory.

But you wouldn't believe the rumors and legends out there about Macs being slow, or the fact that you can't compare a Pentium MHz to a G5 MHz… I was worried : perhaps the Mac OS was slower or different; and anyway would it actually be able to take advantage of the dual CPU for day to day use? The bottom line: it screams! Builds are fast, opening apps is fast, moving windows around is fast, Ripping CDs is really fast. It's really fast!

  • 1 min read

[BlogBridge] Screencast tutorials, so far

There are two very brief audio-visual overviews of 'cool' BlogBridge features.

  • BlogStarz feature: in this brief screencast I introduce and explain a handy way to rate which feeds you find most useful, and at the same time benefit from the experience of other users.

  • Automatic highlighting in articles:In this brief screencast, I show how BlogBridge will highlight words and phrases in green (link to a feed I am already following), red (link to a feed that is new to me) or blue (specific words or phrases which are interesting to me.)

Let me know what you think. Useful? Does it work with your browser on your platform?

  • 1 min read

This is not a religious blog

I thought this was an interesting article even though I don 't agree with it:

"There is no reason for believing that any sort of gods exist and quite good reason for believing that they do not exist and never have. It has all been a gigantic waste of time and a waste of life. It would be a joke of cosmic proportions if it weren't so tragic."

  • 2 min read

I love Microsoft too, but I can’t hold my tongue

Dave Winer points to Kevin Shofield's defense of an "unfair, infamous post saying that Microsoft can't ship software anymore." Scoble links to the thread, without comment (which is understandable, not wanting to be too partisan.) In my opinion, and agreeing with Kevin, Microsoft actually shows an absolutely amazing ability to develop, test, and deliver software of mind boggling complexity to a huge user base. They run unbelievably large scale beta tests, they support remarkable variety of hardware and software configurations, being run by every possible kind of customer, geography and user. IMHO there is no other organization on the planet that has this capability. Ok? But I have to take issue, in a big way , with this claim in Kevin's post: " Other Microsoft products, like Money and Encarta, ship on an annual basis and hit those deadlines like clockwork." As many users of Microsoft Money will attest, the annual, clockwork releases are a farce to extract more cash out of people (like me) who fall into the trap of buying the upgrade. Why do I keep falling into that trap myself? I really rely on Microsoft Money. I run my life on it. After receiving enough reminders that there's a new version out with bug fixes and new features I finally decide to go for it, and almost always regret it. It's called the triumph of hope over experience … Invariably there are very minor feature improvements, and often new horrible, data corrupting bugs. It's shameful. I bet the Microsoft Money team is tiny, which is why it is the most profitable, percentage wise, product Microsoft has.

  • 1 min read

I read Dowbrigade for the articles

Do you know Dowbrigade? An almost always interesting blog, intellectually stimulating and thought provoking. Check it out! Wait, read more closely. There's good stuff there:

"This story has almost everything we look for in a good blog posting. It features an innovative use of one of our favorite technologies, libraries and librarians, and a money-saving move by a public institution. Everything, that is, except an opportunity to feature a little artfully exposed flesh. So we decided to exercise a little creative licence, at the end of the story.."

What I want to know is where is Michael's secret stash of iPod photographs?

  • 1 min read

Google Toolbar: Where’s the fire?

In case you've come across the flaming debate about how the Google Toolbar is evil, you will appreciate this post:

"I'm a bit wary about throwing myself in the middle of the whole Google Toolbar AutoLink business (Dan Gillmor has a good summary and lots of trackbacks to opinions, pro and con), but I'm sort of dumbfounded that so many people are so vehemently against it"

That's from Kottke.org, but it could just as easily be me speaking. My sentiments exactly. Read Kottke's post. One more teapot tempest AFAIC Correction: While I still agree with most of what Kottke said, there's one factual error. When I played with the toolbar it automatically changed a web page to turn addresses into links to Google Maps.

  • 1 min read

Is this picture classified?

5607434_77c4bfa47d_m.jpgI am quickly becoming a Flickr fan. What took me so long, you ask? Well for those of you that don't know Flickr, it's a site where legions of users host their digital snapshots. So far, nothing new, right? But here's where it gets interesting. People are asked to TAG their pictures and they do. So if you are for example, interested in Iraq, you could see all pictures added that are tagged "IRAQ." And by the way, there's a corresponding RSS feed for each tag. So just add your Iraq RSS feed to your favorite aggregator and get a daily download of cool pictures. Hence the title of this post. This is a nice picture of what looks to me like a Predator UAV. From the Iraq Tag on Flickr. Classified? Who knows!