Geeks R Us

Archive for January, 2003

Memories

Friday, January 31st, 2003

I used to be a Mac prankster. A long time ago, in an office far far away, I wrote an extension called “obnoxious” which had no icon, it got to a friend at UCLA who put it on Compuserve. Someone took it, renamed it to “Arggh” and added an icon. It then ended up in Stupid Mac Tricks volume 1. It would randomly scream every 3-5 minutes.

So I put it on a co-worker’s Mac, and it was screaming away. Was bugging me that it was not bugging him lol. So I went over and said “How’s it going?” and while I was there, the mac screamed. I said “What the hell was that?” he said “I don’t know, but it does it every now and then” and went back to work. Man was I bummed.

Apple releases iMovie 3.01 and iPhoto 2 via Software Update

Friday, January 31st, 2003

Jaguar users, check your Software Update now :)

romanticism abounds

Friday, January 31st, 2003

“six moons, shining on your face, all of them illuminating your beauty, none of which is as beautiful as your heart and the caring you have shown me in the past”

Next time you have a bad day….

Friday, January 31st, 2003

Next time you have a bad day, watch the TechTV Windows Media Viewer movie at the bottom of this page and try and not laugh your butt off.

Should security experts alert us to exploits?

Friday, January 31st, 2003

Recently David Lychfield posted that the recent slammer worm that affected MS SQL servers was his code. He posted the code to show the exploit. He now wonders if this was a good idea, because someone used this knowledge to create Slammer. “What if someone died because of this?” was a question raised.

Sure, posting exploits could cause problems, however, what if the exploit had not been posted? Well then MS might not have created a patch. Then when someone *did* find the hole, instead of having an 8 month old solution (and well tested), we might be at ground zero, waiting *weeks* for MS to fix the problem.

In this scenario, maybe many people would have died before the patch was available. I think it is wrong to live in fear, a philosophy for life in general. Let’s post the problems, make the suppliers fix the problems, then the onus is on the user to keep their systems up to date.

How to get back to “default” font

Friday, January 31st, 2003

This is something that has been bugging me in all OS X apps and I would like your feedback.

Lets say I open a new email message in Mail and start typing along. The default font is Helvetica 12 I think. Then I paste something in from, say, Script Editor. The font is Geneva with colors and such.

Now, I want to go back to the default font, but there is no way to do this other than to go and try and figure out what font/size/color/style the default text is in and reset every property by hand.

Mail’s “Make Plain Text” clears the font attributes for the entire email. I realize that the introduction of font data other than the default will make Mail send RTF text vs. plain text, but this is a UI issue with Text Edit, etc.

Anyone have any thoughts?

(I just noticed Mail’s Copy/Paste style from the Edit menu (which is nowhere near the Format menu, but this is not consistent from one OS X app to another. Time for HIG to step up?)

Apple Remote Desktop Experience Anyone?

Thursday, January 30th, 2003

So I’m trying to decide what my next Macintosh will be. Some swank powerbook this summer, cuz I love the new features (bluetooth, better airport, etc) or a new tower, because they are so fast.

The disadvantages to a tower, though, is that I’d have to sit at a desk, which I loathe when I am home. The couch is a much warmer, friendlier atmosphere!

So I was thinking about using a tower remotely via my current powerbook. A friend told me to check into Apple Remote Desktop. Has anyone had any experience using it over 802.11b? Is it fast?

I’d like to have a super fast tower with tons of disk space for compiling, video editing, etc. If I can do some of that work from the couch, even better!

If video playback was too slow (which I imagine it would be) I wonder if 802.11g would help? I could get some PCMCIA 802.11g card with an Airport Extreme basestation. That would solve my airport reception issues as well.

Then the only laptop issue would be integrated bluetooth. Maybe some enterprising company would ship a combo bluetooth/802.11g/802.11b PCMCIA card with OS X drivers :)

Thoughts?

Toolbar hijacks browsers

Thursday, January 30th, 2003

According to this Wired story, a utility is adding itself to user’s browsers and is difficult to remove.

“When I find the bastards who programmed this thing I’d be happy to castrate them with a pair of dull pinking shears,” fumed one of Xupiter’s many unhappy victims in a newsgroup posting.

Um, I have a word of advice for this person - Microsoft. They are the people who made this crap possible, insecure and evil. Head up to Redmond and let them know you are tired of their insecure operating system otherwise known as “Windows.”

Sally has been framed!

Wednesday, January 29th, 2003

I picked up my Sally drawing that I had a custom frame made for at Aaron Bros. They did a great job! I hung her with the certificate near the door, over the light switch hehe. I guess I’ll have to move Cheyenne and Spot down a bit now, as that wall looks unbalanced.

See Sally!

InDesign 2 Quark should be popular product

Wednesday, January 29th, 2003

Looks like someone is being smart about things. The Quark world sucks, but there are still many houses that need Quark files. A lot of people are finding they like inDesign more and more each day, but how to deal with houses set up for Quark printing?

Check this out

Braces update

Wednesday, January 29th, 2003

I had a bracket break off the other day, so I went in to have it replaced. That rear molar is in fine position, so we just cut the wire and left it.

Seeing as my next scheduled appointment was next week we went ahead and put gap springs on the uppers (annoying, but will close the gaps made by closing the sides) and now I am even farther ahead of schedule!

The overbite is nearly gone, which is good also!

So aside from some headaches and general grouchiness due to the teeth moving from the springs, things are progressing well.

Whoa - Just seen on Headline News

Tuesday, January 28th, 2003

Who woulda thunk it? I flipped on the TV to headline news and across the banner at the bottom was:

“Top Selling Mac Software: 1) Mac OS X Jaguar 2) MS Office Promo”

Wow! TSMS on CNN Headline News!

The Fat Lady Has Sung?

Monday, January 27th, 2003

According to this CNET article, there may not be another Opera for the Mac.

Why? They claim because Apple is crowding them out with Safari.

Sorry, guys. Your version of Opera for the Macintosh was mediocre at best. With a 2.6 rating on version tracker, this sour milk gripe just makes me even less likely to try their browser.

Kudos to the Omni team for realizing their weaknesses and planning on changing their engine, not whining about Safari.

Just because we have much less software for the Mac doesn’t mean we appreciate companies that complain about someone taking market share away from their less than optimal application.

Dumb Evan

Monday, January 27th, 2003

Evan, of Joe Millionaire, blew it by kicking off Mo Jo! She was the best one it seemed!!

(tongue-in-cheek entry)

MS chokes on it’s own crap

Monday, January 27th, 2003

Seems Microsoft never patched a lot of it’s own servers, rofl:

Article at CNET

Congrats to Ranchero Software

Saturday, January 25th, 2003

Ranchero Software has released beta 13 of their wonderful RSS newsreader, NetNewsWire.

The pro version allows you to post to your MT blog, and now supports categories in an easy to use drawer. Very nice, guys!

No Undo?

Saturday, January 25th, 2003

Safari has no undo for text operations (typing/paste/cut/copy) in form fields, or anywhere for that matter. I hope this is on the list. :)

35 Million AOL accounts exposed

Saturday, January 25th, 2003

The gnome reports that AOL’s mail servers were not requiring any authentication. Everyone’s email was open for grabs?

Read about it here

Alright! I have art!

Saturday, January 25th, 2003

Ok so it is not really “art” but considering how much I love Disneyland, I finally got my posters I bought at the park dry mounted and hung. No frames yet (too costly) but they still look good!

see for yourself

Now I have a Pirates and Haunted Mansion left to hang, but no idea where! I put the People Mover and Disneyland Railroad posters up first because they added so much color.

Apple to post Keynote fix “soon”

Thursday, January 23rd, 2003

cNet reports that Apple will be posting a fix to the ATI driver bug causing entire system crashes with Keynote “soon”

I hope so, I like Keynote!

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