One useful feature of OS X is the built in PDF handling. It is always easy to export a file as a PDF, and to do some basic editing of PDF files. A post on Mac OS X Hints today got me looking at some customizations. The hint is that creating an alias in the [...]
One of the many modern `conveniences’ that actually take more time than they save is voicemail. Answering machines and voicemail are occasionally useful, but more often than not, someone just leaves a rambling message with details they end up repeating when you call them back. Fortunately, Caller ID has mostly eliminated the need for voicemail: [...]
There are rumors that Apple may reintroduce matte screens as an option on their notebooks. Apple can’t return to glare free displays soon enough! I’m looking forward to buying an aluminum computer once they fix this design flaw. The latest 13 inch MacBook Pro would be almost perfect with an anti-glare screen.
[Update 2009-08-11] Anti-glare [...]
I just received an email from the university saying that the server for faculty and student webpages has been compromised. The message goes on to say it was due to a Microsoft bug and that “pages were defaced, indicating they were hacked.” This one email shows two serious problems. The first is that University Computing [...]
I just watched a couple episodes of Season Three of Rocky and Bullwinkle on DVD. This is a great show, but the DVD collection is an example of something that has been bugging me for years.
I’m sick of the silly animated menus on movies. They were moderately interesting the first four times ten years ago. [...]
The hard drive on my MacBook crashed. It took two weeks to get it back the way I like it. It took a week to get a new drive and do a temporary restore. I then had to use it as-is for a few days. I then went back and did a fresh install and [...]
After a couple frustrating weeks with computers, we have been talking about copy-protection. With the switch to DTV, Blu-ray, and DisplayPort, it is getting harder to avoid buying copy-controlled products. Avoiding Blu-ray is easy, but avoiding encrypted DisplayPort will be harder. Luke and Adam wanted to use the acronym FARCE, but we couldn’t settle on [...]
“Drill, Baby, Drill!” We have heard this phrase constantly since the Republican convention. The thought behind this chant is that increased American oil production will lead to lower gas prices. This idea is based on supply and demand. With a constant demand, increasing supply should lower the price of a resource. Drilling in the US [...]
I finally got around to watching Who Killed the Electric Car?. It is a very good documentary. I have been reading about electric vehicles the past few months, and the movie inspired me to start looking again.
In college, before video games, we would amuse ourselves by posing programming exercises. One of the favorites was to write the shortest self-reproducing program. Since this is an exercise divorced from reality, the usual vehicle was FORTRAN. Actually, FORTRAN was the language of choice for the same reason that three-legged races are popular. –Ken Thompson, [...]