This editorial covers a story that hasn’t seen much light in the mainstream media. The story’s fairly new and came to my attention through this video clip from Bill Maher’s show, which I saw on robin’s blog. Paraphrasing Maher’s comments, if this had happened under Clinton, he would have been lynched. But clearly, Republican presidents receive special attention, which we know given the whole missing munitions scandal, the little Abu Ghraib boo boo, and the minor fact that the main reason for going to war turned out to be incorrect. Clearly, all of these things were nothing compared to lying about sexual relations with an intern, an act which undermines the trust and the very fabric of American society–much moreso than male prostitutes with FBI/CIA clearance in the Whitehouse.

But at least somethings are getting out there, like the failure of Bush’s education policy

My band’s next gig is this Thursday, Feb 24th at 8pm at the Abbey.
we are opening for dälek (matador records, from
newark, nj). The lineup also features Cex , who we play before, and the Drastics, who we play after. Tickets are available online. It’s $10 at the door and $8 online, but I think there’s a $1.25 service charge online, so price is abt the same. The show is written up as a Critic’s Choice event in the Chicago Reader, so I guess it might sell out, but capacity is 600, so I doubt it. Should be ice cold.

Also, we got into the studio one night in Decemeber and recorded a demo, which is finally mixed down now. We recorded it for the purpose of getting more gigs, but oddly enough people keep asking us if we are selling anything, so we will be selling copies of it. It came out decent, sounds better on headphones, but decent. I would say that I enjoy listening to it, but it’s my band, so. . .

I finally found the feature I was looking for. In some older versions of Firefox, you could type “dict word” into the address bar and it would return the Dictionary.com definition of the word. At some point, this built-in special search was taken out, and replaced with the default search from the address bar, Google’s “I feel lucky”.

This article details how to add in your own custom search keywords to search just about any site. All you need to do is make a bookmark for the search string, e.g. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=%s, where %s is a placeholder for the search string; Go to Manage Bookmarks; Click Properties for the bookmark, and type a keyword in.

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I am elated.

This dude in Alaska is building an 18-foot-tall, anime-inspired, working, robot exoskeleton. They call them mechs or mechas in anime, rpgs, and other geeky sci-fi circles. I found this CNET article while looking for something else.

This is pretty nerdy too. I’m always looking for a good desktop background/wallpapers. Let me know if you have some good ones. I’ve been using the cartoons from exploding dog, but I usually end up going back to the high def images that are included in the OS X screen savers. The pics of space, nature and beach stuff are formatted for the screen and a lot nice than any similar stuff I’ve found on the web.

You can use those images as wallpapers, I have been for a while now. I have no idea what happened to them in Panther (10.3), but chances are, you still have them in the /Previous Systems folder.

If you type .slideSaver into the Finder search box, you should find them right away. In Jaguar, the screen savers were located in .slideSaver files, which are actually directories, in the System > Library > Screen Savers directory. In Panther they’ll still be there, under Preview Systems. You can right click the .slideSaver and select ‘Show Package Contents’ to get at the .jpgs.

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PC Magazine has posted a review of its top 15 extensions for Firefox. There are some good ones in there. I just got DictionarySearch , which allows you to highlight words and right click them to bring up a new tab with dictionary.com definitions or google search them. I’ve had been using the Dict extension, not reviewed in the article, which looks up words the same way, but gives you a pop-up window w/preformatted definitions of the word from websters & wordnet. I’m also tried the Tabbed Browsing extension, which lets you tweak the tabbing preferences, but haven’t really found the need for the extra control there yet. I’m thinking about trying the AdBlock extension, for automatically filtering ad images from loading and ScrapBook, which lets you save local copies or snippets of webpages like bookmarks, to avoid bookmark links dying on you.

This is a pretty sweet visualization of the words used in each of Bush’s State of the Union addresses. Click the more link, or visit the nytimes.
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I saw this post on AppleMatters today about the Macs being more cost effective than PCs. This is a brief response. I have a lot more to say about this matter, but don’t feel like spending more time on it.

I generally prefer Apple over the competition for a plethora of reasons, but I’m gonna play devil’s advocate on this one, being a grad student & strapped for $$$. Despite the introduction of the Mac mini and cheaper iBooks, Apple is still high end and more expensive than a cheap Windows or Linux box. The cost is not up front, their prices are competitive for what you get. Their chip speeds will generally be slower, but since the OS is better, you don’t usually notice the difference (maybe for some gaming apps).

The cost is mainly in the service. Servicing a PC is usually cheaper. PC components are cheap and you can often do the labor yourself. Even on laptops, where you can’t do the labor as easily, the service packages on most brands are better than Apple’s, which is only once year, unless you pay more for extended, which I highly recommend, given that minimum cost of service is generally their flat rate of about $300.

For quality components, OSs, UIs, etc. Apple’s top notch. You will generally feel better and enjoy working on the Mac. Things tend to be where they should be intuitively, and they’ve gone through great pains to make it feel that way for just about everyone from the tech expert to the computer illiterate. But their service is really not very good for a company that prides itself on user friendliness. It’s expensive and hard to get.

I don’t recommend Macs to students like myself anymore, as spending an hour or two on the phone or at the genius bar only to be told you need to drop the mandatory $300 to have a fan replaced is not the kind of thing someone strapped for cash and time can do. If you have cash, buy an Apple, and a BMW to plug yer iPod into. If not, the cheapo Windows boxes and minimal time invested in tuning & security is often the way to go. I still prefer Apple, but I work on Winows at work and XP is pretty decent.

I had to shell out $300 last year when my logic board died. I ended up getting the money refunded, which took like 6 months, through their iBook logic board refund campaign, since it turned out thousands of the iBooks in the batch mine was from had faulty boards, but until they made the official refund announcement it was $300 just to look at the thing. The geniuses were of no help. The battery on my iPod is dying now, and although I bought the extended service thing for it (~$60 I think) they give you a hell of a time about replacing it, requiring you to leave it with them for a few days to run diagnostics. This includes erasing all your music, which at the time, I didn’t have 100% backed up, so I had to go home, back it up and I haven’t made time to get out to the Apple store to get it checked up yet. I need to do that… and get the oxygen emissions sensor replaced on my car so the damn check engine light shuts off…

Oh, and regarding the author’s comments on the security of the IE 6 browser, that’s just incorrect. The security it uses for sending info encrypted is the same as any other browser, https is standard stuff. Granted, people may be spending more time trying to hack the browser and exploit its security flaws, but all browsers are buggy, all of them can be tricked.

I lost my cell phone. I’m not sure when, but I think it was on the way to the airport. Last weekend, 1/23, I took a trip to Philly, to give an invited talk at U Penn (I know I’m tooting). Willow had graciously offered to drive me to O’Hare. For various reasons, we were running late and, in addition to my bags, I had a bunch of loose crap in my hands (my iPod, some chargers, etc.) as we ran down the snow covered alley to her car.

I’m not sure that I had my phone on me at this point, but when I got to the airport, I realized that it wasn’t there. When I got home from Philly, I searched my room, but to no avail. My room is a perpetual mess, so it may be that the phone is somewhere in here. I lost a phone in college and found it under my bed a few months later, having had the insurance replaced it at that point.

I would have called it, but it’s not ringing anymore, just going to voicemail. It may be that it’s out of charge, or I may have dropped it and someone could have picked it up and dropped the SIM card and sold it, etc., but no outgoing calls have been made since I lost it. There’s more to the story, but even longer story short, I have insurance on the phone and its being replaced. Cost of replacement: $35. Cost of not having a phone for over a week, including while travelling: huge-mung-guss.

I typically keep my phone in my back pocket, placing it on the table when I sit down, or in my lap when I’m driving. I’ve left it on the table at restaurants a few times, or other places. My mom hates this. She always makes a point to tell me that I shouldn’t leave my phone out cuz someone could steal it, or more likely, I could leave it.

But there doesn’t seem to be a very good alternative. Most guys I know carry their phones in their pockets and put em down on the table when they sit. Some guys also do this with keys, wallets, cigarrettes, lighters, etc. Girls have their bags. Guys don’t. I’ve contemplated having a bag, something like the Seinfeldian ‘European Carryall”, and since I’m in school, I often have by big-ass messenger bag filled with books and tons of other crap (iPod, laptop, silly putty, gum, etc.), basically the same crap girls keep + or - the books and laptop. But it still seems pretty girly to carry around a bag when your just going out. It seems like a pain too.

But modern men have a lot more crap to carry than we used to, and I don’t like keeping stuff in my coat pockets — not just keys and wallet anymore — now there’s the phone, maybe some gum and/or chapstick, often some music, iPod, etc. What’s the answer?

There are the guys who wear their various devices on their belts. Keys on the belt loop are cool. Cells, PDAs, mp3 players, etc, are not. Unless you don’t care what you look like, i.e. you’re getting old, or just a geek/dork/stubborn/etc., or you actually think this looks cool — maybe it reminds you of a tricorder, or maybe you’re just showin off the bling celly — in which case you’d be wrong — unless you don’t care or are just fashion ignorant, you know you can’t go the utility belt route. You know you’re getting old when you where the cell on the belt clip. This is almost as bad as the moment you start thinking, damn those kids are so loud, I wish they’d just be quiet (that moment starting happening to be when I was 4 or 5).

If I did actually drop my phone, then, if I had been wearing my phone on my belt, I surely would not have dropped it. I actually bought a cell phone holster for my messenger bag. Oh well. New phone will be here soon.

But I lost a lot of the numbers.