NSLog();

Shot with a Canon 7D.

My Vimeo Plus membership is about to expire. For $59, I can't see myself renewing. Heck, at $29 I'm not sure I'd renew.

Like it or not, YouTube has won. It's free, has HD, embeds, and has just enough privacy controls (Vimeo lets you control on which sites your videos can be embedded, YouTube does not) that it's used instead of Vimeo.

What will I lose?

If you do not renew your membership, your account will revert to the feature set available to non-Plus Vimeo members. You will not lose any videos or channels/groups/albums that you created during your Plus membership, no need to worry. However, any videos you have set special embed options for will revert to the normal embed options for basic accounts. Your original source files will no longer be available for download 30 days after your Plus account expires.

Eh. Not worth it. $59's a lot of money.

A few years ago I replaced the piece-of-shit ATI Radeon X1900 XT in my Mac Pro. Lately, following reboots and other things which cause the display to go black (I've not tried sleep), the display will remain black. The white LED is on, the computer boots normally, and the display simply remains dark.

Rebooting a few times seems to fix the problem sometimes, but basically, I think the ATI card is dead again.

There are numerous threads about the quality of this card on Apple's discussion forums (here's one, another, and there are plenty more) as well as on third-party sites. I found some other discussions earlier today that I can't find again. The latter one is particularly interesting.

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A few years ago when Carey and I first began painting the rooms in our house, we picked up a Pelican Paint Bucket from either Lowe's or Home Depot.

The other day we looked at both stores for some more liners only to find out that our bucket has been discontinued or is at least no longer carried. I had to overpay (just a little, free shipping) on Amazon.com (I have Prime now, after all) just to get some liners shipped to me.

The Pelican Paint Bucket is superior to the current offerings. It's got a wide mouth that will fit a little roller. It has ridges to take excess paint off. It has a nice, grippy handle that's easy to slide your hand into yet very secure. And it has a magnet to hold your brush - an incredibly clever feature we use all the time.

Stupid Lowe's and Home Depot.

Just a shout out to a good guy in the Mac world - MacRabbit rocks. I use CSSEdit nearly every day and Espresso is a great tool for web development. Give Jan's products a try and I'm sure you'll be impressed with the style and functionality.

The 10.6.3 update may have fixed the AppleEvents Timing Out bug, but one bug that's still around is the Spaces bug I described here. Essentially, if I use ctrl-1 to ctrl-3 to move between my Spaces, quite often the keyboard will stop accepting input (or the OS will stop accepting input from the keyboard) until the Dock is quit (and automatically re-started).

The Dock application controls Spaces. I've worked around this bug by having an AppleScript in my Script Menu that quits the Dock.

Steve Jobs is almost mind-blowingly, well, Jobsian in his D8 conference. The full 100-minute video is a free download from iTunes.

Installed.

For a major version upgrade, things (the UI, the functionality, etc.) remained surprisingly consistent. A lot of back end tweaks.

Every instance - every single one - of the ligatures in the book "Unplayable: An Inside Account of Tiger's Most Tumultuous Season" for my Kindle has an issue with ligatures. Most commonly this is "fl" - lowercase "F" and an "L" character next to each other (or "fi" - "F" and "I").

As you can see from the screenshot below, when reading a golf book the ligature issue is quite, uhm, noticeable.

I've filed a support request with Amazon. I'll update this blog entry when they respond.

The full article is worth reading, but if you're the type who just wants to skip to the end here you go:

Perfect French Fries - Serves Four

Ingredients

• 2 pounds russet potatoes (about 4 large), peeled and cut into 1/4-inch by 1/4-inch fries (keep potatoes stored in a bowl of water)
• 2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
• Kosher salt
• 2 quarts peanut oil

Procedure

1. Place potatoes and vinegar in saucepan and add 2 quarts of water and 2 tablespoons of salt. Bring to a boil over high heat. Boil for 10 minutes. Potatoes should be fully tender, but not falling apart. Drain and spread on paper towel-lined rimmed baking sheet. Allow to dry for five minutes.
2. Meanwhile, heat oil in 5-quart Dutch oven or large wok over high heat to 400°F. Add 1/3 of fries to oil (oil temperature should drop to around 360°F). Cook for 50 seconds, agitating occasionally with wire mesh spider, then remove to second paper-towel lined rimmed baking sheet. Repeat with remaining potatoes (working in two more batches), allowing oil to return to 400°F after each addition. Allow potatoes to cool to room temperature, about 30 minutes. Continue with step 3, or for best results, freeze potatoes at least over night, or up to 2 months.
3. Return oil to 400°F over high heat. Fry half of potatoes until crisp and light golden brown, about 3 1/2 minutes, adjusting heat to maintain at around 360°F. Drain in a bowl lined with paper towels and season immediately with kosher salt. Cooked fries can be kept hot and crisp on a wire rack set on a sheet tray in a 200°F oven while second batch is cooked. Serve immediately.

Courtesy of Super User: http://superuser.com/questions/52483/terminal-tips-and-tricks-for-mac-os-x.

Some good ones in there, along with some goofy ones.

BTW, opensnoop, cool.

Alex King has a list of Inevitable Truths for Mature People. I've always liked lists like this, though I can't come up with them on my own. Of the ones I liked the most:

- Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.

- There is great need for a sarcasm font.

- MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. I'm pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

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I've gotten a few IMs from people who are kind enough to point out that my blog posts here are a month or so behind and that I should check my server settings or something.

Unfortunately, they're not behind. I mean, they are, but the server settings are fine. I've just been so busy that I've just got pieces of posts scattered throughout most days. This post alone took quite awhile to finish. Today's date is July 22, and I'm pretty sure the date on this post is a month or more ago. Yep, June 12? Holy cow I am behind.

Blame summer and the fact that I've been spending a lot of time at the Academy (golf academy).

I'll catch up. May not be this month (or, well, next month… you know what I mean) but it'll be eventually.

Hmm.

I like it.

It almost never fails - when I'm uploading a lot of files (typically I see this when I'm uploading a vBulletin update) - my server will eventually boot me out and refuse to connect for 10 to 15 minutes (or longer).

Nobody's ever been able to give me a reason why or tell me how to fix it. It just happened again. All the server reports back is "connection failed" and I'm booted mediatemple-wide. I can't even access OTHER accounts (not the same dv account, literally other accounts) on mediatemple. My IP is clearly blocked for awhile.

Not cool.