NSLog();

I really, really like Objective-C's [square brackets] method of markup (whatever you wanna call it). Some of the people in this OSNews article are bitching and whining, but odds are, in my experience, they've simply never done much work with Objective-C.

Which, I ask you, would you rather deal with:

someObject.createConnection(mySocket, 12163, 28800, myClient, NULL);

or

[someObject createConnectionToSocket:mySocket onPortNumber:12163
    atSpeed:28800 withClient:myClient andExtraHeaders:nil];

I know I've got a lot of Mac users reading this site, and so they may be partial to Objective-C, but can anyone honestly give me a good reason for liking the first over the latter? "Fear of the unknown or strange looking" does not count.

I previously put two of my sites on this blog's virtual auction block, but only received offers (and plenty of them) from people whom I did not trust to maintain the content of the sites in an adequate fashion. Thus, I've not sold the sites yet.

New plan: give each of the sites away to individuals who will do what they can to keep and preserve them, with the catch that they give me 25% of all profits (from ads or whatever) until $2500 is paid (discounts if you want both). The sites are still AppleScript Central and Sound Set Central. They're still very very popular, and they're still the same sites that have netted over $50,000 in ad sales in the past three years, $18,000 of which was last year (Feb 2002 - Mar 2003).¹

Contact me via email or AIM (iacas) if you're interested.

¹ Edited to add that "last year" information.

Just quoting this Billboard.com article about Apple's "rumored" music service.

"Label sources tell Bulletin that the service is an a la carte download store -- not unlike that of rival Liquid Audio -- that is built into Apple's iTunes player. No subscription is required for the service, and tracks are expected to retail for an average of 99 cents. Once purchased, tracks are transferred to the consumer's iTunes music library and are automatically synched to the user's iPod portable player.

Content can also be burned to CD. Credit-card information is stored on file in the store's shopping-cart system so the consumer does not have to re-enter the information for each purchase. The offering is expected to be made available initially only to users of Apple computers.

Some people have said that a buck a track is a lot. After all, fifteen songs = $15 and that's the cost of a CD, but you don't get the actual physical media, you don't get the liner notes, you don't get the album art, etc. I'll wait to give my opinion, if I ever do, until "rumor" becomes a bit more than rumor.

Chris backhandedly asks how you pronounce GIF in a recent entry. I'm inclined to say that most of the time, I say it with a hard G. After all, it stands for Graphics Interchange Format, not Jraphics. Plus it's not peanut butter.

However, when I say it in a sentence with the word "JPEG" I almost always say it with a "j" sound: "jifs and jpegs." How about you?

Thanks John. Guess I can knock that one off my "Top 10 Safari Issues" list soon.

I just got done reading about my screen so this OneWord is a bit weird. I'm also thinking of screening potential candidates for a job, something I just went through, and Daria screened calls while I wrote about Survivor from her house due to Interland's issues. Screen doors, you see a lot of those in Florida, and entirely screened in porches. "Florida porches" they are called, I think, or patios actually, I'm not sure. Screening calls, pests, and ICMP packets, that's my life.

This 60-second entry was brought to you by today's word from OneWord™.

Ahh, salvation! Thanks to a MacInTouch¹ post, I can disable the touch-sensitive buttons on the front of my Cinema display. I don't know how many times I've accidentally put my computer to sleep by brushing the power button. If you hold down command and shift when you open the "Displays" system preferences item, a third tab is enabled.

¹ I only began reading MacInTouch again recently when they got an RSS feed. Good for them.

Interland was having routing issues for awhile this morning.

[7:49am iacas@Gaia:~] % ping nslog.com
PING nslog.com (64.226.43.134): 56 data bytes
^C
--- nslog.com ping statistics ---
712459 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss

Oddly enough, my neighbor (Daria), using the same ISP and the same connection (but a 24.* IP, while mine at some point in time was bumped to a 68.* IP) could see my server just fine.

And so we begin another episode of Survivor, one day late because someone forgot to let me know when she got back from dance so that we could do our normal "party" thing, even though Gabe is still up in NYC. Let's just jump right into it, shall we?

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 1920); »

So I had this great idea to write about how engagement rings were sexist and all, and I whipped up a draft (albeit a pretty bad one) of an article. Then I met Jamie at work and mentioned it to her, and this got her wheels going, and she beat me to it. So then I mentioned to Daria my thoughts on Jamie's post, and my own, and Daria went home and commented on Jamie's entry!

But hey, far be it from me to let those two ninnies¹ steal my thunder. What thunder you ask? I haven't a clue, but if you find it, let me know. Without further ado, and certainly without talking to anyone else about it, I now present to you my take on engagement rings.

Note: Somewhat major edits made today, April 25, to more clearly explain my point of view.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 1281); »

I said in my "Starting a Blog (with Movable Type)" article that one of the best ways to build up your readership is to simply leave comments (preferably good ones) and post TrackBacks to the blogs you read.

And so it has happened again. Amy of spiffarific.com (fabu name) has posted a few comments here lately, and partly because I'm intrigued by the fact that she's a woman, but mostly because I'd never heard of her before, I visited her site. And now she's in my aggregator.

And so it goes. Besides, anyone who can say "the creator is a Microsoft nad-sucking lackey" is someone I'd like to read a little more (hence the title of this post: she left a comment on my blog and turned me into a reader of hers).

Question: If you could live in a past era just so you could wear the clothes in fashion at the time, when would it be?

My Answer: I would live in the stone age, when clothes were mostly optional, because I tend to be somewhat uncomfortable in any kind of "fashion" clothing. I sit around all day in soccer shorts and t-shirts, trying to keep comfort at a maximum.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Eric Nick points out that Mario Kart for the GameCube has been announced. YES! I previously wrote about Mario Kart, but I have one question not answered by the preview page linked to above: will it allow Internet play? I'd be interested in seeing who's better: the Nickster or myself.

Awesome! This starts this day off better than any of the past few I've had. Though I should note that I still haven't taken Zelda (Wind Waker) out of the cellophane, yet. Maturity is a weird thing. I still love 'em for the release they provide, but I keep prioritizing other things above them. Like reading, talking to Jamie, and working.

The new buddy karts are interesting, but I'm afraid that the game will lose the raw simplicity of previous versions. That raw simplicity was quite fair: better players won more often. The more gimmicks you add to a game, the more potential exists for the lesser-skilled players to pull out wins.

For $10,000,000.00 I'd live nearly anywhere for life. I've long said that if I had a million dollars, I'd be set for life. Live off the $50,000/year that the interest would get you, don't spend the rest at all, and work odd jobs to keep yourself busy and have some sp money. $10M? Why, that's like ten times as much!

I'm a bit late in getting my post up, but oh well. Deal with it. This will be short: I haven't got much time and I'm really far behind on my TiVo playlist.

Diane Warren is pretty awesome, so it's great that she's on. Guest judging and singing her songs, great. Good job. For whatever reason I thought she was fatter than she actually is. "They can sing along with your songs" says Ryan, and she quips "Good, cuz I can't." Must be an interesting position to be in.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 678); »