NSLog();

Canon's TC-80N3 is a "Timer Remote Controller" with four features, all of which can be used in any combination: alone or with any two, three, or four settings combined.

The features are:

1. Self Timer - Delay before taking an image.
2. Interval Timer - Delay between images.
3. Long Exposure Timer - Set the shutter speed for long exposures accurately.
4. Exposure Count - Choose between 1 and 99 images.

Each of the timer modes can be set for anywhere between 1 second and 99:59:59.

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Someone needs to hire a "proffesional" spell-checker.

The timeline goes something like this…

February 6, 2009: At about noon, I make a $676 purchase. Not needing the items all that quickly, I opt for the "free" 7-10 day Super Saver shipping. The only shipping estimates on the order pages are "order in the next 13 hours to have it by tomorrow!"

February 8, 2009: Puzzled by the fact that I didn't get a shipping notification, I check the order status and Amazon tells me that my order will ship on February 11, most likely. It lists the delivery dates as February 19 - 25 - a full 13 to 19 days after the order date.

That's not even 7-10 days if you subtract the five days it's taking them to put my stuff in a box. And why's it taking Amazon five days to put my stuff in a box? You can order the same exact things I've ordered and they'll be delivered to you (or me) tomorrow if pay more money - the products are in stock. Delaying putting the items in a box probably takes more time and effort than if they just packed up the products immediately like every other order. It's apparently a custom feature to "delay" shipment to cheap customers.

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Some random thoughts about the Super Bowl that was…

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For the most part, MobileMe's (née .Mac) "sync" features work well. They keep my calendars, my contacts, my preferences, and more just as I like them on multiple machines¹.

Unfortunately, the Dashboard sync is seemingly hopelessly broken. For two weeks I've been battling this dialog box:

On my Mac Pro, I created four "Delivery Status" widgets to track four packages I was expecting. I'm on my Mac Pro 90+% of the time and on my MacBook Pro the remainder of the time, and things worked fine until I closed the widgets on the Mac Pro.

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In November, 2007 I asked if anyone thought the Kindle was a good idea.

Recently, after seeing how truly small the Kindle is, I started to wonder if perhaps it wasn't a good idea - or to be more precise, if perhaps the next version rumored to be introduced on February 9, wasn't going to be a good idea.

The price is still a bit high: $359¹ isn't chump change. I don't care for the data fee either - I'd just load the darn thing up from my home WiFi. And I still like physical books, for loaning out and other things, so I think I'd only be interested if you could purchase, for a little bit more, both a physical and electronic copy of things from amazon.com.

So that's my wishlist, I suppose, for version 2: $299 or less, ditching of the extraneous data fees, and inexpensive "electronic + physical" books. If the Kindle 2 has those things, I'll consider it. Otherwise, there's still little wrong with paperback…

Prompted to post this by this Ars article, which I've yet to read (but plan to).

The 50% savings we're offering at Cynical Peak ends today.

Josh, creator of FlipBook, sent this to me: "Get Well, Bob" - Extended Edition by furbawl

I concur. Of course, there's more to it than that…

And I still use Entourage. I like the colored labels and I like the unified inbox. Screw Mail.

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As long as I've been aware of professional sports teams, I've been a Pittsburgh sports fan: Pirates, Penguins, and Steelers. I watched the Pirates lose in the playoffs three years in a row. I watched the Pens lose in the post-season a few times, including last year, but also watched them snag two Stanley Cups. I've watched the Steelers lose a lot of heart-breaking games, and Super Bowl XXX, but I've been fortunate to watch them win two Super Bowls in the past four seasons, too.

Brad, the other member of Cynical Peak lives in Arizona. The Diamondbacks won a World Series in 2001. The Suns, Cardinals, and Coyotes have yet to win a title - and this year marked the first time the Cardinals would make it to the big dance.

Two weeks ago, when the Super Bowl teams were set, I asked Brad if he'd like to do something special for the Super Bowl. We decided that we'd offer a percentage off equivalent to the total points scored.

So, with the Steelers 27-23 win, I'm pleased to announce that for the next three days we're offering 50% off all our software¹. Please use the coupon code "SUPERBOWL" when checking out to take 50% off your order.

Drop by http://cynicalpeak.com/ for your software.

Go Steelers! Six-burgh!

I've updated the Desktops page with February's images. Since it's not a leap year, you've got 2-3 less days to get these images than every other month, so grab 'em today.

P.S. We were without power from shortly before 7:00am until just after 3:30pm today. Penelec was digging pretty deep around some electrical boxes in the neighborhood.

I've heard of people using Amazon S3 to backup their home computers, and I've looked into doing this a few times… but isn't it incredibly expensive?

I just checked and I have 1050 GB I'd like to back up to another location (beyond the one on-site and one off-site location I have now).

Storage is 15 cents per gigabyte, so that's $157.50. Data transfer is $0.10 per GB, so that's another $105 for the first backup and, say, $5 any time I want to perform another backup.

So I'm looking at $260 for the first month and another $160+ every month I keep my data on S3?

Or have I brain farted somewhere, somehow?

John Gruber writes up a method for invoking the same AppleScript on Safari and WebKit. That's all well and good, but it reminds me of one of my annoyances.

You see, I wouldn't mind running WebKit nightly builds, but I don't want to run Safari and WebKit at the same time.

It'd be nice if you could download WebKit nightly builds named "Safari" - or change the name after download easily - and run that.

I haven't tested it, but it may be worth while. I could run a cron-launched AppleScript that:

1. Quit "Safari".
2. Downloaded the WebKit nightly build.
3. Renamed "Safari" to "Safari (Orig)" or something¹.
4. Renamed the WebKit nightly to "Safari" and moved it to /Applications.
5. Launched "Safari" and chose the "Reopen All Windows From Last Session" item in the "History" menu.

That would work, wouldn't it? The app would be known as Safari, scripts would work, applications that know Safari handles URLs by default would keep working, and life would be grand.

Right?

Today I received two 8 GB SanDisk Extreme IV CompactFlash cards. As has become custom lately, they came with a CD that has some file recovery software on it should you, I dunno, format your card before you import your images or something. I've never had a need for them, but since the apps tend to be small, I install them. I think Lexar gives you ImageRescue - that's the only other one of these types of apps I have installed.

Turns out I really, really shouldn't have bothered with this one, "RescuePRO."

The front of the CD has a big Windows logo, but says "Macintosh OS X v10.1+," so I put the disc in.

The root level of the disk contains three autorun files (.inf, .exe, and .apm), a readme, and a few folders. The "DATA" folder has nothing useful, and "INSTALL" and "RescuePRO" have .exe files in them. The last is named "MAC," so I open it.

The MAC folder contains another readme¹ and a .bin file named "RPMAC-Deluxe-Installer.bin".

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From A Photo Editor.