NSLog();

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.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 322); »

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.

I type in "apple" to go to apple.com and the stupid thing auto-completes a news story from CNN about Apple. Or I type in "directv" and I get a URL on dbstalk.com about DirecTV.

The URL should always take precedent, I think. I rarely want to search the way it wants to - by keywords. And there seems to be no UI for changing this preference… though I swear caps lock or a hidden (i.e. use the terminal to edit the defaults) preference was available under Safari 4.x.

I downloaded an application called "Watts" from Binary Tricks because I was hopeful it might help me to solve an issue I've been having with my MacBook Pro.

Basically, my battery will get to about 75 or 78 percent or so, then shut down. Not go to sleep - just die immediately and without warning.

I had hoped that Watts would let me recalibrate the battery. Originally my battery status was "healthy." I'd completed 17 charge cycles out of about 300. The battery retained 96% of its capacity.

After running Watts through one of the "shutdowns at 75%" it now tells me my battery needs serviced and lists the capacity at 52% (2947 mAh out of 5600).

It appears I'll have to take the computer to an Apple store (I'm heading to the nearest one in Buffalo in a few days). Any tips or tricks? What's up with the battery?

Yes, please.

Every app with a text field should be able to email, tweet, blog, print, transmute, translate, and read aloud the current selection. Every app with an image view should be able to rotate, crop, set as wallpaper, save to Dropbox, post to Flickr, and upload to an SFTP server. Of course no single developer should add all these features to their application—we have a word for software like that—so a more elegant solution is called for.

Me likey. Me won't get this until iOS 5, but still, me likey lots.

I'm digging the world of Safari Extensions. There's a good site at http://safariextensions.tumblr.com/ that's likely going to be the go-to resource ((Though I do wish they had more infrastructure so that I could, for example, compare one YouTube extension to the others to see if there's one that includes all the functionality I'd like.)).

However, I'm going to take it easy on the Extensions I install, as even early testing indicates that a poorly coded extension can easily lead to crashing Safari.

I have installed and enabled FaceBlock, InvisibleHand, Popup Statusbar, YouTube5, and User CSS.

I've installed but disabled JavaScript Blacklist 1.0 and Better Facebook. They either don't work the way I'd like or seem to cause a LOT of crashing.

My wish list? A way to synchronize my extensions and their settings via MobileMe so that I don't have to manually maintain two computers. Oh, and far less crashing, of course. 🙂

I ask this question only because I've been told a surprising number of people aged 25-45 still do:

I thought most people stopped smoking pot when they left college. Who still does it? Why?

For the record, your answers are completely anonymous, but I'll go on record with my answer: no, I don't, nor do I know of anyone who does ((I probably know people who DO, but I don't know that they do.))

I've made a few posts on my blog about my search for a decent burger. Thus far, the list includes In-n-Out, Five Guys, and even Fuddruckers. But none tops Lindburger in Delray Beach, FL ((They finally have a website! Only been about five or six years, minimum!)). Turns out I can add Red Robin (yum!) to that second tier of burgers. Their Red Royal Robin burger - which comes with a fried egg on it - is delightfully good. Their fries are nice as well - and bottomless. Cheese sticks and other appetizers cost only $2.99.

Too bad we don't have any Red Robins near Erie. The nearest is in Cranberry or Pittsburgh. Mmmmmmmmmmm.

From here:

There's a well-known survey in sports, known as the Goldman Dilemma. For it, a researcher, Bob Goldman, began asking elite athletes in the 1980s whether they would take a drug that guaranteed them a gold medal but would also kill them within five years. More than half of the athletes said yes. When he repeated the survey biannually for the next decade, the results were always the same. About half of the athletes were quite ready to take the bargain.

Only recently did researchers get around to asking nonathletes the same question. In results published online in February, 2009 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, exactly 2 of the 250 people surveyed in Sydney, Australia, said that they would take a drug that would ensure both success and an early death. "We were surprised," James Connor, Ph.D., a lecturer at the University of New South Wales and one of the study's authors, said in an e-mail message. "I expected 10-20 percent yes." His conclusion, unassailable if inexplicable, is that "elite athletes are different from the general population, especially on desire to win."

So that's the question: