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"Pittsburgh's goin' to the Super Bowl. Here we go…"

Brad's a Cardinals fan, and I'm a Steelers fan, so I suspect we might do something fun and Super-Bowl-related with Cynical Peak. Stay tuned.

P.S. If they fire Bruce Arians between now and February 1, I wouldn't mind.

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I just found this today, and it reminded me that I've wanted to get this post out for awhile now. But first, 8:00 of your time.

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I live in Erie, PA so I'm fairly used to cold weather.

-7, though, is rare even here in Erie.

Photo taken on the iPhone while driving to the DMV. Got my (re)new(ed) license today.

Hidden or otherwise:

1. Ignore target="_blank".
2. Don't allow websites to modify window (resize, hide status bar, etc.).
3. Block popups on all sites except… ((I never remember to turn it off the first time I try to print a mailing label at USPS.gov.))

More tk… suggest your own in the forum.

I've changed this site's favicon. It's no longer the old FSS orange: it's now the Rivet icon which I've appropriated for a few other places, too: my Twitter icon, my chat bubbles (in comments here), and a few other forums.

140 characters is not much to work with.

Keep your Twitter names short. @ replies suck when you're wasting 20 characters on a username.

BTW, mine's "iacas." But that falls under "duh." Follow me if you'd like - I'll probably follow you if I have any clue who you are or if you live in the Erie area.

I'd summarize my points here, but, eh, I don't really want to spend that time.

Instead, just head on over to Khoi's pad and check out the discussion. I've posted a few comments, as has Glenn Fleishman.

Add yours.

U = University
DSLR = digital single lens reflex

Given that, and the logo you see to the right (which can go either way), which do you like more?

For awhile now, we've noticed that iTunes Plus songs - despite being "AAC files" according to Apple - will not play on the Xbox 360 when streamed from Rivet.

There were work-arounds. Primary among these was choosing "Convert to AAC" from within iTunes. This method has the unfortunate side effects of re-encoding and re-compressing the music ((I'm not certain if re-encoding at 256 kpbs technically re-encoded the file, resulting in a loss of quality.)) and losing your metadata.

What reason did we have for the work-arounds? It turns out Apple's doing something a bit funky with the files. A little research led to the post of a Nokia N95 user named Joshua, who discovered that the pinf atom is listed as a sibling instead of a child, "breaking" the AAC file (at least as far as the Xbox 360 and Nokia N95 are concerned).

I'm not sure why Apple chose to do this, but since it's been this way since version 7.2, I'm no longer holding my breath for a fix ((If a fix is even needed - maybe this conforms to the AAC specification?)) from them. It's been too long ((Though, admittedly, the new wave of people upgrading to iTunes Plus songs may put more pressure on them.)) and I doubt Apple cares much about the Xbox 360 or other products ((And again, that's if it's even off-spec.)).

Fortunately, Joshua's put together a Java application (works on 10.5.6) that copies the file, fixing the "incorrect" bit in the process, and leaves you with both copies.

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It's good to see that wordpress.com users are getting the excellent "Subscribe to Comments" plugin.

I think comment reply notification is one of the most critical things you can add to a blog. Sure, people can check back to see more comments or, on some systems, subscribe to that post's comment feed, but both of those are much less elegant than clicking a "Subscribe to Comments" checkbox that emails you when new comments are posted.

I'm probably four or five times less likely to post a comment when there's no "Subscribe to Comments" functionality.

1. On My PowerMacBook Pro, when I wake it up, it takes a little while to grab the 802.11n connection from the Time Capsule that serves as its base station and its place of backup. Unfortunately, in the ten seconds acquisition takes, Time Machine tries - and fails - to start a backup. Why can't it just wait? If I don't manually start it, the thing rarely gets a backup in because I don't use it long enough for the next attempt.
2. On my desktop (Mac Pro), I back up to another internal disk. Occasionally a file will be modified while backing up (most often likely my Entourage database), and Time Machine will put up a dialog alerting me to the problem. The issue I have with this is that even four or ten successful backups later, the dialog is still there. The dialog might appear at 9pm one evening and, when I sit down at 9am the next morning, I'll see a dialog about a problem that happened 11 backup cycles ago.

I've written about it before, but I've finally had a chance to play around with some images using the various plugins available in Nik Software's Complete Collection for Aperture. It's a steal at $299.95!

I've spent a little time today watching the many, many, many tutorials available.

If you're unsure about the plugins, download them, watch the tutorials, and decide for yourself.

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iLife '09: Couldn't care less about iMovie. Don't use it. Haven't for years. iPhoto - I use Aperture for my "serious" shots - iPhoto is the dumping ground for the photos Carey takes with the P&S. Will I have to go back and add "places" and "faces" to everything? I hope not. How many cameras have GPS in them? I guess earlier is better than later, even if it's a minority.

iWork '09: I don't care about Keynote (that may change, however), and I like what I saw from Numbers and Pages. Pages still uses a drawer, though - I saw that.

iWork Online: Charging for it? Seriously? But if it works really well it may be a very cool thing. Still not sure I'll want to pay for it though, on top of two full MobileMe accounts in this household already.

17" MacBook Pro: Don't care. Never did. Wonder if Apple can sell their battery technology to Tesla. Run your car from a single 17" MacBook Pro for up to 200 miles!

DRM-free: Sure, but at $0.30/song and 30% per album? Isn't that like an early adopter fee?

Phil: He did fine, but he didn't have much material to work with. We've had pretty boring Stevenotes too.

Overall: Zzzzzzzz. Which is fine - I'm not as caught up in the "excitement" as I used to be. If anything, this expo saved me a lot of money on hardware. On software it's another story: I must admit I'm feeling awfully nickel-and-dimed today:

1. $0.99 for a stupid Keynote remote application.
2. $?? for iwork.com access after the beta (when MobileMe is not exactly the best value these days)
3. $100.42 (that's a lot of nickels and dimes) to upgrade my library, despite iTunes Plus songs costing the same $0.99 as when I purchased the music?

Blarg.

I'm pretty annoyed right now. How much of that has to do with the Pittsburgh Penguins and how much of has to do with what I'm about to write about, I don't know…

A friend of mine just started a photoblog, and I commented that he should include the EXIF information in his photos so that I could see what his settings were (shutter speed, aperture, ISO, focal length, etc.) and make better comments or suggestions.

He said "I am." I then noticed that he was embedding smaller versions of his originals from flickr.

I did a quick search and, gee, this post from JDD comes up. Guess who was the first commenter?

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I've just renewed my driver's license online. I guess I'll get a "camera card" in the mail eventually, will take that to the DMV, and they'll give me a license. And only $26!

I got my last license in 2005 around my birthday. Licenses in PA expire the day after your birthday (March 23, so, March 24, 2009 for the current one) and not long after I got that PA license, I moved. So for years I've been carrying around a dumb yellow piece of paper that has my "corrected" address because PA doesn't want to print and give you a second license, I guess. In other words, my actual license has had the address of the apartment I lived in for a few months when I first moved back to PA.

Blerg.

I also renewed my two kayak registrations online. Double-blerg. $18 + $2 apiece. The boat registration renewal form didn't like when I put "0" in for the amount I wanted to donate to two charities. The form wouldn't work until I left the two fields blank.

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