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Pine Needles is, by far, one of my favorite golf courses in the world. I think it's a better course for the average to good player than Pinehurst #2 - by a long stretch. It's got elevation changes, it's got hard and soft doglegs in both directions, and it's got devilish greens that aren't quite as severe as those at the more famous resort.

Tobacco Road, fwiw, is still a horrible golf course. I played well on the front but by about the 13th hole it goes to pot.

George and I played National Golf Club from the Blue tees today. I shot 75, including a back-nine 35 with a birdie at the last to close out any chances George had of getting back any of the $6 he lost in skins.

It was probably the best I've played all week, all things considered. At other times things like driving were on, but not everything. Putting wasn't "on" the entire week.

I know they needed rain very badly here after a long drought, but couldn't it have come last week instead? 🙂

Today I'll be driving to Southern Pines, NC. I'll be staying at The Markers Club and playing a whole lot of golf.

Updates to this site will occur… less than regularly. When I return, I'm going to see if I can "fix" my iPhone ("Call Failed" when calls end, permanent red circle on Phone icon, etc.) and then, eventually, install 10.5.

I've unlocked my iPhone after virginizing, installing 1.1.1, reverting the software to 1.0.2 to jailbreak/activate, updating to 1.1.1 again, and installing anySIM again.

All is working well, and I was happy to see that YouTube works via the newly updated Independence activate/jailbreak methods.

Amazon recently received a patent for "including a search string at the end of a URL without any special formatting."

Gee, I've been doing that on my blog since 2003. I've called it my "404 Search" because I use it to cause a search via the 404 scripts. I've even ported my search from MovableType to WordPress.

The filing date of the Amazon patent is March, 2004. The first item on my blog with this technology is from over a year prior - February, 2003. And it was based on php.net's capabilities.

Does the U.S. Patent office actually study patent applications or did they just run out of "Rejected" stamps a long time ago?

I may be involved soon in an enterprise that involves interviewing people, in person, and posting high-quality AAC or MP3 files online for others to download.

Video may be involved at a later time, but not at first.

I'm looking for a portable, stand-alone video recorder that can record fairly high quality audio. I don't have a price range in mind, but if you quote something with a comma in it, I'm not interested. 🙂

I don't care how it works - little microphones you clip to shirts, a USB stand mic, whatever - I just want to start with fairly high quality audio sans hissing or noise.

So, what are my options?

The Steelers offensive line need replaced en masse.

And that's all I have to say about that. 😛

I'm interested in picking up Panasonic's HDC-SD5, but I still can't find an answer to this question: what's the fastest frame rate it can capture on video of SD size or better?

The technical specs say the "motion image" shutter speed can range from 1/30 to 1/8000 second. I'm sure it might have to sometimes go to 1/8000 to prevent blowouts in bright conditions… but that obviously doesn't mean it can take even 100 frames per second.

So, what's the answer?

As Brad notes at the Cynical Peak Blog, Cyndicate 1.0.4 beta is available. The beta fixes all known Leopard issues, so users running Mac OS X 10.5 will probably want to try this build out immediately. It fixes a few other issues as well: parsing incorrect Atom 0.3 feeds, a small memory leak, and some others.

Users of the beta will note that they can choose "Release" or "Cutting Edge" in their update settings. If you're comfortable trying out (or at least being notified) of beta-level updates, try the "Cutting Edge" setting. Most users will want to stick with "Release," though.

Additionally, Scorecard 1.2.1 is also available. This fixes a navigation issue, adds an option to toggle the statistics between percentages and the actual values, and fixes a bug introduced in 1.2 that resulted in some statistics not showing properly.

When you download a .dmg that contains an application, Safari ((I'm using the 3.0 beta on 10.4.10)) warns you that it "may contain an application." You're given two buttons: "Cancel" and "Continue".

It annoys me that, when you choose "Cancel," what appears to be a worthless ".download" file remains in your Downloads folder. You can double-click it to "complete" the download ((It's actually already completed; if you look inside the .download package, the full .dmg file is inside.)).

This strikes me as both a potential security risk ((I clicked "Cancel" for a reason, after all - It shouldn't be so easy to "get" the full .dmg again.)) and a clutter issue: why keep stuff I've "canceled"? I didn't "stop" or "pause" the download - I canceled it. Delete the stupid ".download" file too!

Which of the 300 new features in Leopard do you care about more than the others?

Woot! Steve speaketh.

Today I accidentally hit shift-cmd-U. Opera - yeah, that Opera - launched.

I quit Opera and looked in my Applications folder for a copy. Failing to find one, I performed a search. I threw away a few Opera preferences folders but found no Opera application.

So I hit shift-cmd-U again… and used the dock menu to locate Opera. Here's where I found it:

/Applications/Adobe Bridge CS3/Bridge CS3/Contents/MacOS/Opera

WTF?

This is part of why, by the way, I hate the Services menu in its current form.

I pre-ordered Leopard on June 20, 2007 at Amazon.com. Today when I saw the price had dropped to $109 from $129, I checked my pre-order. It still said $129 and that it would ship on November 1-3.

So I cancelled my long-standing pre-order and ordered again - at $109 and with shipping on or before October 31.

Have you pre-ordered Leopard?