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Beware Leopard’s ‘Secure Empty Trash’

It doesn't seem to work. It's hung my system a few times. One of the posters on Apple's discussion forums says:

I'm having the same problem, and am surprised to see such a simple thing not working in a final release of OS X. Also, there doesn't seem to be any point to there being a Securely Delete Trash option in the Finder preferences. When selected, emptying the trash does not securely empty the trash, but just empties it, so why is it there??

At any rate, I've disabled the option for now…

Oh, and "Microsoft Sync" crashes with regularity when syncing.

Halloween Header

Today, since Halloween always falls on October 31, my header is a Halloween image. No rotating images today… just the one. I can't ((Well, not very easily, and frankly, it's not worth the trouble.)) do this for holidays like Thanksgiving. I can for Christmas, my birthday, etc.

Happy Halloween! I'm dressed as a geek. Go figure. 🙂

P.S. If I had a pumpkin to carve this year, I'd carve the π symbol into it.

Upgraded to Leopard

I've upgraded to Leopard. Here are my thoughts on the process, a few of the new features that have struck me already, and the general minutae.

My Process
I did an "Archive and Install." I figured what little "extra" crap (like USB Overdrive, which I've re-installed) outside of my User folder I could re-install. It worked pretty well and, after verifying that everything I wanted had been ported over, I deleted the old system folder before it could be backed up by Time Machine.

Travel Day

Traveling back to PA today. For future reference, the trip really does take 10 hours.

NC Trip Summary

I played rather streakily. Except my putting - that was off all week. 😀 My best round was, by far, the Friday afternoon round at National.

On Pines and Needles

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.

National Skins

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.

Rain in North Carolina

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

Driving to Southern Pines, NC

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.

iPhone 1.1.1 Unlocked

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 Patents, Prior Art, and my 404 Search

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?

Seeking an Audio Recorder

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?

Steelers Offensive Line

The Steelers offensive line need replaced en masse.

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

Panasonic’s HDC-SD5 Frame Rate

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?

Cyndicate 1.0.4 Beta, Cutting Edge Releases, and Scorecard 1.2.1

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.