NSLog();

Today I played golf at the Bedford Springs. I'll have a review of it online at The Sand Trap within about a month.

So Apple has this pretty awesome way to create your own little jingles and things. It's called Garage Band.

And Apple has this nifty little phone that can play little jingles and things. It's called the iPhone.

But there's no way to get something from the first thing onto the second thing.

None at all.

• The iPhone 1.1.1 update apparently modifies your IMEI number to a standard testing number, which means unlocked iPhones won't recognize even the original AT&T SIM card.
• Unlocking an iPhone is not like putting an after-market stereo in your car or painting it, then having the brakes fail. It's more like adding a NOS system, then having your engine explode while you drag race. I think what Apple's done is perfectly legal… but still a bit tacky, especially since goPhone accounts appear to be broken as well.
• I'll be sticking with 1.0.2 for awhile.
• I believe the "Dev Team" will eventually come out with a re-lock. I'm one of the few people who seems to be using my SIM card with Cellular One ((Most everyone else is on T-Mobile or is in a foreign country.)) - a company AT&T will own very soon.
• With the iPhone now "jailed" like the un-jailbroken iPod Touch, I suspect efforts there will be redoubled (or "retripled").

And here I thought I was just about done with MP3.

Then, along comes Amazon MP3, written up by John Gruber not once but twice.

I will certainly be checking Amazon before the iTMS store now. 256 kpbs MP3s probably sound about the same as 192 kpbs AAC, but the prices seem better and the selection of DRM-free music wider than is available from Apple.

Finally, some competition, and DRM-free competition at that. Yippee!!!

Two great applications - EagleFiler and Cyndicate - are being offered this week for a combined "bundle" price of $55.

Cyndicate, of course, I've written about before. I continue to believe it's the best feed reader/aggregator on the market today and one of its killer features - ratings - was developed with help from EagleFiler's developer, Michael Tsai.

EagleFiler integrates with Cyndicate to provide one-key access to store the permalinked web archives. Once in EagleFiler, you can file it into a folder, tag it, search it, add notes, and otherwise get to your data much more quickly.

Whether you're a student, a researcher, or just someone doing your job or following your hobbies, Cyndicate and EagleFiler make a great duo.

More information on the bundle is available here. Remember, this is only available for one week at $55, a savings of over 20%.

What shows - new or old - will you be tuning in to this fall?

I plan to give Chuck, Journeyman, and a few others a shot. I don't know if I'll bother to watch Heroes - I may record it and watch it if I have the time, but not otherwise.

And I will say this: without the DVR, I probably wouldn't watch much TV at all. Being able to watch three one-hour shows in less than two hours has its appeal, as I tend to watch from about 10pm or later after my day's work is done and the rest of the family is asleep.

This blog is now running WordPress 2.3. So far, everything seems to be running smoothly, even with the massive number of plugins I use.

My two plugins also seem to work.

There are still two hacks I still have to make to the code: one adjusts the kses properties and the other "fixes" the uploading of files, though lately I've been using an AppleScript for the latter instead.

Why in the heck can't my iPhone sync some things - contacts and calendars primary among them - wirelessly? Why must I remember to sync something to my iPhone when my normal use doesn't necessarily include docking every day?

My computer sits on a wireless network. My iPhone uses the same network. Why do I still need a cable to make the two talk to each other?

Heck, I've got two wireless protocols: Bluetooth and WiFi. The iPhone is capable of talking over both and so is my computer. What's the problem? 😛

According to iDefrag, my main disk has about 0.2%/0.5% fragmentation ((Which, by the way, is 4,000+ files.)). Big whoop. My Catalog has six fragments. Again, big whoop.

Mac OS X has had, for awhile now, "built-in defragmentation." Something like any file under 20 MB is automatically defragmented when it's touched by the system - to open, to save, etc. Great.

Still, my disks sometimes seem a bit slow. When I was a Mac Genius, we'd use (albeit on the down-low, as it wasn't exactly approved) DiskWarrior to clean up the catalog file and whatnot. It'd spiffy things up nicely.

Occasionally, defragmenting and optimizing the disk layout (i.e. to create a large contiguous block of free space, even if individual files weren't fragmented) improved disk performance, or at least felt like it did.

So that's a long-winded way of getting around to this question: is iDefrag or even DiskWarrior 4.0 worth a purchase? Does anyone (who uses a Mac) defragment or otherwise optimize their disks?

From Buzz Out Loud #564:

First-year students whose roommates brought a video game player to college studied 40 minutes less each day on average, which translated in first-semester grades which were 0.241 points lower on the 4.0 grade scale.

I still swear five of us my third year on campus could have probably gone pro at Mario Kart battle mode. We had mad skillz, yo!

DirecTV was supposed to launch 30 new HD channels today (which I was hoping would include Golf Channel HD), simulcast on the same channels as the regular SD broadcasts.

Our entertainment needs are pretty simple: I have my old TiVo as a backup in the bedroom (hooked to a tiny 19" TV that's so old it only has one input - coaxial cable) and a DirecTV HD DVR downstairs.

Our current programming package is no longer offered, but costs $51.99. We pay $9.99 for the HD package and $5.99 for the TiVo (a second DVR). It's a "no longer offered" plan that comes to $67.97 per month.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 307); »

Arrrrgh! Me mateys tell me DirecTV is supposed to launch 30+ new HD channels today, but avast, I've not yet seen the proof. Ahoy!

I'm on a mission: I'd like to discover how to make a good prime rib at home. I'll begin with a Google search, but if you've got any tips, share them in the comments.

It looks simple enough.

A woman from the PA Fish and Boat Commission called me Friday regarding my two applications for kayak registration. You know, the kayaks (here and here) that I bought in Florida while I was living in Florida.

She told me that because the boats were relatively new (March, 2004 being the newer of the two), I'd have to pay PA sales tax on them at their fair market value or produce a purchase order which shows that I've already paid sales tax (presumably she meant Florida sales tax).

What the heck makes PA think they're entitled to sales tax on kayaks I purchased in another state? It's already been paid. It's very easy to prove that I did indeed live in Florida when the kayaks were posted. My tax returns, for one…

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 295); »

It's true. Now if only he would buy the Pirates…