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Scott talks about a possible (or not) Photoshop replacement from Apple. I would love one. Most of my work in Photoshop centers around:

• Cropping
• Resizing
• Adjusting hue, saturation, balance, and the like
• Adding simple gradients (to blur to white the edges of an image)
• Adding circles, arrows, lines, etc.

And for this I have to wait ten seconds every time I launch it? I launch Photoshop probably 10 times per day as things come up. iPhoto isn't powerful enough and GraphicConverter is powerful enough, yet also too much of a pain in the ass.

I wouldn't mind seeing a competitor. Will we some day? I think it's unlikely. For now I'd just settle for a word-processing app that didn't completely suck (cough, ahem, Pages, ack, cough).

I did something nice for someone today, and he offered to pay me. It wasn't that big a deal - I had to spend 30 minutes looking for something, that's all - so I said that if he still wanted to give me something, he could give me an iTunes gift certificate.

Unfortunately, I didn't notice that he lived in Canada. His iTunes Music Store gift certificate is unusable by me here in the US. I'm not sure what to do at this point except to give him the certificate code right back so that he can use it…

I realize that $10 Canadian != $10 US, but c'mon Apple, figure out something here!

NetFlix Freak screwed up today. How? Have a look. Kinda silly, really. I clicked on "Munich" and a description for another movie came up.

Incidentally, I like NetFlix Freak, and I think I've mentioned that here before. I need to get a copy to my mom… she's going to sign up for NetFlix soon, I believe.

You can read about them here. Basically, in edit mode with the retouch or redeye tools selected, hit ctrl-capslock-9 and then hit tab to cycle through three hidden, "advanced" tools. With some key presses, you can change some characteristics of the tools.

This site has some funny lists.

$200? For 20 GB more space and a black shell? Bah.

I watched the final episode of The West Wing this morning. Though I've never actually been in this position, watching it was akin to the subtle but permanent denouement to a great relationship both parties see coming. It's nobody's fault… it's just the way things go. The feeling was mirrored in the ways in which the staff members displayed their feelings towards their final days, hours, minutes, and seconds in office.

Just like an ex, you'll occasionally see them around town - Bradley Whitford and Rob Lowe will even be starring in Aaron Sorkin's new show - but it won't be the same. Every time you see them, you'll remember the good times you had back when. Back when you became enveloped in a TV show that portrayed government the way you wish it was, not the way it's increasingly apparent it really is. I didn't often agree with the politics of The West Wing, but I always found comfort in the ideal the characters portrayed: that hard work and morals are nothing to be afraid of, that leadership can be found in everyone, and that small groups of people can do tremendous things to shape our world, for better or worse.

Despite the subtle agony of the post-Sorkin episodes, on the whole, The West Wing managed something very few TV shows can do. That small group of people - the actors, the writers, the crew - changed my world for the better. So I'll look back fondly on the past seven years, and when I'm feeling nostalgic, I won't break out an old love letter or a shirt left behind or a tattered photograph, but a DVD, even if it's only for a few minutes at a time.

Goodbye, West Wing. We had good times.

He's simply got to go. Sell the team to Mark Cuban. Sell it to someone. At this point, I almost don't care that Pittsburgh has a baseball team because, in effect, they don't.

If you're interested in beta testing some Mac golf statistics software, head on over to the forums at Cynical Peak and sign up. Obviously, requirements include being a golfer and having a machine running Mac OS X 10.4. I can tell you a bit more as well, including:

• The name of the application is "Scorecard."
• The icon is as you see above.
• In addition to generic stats like your handicap, fairways hit, etc. you'll also be able to track things like average putting distance after a sand shot, greens-in-regulation percentage when missing the fairway right, and more.
• To get all of these stats, you need only enter few pieces of information per hole (see image below).
• Projected price is about $29.99, though introductory pricing may be available. Valuable beta testers will get free licenses.
• Brad Miller used to work with me at Freshly Squeezed Software. This product, though of my design, is largely of his development.

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Question: If you were czar of the Mac OS for a day and you were tasked with the question of how the Finder should handle same-named folders when one is dragged to the location of the other, how would you handle it: the current "replace" method or the "merge" method?

My Answer: I like the current method. I almost always want to replace, and when I don't know of a same-named folder, I'm warned I'm about to replace something. If I ever want to merge, I just open the folders, but these times are vastly outnumbered by the number of times I want to replace something.

Just as replacing can have very bad side effects, an accidental merge of two folders containing even 50 items each could take a very long time to correct.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Sports Illustrated has apparently gone down the tubes lately. People on forums are calling it a "tabloid" and a "rag." The reason I've checked? Hines Ward - February's Super Bowl MVP - was quoted several times in a story about his trip to Korea as being very rude, arrogant, and egotistical. One of those quotes, for example, is "I don't have anything to say to him (Cowher) after what he did to me, after how he treated me. No. The numbers I put up, the seasons I had for them. To keep on bringing in guys…"

Turns out the quotes were from last August while Hines was in limbo about his contract being renewed and re-worked. He explained as much to Channel 4.

Screw SI and the horse they rode in on, parading year-old quotes as if they're current.

They're building a golf course (or, rather, a housing development with a golf course meandering through it) in a community about three miles from where I live. It's called "Whispering Woods" and it's being done by the same fellow who designed the Upper Course at Peek 'n' Peak.

This course has been, apparently, a while in coming. It is scheduled to open next spring (it's routed and seeded and growing in, currently). It was going to be a private club, then high-end public, and now maybe more of a semi-private type of club.

Clearly, driving five minutes beats driving 25 minutes, so I am curious as to whether I may some day switch from Lake View to this club. It boils down to a number of things:

• Design of the course.
• Cost.
• Whether I'd be allowed to walk.
• Membership "perks" or "limitations."

Incidentally, the third one is a doozy. Carts are mandatory at the Upper Course at the Peak.

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Another QuickTime update (to 7.1), and still iTunes absolutely sucks donkey balls at playing videos. Ho hum. 😛

I don't think enough people know this, so I'm pointing it out: it's perfectly legal to let your friend borrow a CD so that they can make a copy of it (or to give them a copy yourself), so long as you don't sell the music (that'd be "financial gain"). As clarified here:

Under the old way of thinking about things, copying your CD and carrying the copy around with you to play in your car, in your Walkman, or in your cassette deck at work is legal. Borrowing a music CD and making a copy on some other medium for your personal use is legal. Recording music from the radio; maxing different recorded tracks for a ‘party tape,’ and making a copy of one of your CDs for your next-door neighbor are, similarly, all lawful acts. The copyright law says so: section 1008 of the copyright statute provides that consumers may make non-commercial copies of recorded music without liability. Many people seem not to know this any more.

Don't let the RIAA fool you. Know your rights and the laws.