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Question: What is 'iWeb?'

My Answer: I don't know. Or at least that's my official response. If I were to guess and have some fun with it, I'd suggest that it's a tool that ties into .Mac and iTunes and Safari and iPhoto and iMovie. iDVD, sadly, will not have much to do with it. But hey, that's "just a guess."

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

Carey and I watched The Island last night. Well, I did, and Carey fell asleep as usual. It was her NetFlix movie, too!

I liked the movie. It had a deeper edge to it than I was expecting, with a few subtle layers. The plot was rather simple, and some of the characters weren't fully developed (like the black man who changes his mind and helps to free the clones), so that's a black mark on the movie. In other words, it wasn't crap.

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Okay, so I don't completely suck at pool. I played reasonably well today and nearly broke and ran a rack of nine balls, which is quite an accomplishment considering I sometimes have trouble making a single ball. I changed my stance a little to a more open position and that has eliminated a lot of extra movement in my arm. I also realized that you can't aim the top of the tip at the center of the ball or, duh, you're actually hitting just below center. I'll post a drill to Billiards Drills .com later tonight to talk about I worked on correcting that.

I played a game of 8-ball against Chris, one of the owners. I can't be sure what the deal was, but he missed three shots and I managed to win the second game against him. He'd have won the third if he didn't try to make the 8 by banking a minimum of three rails, and he handily won the first.

Incidentally, as soon as Chris and his partner Dan decide on the setup, the forum at http://greatlakesbilliards.com/forum/ will be open. The site itself will be open sometime within a month or so of that.

For my own sake…

Outer rail dimensions: 61" x 111"
Outside of leg dimensions: 49" x 98"

Incidentally, if you visit Olhausen's site and build your own table, you can enter the Table ID "01C-401-4D001-000-13U" to see the table I chose. The cloth is going to be Simonis 860 in approximately the same color. Otherwise, it's as you see it (with a slightly darker finish than appears on the Web).

Yesterday I took the Touareg in for its 5K oil change. I also had the fire blanket installed under the hood (it should have been there all along). I've been waiting for the iPod adapter since August or so, and last wrote about it in early November.

I got the iPod adapter yesterday. As suspected, it does not display the ID3 tags on my car radio. The iPod itself uses a weird font to display the information, and album art does not appear.

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From the "government threatening its citizens" department comes this nugget (visit grokster.com):

The United States Supreme Court unanimously confirmed that using this service to trade copyrighted material is illegal. Copying copyrighted motion picture and music files using unauthorized peer-to-peer services is illegal and is prosecuted by copyright owners.

There are legal services for downloading music and movies. This service is not one of them.

YOUR IP ADDRESS IS xx.xx.xxx.xx AND HAS BEEN LOGGED. Don't think you can't get caught. You are not anonymous.

Of course it's been logged. It's a fucking web server.

Incidentally, as a Mac user (did Grokster ever work on a Mac?) and as someone who knew one of the Grokster lawyers, I visited after reading this article.

I have an Apple Developer hardware discount and I won't be using it. It expires at the end of February.

In a completely unrelated note, I have a PayPal account and I also happen to like iTunes gift certificates. 😉

Question: Do you like Mac OS X's font rendering more, less, or the same as Mac OS 9's? Why or why not?

My Answer: Articles like "Coping With Mac OS X's Font Rendering" irk me. I, along with many, think that the font rendering in Mac OS X is far superior to that of Mac OS 9. In fact, since 10.2.4, I've been quite pleased with it on both a PowerBook and an LCD. I have not used Mac OS X much on a CRT. I will say this: examples like this are a bit contrived - use a larger font if you can't read it or bump up the smallest "smoothable" size.

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

I just read Mark Cuban's investment advice and am happy to say that within the next month or so, Carey and I are going to be opening a savings account with a pretty good interest rate. My original plan was to be able to do this after one year of home ownership, but we're going to be able to do it a little bit sooner.

I've never been one to get into all of the financial market stuff - though when I was an Apple employee I did do the employee stock program. That one couldn't lose money, and in fact, I tripled it. Had I held on a bit longer, I'd have more than doubled what I tripled! But hey, that paid the closing costs on the house, so I don't regret taking it out when I did.

I've always believed in the third (of three) item on his list:

Invest in yourself. Do the things that can get you closer to your goals and dreams. It won't come from a brokerage commercial. It will come from preparing yourself, working hard and standing apart from your competition. You Inc is the best stock you can ever buy… if you are willing to do the work.

Darn right.

I suck at pool. I played a game of "golf" today and didn't break 100. Billiards Golf, that is. I'm taking a class by Tom Simpson, a Master BCA (Billiards Congress of America) instructor. Unlike with golf, I don't plan to teach myself pool - I'd like to get good quickly, not via trial and error. I've enjoyed the journey in golf, and I can always tell people that my swing is my own, but I'd like to skip ahead a few steps (ahem, years) in my pool game, so I'm looking forward to the class.

Incidentally, I think one of the tricks to doing well at billiards golf is to simply "tee off" with a very soft break shot. Just leave all the balls at the far end of the table - don't scatter them willy nilly, possibly scratch, etc. I'll have to try that next time.

This is my test entry. I'll use it to test just about everything I could do in a standard file. You can already see the em and strongs. How about a strike?

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I don't make new year resolutions, because I tend to believe that if you're serious about improving yourself as a human being, you should resolve to make positive changes in your life throughout the year, not just after a dramatic event (someone dying, a breakup, financial collapse, etc.) or because the calendar reads "January 1."

However, I can tell you that I'm going to change one thing here at NSLog(); - the QotDs will become a lot more, well, less daily. They were originally intended to get me to write something at least once a day, to enforce the "blogging habit" so to speak. Having missed my anniversary for the third time (I began seriously blogging on December 10, 2002), I think I'm comfortable in calling blogging a bit more than a habit.

As such, QotDs will now appear when I'm being somewhat lazy and don't have much to say in a given day OR when I really want to see what people think without really providing much of an argument in one direction or another. Future QotDs will be prompted by world events as well as things in the Mac community and other areas of interest.

Happy New Year.

Question: How are you going to ring in the new year?

My Answer: By sleeping through the change, perhaps? Nah, I'll probably be awake, though I won't be counting anything down. Just another day.

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

Carey and I have visited two places (A, B for the purpose of this post) in Erie now to get flooring quotes for the game room. The best offer we've gotten thus far is $2750. The idea is to use Shaw laminate flooring to cover between 396 and 437 square feet of space minus a sunk-in carpet measuring 5'x9'. The pool table would sit on the carpet in the center of the room (with no padding beneath it). The quote breaks down like this (for a 400 square foot room).

$1260 laminate (~ $3.35/sq.ft. - B had it for $3.21)
$250 for the carpet (a little cheaper than B)
$270 for the foam (~ $0.75/sq.ft. - B had similar stuff for $0.49)
$800 for labor (B had this at ~$1100)
$155 for tax

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Not a whole lot is changing, really, but a few things are. I'm getting sucked into the whole "pool" thing - planning to play a lot more and working out a deal with the pool hall in North East to do their site in exchange for playing time and some lessons. Trying to figure out the pool room stuff. You know, that sort of thing.

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