NSLog();

One spring, oh, about 10 or 11 years ago, I bought a 20 oz. Coke from the vending machine at Lake View Country Club. I looked under the cap and saw that I won a free 20 oz. Coke - yay! I used the lid to get my free Coke and won another! The cycle repeated itself quite frequently, and I think I spent about ten dollars all summer and won at least 75 free Cokes. Nearly every Coke I got was a winner. That was back when you had a 1 in 3 chance of winning.

This year, Cokes offer a 1 in 12 chance of winning, or an 11/12 chance of not winning. From the Country Fair less than a mile from my house, Carey and I have purchased at least 100 Cokes. Not a single one has produced a winner. What are the odds?

Doing the math, we take the odds of not winning (11/12) and raise it to the number of times I've not won in a row: (11/12)^100 = 0.0001663963943. That's roughly 1 in 6000 odds I would not win 100 times in a row.

Needless to say, Carey and I question both Coke and Country Fair. The summer I won a bunch of Cokes it was as if every bottle was a winner, and I seriously wondered (after just five consecutive winners) if the bottling plant had screwed up and sent cases of winners to one location and cases of non-winners elsewhere. Basically, perhaps they forgot to randomize the caps?

Well, this summer I wonder the same thing. One in 6,000 odds are pretty steep when the odds are supposed to be 1 in 12.

Question: Are you going to buy Aperture?

My Answer: I think I may. Of course, I'll have to hear more about it than this before I make any decisions:

12:24pm - Apple's also introducing a new post-production tool for photographers today. It's called Aperture. The idea is to make shooting in RAW as easy as shooting in JPEG.

Sounds nice. I would have settled for a quicker, easier, more powerful iPhoto. 🙂

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

I'm interested in starting a weekly podcast. Not for NSLog();, no, but for The Sand Trap. I have several concerns, however:

1. How easy is it to create an entry with text (to explain what's in this episode) with an attached .mp3? I'd rather not do things by hand if possible.
2. Sand Trap staff members are scattered about the U.S. - what software should we use to record our podcast so that it doesn't sound like, well, like a bunch of people scattered around the U.S. talking into their computer microphones.
3. The show will be kept short (10-15 minutes or so), but should it be pretty "whatever's on your mind" or should it have some semi-formal structure?

Those are the primary concerns, of course. I'll worry about bandwidth, getting into iTunes, and a lot of other things later.

Any suggestions? Ideas? Comments?

Question: Are you getting a video iPod?

My Answer: Yeah, eventually. Not because I particularly care about the video stuff (though putting some videos on for Little One will be nice, especially as I can roll my own from the TiVo if I dare to bother), but because mine is getting older. It's a 30 GB from when 30 GB was huge.

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

Prior to my reinstallation, I seem to recall that closing a tab in a series of Safari tabs would result in the tab to the right of the closed tab being selected. Now, after reinstalling everything, the tab to the left is selected.

Is it just my imagination? Did I change some setting eons ago that has since been wiped out? What's up?

Update: It's a Saft pref. All fixed.

I've returned from North Carolina. There are pictures both here and here for, well, my enjoyment. You might get a kick out of one or two of them, though.

Question: How many of these old domains have you been to?

My Answer: 26

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

This weekend while I was in North Carolina, my primary hard disk decided to corrupt itself. A minor inconvenience, I figured. After all, I'd been backing up with Apple's "Backup" application every night.

Note: small changes made (11:29am, Oct. 18) since John Gruber decided to link to me. I may as well clarify things…

Little did I know what a steaming pile of shit Backup turned out to be. The list of things Backup can not do is astounding, including:

• Restoring a backup to a blank hard disk (you need to have the same username as before, with an OS installed).
• Restore incremental backups in one fell swoop. No, now I have to go through and figure out what the differences are between the 170 GB full backup and the nineteen incremental backups that occurred after that.
• Open the .sparseimage files and copy files back over. If you were using resource forks, why, it seems you're out of luck. Bye bye many of my fonts files.

In other words, there's really no way to actually use backups made with Backup in any way that makes sense. If I - a former Apple employee, Mac Genius (and trainer), etc. can't figure this out, I'm not sure how my mom will ever do.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 956); »

Question: Which Mario is your favorite?

My Answer: It's definitely not Naked Mario. I'm going to have to go with Devo Mario or Mickey Mario.

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

Question: Should Apple sell old commercials, old Steve-notes, old WWDC sessions, and so on via the iTunes, uhhh, "Media" Store?

My Answer: The idea comes from Mike Zornek, and frankly, I think they should. They could charge $0.99 if they wanted (so they weren't seen as "milking the faithful), or even less - it's their content, after all. I'm all for it.

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

Question: Why isn't Apple's "Front Row" software available for previous Mac models?

My Answer: I don't know. It just uses Bluetooth, doesn't it? Why can't third-party apps plug in to it? What gives, Apple?

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

Question: Where do music videos and movie trailers download to on disk in iTunes 6?

My Answer: I don't know, that's why I'm asking. It was pretty easy to dig out the file before and copy it to your desktop… but iTunes 6 does not put the file in any of the usual places.

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

Is iTunes' "video stuff" not ready for prime time yet? I can't get any of the Desperate Housewives videos to preview at all, and just now, the Apple web server gave me "Server Error - The following error occurred: [code=CANT_CONNECT] Could not connect because of networking problems. Contact your system administrator" when I was trying to load up the Pixar movies listed at http://www.apple.com/itunes/.

Rush job to get it done by the 12th?

Question: Do you watch the news?

My Answer: Not really, no. As Kasia says, it's scary.

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

Uhm…?