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Interesting fact I just read: boys tend to bond with their fathers (and male friends) side by side, facing the same direction and girls tend to bond with their mothers (and female friends) face-to-face. In my experience, that's held up pretty well.

• Sitting on a couch playing video games.
• Fishing in a stream.
• Shooting rifles at the range.
• Walking down a fairway (golf).
• Leaning inside the hood of a car.

Yep. I can think of a few others, but I'm satisfied.

Erie Mayor Rick Fillippi is a Democrat, and he's in trouble. Worse yet, he's a Democrat who snubbed Bush a few times in this most recent campaign, too.

I don't care who you are: when you're a mayor of a medium-sized city, and the President of the Freaking United States visits your city, you at least have the decency to meet him and welcome him to the city before bugging out.

Doing anything less than that is immature and stupid.

Scott and I are kicking around an idea, and we'd like to consult with an OpenGL developer on a potential new business. I can't give away too many details, but the basics are this:

• Custom 3D software for vertical market
• Leverages Mac OS X/OpenGL
• Software used to leverage services or be sold outright
• Related question: are there libraries of OpenGL objects for purchase, like trees or household items or automobiles?

If you've got some info or know of someone who does, my AIM name is iacas and my email is "me@" this domain. I prefer the AIM approach.

P.S. No, we're not looking to make a game of any kind. Nor build a business around re-creationg of automobile crashes.

Question: I asked the question about the Nintendo DS, and now I'm asking it about the Sony PSP: do you want one?

My Answer: No. The ability to play movies and, occasionally, a decent looking game is attractive. The battery life and price are not.

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

Anyone know where one might acquire (purchase, get for free, whatever) a software development kit (SDK) for the Nintendo DS? I don't have any serious plans, but it might be fun just to hack around and make a simple game of Hangman or something.

Some people have told me that Nintendo is giving away the kits either free or very cheap, and that'd be awesome if people could distribute their own ROMs, etc. Geeks everywhere would be writing their own games for the world's #1 handheld gaming system. When can I browse the Web on my Nintendo DS?

Of course, the above paragraph is so atypical of Nintendo that I don't really believe it. Yet. I want to…

Update: Scott found this.

This might come in handy if you suspect that one of your Prefs files is corrupt.

sudo plutil -s ~/Library/Preferences/*.plist

Thanks to José for reminding me of this! (Obvious changes will be needed if a) you don't need to be root, and b) you want to check subfolders, or a different folder, or whatever. Y'all are smart enough to do that…)

Question: What's the most duplicitous thing you've ever done to a member of the opposite sex?

My Answer: Years ago, I failed to mention that I had a girlfriend just to see where things would go. True to form, they didn't go anywhere, which was why I knew I was relatively safe going in. I'm not much of a duplicitous person: my faults are right out there to gawk at. No hiding 'em!

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

Ugh.

Jason Kottke has quoted me on RSS/Atom Ad (Blocking). It's true that we've had "filter ads" since before release (the picture shows 9-22-04, because that's the day we reinstalled Mantis, our bug-tracker - and you can see a few other features in the screenshot).

He then asks another question of us:

Newsreader makers… how will you react to pressure from feed advertising companies like Overture or Kanoodle or companies that rely on feed advertising as a revenue stream to encourage you to keep ad blocking capabilities out of your software? Are you worried about getting sued by CNN or the NY Times (for example) if you allow users to block ads in their feeds?

Overture and Kanoodle haven't gone out of business though they've been advertising on the Web for ages. I think that, so long as "RSS ads" continue to be as non-intrusive as Google AdWords ads, that people simply won't care. There will be no revolt. If they get obnoxious, well, tough for the advertisers: users will figure out how to remove them, or will ask the developers to help them. I haven't seen browser "ad blockers" removed - it must be legal.

This is a big issue to which I've given quite a bit of thought, and this is the nickel version. I'm most interested in hearing from others about it.

Barnes & Noble offer 10% to their members in stores, and 5% online. WTF? I'd certainly buy more books if, as soon as someone mentioned "you should get this book," I could go buy it. I can, but I don't because I say "wait, I can save more if I get it in the store." Then I wait to get it in the store, and usually forget.

If Barnes & Noble offered the same 10% to members in B&N online that they do in B&N B&M stores, I'd buy more books.

Who wouldn't? I have trouble understanding their business logic here. The stores themselves use a back end to the same online ordering system when placing orders for books they don't have, costing them more money than if they'd just sent me the darn book to begin with.

Question: What's your favorite fruit? How do you most like eating it?

My Answer: Kiwi, straight up (I eat the skin too). Cherries are second (if anyone ever made a seedless dark red cherry, it might just bump kiwi from the top spot - as is, they're just a little too much work).

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

Two problems with this:

1. No big, easy-to-find "Download" link.
2. Step 1: Enable third-party menu extra "support"

Y'know, because this would be soooo terrible as a faceless application with a menu. Talk about unnecessarily limiting your market (to those who want to "hack").

And into the trash it goes. Total time spent considering it as an addition to my software toolset: 37 seconds.

The Steelers played the Cardiac Cats tonight and pulled away with a win. How, I don't know: they deserved to lose. They made stupid mistakes resulting in drive-stalling penalties for themselves and drive-sustaining penalties for the Jaguars. A few bad refereeing calls did the same.

The Steelers went up early on a 37-yard TD pass to Hines Ward. Then they gave one up to former Steeler (and waste-of-space) Troy Edwards. Then the Steelers used a trick play and threw to a tight end for a TD. Three straight field goals by the Jags put them up 16-14 before the Steelers drove about 55 yards on four plays and kicked a 37-yard field goal to put them ahead 17-16. The Jaguars then missed a 60-yarder by about three yards.

Roethlisberger was 14/17 for 221 yards and made several great runs. He failed to throw the ball away in the first quarter, resulting in a stupid sack for something like 11 yards. That was about his only dumb play, though. The lines weren't dominant and Staley was, well, stale, only outrushing his QB by 11 yards on 14 more attempts. Willie Mays had a chance to make a play early in the game and didn't - thankfully he did on the game-winning drive.

Jaguar fans are going to have issue with Riemersma's TD, but the simple fact is that as soon as he had control of the ball, the play was over. That he lost it falling down is inconsequential.

This was one of the best games I've ever seen. Had the penalties not been there, it may have been the best.

Question: Do you use OmniOutliner, and if so, for what?

My Answer: I don't. People seem to like it, but for the life of me I can't figure out why. I have a to-do list in my email app (my "Drafts" folder), I keep my other to-dos in Stickies. When I need to actually create an outline, I create simple ones in BBEdit. What good is OmniOutliner? How do you use it?

I will say this: if OmniOutliner had a way to collaborate with a web server to keep a list of shared outlines (automatically, not via CVS or something), it would come in handy for FSS. That's for sure. And I don't mean in some hackneyed way: I mean honest-to-goodness working within OO, out of the box. Even if I had to install a PHP front-end and/or MySQL database to do it (two things every Mac these days come with).

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

A few random thoughts on the Nintendo DS, which I'll apparently be picking up within about a week.

• Where the heck is a good DS site? One with reviews, news, previews. Don't tell me IGN or GameSpot, of course. Where? Perhaps even a blog-like site?
• I sure hope I'm able to play against people online. Even in turn-based stuff where latency doesn't matter much. Like Tiger Woods!! (but that won't be enabled - hell, I dunno if it's even multiplayer).
• I have big thumbs. I wonder if I'll be able to see anything on the bottom screen.
• I want that Pac-Man game. It looks awesome. But I hear it was mostly a demo.
• What should I do with my old Advance SP?
• Sleep mode is great. I can play for a minute and then get back to work and not lose my spot.

That's all for now.