NSLog();

Duce Staley sat again, and again Jerome Bettis rushed for 100 yards in a win that ended up being even uglier than last week's win against Cincy. The Steelers - the #1 defense - and the Redskins - #2 - allowed only 25 total first downs and 363 yards of total offense combined.

A win is a win, and I'll take it. The Redskins managed only one valid drive - of 79 yards in Q3 - and were shut down most of the rest of the time. The Steelers are now 10-1 and fighting to stay on top of a conference and a division. Contrast that with the NFC, of course, where 5-6 at this point in the season puts you in a wild card spot!

Plaxico was out today, and Lee Mays didn't step up at all. Randle El did "ok" as a receiver and ran his heart out as a special teams returner. Ol #77 on the O-Line let in far too many rushers, and was single-handedly the cause of at least half of our sacks and short running plays.

Duce - and Plaxico - should be back next week against the Jaguars at 8:30 Sunday night.

Question: Pen or pencil?

My Answer: Gosh I don't like pencils. The scratching, the sharpening… give me a thick pen every time.

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

So Thursday was Thanksgiving. My sister and her husband (now about 18 months in) arrived just before 1 pm, and we sat around (with Carey) until 3 when we took off for my parents' house. The food, which was to have been ready at "3:30 or 4," was not actually ready until five, so we were quite hungry.

After dinner we played a rousing game of Pictionary (Carey and I think so much alike that we had no problems winning after we became comfortable with each other's style) and Trivial Pursuit, 90's edition. The questions in this version of Trivial Pursuit border on being insultingly easy. In the "Wired" category, for example:

Q: In 1993, this company delivered more mail messages than the USPS.
A: America Online

Well duh! I think that Carey and I got about 2/3 of the questions correct. My sister and her husband and my parents probably got about half. Carey and I landed on the center three separate times but couldn't get any of the questions right, though, and my sister and her husband pulled from being down six pieces to three to pull out a victory ("What browser company invented 'cookies'?" - real freakin' tough :-P).

Friday Carey and I met the foursome for dinner, then saw Friday Night Lights at the dollar (fifty) theater. Today Carey and I went ice skating (I need new ice skates - mine really cramp my feet, and I'm beyond the point where I just try to be macho about it). We'll be going shooting in a few minutes… And tomorrow, I don't know.

That's my holiday weekend. How was yours?

Question: What's the strangest thing you've ever heard a neighbor doing?

My Answer: My neighbor in Florida seemingly once tried - I emphasize tried - to sing opera. He was a 60-year old, beer-belly, balding white dude.

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

Question: How well would you do on Survivor?

My Answer: I'd either last quite awhile or I'd leave very quickly - I don't think I'd be a piece player at all. I would have a tremendous problem eating what they eat for 39 days, though. And half of the rewards wouldn't help either - coffee? Pringles? Real nutritious… I'm a meat and potatoes kinda guy. Love fruits. Not so sure I could survive on just fruits though.

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

Consider a Cocoa application I'll call "EggLoop." EggLoop sounds an NSBeep(); every x seconds, where x is set by the user in the application with a slider (from 1 to 999).

This is easily done with a repeating NSTimer. Every x seconds, the NSTimer signals a "beep now" method and resets itself.

Imagine that the user (or the developer) wants to pause the timer. Unfortunately, the developer has to write this himself by keeping track of some number (an integer would be fine for whole seconds). When that int = x, beep and reset the integer to 0. This would require a timer running once per second and triggering a method that does little more than int++ and if(int == x) NSBeep();.

Solution? Apple should add these:

- (BOOL)pause:(id)sender;
- (BOOL)resume:(id)sender;

The BOOL could be used to return a NO if the timer was unable to be resumed or paused (perhaps something else invalidated it in the meantime). This is something I considered after titling this entry, as you can see. 🙂

Question: What's your favorite board game (things like Pictionary count).

My Answer: Trivial Pursuit - but I'm a fan of silly trivia. I like Pictionary quite a bit, but it's tough to find a fair match. I think Carey and I will give my parents and my sister and her husband a good run, though. We think too much alike…

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

It sure would be nice if Preview could be set to display facing pages. Or just two pages, side by side.

I regularly zoom to 130% - that fits a full page, with the toolbar (icons + text) on the height of my 23" display, but it leaves plenty of room. Hitting page down every page is annoying - why can't I view two pages side by side?

Preview isn't even scriptable, so I can't even open the same PDF twice, arrange the windows, set the left page to an odd numbered page and the right to an even number, and - via AppleScript and my programmable mouse, make them scroll down two pages apiece when I click my "page down" button.

Harumph.

This is the first free iTunes song I think I actually like:

Erik is listening to "Breathe (2AM)" by Anna Nalick from the album "Breathe (2AM) - Single" (2004). Erik has rated this song 4.0 stars and has never played this song to completion before.

Here's a link (affiliate-free) to it. It's free this week, so, you have a few more days. It's not super-duper great, but it's something I'll want to hear again.

The little "Erik is listening to" thing is part of an AppleScript I wrote about two years ago (I think) for iTunes. I use it for away messages in Adium and several other things. The script sources is in the extended entry.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 650); »

I continue to get questions like "is there a date set?" and "how did you propose?" and "did you book a band yet?" These questions come from friends who should know better. While I appreciate that they're asking, I don't appreciate that they've failed to remember things I told them only a month ago.

So, let me post here before I become so annoyed by having to answer the same questions many times. Many, many, many times. And then some. 🙂

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 400); »

Question: How do you think advertising will affect your use of syndicated content?

My Answer: Jeremy offers up his opinion - and I hope that advertisers implement his suggestions. I don't believe they will, though.

As I scan my subscriptions list, I find that only about 5% of my feeds are maintained by more than two or three people. In other words, 95% of my subscriptions are to personal blogs. Many of the others - things like Gizmodo and so on - are easily replaced by sites that publish similar content, so I don't expect them to go too hog-wild with advertising in feeds or they'll lose readers.

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

Someone sent me this. If you have thoughts, leave a comment:

Erik, do you think I could use a G5, hook it up to the internet, get some software, iChat, iSight cameras, etc. and set up as a video surveillance and security system in my warehouse in [some city]?

Personally I think that it may be cheaper to get a standard security system, but I don't know if those tie into "remote viewing" very inexpensively.

Are there more Apple blogs to come?

While I was an "Apple blogger," I was threatened with being fired if I didn't cease to comment on any and all things relating to Apple, despite the fact that I also develop software for Mac OS X and never (well, not really) divulged on my blog that I was an Apple employee.

I too know of about 30 Apple employees with blogs. Most don't even mention that they work for Apple. Those that do are far more likely to talk about their cats than their day jobs. So "Apple blogs" is a bit of a misnomer, usually - except when applied to blogs located at education.apple.com, that is!

I went to Bedford yesterday to do three things: accompany my mom, visit my grandmother, and stop in to see my uncle. My uncle is a jeweler, and so my reasons for seeing him were quite obvious. Carey and I had previously both visited my uncle, but this time I was going alone.

I managed to pick out my wedding band: titanium, 6mm, size 9, and "brushed" half-round. The closest I can find online is this with platinum instead of gold (choose the "White Gold" option to get a general idea). I also picked out Carey's wedding ring. On Sunday we'd picked out something like this: Diamond Channel Set Milgrain Band in 14k White Gold, but I found something I liked more, jazzed it up a little, spent a little more, and am happy with my choice. I won't say any more than that because she reads this stuff.

Funny how my wedding ring is 1/20th the cost of hers. 🙂 Oh well… once I get my uncle the right size (we think she's 5½, but we want to be sure), I'll have the rings. So, before Christmas - weird, exciting, etc. Apparently I wasn't supposed to pay for my ring, by custom. See? But theknot.com disagrees. I really don't care, truth be told, and am just happy to be moving in this direction.

Question: What do you listen to in the car?

My Answer: My iPod. Occasionally a CD… but almost never the radio.

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