NSLog();

Question: What does the shorter version of your iTunes status area say when you're viewing your library? Your "Purchased Music" list?

My Answer: 9839 songs, 34 days, 56.60 GB. I've purchased 573 songs, 4.1 days, 3.05 GB (about 1/3 of which were free - my total iTunes store spending has been less than $200).

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

SystemUIServer - which controls the top-right menu items (fast user switching, date and time, etc.) keeps locking up on me. I can't even kill -9 the PID. I looked around and some things pointed towards AirPort, but removing that menu item has not resolved the issue. I don't even care that it doesn't work very well, except that 1) I like to take screenshots, and 2) I like to know the correct time. Grrrr…

Running 10.3.6. Will hunt for a solution tomorrow or something…

Golf statistics software, frankly, sucks. The best I've seen so far is actually an online piece of software. The best desktop software I've seen hasn't been updated in over two years.

That all having been said, I'm curious to know whether someone would be interested in working with me on a Cocoa (thus Mac OS X) golf statistics application. I've done a bit of work and come up with some lists of easily-tracked stats and I have a good idea for the UI. The UI will take very little time to write: the equations and database queries will take up the bulk of the time.

Later versions of the software would include charts and graphs, but the first version - 1.0 - would primarily be "here are some statistics, have fun."

If you're interested in working with me (and Freshly Squeezed Software) in creating this, let me know via AIM (iacas).

Question: Do you use fink?

My Answer: I don't even have it installed on my system. I did once - back in 10.1 or 10.2, I think - but I never ended up using it, so, I have simply failed to expend the necessary energy to get it on my 10.3 setups.

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

The Sand Trap .com is really churning out the articles, baby! Woweee.

The MailDrop 2 Icon contest is over, and we have a winner: Makalu Media art director Mike Rohde.

The toolbar icons in MailDrop 2 were done by mini-Buzz (aka Bobby). MailDrop 2 will be available just as soon as we get it done, which will hopefully be just before December rolls around. That way everyone can send out their personalized Christmas cards to those family members who don't quite deserve a real card. 🙂

P.S. We're still tweaking the icon - the 32-pixel and 16-pixel icons we've asked to see in just the "body + hat" configuration (no legs/arms/sack). The document icon will take some tweaks too, but is currently a "document" (the white piece of paper common on Mac OS X) with the hat and some letters.

You know what would be nice? Something like this:

<ol start="backwards">

It sure would be nice for numbering things like top-10 lists backwards (10, 9, 8, 7…).

Question: How many buttons does your mouse have? Don't count the scroll wheel as more than one button, and don't count "chording."

My Answer: Eight. The Logitech MX-700.

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

I hate to pile on to the "blogasm", but Jeff has taken a stand on last night's West Wing. In it, Josh Lyman hit a Prius test-driving an SUV, and a blogger captured the story and the photo. Josh, in a huff, then called the blogger, berated them, and watched in surprise as his words, which he had declared to be "off the record," were posted.

Jeff says:

This little bit, frankly, pissed me off. Respecting the convention of "off the record" isn't something that only professional get-paid-for-it journalists do. It's something everybody does. It's like saying "Bless you" after you sneeze. It's just a thing. We all do it.

No, "we" don't. I have standards for professional etiquette, and they include things such as "don't quote anyone without first asking for permission to do so," but those are my standards, not someone else's. I don't swear a vow or sign a contract stipulating to these things. A reporter not respecting "this is off the record" is shunned, banished, and often fired. A blogger works for themselves, and they're rewarded with "the inside scoop" and increased traffic, ad income, etc - quite the opposite of being fired.

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It is reasonable to suggest that a large chunk of blogs are just like forums with one difference: on a blog, the ability to create a new thread is limited to the authors of the blog.

Why then has blogging software remained so far beyond forum software? Granted, forums and bulletin boards have existed since long ago, but many are open source and the ideas have been done. Polls? "Who's online" lists? Private messages? Every piece of forum software I've seen has these capabilities. Many use PHP and MySQL for dynamic posting out of the box.

What's to stop someone from creating a forum on which only they can create new threads, and simply using that as their blog? Hrmmm.

In other news, I may be working on a polling solution for MovableType with someone. We're not sure just yet, but we'll see. MTVote and MTPoll aren't going anywhere.

Question: I'm going to call comment spam "spamments" now. This new word securely embedded in your vocabulary, today's question is: how many spamments has your blog blocked? If you don't have a blog, how often do you see spamments on blogs?

My Answer: Here are MT-Blacklist's stats, which go back to about… uhhh… Let's say September 30, which is when I think I installed MovableType 3.1 and the latest MT-Blacklist.

Spamments blocked:         7570
Spamments moderated:        352
Duplicates blocked:          47
Blacklist - Strings:         76
Blacklist - URLPatterns:     44
Blacklist - Regexes:          0
Blacklist - FlexProtect:      0
Blacklist - Pending:        N/A

Yes, 7570 spamments blocked, and probably 320 or so of the moderated spamments were eventually removed as well. FWIW, I rarely see spamments on blogs because I tend to look only at new content.

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

Well, having negotiated things properly, I am now a member of Lake View Country Club. I'm a yuppie elitist now. I'm one of the "upwardly mobile" youth. I'm country club snob.

Okay, I'm the same guy I was three days ago, but now I get to play golf at a great course just about any time I want which, thanks to a nice little warm streak, has been each of the past two days. The changes they've made to Lake View have been fabulous: they've removed some trees to let some more air flow and gotten the bunkers in tip-top shape. The course is wonderful, and as stern a test as I remember.

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I'm impressed with the number of things that have worked on the beer girl so far. A partial list:

fight
dance
kiss
eat banana
give me a hummer
exercise
lick
lie down
show tattoo
strip
shower
jump
laugh
bend over
play with your hair
squeeze
rip
read

And finally…
get me a beer

P.S. Scott found a cheetsheat. It's in the extended entry.

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Seen on a golf forum somewhere:

Well said, those who cheat only cheat themselves(tourneys aside) golf is hard and penile tnough(which is no excuse for cheating)..

My driver is bigger than yours.

My friend Seth has a funny image on an entry called Goodbye Sanity!!. Good stuff!