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NADD

I wrote yesterday that I don't suffer from Infornography. However, I do suffer from NADD:

You enjoy the content fire hose. Give me tabbed browsing, tabbed instant messaging, music all the time, and TIVO TIVO TIVO. Welcome to NADD.

NADD, or Nerd Attention Deficit Disorder, only affects me when I'm at my computer. I seem to be capable of unplugging (going to read a book, watching a movie, etc.) fairly easily. But dammit, when I'm sitting here at my keyboard, you can bet your shiny pale ass that I've got about twenty apps running and at least as many windows open.

QotD: Your List

Question: If you were married (or if you are), what five celebrities are on "your list?"

My Answer: By "the list" I mean the list of celebrities which - if ever presented the chance to - you're allowed to, uhh, "share a promiscuous adventure" without consequence. It's a fun game to see who each other considers "hot" without actually having to worry about your significant other screwing your best friend (unless your best friend is Brad Pitt, in which case, could you perhaps introduce me to Jennifer Aniston?).

Anyway, my list, in no particular order (it changes day to day): Shania Twain, Sandra Bullock, Kate Beckinsale (sense a trend?), Sophie Marceau, and Claire Forlani. The last one or two change fairly frequently, depending on my mood. Besides, a man's gotta leave himself some wiggle room. "No, honey, you didn't get the memo? I took Claire off and replaced her with Christina Aguilera… yeah, the day before we met and had that orgy, uh huh." 😛

(For the record, I think Christina's out of my league. Or Xtina, or whatever she is these days. Not out of my league as a person, but as a sexual entity. I think she may have done things I don't think I'll ever do…)

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

R.E.M. on ITMS

As an R.E.M. fan, it's interesting to see how their work comes up in the ITMS:

Of the 14 albums, the top 10 (in order) are:

  1. Automatic for the People
  2. Reckoning
  3. Murmur
  4. Out of Time
  5. Life's Rich Pageant
  6. Green
  7. Document
  8. Eponymous
  9. Reveal
  10. Monster

Not a bad list, and in what I'd call a fairly correct order as well! 🙂 Automatic for the People is one of the few albums to have gotten 5 stars from Rolling Stone (unless that's changed in the past four years), and is worth it.

Infornography

Jeff writes about what he calls (or maybe someone else did and he's ripping them off) "Infornography." I know I haven't got a problem - I have a HipTop, errr, SideKick I rarely use. I gave away my Palm III. My 12" PowerBook goes largely unused. Sure, I'm online all day, but I'm also wandering around, reading a book, doing something athletic, or whatnot. I love it when I'm wired, but I like to be unwired too.

I'm not a geek, but I play one on the Internet. 😉

Driving Points

Florida takes your driving license away if you accumulate 12 points on your driving record in 12 months, 18 in 18, or 24 in 36. After three years, I guess your points drop off. Today I got mail claiming:

Conv. Date     Court       Points      Speed
----------     -----       ------      -----
01-31-02       PALMBCH     3.0 PTS     50/35
08-26-02       GEORGIA     4.0 PTS     83/65
12-13-02       PALMBCH     4.0 PTS     65/45

There's two things wrong with this: the offense dates are 12-28-01, 05-24-02, and 10-31-02 respectively. Fortunately, the timer counts from the offense date, not when the paperwork goes through, meaning that my first offense was over a year and a half ago (18 months).

TheyCantStopSpam

If you browse on over to WeCanStopSpam.org you'll be told to include one of two URLs in your email because:

Over time, if the idea catches on, spam filters will be trained to recognize emails containing the http://thisurlenablesemailtogetthroughoverzealousspamfilters.org or http://wecanstopspam.org link as legitimate. So, you will be able to increase your chances of getting an email through spam filters if you include it.

Spammers will be tempted to include it in their emails, of course, in order to evade the filters.

But then they will be introducing their targets to this page, which lists antispam software and services. If it catches on end result will be a balance, where some spammers use it anyway, and many legitimate users will include it in their emails.

Uhhh, right. These people are what I'd call "clueless" because a spammer can easily include the URL. Case in point? <!-- http://wecanstopspam.org/ -->. Most of my spam is HTML, and as such, a commented-out URL will still be parsed by most (every?) spam filter, but won't be seen by anyone but the most severe geeks with too much time on their hands. Another way spammers could include it without exposing it to their targets: include it somewhere in the headers - most people don't examine those either.

Style Master 3.0

Two or three years after the release of Mac OS X, Style Master 3.0 - a CSS editing app - is out. In that time, I've simply taught myself enough CSS that I don't need to use an editor, and that - in fact - I'm slower with an editor. Primarily, I had given CSSEdit a try.

I reviewed Style Master 1.1 or 2.0 (or perhaps both) for Apple Wizards when I ran that zine, and I recall rating it quite highly. I also helped to find an issue with the development environment and ACTION! Files. The developer is a nice chap, and so I encourage you to give the software a try.

P.S. I'm not too keen on what is probably that same development environonment's version of drawers. They look different and probably behave differently, and that's A Very Bad Thing™.

QotD: Clients

Question: If you could pick the most important characteristic a client of your services should possess, what would it be?

My Answer: Dependability. That's a far-reaching "characteristic" - they get critical information - and your paycheck - to you on time. They are on time. They do what they say they'll do.

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

Haircuts are Moments of Zen

You sit in a comfortable chair, your feet often dangling. The scissors make quick, precise snips with an abbreviated "shhhhhhhht" sound. Your head is gently pushed and pulled this way and that. Your eyes are closed (to avoid the falling hair). Oftentimes, there's no conversation. Yes, indeed, haircuts are little zen moments.

Regardless of the experience, I'm never 100% thrilled with the result. I like my hair short - so short it dries nearly instantly with a quick towelling - but not so short that I can't part it. I like it straight across at the ears and tapered in the back. Probably not too hard, right? Your basic no-maintenance "geek" "another thing not to think about" kind of haircut. Daily care? I wash it, I dry it. I run a brush through it about ten times. That's ten brush strokes. Max.

Today's haircut is a little long on the top. I worry what this will look like if the sides grow out at the same rate - will I look a little top-heavy? It looks "decent" now - that's the best I can say for most haircuts - so it should suffice. Still, a little more wouldn't have killed the guy.

P.S. Asking a guy "look ok?" while his glasses are still sitting on the counter isn't fair.

AdSense

Consider the placement of Google AdSense ads on Cocoa Dev Central a test balloon. The ads won't appear on this site any time in the near future - and probably never if Google continue to offer only two inflexible styles - but I'm hopeful that enough people will click on the ads at Cocoa Dev Central that I can get the site to pay for its share of the hosting. 🙂

And yes, Gruber's article prompted this. If you guys want to contribute to me, well, I've already got an established means of doing that! Granted, that's also a multi-person company, but I'm simply saying it's already set up to handle payments, and you get some pretty great software as a thank you gift.

Lauryn Hill: Ugh

Only twangy country gets a lower rating:

Erik is listening to "I Find it Hard to Say (Rebel)" by Lauryn Hill from the album "MTV Unplugged" (2002). Erik has rated this song 2.0 stars and last played this song Wednesday, September 4, 2002 9:59:54am.

I really don't like Lauryn Hill. At all.

(Note to the curious: I have an AppleScript generate the thing above for me for email, IM, etc. I don't blog in the third person.)

Blogroll Cleanup

I truly intended to cut my blogroll to about 25 good sites, but I simply can't get rid of the ones I've got. Some are pretty borderline, but as my time becomes increasingly valuable, the "fringe" blogs had to go: those that post on topics I don't care about (politics), those that post infrequently (which is fine) and when they do post, post very little (not fine), etc.

Listeners Who Bought

Listeners who bought Clay Aien also bought:

  • Steven Curtis Chapman
  • Adam Sandler
  • Eric Marienthal
  • Anthrax
  • Oingo Boingo
  • The Carpenters
  • Dave Gahan
  • Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown
  • Julian Lennon

Not sure I want to include myself in that crowd… 😛

Blog at Your Own Domain

As much as I'm looking forward to the impact of AOL Blogs and TypePad (MT power for the masses!), I do wish to stress this:

Final lesson from this situation: never, ever blog at a domain that's not owned by you. Don't blog on your employer's site, don't blog on your blogging application's site - make sure your blog lives (and stays!) on your own domain.

From Rich Klau. The rest of the article is worth reading, especially if you're a Winer conspiracy theorist.

PulpFiction Work Continues

Andy and I had a good discussion re: PulpFiction today. We both shared our opinions, we both agreed on what we feel are the best approaches, and in the end, PulpFiction is a simpler, more elegant, and also more cohesive, powerful piece of software.

PulpFiction will only run on Panther, and as we sit around waiting for our copies, we realize that we're fine with that decision. PulpFiction's audience will be the variety that will install Panther the day it ships, so we're not worried about that. Instead, we're looking forward to getting a bit of a leg up on apps that are compatible with 10.2 (or even 10.1).

We're going with an approach very similar to one of the free apps you get with your OS, and it will probably be a non-textured app. Toolbars look bad in metal, and PulpFiction doesn't meet the "guideline" criteria for texturing, so we're not going to texture it. We reserve the right to change our minds, of course, and we're fairly neutral in the "we hate textures" arguments that pop up every 1.3 nanoseconds.