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I have nothing to say about this.

It is its own joke, I imagine.

It's been requested of me, and I will comply immediately, that I limit my commentary on Apple-related items. It's only fair - things I say could be misconstrued or taken out of context, and in the end, may in some small way harm a company I love dearly. As such, I have no issue or problem limiting my commentary on Apple-related items.

Frankly, I'm not sure why anyone visits my site. I'm glad people do - I like discussion, I like meeting new people, and I've gotten quite a bit of both from my blog. I hope that does not change, as I've got several categories that haven't got the slightest thing in the world to do with my favorite computer company but are still filled with all sorts of juicy tidbits about thwarting counterfeiters and dating in the 2000s. 🙂

Question: If you were to be killed by an animal, what kind would it be??

My Answer: My first instinct was to choose a quick death, and the animal that would cause it, but I'm not certain death by lion mauling is fast enough. My next reaction is to choose something relatively painless, like some kind of poisoning, but I can't really think of any animals with painless poison. In the end, I'm going to have to go with "death by duckbilled platypus." Most people don't know that the duckbilled platypus is actually quite deadly, and at least my death would serve as a warning of these dangerous monotremes.

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

Pink is certainly a feminine word and it's also the name of an artist, and I'd listen to her music but right now I'm finishing my rating of Fleetwood Mac's greatest hits album or something. Two discs, actually, and I can't type today. I keep backspacing to correct things, which isn't the point of a OneWord, but I'm anal and I want what I write to be legible, because I don't think in typo'd words, and so really, which is more accurate?

This 60-second entry was brought to you by today's word from OneWord™.

Survivor week is here. I watched last night with Gabe and Daria, and now I'm blogging about it around 1 on Friday. Rob screwed Heidious and Jenna last week (not in the way he'd truly like to screw them), and so this week was an interesting one. Christy being voted out? Unexpected!

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From a MacInTouch discussion on the iPods:

Just a note to those people (like me) who are frustrated that the original iPods do not support the new software features of the current iPods. While reader reports like this one on MacInTouch are very useful, if you want a chance of Apple actually developing the 2.0 software for our iPods, you should leave them some feedback.

Bloody shut up already (I just spoke with someone from the UK, forgive me) you wanker! 😛 I mean, if Apple could have given you all those features, might they have? Probably. And hey, if they could have and didn't, oh well - incentive to upgrade. Furthermore, it's not like your "old" iPod became less fully featured than before. You bought a product and with the 1.3 update, it was improved!

Some have speculated that the new iPods contain larger Flash ROMs than the old iPods, leading to the idea that maybe the old ones simply can't take software as large as 2.0. Technology evolves, and people are "left behind." If you feel bad because you're not on the bleeding edge, that's your problem. My answer to that? Don't feel bad. Apple - and most likely you - have better things to worry about!

Where am I? Using TerraBrowser, I've located my precise position.

Terrabrowser is a front end to Microsoft's Terra Server which contains satellite imagery and topo maps from the US Geological Survey (USGS). The aim of this program is to provide a simpler and more user friendly interface to the data. It doesn't support all of the features of the Terra Server such as search by name/region, but it does allow direct entry of latitude/longitude and displays a marker at your current location. It also has extensive bookmarking capabilities.

So where am I 99.9% of the time (okay, not quite that often)? 26.47195, -80.09587. Notice how I have the "lake view." Woo!

Y'know, seeing screenshots of the recently released NisusWriter Express reminded me of something: I Dislike Drawers. Those slide-out never-wide-enough drawers in Mac OS X. In fact, aside from Preview, I can't think of a single app in which I even like to tolerate drawers. On a scale of 1-10, 10 being "yay" and 1 being "grrr" drawers consistently rank in around a 1.8. Preview? Maybe a 4.

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My friend Jason couldn't authorize iTunes to play some songs he'd purchased (on the same machine he'd purchased them on), and he found the answer on a discussion board:

% sudo mkdir -p /Users/Shared
% sudo chmod 777 /Users/Shared

Doing some investigating of my own, I found a hidden "SC Info" folder that directly links to the iTunes authorization mechanism. I deleted the folder and iTunes prompted me to enter my authorization information again, and then the folder was there again. The folder contains only a single file:

[8:18am iacas@Gaia:/Users/Shared/SC Info] % lis
total 8
drwxrwxrwx  3 iacas  wheel  102 May  2 08:17 ./
drwxrwxrwt  3 root   wheel  102 May  2 08:17 ../
-rw-rw-rw-  1 iacas  wheel  200 May  2 08:17 SC Info.sidb

Wonder what "SC" and "si" (db = database I would imagine) stand for… At any rate, a useful and helpful hint to those having trouble getting authorization to "stick."

Question: If you could keep only one of your five senses, which would you keep?

My Answer: I would keep my sight. Much of my communication is textual - email, IRC, HTML, PHP, Objective-C, etc. I could live without feeling pain, I could deal with not being able to taste things (I might eat healthier!), and I could sure as hell deal with not having to smell myself. 🙂 Hearing is the only one that gives me pause in answering this question. Sure would save me money at the iTunes Music Store though!

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

Every month (since February) I post my site's referral search terms (not what people search for on my site). It's an interesting peek that illustrates "how people are finding me." Here's April's…

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I've recently had to say "sod off" to a certain "pal" of mine. This "pal" wrote something that upset and hurt me. Try as I might, I was unable to see what they wrote in any other way - humor, sarcasm, etc. People I've showed the writing to are appalled at what was written, the typical comment being something like "how fucking rude!" People with whom I've never even emailed have contacted me saying the same thing.

My life is about to get a lot busier. I'm taking on three new jobs, effectively, and scaling back on one, keeping a fifth at the same level, and still attempting to have a social life. I'm not mad at this person, and if I had the time or inclination, I'd most likely work through it. But I lack both the time and a reason to be so inclined, and so I've asked him to sod off.

It's interesting to me how people read "anger" into things. I "hinted" that I wished nothing to do with him, he emailed again. I hinted again, he emailed again. I said so more abruptly, he accused me of being angry. And he wants to call me egotistical? Listen, mate, if you're reading at all: I've got better things to do than get angry with you. There's far too much good in the world to let you bring me down. Of course, that doesn't mean I've got to continue being your "pal" either.

The use of "pal" throughout because privately, I reserve the word "friend" for a select few, though out of the context of discussing relationships, I use the word nearly as flippantly as everyone else. This is not one of those times.

My date for dinner at Ruth's Chris looked elegant the other day. I'm used to seeing her in boy clothes, kinda, so it was quite a shock to see her all dressed up nice and sexy. She looked very, very good, and I think I told her that about five hundred times through dinner and afterwards. Elegance is very, very sexy after all. I'll take sophisticated over slutty any day of the week and most weekends too. Or every other weekend.

It seems that iTunes 4 has a myserious hidden menu. To get it:

1. Click "Window" menu
2. Press right arrow key
3. There is no step three!

The appearance of this mysterious menu is intriguing. Quite obviously it provides the old cmd-Y keyboard shortcut for those that may want it. It also provides the lovely shortcut for the search field. Hey - if that's an easy way to get keyboard shortcuts in, so be it!

Someone published an article called Why eMusic Gets It as a direct comparison between eMusic and the iTunes Music Store (iMusic for the purpose of a funnier title). Point by point, let's have a look at the issues raised.

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