NSLog();

The Evil Bit is a pretty lame April Fool's joke. This is the best that the brightest minds in the world could muster? Bummer. There are one or two previous IP jokes at ietf.org.

Anyone have any good April Fool's jokes? I liked Unsanity's and CPAN's (this one won't work after today). Adam has one or two moderately amusing ones. Michael is keeping a list.

Speaking of TrackBacks… I find it somewhat offensive to link (and thus TrackBack) to articles while offering nothing new to the topic. While not the same as TrackBack spam, this kind of thing is pretty close.

Is it too much to ask that you even write a simple "I agree" or "This is funny shit, check it out"? Pretty please? People will come to my article (or they won't - whatever), follow a TrackBack, and be greeted with… absolutely nothing new. Tony, most of your blog seems to be like this. C'mon man. 😛 Turn off TrackBacks for the posts on which you're simply acting as a pointer, not commenting. Pretty please?

P.S. Apologies to Mark Knopfler for stealing the title for this one. That song came out the year Jamie was born… Eek! :-O

Sunday
7:30 -- My 33 Sons
8:00 -- Osama Knows Best
8:30 -- Let's Mecca Deal
9:00 -- I Dream of Mohammed
9:30 -- The Kabul Hillbillies

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 191); »

Jamie pointed me at this page. I'll let you read it yourself, but the gist is this: a "woman" writes in to criticize feminists for taking things too far, cautioning them that she likes getting flowers, for example. Except the "woman" is a guy, as the real women discover.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 1099); »

Back in Mac OS 8 and 9 I used something called PopupCD to control my CD player. Back before the days of widespread MP3 use, when the only audio you typically heard on your Mac was from an audio CD, a movie, or a system beep, PopupCD was a godsend. Who wanted to use Apple CD Audio Player? What a pain. You had to switch apps just to change your music?

I've avoided Synergy for awhile now on Mac OS X. I'm not sure why, but I gave it a try today and bought it nearly immediately. Like PopupCD, the best feature is the ability to control iTunes with keyboard shortcuts from anywhere. I've set cmd-opt-arrows to control ffwd/rew, volume up/down and cmd-opt-space to play/pause.

I don't understand what's so difficult to understand about TrackBacks, but this surely wouldn't clear it up if I was confused.

A TrackBack list is simply a list of entries that relate to (usually by linking to and discussing) the page (be it an individual entry or a category) at which you're staring. The plasticbag.org article (and author Tom Coates) will see that I've linked to it because my blogging software will say "hey, I've linked to you" to his blogging software. That's it. That's all. Tom's pictures don't even make sense because - guess what - he doesn't seem to display TrackBacks on his site like he mentions ("in that funny pop-up").

TrackBacks aren't that hard to understand. I think anyone with an IQ of greater than 80 can figure them out. I've explained them - by demonstration typically - in 30 seconds to everyone I've started on blogging. Why has there been a mini-explosion in people trying to explain them lately?

(Edit: some comments edited or removed, including my own, in regards to how Tom's site displays TrackBacks. Because he can change them at any time, as he did today, it's silly of me to comment on them.)

Do you think that if Playboy ever did a "The Women of Apple" pictorial, they'd be able to resist making a few "garden of Eden" jokes?

"One of the deep mysteries to me is our logo, the symbol of lust and knowledge, bitten into, all crossed with the colors of the rainbow in the wrong order. You couldn't dream of a more appropriate logo: lust, knowledge, hope, and anarchy" - Jean-Louis Gassée

My favorite quote about Apple's (old) logo.

Do you speak 'Caddyshack'? I do. I've had this conversation with several women friends, typically after quoting a movie that they didn't see or don't recall. "… and some Funions, man…" is from Half-Baked. "Hello, Clarice" is a bit easier - most women usually get that one. All sorts of movies. I quote quite a few from my favorite movie, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, for my own amusement.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 255); »

"War" is something that, in my country, only our Congress can declare. As such, we are not at "war" with Iraq. Yet Fox, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC refer to the "war" in Iraq. By dictionary definition, yes, there is a war going on. By that same definition, I suppose that, in fact, America has previously waged wars on drugs, poverty, and who knows what else.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 366); »

Kuro5hin talks about iterators - C++, Java, etc. I didn't find any mention of Objective-C or Cocoa on the page, but I'd like to point out that the Cocoa frameworks have some pretty nice iterators and reverse iterators called "enumerators." Combined with some of the other methods, like componentsSeparatedByString: and so on, Cocoa's enumerators are quite nice. We use them quite frequently in MailDrop.

My dog Flint has been acting oddly the past few hours. I took him out and he had, well, let's just say what came out the back wasn't so solid. I took him out again just now and he tried to eat some grass. I'd let him solve his own problems except the pesticides would undoubtedly create more.

So, a few teaspoons of hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) later and voilà! Bubbly Dog Vomit™! He's doing much better now.

Good writing gets people to think. It may get them to react violently - and I don't mean physically violently - or it may get them to react pensively. It doesn't matter much - it gets a reaction that involves thought.

Many times throughout my writing career I've even said this. When discussing John Dvorak I said:

To that end, this Edwin Schlossberg quote from Tim O'Reilly resonates strongly:

The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.

Even my disclaimer says I may not express my actual opinions, but instead may write to provoke thought. My own, typically - I don't assume that anyone's reading this silly site! 🙂

Buzz takes issue with my previous mention of Shrub^*, calling it a "withering assault."

Frankly, I thought it was rather glib for a quickie post, and anyone who knows me understands that I care very little for most politicians (or politics). Would Al Gore have made a better President? I don't know. That's neither here nor there.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 572); »

This morning I went to Albertson's to grab some ham, some bacon, and some OJ. They open at 6, and I had yet to go to sleep, so I wanted a real breakfast. I gathered my items (the bacon is not near the ham, as I discovered, but is instead by the cheese - sandwich area, I guess?) and proceeded to checkout.

Two people in line in front of me was a 35-year old (approx.) thin black man in a yellow shirt paying for about $5 in groceries with a $100 bill. I overheard the clerk say "this isn't real, is it?" and he said "yeah, it is!" She marked it with one of those pens, it came out that brownish yellow, and she popped open the drawer for his change.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 447); »

From this Newsday.com article (found on TooMuchSexy.blog) comes this load of hooey:

The House passed a resolution Thursday calling for a national day of humility, prayer and fasting in a time of war and terrorism. The resolution, passed 346-49, says Americans should use the day of prayer "to seek guidance from God to achieve a greater understanding of our own failings and to learn how we can do better in our everyday activities, and to gain resolve in meeting the challenges that confront our nation."

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 399); »