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My friend Daria's finished putting together a Web site at the request of a client: I Support Our Troops .US is ready for your digital signature. If you want to link to them, do so using either of these badges.

Whatever we may think about where our troops are sent, or what they are asked to do, Americans, overwhelmingly, are grateful to the men and women who defend us. Everyday, these brave people endure separation from their families and put their lives at risk to protect us and the freedoms we cherish.

Support our fellow Americans, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with their being there in the first place. Here's hoping whatever does happen is minimal, fast, and relatively painless for all involved.

The Insecure Invasion Server has been riddled with another round of bullet holes. How sick are you of buffer overflows? How much sense would it take to, I dunno, code in checks for these things? Jeez.

This one falls into the "Duh" category. As I was reading through this article I saw an archive format like this:

<MTArchiveDate format="%Y/%m/%d">

How had I been doing that very same thing?

<MTArchiveDate format="%Y">/<MTArchiveDate format="%m">/<MTArchiveDate format="%d">

I'm not sure why I was doing it this way. Maybe the manual suggested it. Maybe I wasn't sure whether slashes inside of <MT> tags worked the same, who knows. Anyway, I've updated my "Starting a Blog (with MovableType)" article to reflect my newfound un-duh-ness.

In "Creating High-Res PDF Files For Free" Andy lists the several pieces of software necessary and the several steps it takes to get a PDF out of Linux. He somehow sees fit to end this with "Ain't technology grand?"

Unzip the PPD archive and copy the ADIST5.PPD file someplace useful.

Run the PostScript windows driver installer.

Tell it to use the "write to file" device.

Tell it to use the PPD you saved off in step 1.

Funny, I just choose "Print" and then Save as PDF. Actually, I don't - I choose "Print" and then I use 10.2.4's Print Services to choose my Desktop, Entourage, Acrobat Reader, BBEdit, or several AppleScripts I have set up to post-process the PDF. Creating the PDF is the easy part. Deciding what I want to do with it is the "long" step. Y'know, about five seconds.

Ain't technology grand?

Seems some Iraqi soldiers are already practicing for war:

The stunned Paras from 16 Air Assault Brigade were forced to tell the Iraqis they were not firing at them, and ordered them back to their home country telling them it was too early to surrender.

Find more here. Yeah, short post, but I don't care much for politics one way or the other, so I have nothing to say. Just find it amusing that the soldiers didn't know the war hadn't started yet.

Last Sunday I saw The Quiet American and Jeff saw it last night. It's a Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser movie based on a novel of the same name, written in 1956. A few things explode, but it's not an action film. There's a woman torn between two men, but it's not a romance. It's not a war movie, it's certainly not a comedy, and it's not a documentary.

It is, however, a good movie. Caine displays his Academy award-winning talent, and Fraser muddles through without acting too goofy. Some of the cultural aspects - I won't divulge them here - and some of the foreshadowing of later world events are done subtly. It's well done.

The Quiet American (2002) seems to have been preceeded by a 1958 version starring Michael Redgrave. I'll have to check that out.

Am I the only person who finds Konfabulator to be useless? Even Gruber seems to like it, or at least the idea behind it.

Konfabulator's list of widgets is full of Airport signal monitors, battery monitors, to-do lists, and more. Says the description of one widget, "Useless, but fun!" (View all modules here.)

Guess what? I've already got things that do these things. The menu bar (Airport, Volume, etc.) and dock (CPU Monitor, etc.) all handle these tasks. They're always available unlike Konfabulator's windows, which can easily be obscured by other apps' windows.

I've said it before: I like form to follow function, not the other way around. Konfabulator - and most of its widgets - are all form. $25 is way too high a price for that.

At any one time in my life, I've got about five or six friends. That's all. Mostly no more, and rarely any less. Six. 1 2 3 4 5 6.

Acquaintances, or hemi-pals, or pals, or "people I know," well, I've got lots of them. More than anyone has friends, that's for sure, and more than many people have acquaintances because they're too quick to lump people into their "friends" category.

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I just realized I hadn't posted anything on TypeIt4Me yet. TI4M is an absolutely fabulous^* utility that expands my abbreviations to full-grown blocks of text (words, paragraphs, etc.). For example:

"ejb" expands to "Erik J. Barzeski"
"hns" expands to "http://nslog.com"
"fssw" expands to "Freshly Squeezed Software"
"teh" expands to "the"
"becuase" expands to "because"

So, not only can it save you keystrokes when typing your name, but it can correct typos. In the terminal. In your browser. In your email app. In your development environment. Nearly anywhere you can type.

I hope the next version supports a few more built-in expansions, such as "whatshewantstohear" and "whateverwillgetmelaid." He'd sell a billion!

^* Obligatory "fabulous" footnote.

There's an article on giving up TV. Many of the people in the comments section talk about how bad television has gotten, largely due to commercials.

These people need a TiVo.

I watch more TV now than ever. Before my TiVo, I too hated commercials. Now I can watch the shows I want to watch when I want to watch them without pesky ads. Simple as that.

Steven of Panic talked about iPod engraving and I made the comment that mine was engraved, well, as you see to the right. I'd previously owned a 5 GB model (no engraving) and sold it for a fairly paltry sum to upgrade to the 20 GB model. 20 GB is a lot of music, so in order to prevent myself from ditching the 20 so easily to get the 60 (or whatever there may be, maybe?), I had it engraved with my name and a little humor. It narrows the list of potential eBay buyers down to those named "Erik."

It's surprisingly incredibly fun to drop by the Apple Store and engrave your own iPod. Just preview it, change it, preview again. Take screenshots of the funnier ones. I can't recall how many I tried out, but I remember trying things like "Thanks for all the cool ideas - Steve" and "Man, you make me feel like a woman! ~ Shania" and "This iPod contains only crappy music." Steven's post has a few good ones:

Property of RIAA - chiller
This end up. - JP
©2003 Microsoft Corp. - z0mbi
01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011 - August

Frankly, though, I'm surprised at how weak the entries are. Surely you people have some imagination! When iPhoto first came out, some friends and I were tempted to put the face of a certain Steve in some porn scenes and try to order 4x6 prints of the resulting Photoshopped JPEGs, but never got around to it. After all, it's all automated, so surely we'd just be wasting our $0.49. Right?

Anyway, maybe Britney really did give me an iPod…

The funniest thing I've seen today by far.

With digicam in hand, master grabs puppy, opens Vaio, and places one atop the other. As master says "Stay" and takes aim, the puppy recalls the only trick he's learned so far, and does the same.

That "trick" was of course to pee whenever being picked up and placed somewhere. The picture at the end of the article is priceless. Good boy! 🙂

I've given some more thought to my idea of starting a Florida Blogs directory site. Mainly, in the absence of finding other regional ones (call me lazy, sure), I've come up with a list of what I feel the "requirements" for the site should be. I've listed them below. Please comment (preferably via email) and I'll append to and modify the list as necessary.

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Christina Aguilera's Stripped CD has gotten a lot of playtime lately and she's taken a lot of flack lately for being, uhhh, shall we say more "out there" than other pop stars (Justin, Britney, Jessica, Mandy, Avril, Kelly, Norah, Alicia, etc.).

Christina's first album and her song on Mulan showed the world that she could sing, with a stronger voice and a bigger range than Britney. Stripped reveals her artistry and songwriting skills a bit more. From the clubby, eager "Can't Hold Us Down" to the obnoxious and sex-laced "Dirrty" and the kick-ass girl-power "Fighter" we get a sense of Christina's energy. From "I'm OK," "Walk Away," and "Infatuation" we get a sense of her sensitivity and songwriting skills.

In fact, "I'm OK," a song about her abusive father, was recorded in one take while Christina lay on her back. It contains some powerful lines:

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Wired has their Wishlist for 2013 up, and the top item is an Apple-made wristwatch PDA, phone, MP3 player, sous chef, and… well… watch. The other items include thin, flexible OLED displays, space-age contacts, and smart earplugs.

Said Jamie:

Jamie: oh geez
Jamie: wish list for 2013... ha
Jamie: at this rate.. they should have added the 17" powerbook to that list

Never underestimate the dry wit of a Mac chicky. 🙂