brett's logjam

Firefox tops PCWorld’s top 100 products of 2005. Mac OS X.4 (Tiger) is #3.

Things Trip called Mama today:

• His mother.
• The sink.
• The guest bedroom.
• His mother, again.
• The giraffe that plays music.
• His grandmother, over the phone.
• The phone.
• Running water.
• His mother, for five hours straight.
• His father, once.

Zen Master Steve reminds me that the Audi RS6 has zoom.

“Oh yeah, RS6. Hi.” Indeed.

Just when I thought I had a handle on things, a blob of rat brain neurons goes and flies a plane.

Huh. Guess I was wrong.

Music Publishers Want Jail Time For Lyrics Posters.

I’d really like to see “Musicians Want Jail Time for Music Executives” as a headline. Can someone make that happen?

Today was one of those tough, fast, hard days at work: everything seems okay until it really, really isn’t. And then? Shit → Fan. Not pretty.

So, in response, after losing myself in my family when I came home, it’s now time to kvetch about computers. It’s either that or move furniture around, and there’s a sleeping baby to consider there.

I got a lot of responses to my switch to a Mac, mostly positive. I think it’s worth making the point that once you’ve switched off Windows for Linux, you’ve already gone through the cognitive gauntlet of a foreign OS. That Windows → Linux transition is missing all the nice pretty shiny parts that OS X brings to the table. Aqua is definitely a step up from KDE or Gnome.

That said, I still have some issues with the Mac. (Why are you not surprised, dear reader?)

• My only hardware-related complaint is that the trackpad on the G4 Powerbook isn’t 100% reliable. Occasionally it decides to take a break. Following a tip on the net, placing your palm across the pad surface resets it and gets it going again. Unfortunately, the wrist angle is all wrong on that move for it to ever be comfortable.

• I’m having a damnable time getting the OAR/Address Book sync to work, so I can share contacts between work (Exchange) and home (Address Book). I suspect there may be something disabled on our server.

• I don’t even want to talk about the iCal/Exchange integration woes. iCal looks beautiful and easy to use. But without Outlook syncing, ploink.

• Passwordless ssh. I’ve spent hours trying to set up passwordless ssh between the Powerbook and my Linux server. I can go to my webhost without a problem, but for some reason the SuSE 10.0 box won’t allow it in that direction. (The other direction - server to laptop - is perfectly fine, so I just need to switch backups from push to pull.)

• iPhoto. Okay, I’m seduced by the square footage and photobooks, but not only is iPhoto doing bad things to my photo organization, it’s slow. That may be its death knell. I think my previous folder-based organization was actually better than trusting some big scary database. I’m not ready for Photoshop CS2 - yet - but I wouldn’t mind giving it a test drive.

• Adium wins the chat battle hands down after Trillian hosed my carefully-annotated contact list. The best part? Address Book integration. Rename once, apply the alias everywhere. Now when I work from home I leave Adium running and don’t bother with IM on the Windows boxes. That said, it still sucks when trying to actually remove people from your list. I just want to get my contact list below 500 people, people! Is it so much to ask that I not have multiple accounts on a single provider just so I can see who’s online?

And now for the heresy:

• I like Safari and Mail.app better than Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird. Much better, in fact. The RSS features in Safari have changed how I read online, and I no longer read all my email in pine. Perhaps it’s the punk rock reaction to popularity (I knew those apps when they were cool and outside the mainstream and buggier than a bayou, and now you young whippersnappers get all your fancy extensions and a million downloads!), but it’s more that I just don’t care anymore. Mozilla used to be miles ahead of the pack, but it’s lost ground again, and on the Mac it’s not quite the same experience, and hey! I have other things to think about these days.

See? Much better than talking about work.

I would be remiss in not pointing out that Trip’s fourth tooth has come in (with two more on the way). I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention that the holiday outfits have begun to appear. So cute!

• Christmas tree is up.
• Old (3 years) lights blown, replaced with fancy LEDs which I now adore.
• Older (30 years) lights safely stored away for future color matching and tales about the tough old days of Christmas past.
• Dining room rearranged.
• Kitchen rearranged.
• TV moved.

And, no surprise:

• My back is not very happy with me.

Cute overload!:

… and, the EFF’s response to Warner/Chappell.

We write today to inform you that the distribution of software such as pearLyrics does not violate U.S. copyright law and that any legal threats by Warner/Chappell against U.S. software developers in connection with software similar to pearLyrics could expose Warner/Chappell to legal action in U.S. federal courts.

As you know, Apple’s iTunes software includes a “lyrics” field for every digital song file, permitting users to add lyrics to song files purchased from the iTunes Music Store or copied from CD. Lyrics can then be displayed when the song files are played on certain iPods. It is our view that this activity--annotation by individual music fans of legitimately acquired music--would be viewed as a “fair use” under U.S. copyright law. At a minimum, we know of no legal authority suggesting that such personal, noncommercial copying of lyrics constitutes infringement.

Lots of link-fixing and general updates over at Trip’s site.

A strange set of circumstances leads me tonight over to Joel Splosky’s In Defense of Not-Invented Here Syndrome.

Warner/Chappell says they’re sorry.

All of the typepad sites I read have reverted back to December 9. An attempt to get more shopping days in before Christmas?

Have I plugged my own web host recently? If not, plug plug plug. Cornerhost remains fantastic.

But if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to check my own backups.…

So I’m quite happy to hear that my old Ricegame partners-in-crime are putting on an old-style Vampire/Werewolf LARP at Owlcon 2006 this February 10-12. I highly recommend anything that Roy, Zach and Zed put together!

I can also vouch for the Call of Cthulu LARP, though I know no details; I’ve played Michael’s COC games before and had a hysterical time doing so.

And while I’m at it, there are some very good gaming conversations going on in the 20x20 Room.

Celebrity D&D. Yes, more of that, please.

A tour of the Transparent Phaeton Factory.

I’m retiring my bookmarks file. Migrating from Firefox to Safari rendered it obsolete, so I’m replacing it with a smaller, more targeted links page.

Still, not bad for a file that has been online since my very first web page in 1994!