One of the more interesting questions you can ask someone is "What was your favorite Halloween costumes as a kid?". You usually get a wide variety of answers, and they often look to the side and get a half smile on their face as some memories come rushing back.
posted on October 31, 2004 at 10:25 PMIf you take a look over at marcasuzaa.com, you might have to do a double take. This isn't a big deal at all, not the first time, or something I really care about: it's both amusing and flattering. Hopefully whoever does it actually gets around to making their archives look decent.
However, if you click and take a look at the screenshot below, and then at the site I referenced again, things get a little bit less amusing.
Another special treat for my 13 14 loyal readers: Christopher Forsythe, the creator of Growl for OS X was gracious enough to sit down for another lengthy chat about the project and where it's heading.
Chances are, this'll be the first time many of you have heard of Growl, and there'll be linkage at the end to get you started.
At first glance, it might be easy to dismiss Growl as superfluous eye-candy. However, once you spend a bit of time with it, you realize what it's trying to do and just how much it can help you.
I haven't even had my morning-after coffee yet, and my inbox is just abuzz that there's probably some serious malware possibly making the rounds on Mac OSX.
Ah well, I need something to bang on while I'm waiting for the coffee to brew and my morning infusion of the nectar of the bean lets me think in a more coherent and structured way.
...while I'm working up a redux for the RSS Roundtable; we blew well past 1,000 comments over the last few days after filtering out my own posts but leaving the ones disparaging me in. While a minor milestone, it's a milestone of sorts.
*pets his blog*
I've been a little busy over the last few days, but for those who aren't running the beta (as, well, the beta tells you there's a new version) it's worth noting that AdiumX is out of beta and 0.7 is out for your enjoyment after beta after beta and release candidate after release candidate. When I was snagging it last night, not all the mirrors had it yet, so you might have to clicky clicky a bit.
I could poke a little at how many I was downloading and installing, but really it was all going towards making this release as solid as possible. My prior notes on some of the changes are here. It's a pretty fun release.
I'm a big fan of RSS, and while ago I decided I wanted to do one of my chats with the author behind one of the RSS aggregators for Mac OS X, and hit a conundrum: there were too many cool apps to choose from. I know, I know, what a lovely conundrum as far as conundrums go.
To that end, I have an extra-special treat for my 13 loyal readers... the first DrunkenBlog Roundtable, with five of the best RSS aggregators available for Mac OS X.
To review a bit about RSS if you're unaware:
If you take a look to the left, you'll see a little box saying "Subscribe" and within it a link to an RSS feed. If you just click on the link, you'll see what appears to be gibberish.
But if you drag the link to an RSS news reader, or copy and paste the link to one, you'll be able to see when this site is updated with new content whenever it becomes available. Your news reader does all the heavy clicking for you at whatever timed interval you set it for, and then lets you know.
It may sound trivial, but keep in mind that the only difference between a Post-it Note and a piece of paper is a small strip of adhesive. Sometimes a small catalyst can make a big difference in how you use something, and many would argue RSS is seriously changing how people use the web.
With that out of the way, it's my turn to get out of the way and introduce you to those who graciously agreed to participate:
Brent Simmons
Brent hails from Seattle, and is the author of NetNewsWire and other great software through his company Ranchero Software with his wife, Sheila. Considered to be the godfather of RSS on the Mac.
David Watanabe
David hails from Australia, and is the author of NewsFire when he's not working towards a masters in environmental policy. It's known he's originally from Canada, but why he fled is not.
Rory Prior
Rory hails from the UK, and is the author of NewsMac. A Java programmer turned Cocoa fanatic, Rory has recently left his position with a UK firm to devote all of his energies behind his Mac software company.
Erik J. Barzeski
Erik recently returned to cold PA from Florida to marry his high school sweetheart, and as the owner and founder of Freshly Squeezed Software is responsible for PulpFiction and other great Mac-only software.
Graham Parks
Graham also hails from the UK, and is the author of Shrook. He's known to be a Cocoa maven, but little else is really known. I think he prefers it that way, and I'm not going to go fudging his mystique.
Without further ado...
An article on MacWorld regarding the announcement of Cherry OS seems to have thrown a bee in the bonnet of a lot of mac users. This is only going by my mail, but they're predominantly skewed towards Cherry OS at the moment.
Had the news that Christopher Reeve passed away fall across my newsreader a few minutes ago, and it's left me a bit sad. Excerpt:
Christopher Reeve, the star of the "Superman" movies whose near-fatal riding accident nine years ago turned him into a worldwide advocate for spinal cord research, died Sunday of heart failure, his publicist said. He was 52.
It can feel a little campy now to look back at the Superman movies, and we won't dare talk about some of the later sequels... or the spawned Supergirl film that somehow sucked in Peter O'Toole.
Those first few Superman films just rocked for the time. Hard.
And as a kid, Christopher Reeve was the guy who really made you believe a man in colored spandex and a cape could fly.
Most of these movies came out when I was barely a toddler, but I was lucky enough to be a kid when cable hit and in between repeated viewings of Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo they'd often show all sorts of movies that were pure candy to my brain, and the older Superman movies were some of the best of them.
Good memories there. Godspeed, and thanks for those.
I'll be wearing my blue Superman shirt today.
Awhile ago I found some cocktail napkins left behind by a girl who just wasn't careful enough about her cleanup when she left for the restroom. For the most part, those napkins had all sorts of tidbits on them about iChat. I passed on a few of them to a very small group of people, and right now there's an Adium developer reading this link about iChat getting iTunes integration and probably pissing themselves wondering if the rest will be true.
I dunno, but a very telling sign will be if you'll be able to click on the song in someone's status and it'll take you directly to that track in the iTunes store. And no, no one is going to get that subject except the girl who was careless, and only because it was on the napkin next to hers. So many napkins, so little time.
I was looking over the ArsTechnica review of the dually 2.5GHz G5, and it's pretty close to spot-on against my experience with playing with one of them for a bit. The Ars review is solid and worth a read, although I wish they'd harp even sharper on some of the limitations... like the two drive limit and the wimpy graphics card. Plus you can see their new layout, which doesn't have black-on-white type... yay!
I watched the debates last night... cus I usually follow that stuff even if I don't really blog about it often. It's not a political blog. The only reason I'm blogging about this was because, well, I was kind of stunned at the commentary I watched after the debate and I'm still not sure that they were even watching the same debate I was.
I'm not one to overly-praise produce. I like trying new things, but hey, half the time if I'm trying new fruit its to see what kind of milkshake I can get out of it (hint, mango + rum + ginger + cardamon makes an awesome milkshake) but I came across these Honey Crisp dealies and have fallen head over heels.
You'd sorta think that a company known for its fanatical 'highly enthusiastic' user base would go out of its way not to dress it's employees in black and white sneakers... If the Koolaid man comes out during a keynote, I'm soooo switching to Linux.
Not everyone gets to say they know someone who has actually broken their back, let alone it being a family member. That's going to affect the blog schedule, and already has as far as this last weekend is concerned, but long term the person should be fine. They were tossed from a horse and now 20% of a vertebrae is crushed, which hopefully means after a period of severe annoyance it'll heal. Giving them shots of tequila when it was thought it was just a muscle spasm might not have been the best course of action, but hey.
So it's been awhile since I've been able to sit down and have a real drink with my fellow drunkers, but I do have a treat for my 13 loyal readers: Pieter Van den Abeele of Gentoo Linux PPC and Gentoo MacOS was gracious enough to sit down for a weighty chat on both the projects.
It's worth warning that this is a bit of an odd chat, primarily due to the language barrier. I tried to dilute the sheer geek factor where I could, but it's still pretty concentrated. Where things got lost in translation should be obvious and amusing, but still worthwhile.
Before you ask why I didn't clarify more: getting this chat out was even odder behind the scenes and would qualify as a post of its own, and I'm fairly sure there's the Belgian equivalent of a restraining order with my name on it. Special thanks to Pegasos Systems who ended up doing the last phase of stalking for me and who I'll be doing a chat with in the future.
