New Look, Same Great Taste
Well, I've been planning to bedeck asisaid for Christmas since the end of October and that fit in neatly with my desire for some improvements in the site's design. Christopher's recent reworking of What in Tarnation!?!? and Avoiding Evil got me even more in the mood to redesign. While I'm still working on some things (like redoing the navbar categories — they really don't fit as well as they did before the site became mostly centered around this blog), I've pretty much revised the look. It's about time: not much has changed on the site for almost two years and I was getting tired of the way things looked.
Obviously, some of it is season specific (it's Ccchrrriiissstmmmmassssss allll oooovverrr the woooooorrrlld… uh, ahem) , but what do you think overall? Is it an improvement? I've tested it on Mozilla, Konqueror and Internet Explorer and everything checks out. I would have tried Safari too, but my KVM switch seems to be getting ready to buy the farm and I can't control my G5 very well atm. sigh
By the way, I realized that last week marked the one year anniversary of the first time I was aware that someone other than Ciaran (who gave me the software to start this blog) was reading this blog — Mr. Wright! It also marks a year since I added comments, so perhaps Christopher, or someone else, was here before that, although I rarely posted anything that was very interesting prior to the redesign of the blogging software that added comments.
The Premier of...
Actually, I don't need this system anymore than I need the Shuttle system I got for free (or actually half price, since I had to buy components for it), but I ended up ordering it anyway in late October. It finally arrived last Wednesday. It's a 2 Hz Dual Processor PowerMac G5. It took almost a month since I custom ordered it with a Radeon 9800 and Bluetooth capability. It's very fast and very nice. I've been too busy to try it as much as I would have liked, but I did take some time over the holiday to set it up.
The thing that really is great about this particular G5 is that it came from TerraSoft, the Apple Authorized Proprietary Solutions Provider that specialized in GNU/Linux. Thus it came with not only Mac OS X Panther, it also came with a preliminary preview release of Teresita's Yellow Dog Linux for the G5. Yellow Dog looks nice, although (as you'd expect with a beta) I'm still fighting with it to give me a proper resolution in X11. Once I get some time to devote to it, I'm sure I'll get it working. Next week, perhaps. It's exciting since, as Linus Torvalds notes, the G5 offers an affordable platform for 64-bit GNU/Linux.
At any rate, TerraSoft deserves a large heap of praise. They got it on Friday, November 14 fresh from Apple. They then delayed shipment (with my permission) because they knew a substantially better version of YD would be out very soon. On Monday, the 24th, they thought they almost had it and they informed me they were upgrading my shipping from 3-day UPS to 2-day UPS for free so that it'd arrive before Thanksgiving. A bug in the new code delayed the system and so it wasn't able to ship until Tuesday. However, TerraSoft still managed to get it to me by Wednesday by eating the cost for next day air (roughly $70 extra dollars over 3-day shipping). In their rush to get it to me, they accidentally forgot to repack the System Restore disc, so this week they sent it to me ASAP using Next Day Air once again. Impressive!
Now I just need to find time to give it a good test.
Not Dead.
Despite rumors of such, I actually am still here. Time permitting I might get a nice post in tonight — if not tonight, tomorrow for sure. I have some last minute work piled up, but I think it should go fairly quickly. Or maybe not.
At any rate, I have some stuff to talk about. I have two new computers sitting under my desk — one of which I really don't need… I'll explain why in my next post.
Happy Thanksgiving
Sorry this is late, but happy Thanksgiving to everyone here! I meant to get this online last night, but after all the turkey and company I was rather busy with setting up a new piece of equipment that arrived on Wednesday. I'll talk about that in a little bit, but for now I just wanted to get my belated wish up.
BTW, what's everyone's favorite Thanksgiving dish (not counting dessert)? My favorite are the delicious homemade mashed potatoes.
iTunes/QuickTime DRM Scheme Disabled
The same fellow who created DeCSS has now created a program that dumps DRM AAC files into non-DRM AAC files.
I have mixed feelings about this. I like the fact that it allows me to take care of legal requirements myself (which I would still obey if I used it) instead of Apple doing it for me — it has always made me uncomfortable that company's are basically saying “yes, we've sold you this song [or something else] but we don't trust you enough to properly use what we've sold you, so we are going to make sure you use it a certain way and sue the pants off of you if you don't use it that way.” At the same time, I wonder if this isn't a big mistake.
If a fairly respectable (is there such a thing?) DRM scheme like that used by iTunes is broken into, the MPAA/RIAA have even more of a case to argue that either (1) tougher legislation is required to stop thosenasty people that clearly want to use this for pirating purposes (indeed, many probably will) or (2) that the Secure Computing Initiativemust be sped up to make it so that hardware prevents people from doingthings like this. While I'd prefer no DRM, I wonder if in the long term this won't lead to worse DRM. No matter what, the law abiding citizens will get hurt while the companies go after the non-law abiding ones that make DRM attractive in the first place.
As I've said before, I think I should be able to do — so long as I follow copyright law — whatever I please with a file I've legally bought or obtained. If I pay $.99 for a song, I should be able to do absolutely anything to it on my computer (since that doesn't in any way cause a loss of value to the copyright holder — I'm still the only person with a copy).
On the flip side however, while I believe that such freedom shouldexist, I realize that iTunes Music Store could possibly serve to cause the inevitable expansion of DRM to at least be a lot more friendly that it might otherwise be. While the idealist in me appreciates someone providing more freedom to me for my legally held music, the practical side of me realizes that such a gain in the short-term will quite likely hurt the promotion of friendly DRM schemes in the future.
So what do you think?
Back!
I'm back… yeah, it was a short trip, but I just couldn't arrange things to get part of the week off. I went to Silver Dollar City yesterday and, as always, it is one of the prettiest Christmas displays you can see. I feel very refreshed at the moment — the Ozarks will do that to you. I'll post more about everything later.
In the mean time, I have a question for the Bourbonite readers of this blog: What's your favorite pie at the Hen House Restaurant? I'd had the French Silk and Chocolate Meringue before (and I have a to-go piece of French Silk in the fridge), but tonight I tried the Coconut Meringue and it was delicious!
Be Back Soon
I'm taking a few days off for some R-n-R in the Ozarks. I'll be back soon and try to post more afterwards (reflections on the Purpose-Driven Life will be one of my next posts — I just finished about an hour ago). I'll also answer the final set of questions on the 40 Days of Purpose small group (sorry, guys, for being missing the last week!).
Driving and My Digital IQ
How did you do? Post yer results (or your answers to the “Sunday Brunch” questions) below.
A New Meaning for DOA
Most things you receive are guaranteed that they won't be dead on arrival. What if, on the other hand the whole point of its arrival was death? That must have been the thought that crossed the mind of founder of a new e-mail service: MyLastE-mail.
Apparently, the concept revolves around the idea that a person would want to send people e-mail messages when they died (you can send personal messages, not just a generic announcement). Afterall, as the site points out, you never know when you might kick the bucket, and you certainly may have things to say to those who you leave behind after your farm purchase. Yeah, right. I just can't see sending loved ones an e-mail message saying:
Hi there, I'm dead. I'll miss you.-Tim
PS: Don't forget to feed my cats. Thanks!
How about you?
I'm back.
Well, I'm back from an unexpected blogging break. This week was really busy and then the weather change got the best of me leaving me a bit under the weather (pun intended), so I just haven't had a chance to come blog.
I've also spent a lot of time on the phone with FedEx and NewEgg.com. FedEx delivered about $300 worth of parts I ordered to the wrong address (an address which apparently had a waiver that said that FedEx didn't have to get a signature from them). After several days of repeated calling, FedEx finally got the driver to go back, only to find out that the resident of the home it was delivered to took the FedEx package to where you would logically take a wrongly delivered FedEx package: UPS!
After that, they waited around a day hoping UPS would call and report the package. When that didn't happen they had me call NewEgg and ask them to resend the package (saying they'd settled the claim with NewEgg). Of course, when NewEgg called FedEx, FedEx said it was my problem because I signed a signature waiver (rather the resident of where ever they delivered to signed that waiver and even if I had… how's that relate to delivering to the wrong address?!!?!). Finally, after talking to FedEx a few more times, I called NewEgg back and they now have my order shipped again. They were nice enough to up the shipping from FedEx Economy to FedEx 2 Day. Hopefully this time FedEx will get the address right.
Unfortunately all of this also ended up preventing me from getting a few articles on OfB that I was hoping to. On the bright side, one of those articles depended on the parts that are now MIA at UPS, so I couldn't have written the piece anyway. There's always next week.
Moral of the story: this is the second time in four months I've had trouble with FedEx. I recommend UPS at the moment.
