I met with some folks at Apple today and they informed me that the 2.0.1 iPhone software was released last night. It’s supposed to fix all the slow-crappy-buggy aspects of 2.0. After spending 40 minutes trying to type on my time-delayed iPhone keyboard, I sure as hell hope they’re right!
Trust in Jobs… Jobs is good. Ack… maybe there was something in that punch.
That’s right kids. I had my old ass iPod Mini cable laying around and I grabbed it by mistake. Works like a champ. Sync, charge, everything. Don’t pay $20 for a 3G cable, just dig up an old mini cable and you’re good to go. Hell for $20 you can prolly buy an iPod mini WITH a cable from eBay. Re-Cycle.
-Shon
So for the time being I am running a my media center on Vista. Yes yes… I’m sad about it too. It’s a compromise that I’m considering how to fix. Possible solutions include PS3 connecting to media server (not 100% solution), An X86 running OS X and XP (This is most likely at the moment, or giving up good 3D and going with a Mac Mini since Apple doesn’t make the hardware I want. Make me a mini with decent 3D and I’ll buy it Steve, really…
Anyway… Lots of storage on the good old gigaQube, which is now running Debian (gotta update the page I know) which Vista needs to connect to so we can have all that media goodness. XP works, Macs work, everything works ‘cept of course… Vista. Vista won’t connect to the gigaQube’s Samba shares. Surprise surprise eh? Turns out that MS decided to default Vista to NTLMv2 and refuse all other authentication types. For some reason this wasn’t obvious in the qube’s logs. Anyway this breaks compatibility with a whole bunch of cheap NAS devices using embedded Linux and Samba, as well as my fairly recent version of Samba on the qube. Good news is you can tell Vista to stop this nonsense. Instructions here: http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS4434907782.html Or you can upgrade to Samba 3.0.2.something which does support NTLMv2.
I’m gearing up to revive Geek Jeopardy. First step: Build the buzzers. Gotta have buzzers, they’re integral to the process. Plans I’m considering:
http://www.desmith.net/NMdS/Electronics/Jeopardy.html
With my normal browser load, e.g. 5-10 tabs open with “rich” applications like gmail / google apps + a bunch of random web pages, I get very different cpu utilizations depending on what browser I use.
Firefox is the big pig. It typically sits at around 12-15% on a Dual Core machine with no user interaction. Safari is constantly around 2.5% utilization with the same pages open. Camino is roughly double Safari, coming in at around 5-7%.
I guess if you want to save battery, use Safari… too bad it still doesn’t work 100% with gmail! 
I use the term “Lobster Math” to describe when a person learns something or can complete a task without knowing all of the intricacies or details normally required.
Good technical recruiters for example, can accurately judge a technical resume full of words they don’t understand as well or better than a technical person who deeply understands all of the words and the technologies. That’s lobster math.
Etymology: There’s a fellow named Devlin who believes that Lobsters (and other animals) must be doing complex math to go about their daily lives. He sites the way lobsters navigate as one of the examples he uses to illustrate that in order for humans to accomplish a similar feat, we would have to use complex math, therefore they may also be doing complex math at some level. Hence, Lobster Math.
Neat. UT3 for PS3 looks good. Plus, I’m up 80% on Midway stock in the last week. I guess I should buy a copy. 
Good to see the old school game companys surviving. Midway, Activision, EA (despite being evil).
-Shon
Used Safari for a couple days. It may be a little sexier than Firefox but a little more flakey… reminds me similar compromises with women… beauty is important but sanity is key… ideally you’d like a good combo of both.
Back button is disabled in Safari on gmail. Ahh.. back to Firefox.
Wow.. it looks like the “new version” of gmail may actually be working-all-the-way in Safari. Time to finally get re-aquatinted with the native mac browser.
What’s fixed? –Seems a lot of people didn’t know this was even broken. But for as long as I can remember, Safari would not display most of the enhanced interface features in gmail. Such as the dropdown for reply, reply all, forward, and the enhanced (bold, bullet, etc) editing features.
As a heavy gmail user, these issues kept me away from safari. Looking forward to trying it out again.
I hosed the qube so I was looking into exporting a filesystem via NFS on my mac and discovered that Netinfo is gone. Hmm.. thought that might be bad cause I kinda sorta knew how to use it. Nope.. much better. nfs exporting now works like nfs on any other *nix. The following was clipped from http://www.behanna.org/osx/nfs/howto1.html :
/Users -network 192.168.0.0 -mask 255.255.0.0
Thanks to Chris Behanna of http://www.behanna.org/ for the updated info.
People that voted twice for Bush should have to make a choice:
A: Immediate deployment to Iraq.
B: Revocation of the right to vote for life.
The funny (but sad) part is that I actually told this to a family member who would qualify and they said; “you’re probably right.”
I have a problem with the logistical complexity of conspiracy theories. This video draws some interesting conclusions which are no exception. However, this one is interesting food for thought, or debate fodder at the very least.
The video starts up with the history (and striking similarity) of established world religions and ends up with a neat-o alternative explanation of present world events (9/11, etc) and the almost omnipotent force that orchestrates everything for it’s own benefit. The first half is pretty cool though. Take a look:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5547481422995115331
Wow… I just looked in to the browser stats on my various sites and it’s amazing to see how far Firefox has come. 10 years ago it was hard to imagine an internet in 2007 that wasn’t dominated by MS. ActiveX was gaining ground and MS was force-feeding IE as a “required component” in everything it could, including SQL Server.It looked like these tactics were working. IE was 90%+ dominant.
Today things are very different. I see Firefox well ahead of IE on some of my sites and it’s a major player in all of them. I hope everyone starts posting their stats!
Here are the stats for this month, which I am too lazy to format nicely.
SHON.ORG
Browser Visits % visits
IE 152 44.57%
Firefox 133 39.00%
Safari 23 6.74%
Mozilla 20 5.87%
Opera 5 1.47%
geekSessions.com
Browser Visits % visits
Firefox 801 61.81%
IE 223 17.21%
Safari 146 11.27%
Opera 69 5.32%
Camino 31 2.39%
IsShitty.com
Browser Visits % visits
IE 346 65.04%
Firefox 147 27.63%
Safari 22 4.14%
Opera 8 1.50%
Mozilla 6 1.13%
I have to laugh. I was talking to a good friend this weekend, we’ll call him “Mingey”, who ranted and ranted about how he hates Apple and how rotten they are. I forget what got his knickers in a wad in the first place but he was all up in arms saying he’d never buy another Apple product again. NEVER… NEEEEVEEERR!! He was even trying to convince me to blog about how evil Apple is.
Anyway, then I get this IM just now: “3:03:04 PM Mingey: got the Itouch”
Bahahaha… what else besides sex, drugs, and alchohol makes people go against their own principles? Apple does.
HBO has a documentary about folks injured during their service in Iraq. It’s clearly anti-war propaganda and probably pretty effective if people watch it.
Too bad it wasn’t produced before the 2nd Bush election.
And speaking of that rotten-failed-IQ-test of an election… I say that everyone that voted for Bush the second time should have a choice; ship off now to Iraq (assuming they haven’t already served), or lose the right to vote, for life.
ACT NOW! Buy my new sweet-ass T-Shirts and live long and happy lives!
High-power Sniper Riffle + Decibel meter + Harley riders
The game would be based on shooting Harleys (or Harley wanabees) and/or their riders as they ride through the city making noise. Points would be awarded based on the loudness and speed of the harley with style points as a bonus.
I’m thinking you’d start out with a broad view of the street and have the ability to zoom in and lock-in a harley for the kill-shot. Different shots would have different effects and style points. For example, a hit to the fuel tank would cause a massive explosion and highly-detailed (if cartoonish) “dispatch sequence”.
Each level would have varied scenery and shooter positions. Different weapons (rocket launcher, flame thrower, water baloon cannon, gum launcher, etc) would be earned as well.
Sweeeet….
09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0
Go check out http://www.google.com/history/. I just looked at mine and it has all of my searches (and what I clicked) since 2005. It’s neat. But sorry.. Google. I’m not ready for that level of transparency. David Brin might be, but I’m not.
Google is good at mining, sorting, searching, organizing, and visualising data. That’s their core business. It also just so happens that Google has a tap into my main information stream. Google knows I’m getting married in Italy, and when. It knows I’m in the market for an LCD HDTV. It knows where I’ve worked and where I play. It knows where I live and where my friends live, what kinds of food I like, etc. It knows this and more, not just about me but about everyone that uses it.
Google is not evil. At least not yet. They let me know that they are watching me and they let me see some of the data they have on me. They even give me tools to look into the thoughts of others in some small obfuscated way. To tease me with a taste of what they know.
But like the government, I can’t help but think what crazy tools Google keeps for itself. If they’re showing me things like Google Trends and Google History, what devious and omniscient tools must Larry and Sergey have access to? And what are they doing with them?