iPhone

I’m sticking with my blackberry for the time being (mostly because t-mobile has me in a contract for another year) and to be honest it does most of the same basic functions as the new hotness that all my freinds are buying. One thing it can do that the iPhone can’t is copy and paste. Daring Fireball has a very interesting extrapolation as to Apple’s logic here.

The analogy that comes to mind is to the keyboard on the original Macintosh, which had no arrow keys. The most commonly cited reason for this omission was that Apple wanted to force users to use the mouse, and not allow them to fall back on keyboard-centric habits forged on pre-Mac computers. – read more…

Sci-Fi in the 80’s, in South Africa…

In an extended effort to stave off boredom on a rainy day, germ has been slinging some groovy web -shorts my direction. Alive in Joburg is kind of old, but still kind of pertinent as the director, Neill Blomkamp, is in theory at the helm of the as-yet-still-hypothetical, but supposedly-coming-soon Halo film. I generally don’t support video games being made into movies (the track record is absolutely dismal – there’s not enough space) but if this guy can make an interesting short out of apartheid-era news coverage and some cheap special effects, he might just pull it off. Of lesser fame but just as good (if not better) is the short TempBot, an interesting take on the modern work place.

On the Inter-Tubes

Today marks my triumphant return to the internet. The last picture is hung in the new domicile, the new neighborhood is slowly being mapped by me and my single-speed, and all is right with the world. All told, the great domestic realignment of 2007 has gone off without to much trouble, broken glass or bones. But more on that later. Today we focus on the important shit – ways to waste time at work.

For the Aviation geek in all of us – Erkranoplans, or “Wing-in-Ground” (WIG) vehicles

Developed mostly by Soviets during Cold Wars years (by Rostislav Alexeev’s design firm) some of them were over 500 feet in length and had an estimated weight of over 500 tons! And yet they skimmed over the waves with grace, at high speeds, able to negotiate stormy conditions, unseen by radar – all thanks to an aerodynamic principle known as the “ground effect”.

An interesting read from the good folks over at Dark Roasted Blend – Read on…

For the comic geek – a top 20 of animal inspired superheros
The Top three are no-brainers but there are a few missing that, despite the following disclaimer, I still find objectionable.

Wolverine is NOT emulating a wolverine. Yes, I know he is little and scrappy with claws, but that is about it. I love Wolverine, but his intention is not to emulate a wolverine. He was given the codename due to his attributes. That is why he is not on the list. Deal with it!

Bullshit. Have you ever seen the haircut ? give me a break. Squirrel Girl makes number 15, but Logan is no where to be found ? That’s just wrong man. (Otherwise though, a quality list from Cardboard Monocle).
Read the rest…

186. See A Large Building Demolished

Not quite as cool as #27 (go to outer space) on the list of things to do in this existence, but still a nice way to spend a Sunday morning. Only Austin could turn this into a civic event – there haven’t been this many people downtown, this early, since the 30’s.
Read more

A Million Billion…

Apple Inc, today posted fist quarter earnings of 1 billion, based on the sales of 21 million iPods, and 1.5 million Macs.

If you take the average storage size of the iPod at 20 gigs (based on their five models) That’s 443 million gigs of storage (dont worry I used one of those math-doers (calculators) to figure all this out) space that jumped into the market place over the Christmas season, or room for something like 108 trillion songs. In other words Apple, and Steve Jobs specifically can afford, like, infinity turkey sandwiches.
Read more

Christmas Video Zen

Pretty damn funny, especially for those of us who’ve had to design politically correct corporate greeting cards.

Well….


…shit.

It’s been acting a little iffy lately, but I think we’re really screwed now. For those that don’t know, that little icon with the folder over the question mark is pretty not good. Essentially, I now have a very nice white plastic paperweight.

This is kind of like Han Solo crashing the Millennium Falcon into something large and very unforgiving. Or Robert Redford in the Natural throwing his bat in a wood chipper.

At least I backed up.

Uber Geeky Cool

There’s been a lot of hoopla around the web lately about long time Mac geeks leaving the OS in favor of Ubuntu Linux, mostly because of Apple’s increasingly restrictive polices regarding DRM and open source. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of Apple’s DRM, but color me curious, I wanted to see what this was about. A week and three hardrives later here we are: two OS’s on the ibook.

I ran a version of RedHat back in college, but eventually had to ditch the install due to limited hard drive space, and a need for AutoCAD. Needless to say the system’s have come a long way since then. After borrowing several different external hardrives to dry and make a clone of my existing Mac system, I was able to fairly painlessly get every thing up and moving. It’s an impressive system. I’m still acclimating, but I’m an immediate fan of the Open Office suite as well as the highly customizable desktop GUI. Even for someone with very limited experience in the nuts and bolts of Linux, the setup was cake. I have no plans to switch exclusively to Linux, but It does offer some versatility that my system had previously lacked. And there’s just something uber-geek-cool about dual booting my Mac.