“Michael Jackson horrified German onlookers by dangling a baby over his hotel balcony railing in Berlin. He’s there for a reason. Americans are so annoyed at Germany for insulting President Bush that we sent them a fruitcake for the holidays.” —Argus Hamilton
Speaking of ATPM publisher, and pal, Michael Tsai, Michael started his own weblog back in September and failed to mention this to anyone on the ATPM staff. 🙂
Like myself, Michael is using Movable Type to drive his blog, though he’s doing a much better job in getting the HTML that MT produces to validate. Now if I could just fix my MT templates to look as good in Chimera Camino/Mozilla as they do in IE.
The December issue of About This Particular Macintosh is out. Nothing in there from me this month <head hung in shame>, but Robert Lewis has what I think is the most comprehensive Mac game gift guide seen in a while. New-to-the-staff Kirk McElhearn reviews a book I keep near my Mac, and publisher/friend Michael Tsai reviews the latest rev of one of our mutual favorite applications, BBEdit.
This week’s “Keen Sense of the Obvious” Award: “The Bush administration often seems to be completely engrossed with the campaign against terrorism.” —Peter Jennings, ABC News (from The Federalist)
Ummmm. . .yeah. Could it be, Peter, because the primary responsibility of the federal government as set forth in the Constitution of the United States of America is defense of the nation from enemies foreign and domestic? That’s right, contrary to what the Left would have you believe, the federal government’s primary duty is not to provide free or discounted health care, prescription drug benefits, prop up the stock market, or finance late-night urban basketball leagues. Your tax dollars should be spent building the strongest military and finest intelligence services in the world. And can we please stop listening to whiny, leftist Canadians? (With apologies to the non-whiny, non-leftist Canadians I call friends. If only there were more of you.)
Speaking of Think Geek, I have updated my Think Geek wish list, just in case anyone feels generous enough to buy me anything. My top picks include the Bounty Hunter t-shirt, the Megatokyo “Capture the b34r” t-shirt and poster, and the O’Reilly 2003 calendar. No pressure, though. Really.
Thanks to the overlords at Think Geek, I am now a fan of the online manga strip, MegaTokyo by Fred Gallagher. Computer geeks, especially gamers, and any manga/anime fans should check it out.
Yes, yes, 32 today. Well, officially, 32 as of 11:03 am, about half an hour from now. Eh, just another birthday. Thirty-two doesn’t feel any different than 31 or 30 did. Phil, the department’s resident cook, made peach cobbler today for all of the December birthdays. YUM!
More and more PC users are learning how easy it is to switch from Windoze to Macintosh, and OS X is a big reason. For Shoshana Berger of Business 2.0, the new PowerBook G4/1 GHz proved to be a big selling point in her move to Mac, helped along by Detto Technologies’ Move2Mac software.
Command-line developer Tom Yager made a voluntary switch as part of his research for an article in InfoWorld, shelving his ThinkPad for a PowerBook G4/800. After a two-week business trip with only the PowerBook, he’s realized that he switched without even really thinking about it, since most of the work he did under Linux or BSD can be accomplished under OS X.
Infoworld also has an interview with C.J. Rayhill, Chief Operating Office and Excecutive Vice-President of Technology for O’Reilly & Associates, wherein she reveals: “I will share with you that we’re currently in talks with Apple to possibly do a corporate switching program.” C.J. cites that many of O’Reilly’s “heavy technical folks” have moved from having two systems on their desks–some sort of Unix box plus a Windows PC for productivity apps–to using an iBook or PowerBook as their only system. (Anyone notice a trend here with regard to the popularity of the portable Mac?)
For the first time ever, NASA mounted a “RocketCam” on the external fuel tank utilized by the Space Shuttle. From a launch of the Atlantis earlier this year, you can watch the launch until the separation of the booster rockets, as the Atlantis hurls into space at a whopping 2,800 miles per hour. (QuickTime required)
Proving they have too much time on their hands, as well as what PCs are really good for, it’s the NeuHausPlatz 200NC. NC stands for “no case.” This is an oldie, but a goodie.