RetrophischI love this:
“The LORD reigns; let the earth be glad; let the distance shores rejoice!
Clouds and thick darkness surround Him: righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne.
Fire goes before Him, and consumes His foes on every side.
His lightning lights up the world: the earth sees, and trembles.
The mountains melt like wax before the LORD; before the Lord of all the earth.
The heavens proclaim His righteousness, and all peoples will see His glory!”
—Psalms 97:1-6
And on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the Great War ended with an armistice. November 11th was officially honored as Armistice Day from 1926 to 1954 in the United States. In 1954, the holiday was changed to Veterans Day, and we honor all of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who have served and sacrificed.
A special thank-you to my dad and my uncle for their service in the Navy and Army, respectively, during the Vietnam Conflict. Thankfully, neither had to serve in the Southeast Asia theater of operations.
So if you live next door to, work with, go to church with, or simply just know of, a veteran, take a moment today to shake their hand and thank them for serving their country.
“Greater love has no man than this, than to lay down his life for his friends.” –John 15:13
I can’t believe I forgot to make mention of the new PowerBooks and iBooks that Apple released last week. The new PowerBooks go up to 1 GHz and contain a SuperDrive! Not to mention that with the 60 GB hard drive, it’s actually cheaper than the TiBook/500 I use when that machine was brand new.
And Apple has broken the one-grand barrier with a new entry-level iBook at $999.
Steven Frank, co-founder of Panic Software, has an early analysis on why Microsoft’s new TabletPC initiative is really nothing new, and in many ways, like the Palm OS, is still inferior to the discontinued Newton platform from Apple.
Steven’s point, and one I concur with: since you’re not really getting anything new or innovative, go buy a Newton on eBay and save about three grand.
“To be prepared for war, is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” –George Washington, First Annual Address, January 8, 1790
Veterans Day is Monday, November 11th, and this is National Military Appreciation Month. The Department of Defense has set up a web site where you can go and digitally sign a big thank-you to our men and women in uniform. The message, with names, will be distributed at the end of the month. These soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are at the forefront of preserving our national security and defending our liberty. Let them know you appreciate it. (Thanks, Dad!)
Update: Congress approved May as National Military Appreciation Month in May 1999. Looks like my original fact was incorrect.
Remember that Monster.com ad with all the kids talking about what dead-end career they wanted “when I grow up?”
If not, you’ll certainly remember it when you see this advertising-centric version that apparently slipped through the cracks. It’s by far the funniest thing I’ve watched all week; two-thirds of the way through, I was already in tears. QuickTime is required. (from Grant)
The latest stable version of Chimera was released a couple of days ago, and I am falling further in love with this browser. Powered by the Gecko rendering engine (of Mozilla fame), it is a Cocoa-based web browser, only for OS X.
It is fast. Wicked fast. Scary fast. It blows IE away in rendering pretty much all of the sites I visit. MacUpdate.com loads blindingly fast. MacMinute appeared instantly. Did I mention it’s fast?
It shares some of my favorite features with its Mozilla brethren, as well. Tabbed browsing is just one of the coolest things to hit web browsers since standards compliance. No more multiple browser windows littering the desktop! And built-in pop-up ad blocking is a godsend.
If you’re running OS X, you owe it to yourself to give Chimera a try.
The fine folks at Panic Software released version 2.1 of their fine FTP client, Transmit today. Hey, Michael, guess what feature got implemented? 🙂
Wired has an article on successful tech entrepreneur Doug Humphrey, wherein he discusses his decision to move his company to all Macs. He has an excellent quote:
“We avoid the Windows operating system since it is such a huge security risk,” he explained. “We didn’t want to have viruses blowing up systems that we depend on for navigation and monitoring engines and other systems. And since nothing seems to be able to stop all of these Windows viruses, the best way to win is to just stop using Windows.” (emphasis added)
Personally, I have long maintained that HTML belongs in browsers, not my email client. One of the reasons I use Mailsmith is that it never shows HTML in my email, stripping it in to plain text, if possible, and at worst keeping it as an HTML attachment I can open in my browser.
Scot Hacker wrote an excellent article that sums up all of my reasons why you shouldn’t use HTML in your email, and he offers tips on several email clients/services for turning HTML formatting off. Bookmark this one, boys and girls. (Thanks, Lee!)