Author Archives: brad

Drinking the Kool-Aid

I’ve also switched to MovableType. This should give me sufficient motivation to get Frequency working well with MT. I’m keeping my Frequency Dev Journal on Blogger for now. This means, unfortunately, that all comments were lost. However, the site should be way faster now. I still need to dig out my old articles and put them up, and the template needs major work, but things are progressing nicely. I’m currently in the process of putting titles onto all of my old posts.

To People Who Visit My Home

I don’t know where this came from originally, but Nicole sent it to me today, and I love it.
1. The dog lives here. You don’t.
2. If you don’t want dog hair on your clothes, stay off the furniture.
3. Yes, he has some disgusting habits. So do I, and so do you. What’s your point?
4. Of course he smells like a dog.
5. It’s his nature to sniff your crotch. Feel free to sniff his.
6. I like him a lot better than I like most people.
7. To you he’s a dog. To me he’s an adopted son, who is short, hairy, walks on all fours, and doesn’t speak clearly. I have no problem with any of these things.
8. Dogs are better than kids. They eat less, don’t ask for money all the time, are easier to train, usually come when called, never drive your car, don’t smoke or drink, don’t worry about whether they have the latest fashions, don’t wear your clothes, don’t need a gazillion dollars for college, and if they accidentally get another dog pregnant… you can sell the pups.

Jammin’ With Grandma Becker

Jen’s Grandma jammed with us tonight, following Grace’s fourth birthday party. Granted, we jammed on hymns, but it was fun anyway. She and her late husband were in a combo together for years. They played at various churches and nursing homes. When he passed away last summer, she was forced to move from their house into an apartment, so she had to downsize, and gave away a lot of things. She asked all the grandchildren what they wanted. While everyone else tried to figured out which antiques and pieces of furniture they wanted, Jen and I said to each other, “Wouldn’t it be too cool to have Grandpa’s accordion?” Grandma thought it was a great idea, and graciously gave it to us.

Tonight she got it out while she was here and played some songs for us. Then she asked if Jen and I would get out our instruments and play some songs with her. We were more than happy to.

It’s funny, back when Jen and I were still in a band, no one was more supportive of us than Grandma Becker, even though I’m sure she thought our music was mostly noise. She’s a neat lady. I’m lucky to know her.

I wish I’d gotten to know Grandpa Becker better before he died. The last photograph of him was taken just a year ago, at Grace’s third birthday party. He died less than a month later.

Open Apple/Closed Apple

An exchange I participated in on the RB NUG list today follows. Someone made reference to the Command Key/Apple Key debate, so I threw this comment in:

Actually, I think I’ve seen some references, in Apple documentation, mind you, to the Apple key. Perhaps they’ve given up, since every non-tech I know calls it the Apple key (or worse, the Open Apple key!).

Someone replied with this:

If you hear someone refer to the “Open Apple key” check their CV, they’ve probably been using Apples since 1976 … or at least well before 1984. Apple II’s originally had 2 Apple keys, one was an outline like the one we know on our Macs & the other was filled in. They were colloquially referred to as the Open Apple & Closed Apple keys. When the Apple II adopted ADB they also got Mac keyboards & the closed Apple was no more. From memory [my Apple II’s have been in storage a long time 🙁 ] the closed Apple equated to the control key.

My response:

Since the mid-1980’s. We had one in my sixth grade classroom. Everyone fought over the Apple II during inside recess because it had color. Meanwhile, the TSR-80 (complete with cassette drive) sat idle in the corner, so I had it all to myself. That’s when I taught myself BASIC for the first time. I’d print out the programs we had and then change the messages to sarcastic ones.

As I remember, the control key was its own thing. The “three finger salute” on those models was Control-Open Apple-Reset. I’m not sure, though, what function the Closed Apple Key had.

Most of the teachers I support still say Open Apple Key, even though many of them are running Jaguar on iBooks.

Strange that I wasn’t more popular in school…

More on the Open Apple/Closed Apple Key

More on the Open Apple/Closed Apple saga from Joe Strout:

Both the Open Apple and the Closed Apple were actually paddle buttons, malady and typically were used only for games — situated to the left and right of the scrollbar, they were perfect for things like pinball. Open-Apple did not have any meaning as a modifier key until Appleworks (the original one, not ClarisWorks which came much later) started using it that way, and even then, it was just the convention of that program, not a platform standard.