Author Archives: brad

Patrick Norton writes about making the switch.

A great product is no more: BBEdit Lite, the free one. That’s a shame, because it was an awesome text editor. Now it costs $50 and it’s called Text Wrangler, which, while I love Bare Bones, is a horrible freakin’ name.

Very sadly, a great man is no more. Fred Rogers will be missed. I grew up watching his show. My Mom continued to watch it even after I left home. He was such a wonderful influence on kids. Very sad news.

John Perry Barlow: As it turned out, this is more or less what Cheney and his phalanx of Big Stategic Thinkers were doing, if one imagined the Soviet Union as a speeding Mexican bus. They were determined to project such a vision of implacable, irrational, lethality that the Soviet leaders would decide to capitulate rather than risk universal annihilation. It worked. Fascinating article. John Perry Barlow, one of the smartest guys around, writing about Dick Cheney, whom he considers to be one of the smartest guys around.

Here’s an article that perfectly echos the criticisms I have against web-based applications.

Finally, before I go to bed, one last article. A very sad one.

Which OS are you?

Oh, yeah. Myth II: Soulblighter is Carbonized and will be released soon. That’s so cool. I won Myth: The Fallen Lords a few years ago in some web contest and I bought Myth II as soon as it was available. Never did get Myth III: The Wolf Age, though.

The 10 Habits of Highly Annoying Bloggers can be found here. To be honest, I’m not sure why this guy put so much energy and thought into this. If you don’t like someone’s web site, don’t go there. If someone has a different opinion on what a web site should be, so be it. Who cares? I like the idea of having a weblog, but sometimes I find the “blogging community” to be really elitist and, frankly, quite irritating. I have a weblog because I enjoy writing things down, things I want to remember. And I like having a site to share with family and friends. What’s the harm there? Sheesh. Lighten up, people.

My grandfather told me a funny story tonight after dinner. When he was a child, he went to Sunday dinner at his grandparents’ house every week (much like my family and I do – what a great tradition). His grandparents had a dry house, where they dried fruit and vegetables before the days of electric food dehydrators. One Sunday, he and his cousins starting gorging on dried apple slices. They apparently went way overboard. Anyway, after running around and playing for a while, they got really thirsty and hit the spring house, where they drank their fill. He said he never had a stomachache like that before or after. Every single one of cousins bloated up and felt horrible.

To all the cars Dave’s loved before…

I got my phone back from Sony/Ericsson. They sent it back before but refused to repair it due to “extensive damage to the phone.” I couldn’t find any damage. After a few phone calls, they gave us their FedEx number and said to ship it back on their dime. They still say the phone is unrepairable, but honored the warranty this time and sent me a brand new T60d. At least, I think it’s a T60d. That’s what I had before. But this is upgraded or something. It does predictive text entry for one thing. I don’t think the old one did that, but I could be wrong.

You know, I get pretty annoyed at those Nigerian scam emails, but I’d never take it this far.

Box Cutters (via MSNBC): Fortunately for all of us, look you have to be a genius (yes, an evil genius) to get that mix of conception and execution just right. And while Al Qaeda has a few brilliant minds, its ranks are full of dim-witted losers with thousand-mile stares.

Crazy Apple Rumors: Microsoft Enters Rehab

Franks and Beans. Too funny.

Seems like every day, I read about more people switching to the Mac. That’s so cool.

Man, I’ll tell you what. Mention site blocking on Slashdot and watch the sparks fly. All the libertarians come out to ask what’s wrong with kiddie porn and claim (for the fourteen billionth time) that “information wants to be free” and all that.

I don’t think information wants to be free. I think information wants to anthropomorphized.

Big development. Microsoft has acquired Connectix, makers of VirtualPC, RAM Doubler, and the venerable Mode32 (if you know what Mode32 is, you’re as big a nerd as I am). Microsoft acquired Connectix for the virtual server stuff, but for a good chunk of today, the question of what would happen to VPC was up in the air. Would Microsoft kill it? Or would they cease development of their native Mac software and tell all Mac users to buy VPC? According to news.com: A Microsoft executive said the company did not purchase the software to kill it, nor does Microsoft plan to stop developing its native Macintosh software, such as the Mac OS X version of Office. Whew.

That’s a relief. Strange as it is, VirtualPC is a key product on the Mac. More here and here.

And speaking of Microsoft, here’s an article about the origins of WindowsNT and its evolution into Windows Server 2003. It’s an interesting read, if a bit fanboyish.