G5's Leaking Coolant!

I knew I was right on the money to avoid the liquid cooled 2.7 Ghz G5's

Symptoms are wide-ranged but will include fans spinning wildly, machines shutting down when they heat up, greenish liquid leaking from the case, and if you are able to look, crystalized liquid forming where the CPU meets the heatsink as well as corrosion of all the metal surrounding the CPU module.

Anyone, and I mean anyone who has done ANY kind of work on a car knows full well that cooling/heating systems will leak. For an internal combustion engine that comes with the territory but a computer, for which I may have my entire business running on...a completely avoidable situation. Never should have been produced.

NeoOffice 2.2.1 Out

I just downloaded NeoOffice 2.2.1 and lo and behold I can save as MS Word 2007 (docx) and MS Excel 2007 (xlsx) format. I haven't checked the ability to open docx files but If it does, then unless I get MS Office for cheap, I'll not be doing the Office 2008 update.

[Update]

Holy battery draining cpu cycles! Trying to open an Excel sheet spawns an ODF converter that maxes out the processor with a crawling "waiting for external application" so called "progress bar". Ummmmm. Kill now.

[Update 2]
Finally let an excel document open within NeoOffice. It took nearly 15 minutes with the processor maxed. That's on a G4. I'm not sure what that would be like on a G5 or Intel chip though. Three sheets in the document with graphs. Seems kinda long though.

Technorati Tags: Neo Office

Wake Up Call on Pollutions

For people who pooh pooh environmentalists, I suggest a reading of the recent article on China's pollution problem.

Expanding car ownership, heavy traffic and low-grade gasoline have made autos the leading source of air pollution in major Chinese cities. Only 1 percent of China’s urban population of 560 million now breathes air considered safe by the European Union, according to a World Bank study of Chinese pollution published this year. One major pollutant contributing to China’s bad air is particulate matter, which includes concentrations of fine dust, soot and aerosol particles less than 10 microns in diameter (known as PM 10).

The level of such particulates is measured in micrograms per cubic meter of air. The European Union stipulates that any reading above 40 micrograms is unsafe. The United States allows 50. In 2006, Beijing’s average PM 10 level was 141, according to the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics. Only Cairo, among world capitals, had worse air quality as measured by particulates, according to the World Bank.

Oh and this is a place where pollution regularly blocks the sun.

industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution; a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life.

Windows Geniune Advantage Outage

Let me, as a MacOS X user, take the time out to:

a) laugh
b) laugh some more
c) shake my head in disbelief

because apparently, even if you've paid for your copy of Windows, and it's all legit, one connection to MS's WGA server will render your Windows install "not genuine."

Now how is that for "secure computing".

NIkon's D3

Nikon has just released the D3

Mr. Lee said that professionals’ camera choices influence consumer tastes. Price is less of a concern for pros, making these cameras more profitable. The Nikon D3 will sell for $5,000, and the Canon Mark III will cost $8,000; both cameras ship in November. <b>Neither camera comes with a lens.</b>

$8,000?

Looks like me and my Kodak Easyshare Z740 will be bosom buddies for a while longer.

E30's Rock

For those not in the know, the 1980's version of the BMW 3 series are referred to as E30's. I have one and recently a "nice young lady" suggested it was "not worth it" to invest in re-upholstering it (it really needs it). Some people are just stuck on "new". Anyway for your perusal is a bomb E30 from NJ.

This is what you drive when you don't want to see yourself coming and going.
See more at the E30 Tuning Site

Maturing iPhone

A nice article at iPhone Atlas on adding custom apps to the iPhone. This is a very good development and makes me consider an iPhone as my next purchase. The stuff I'm seeing here seems like the iPhone will eventually surpass the N800 in practical use for me, with the notable exception of MaemoMapper. I'm already a Cingular customer (Not happy that they are now ATT as I dropped ATT for certain ethical reasons) so that issue doesn't bother me, but as I've been griping about my N800, it can't make calls when I want to make calls and I'm not sanguine about paying yet another party for the ability to make phone calls. With the iPhone now available as a refurb product through the Apple online store for $100 off. It is now a better deal (closer to my investment in the N800) so when the N800 reaches it's anniversary I'll see where the iPhone stands and I may make the switch.

The Problem with American Drivers and Roads

Yesterday I drove to Baltimore, Maryland. That trip should have taken me about 2.5 hours. It didn't. It took me well over 5 hours. Why? There are a couple of reasons. Let me start with the more mundane and preventable.

Quick question. What is the left lane for? If you said "passing" YOU are in the minority opinion here. Although the drivers ed book says it so, and though there are signs on the road to that effect, it appears that Americans, At least those in NJ think that the left lane is for sitting back, smoking a cigar, talking on the phone or changing the DVD that everybody behind you can watch is the purpose of the left lane.

Another related question: What are those reflective thingies on the side of your car and hanging dead center of your windshield? and what's their purpose? If you said mirrors you too are apparently in the minority as well. If you said to see upcoming traffic and traffic to your left and right, you ought to get a medal.

Yes apparently, at least in the great state of New Jersey, USA, people sit in left lanes while passing no one and they don't appear to check their mirrors OR even know what to do when a car appears in it. So let me clue these folks in.

The left lane is for passing. Your mirrors are for seeing traffic behind your vehicle. When a vehicle appears to be catching up to you in the left lane it is YOUR job to vacate the left lane and NOT OBSTRUCT the lane. Obstructing the flow of traffic is actually a moving violation. I know that State Police appear to not think it's as 'important" as so called "speeding", but yes, it is an actual, on the books civil offense.

When a person blocks the left lane, they cause traffic to line up behind them UN-Frinken-necessarily. That increases the likelihood that someone will have a rear-ender because people will naturally try to change lanes to attempt to get around the "stuck" traffic. This leads to uncertainty on the road as people can no longer expect traffic to their right to be moving at the same or slow speed than they are. In other words the person blocking the left lane is creating a traffic hazard.

So since I find that many people have NO CLUE how to properly use a high speed interstate, let me spell it out:

You stay in the right lane until you come upon slower traffic. you check your mirrors to make sure there are no other cars coming up on your left. If it is clear you INDICATE your intentions and move into the left lane. Pass the vehicle and then pull back into the right lane UNLESS there are multiple cars in the right lane with little space between them. I such a case you pass all vehicles quickly and then pull back into the right lane and resume "cruising" speed.

It's not that hard.

Now the other problem I had going to Baltimore was this toll business. I would GLADLY pay more federal or state income tax if it meant abolishing those damn tolls. Firstly it is inconvenient to whip out my wallet every 30 miles or so AND I don't like easy pass since I believe where I go is my business and no, the government or quasi-government agency does not need to know where I crossed what and when. The easiest pass is my income taxes at work.
I could simply not understand why traffic came to a complete stop between exit 1 on the NJ Turnpike and the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Then I remembered the toll. Oh and lets not even discuss the two lane bottleneck. Who's bright idea was that? And what the heck is with this paying to enter every little thing? Entering Delaware? Pay up. Entering Maryland? Pay up. Leaving Maryland? Pay up. Taking one of the tunnels? Pay up. I soon expect to see a little toll both at the Maryland House. Well actually the inflated prices for the "goods" sold there are the tolls.

I paid about the same as the tank of gas that got me to and from Baltimore in tolls. Ridiculous. Put it in my taxes and lets kill these congestion causing tolls. The cars themselves are bad enough for the environment but having them sit for hours on the road partially due to tolls is even worse.

iPhoto is no Lightroom

The Tao of Mac has an entire, long entry on why iPhoto sucks compared to Lightroom.

To cut a very long story short, iPhoto ‘08 now has a simple keyword/tagging mechanism that appears to not completely suck, and will insert titles and keywords as EXIF metadata when you export files:...

iPhoto has always been somewhat of a bad joke where it concerns color tuning – although its “enhance” button makes some reasonable guesses as to what a photo should look like, the results are generally amateurish and over-saturated

To paraphrase the recent Hyundai commercials.

DUH!

If you want to compare "apples with apples" compare Lightroom to say, oh, Aperture where things like EXIF data?

Aperture lets you view, extract, and add metadata with unprecedented ease. On import, it automatically extracts all industry-standard EXIF and IPTC metadata. What’s more, it lets you comprehensively add important metadata — copyright, captions, keywords — at the point of import. That’s a real time saver.

And photo "enhancement":

http://www.apple.com/aperture/process/index.html


Lots of editing options there.

Look. I use iPhoto when I don't need a lot of control. When I need to do manipulation I'm off to photoshop. But the whole comparing Lightroom to iPhoto for anything other than to show what a step up it is, rather than how sucky iPhoto is is just dumb.

Thou Shall Not Commit Murder...

But apparently praying to GOD to kill on your behalf is OK

In light of the recent attack from the enemies of God I ask the children of God to go into action with Imprecatory Prayer. Especially against Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

You know, these folks ought to be checked rigorously before boarding planes, renting Uhaul trucks or running for elected office.

Max Roach Passes

Max Roach, a founder of modern jazz who rewrote the rules of drumming in the 1940’s and spent the rest of his career breaking musical barriers and defying listeners’ expectations, died early today in Manhattan. He was 83.

I'm a Twit!

Well not in the English sense.

I just created a Twitter account. Not sure why I did it, since most of the "social networking" thing is not of interest to me but there it is. On twitter.

Yay?

N800 Javascript Faster Than iPhone's

Stumbled across this site that has benchmarks for running Javascript on the iPhone vs. a 1.8Ghz Intel iMac:


So not only do we have a larger screen, and true VOIP capabilities, we have a faster browser to boot. I'm an Apple fan and have multiple Apple machines in my ownership, but it is soooo funny reading people practically fall over themselves over the iPhone, aside from it's excellent UI, as if other machines are not out there that do the same thing (other than cellular calls) and more.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, N800

Dog Fights: The Game

So I'm watching TV. I see Dogfights: The Game. I see an Apple Computer. I have an Apple Computer! I go to the website. I read this:

System requirements:

* Broadband Internet Connection
* Windows 2000/XP
* 2.4Ghz processor
* 512 MB RAM (512-1024 recommended)
* 128 MB DirectX 9 compatible video card
* DirectX 9 compatible sound card
* DirectX Version 9
* 3Gb hard drive space

So why show an Apple Computer? Oh that's right I can install windows on an Apple Computer so it isn't <i>really</i> deceptive advertising.

No You May Not.

I don't know why people allow this but I for one am growing tired of it.

No, you may not have my last name.
No, you may not have my zip code
Nor will I give you my home phone number.

I just want to buy this thing here. Cash. Anything else is NOT YOUR BUSINESS.

You can send your dimest cashier and I'm STILL not given up my personal information.

View Porn Go to Jail

In related news, the Australian Parliament is evaluating a legislative proposal introduced by indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough that aims to impose extreme restrictions on pornography in the Northern Territory...Mal Brough's proposal, which is described as "draconian" by the New Zealand Herald, would implement a broad ban on X-rated films in the Northern Territory, and impose jail sentences for porn "trafficking" on those who are caught with five or more X-rated films even in instances where the pornographic products are not being distributed.

Just where would we be without people protecting us from seeing other people have sex? I tell you, if these people were all that concerned with "morality" they wouldn't have troops in Iraq since, you know, killing is a "sin" too. And no, this is not an approval of sex trafficking of grown women or child pornography.

Mac Mini in a Corvette

A Mac Mini has been installed in a Corvette.

I was going to do the same thing but I have a 1987 (man. 1986) 635 CSI that would have needed extensive mods to get a screen put in. I finally managed a Sony DVD player with a 7" tilt screen, but THAT (and the amp) was a monster to install which includes a now unhinged glove box. I can still put a computer in the car but my recent acquisition of the N800 with it's mapping functions has kinda made that unnecessary. Besides and unfortunately the "shark" has a bad rust problem and may not be with me too much longer so more investments may not make sense.

First was an oddity, every time the Mac mini booted the system volume level was set to 50%. I wanted iTunes volume and the system volume set at 100% all the time in order to provide the right volume control on my head unit. With both of these volumes at 100%, the volume control on my head unit was a normal ratio of graphical bars to decibel output. With the Mac mini’s volume at 50% however, I had to crank the head unit volume to reach listening levels.

I have this particular problem with my system. The Sony unit I have came with an XM adapter which I discovered was the only way I could connect my iPod to the unit. On a side note it took me about 3 hours to figure out how to use the XM controls to control the iPod. THAT was fun. But the input is very low and have to crank the volume 3/4 in order to get decent sound. regular FM radio is much better. This actually revealed another problem which is that I am running the stock amp close to it's max rated current since whenever the headlights are on and the bass goes boom, the lights will dim.

iMovie '08 on a G4...mostly

Reports at xlr8yourmac.com has people running iMovie '08 on both a PB and a dual G4. Performance on the PB was said to be poor, while the dual G4 with a Radeon 9800 pro.

Many of Apple's apps have been leveraging the GPU for work, I suppose that iMovie 8 is hitting up the graphics card which along with the smaller cache on the processor is responsible for the differing results. iMovie on my 12" PB is not exactly a speed demon either, but if FCP can run on it I cannot imagine why anything called "iMovie" shouldn't.

Can This Marriage be Saved?

On a personal note, having gotten out of a relationship relatively recently, the following article touched home for me.

The next day, Marie arrived looking glassy-eyed and grim and announced, “I just sort of wanna get through the day.” Before the group began, while people were filtering in and picking at the breakfast of bagels and coffee Coché had laid out, the therapist took Marie aside to ask how she was doing. “I’m fine,” Marie said. Now she sat on the couch, eyes closed, holding her head in one hand, petting Coché’s Portuguese water dog with the other. Just before lunch Coché asked if there was any way the group could help. Barely looking up, Marie said that the only reason she’d returned was because of the “contract,” prompting Coché to ask why she told her she was “fine” before the group started.

“Because I wanted you to drop the situation immediately,” Marie said.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to discuss it.”

“Are you angry with me? Did I push too hard yesterday?”

“When I say I’m fine, that means just drop the subject,” Marie spat.

“Could you do me a favor,” Coché said, as calm and collected as if she were asking Marie for the time, “and instead of saying you’re fine, could you say, ‘I need to be by myself’?” Coché wanted Marie to see that when she was angry — at her husband or anybody else — she’d be better off stating it rather than withdrawing behind a froth of fake assurances.

“Um, no,” Marie said. “I find that when I say that the response is the exact opposite.”

“I see,” Coché said evenly. “So the only way you can get me off your back is to say you’re fine when you’re not.”

“I’ve found that’s the only thing that works with you, and with many other people,” Marie said, seemingly referring to the ghosts of her father and brothers that Coché believed were lurking in the room.

That about sums up what went wrong in my relationship and I suppose a whole lot of others too. If you're not "fine" don't say so you are lying and lying in a relationship, marriage, whatever is NOT COOL.

Oh yeah, and...

he said that she met perhaps his top requirement for a wife: She’d never “stray or look at other men or have an affair. Marie’s true to me, and that’s one of the things I wanted, and that’s what I got.”

Yeah.. I thought that one too. I don't put anything past anyone now.

NY Times Select To Bite The Dust

Washington Post:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Times Co. (NYT.N) plans to stop charging Internet users for access to its columnists and Op-Ed pieces on a section of its Web site known as TimesSelect, The New York Post reported on Tuesday.

When the NYT's made the change. I simply stopped reading that which was "select". It's the internet. Even "select" content gets out in the wild. Besides, if I can't read your take, I'll find someone else's to read.

Garageband '08

I've never liked the sound of the trumpets in Garageband. During Steve Jobs' demo of Garageband '08 he had a trumpet sound that sounded pretty nice, at least on the video. I'm going to have to go back and check on the trumpet sound on my iLife '06 version but if they have a new a decent sounding trumpet sound in garageband I'll have to cop the new iLife since I've been itching to put down some trumpet sounds in my compositions. Double bonus if there is a muted trumpet.

What Do

Teenager Sues Busta Rhymes

NEW YORK - Busta Rhymes has been sued again,this time by a 19 year old who alleges the rapper and his crew beat him after he spit on one of their cars.In the lawsuit filed Monday in Manhattan state Supreme Court, Roberto LeBron, who is now 20, charged that he was kicked in the head after an encounter with Rhymes and his nine bodyguards in August 2006.

“Me and my friends were walking across the street. I spit on the street and it landed on a moving car. It was a Maybach. That car stopped, along with two black SUVs.

“People came out and they were walking up to me. We realized it was Busta Rhymes,” Lebron said in a phone interview arranged by his lawyer.

So let me get this straight here. LeBron has a habit of just spitting any which way regardless of who or what may be in the direction of his spittle? See that is what we refer to as a lack of home training. See any time I have to spit (thankfuly a rare occurence) I go to the side of the street and spit directly down in a such a manner that nothing other than ground is hit. Furthermore THAT is if and only if I do not have a napkin or some other disposable paper product which I can spit in.

LeBron is simply low class and got dealt with in a low class manner. Live by, deal with. Parents, please teach your children how to properly evacuate phlegm (the only reason to even THINK about spitting in public) from their mouths.

I guess I'll be said to be blaming the victim.

IMovie '08

Umm did I just read that iMovie '08 will not run on a G4?

"iMovie requires a Mac with an Intel Processor, a Power Mac G5 (dual 2.0 Ghz or faster), or an iMac G5 (1.9 Ghz and faster)."

My 12" PB is insulted. Someone confirm this quick.

Pooping yourself Skinny

An Alternet article. I could not keep from smirking when I read the headline.

It offers a beguiling promise: a weight-loss regimen involving alli will help you shed pounds by inhibiting your body's ability to absorb fat. The newly excess fat exits your body by means of 'gas with oily spotting, loose stools, or more frequent stools that may be harder to control.'

Just so I understand this. There are people out there who want to lose weight and up until Alli, refused to heed the advice of those of us who are in shape to stop eating fatty foods and to make other lifestyle changes, but will now take the risk of getting the runs while out in public and pay someone for the priviledge? I am certainly in the wrong line of work.

Our Fat Is Doing Us a Favor

NY Times reports on the function of fat cells, though I saw no mention of the fact that fat cells form a lubricating buffer between organs. But that other favour that fat is doing?

Dr. Spiegelman and others have shown that with the onset of obesity — defined as 25 or more pounds above one’s ideal weight — the fat tissue starts releasing potent inflammatory hormones. That response is complex and harmful in the long run. But in the short term, said Dr. Spiegelman, “inflammation clearly has an anti-obesity effect, and it may be the body’s attempt to restrain further accumulation of adipose tissue.”

Yeah..so that burning sensation..that would be your body saying put that ish down.

Apple Releases iWork 2008

What's this little statement in the documentation?

"Numbers handily imports spreadsheets created in earlier Excel formats, as well as Excel 2007 documents created in the new Office Open XML formats."

Really?

So Apple manages to do something the Mac BU cannot do: provide a program to actually read the new Excel file format.

Thanks Steve!

[Update]

Apparently Pages will open Office 2007 documents as well. Can I do that with MS Office 2004? No of course not. But I can download a little program that will convert it to a RTF document. How nice. Hop skip jump. Thanks MS!

Bourne Ultimatum

Enjoyed the movie.

BUT.

This handheld camera action during close up dialog; not to good. Extremely annoying actually. A little camera wandering I can stand, but a huge screen that has a camera moving when I'm trying to focus on the convo is annoying. Please stop.

Webmail Gotchya

As stated earlier I have an N800 which can use any WIFI access point to get on the net. Unfortunately the product will also by default check mail automatically. The clear problem with this is that my web traffic is passing through an unknown network and is available for hacking. Proof of this is here:

The attack is actually quite simple. First Graham needs to be able to sniff data packets and in our case the open Wi-Fi network at the convention fulfilled that requirement. He then ran Ferret to copy all the cookies flying through the air. Finally, Graham cloned those cookies into his browser – in easy point-and-click fashion - with a home-grown tool called Hamster.

The attack can hijack sessions in almost any cookie-based web application and Graham has tested it successfully against popular webmail programs like Google’s Gmail, Microsoft’s Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. He stressed that since the program just uses cookies, he only needs an IP address and usernames and passwords aren’t required.

I constantly warn people about the usage of public WIFI. Heck I warn people about using networks that aren't theirs, ask my ex (and why she's an ex).