Neither the Weblog Filter nor

Neither the Weblog Filter nor the Weblog Favourites have updated in the last two days. I suspect there's a problem with the Weblogs.com XML files.


Later note: Dave saw this post and fixed it--thanks!

New link here: Mumble Daily,

New link here: Mumble Daily, and a belated happy 13^th birthday to James.

A crack in the veneer.

A crack in the veneer.

Damien Barrett is now doing

Damien Barrett is now doing freelance Mac consulting. I suspect that's only temporary until he gets his next full-time gig.

Am I the only person

Am I the only person who suspects that the Talking Moose might be Robert Scoble? Has anyone ever seen them both at the same time?

These people are just meant

These people are just meant for each other: Lovers' planes cross in sky as each pops a surprise visit.

Political correctness run amok. Funny

Political correctness run amok. Funny stuff.

I recommend Black on White:

I recommend Black on White: the writer's web site, especially if you're struggling to get words out of your head and onto paper or the screen (who? moi?). I particularly recommend reading The Dust Jacket, if nothing else.

After robbing Peter with a

After robbing Peter with a huge, foolish tax cut for the wealthy, the Bush administration is plotting to screw Paul out of his Social Security check, as this NYT Op-Ed piece explains. Normally, articles on Social Security put me right to sleep. But this one spells out in clear language the nature of the planned scam.

For those following the saga,

For those following the saga, today's doctor visit resulted in the verdict that the problem with my right wrist is actually arthritis. As to my left wrist, I'll know more next month, but I'm suspecting the worst.


And here I thought I had another two weeks before I was Really Darn Old.

Is It Over Yet?

Is It Over Yet?

I sure feel great about

I sure feel great about being a citizen of a country that opposes enforcement of a ban of biological weapons. Don't you?

I was going to write

I was going to write a long, drawn-out piece about last week's Macworld Expo, and I haven't gotten around to it. So instead, here's at least my best of:

• Hardware: MyTV2Go-fm from Eskape Labs. Put this together with an iceBook and a few other pieces, and you have a killer system that every college student will want. Yeah, your laptop can play DVDs and burn CDs, but why not get rid of everything else too? With this tiny little box, your Mac is also your TV and your FM radio receiver. Full screen video looked pretty darn good.
  
• Software: Groboto from Braid Media Arts. What can I say? I'm pretty jaded at this point. The only app that I saw that made me say "Wow" was this one. 3-D drawing and animation... for $29. No, I'm not missing a digit there.

No, Sean did not get a new Mac. Apple just wasn't shipping anything that Tom or I found compelling. I asked a lot of smart people for their opinions, and the best machine anyone was able to recommend for his situation was an iceBook. And no, I am not going to buy a 13 year-old a laptop just because Apple doesn't make a reasonably priced stand-alone CPU.

But, the fact is, his 3-year-old Umax J700 just isn't cutting it anymore. So, here's what we purchased for him:

• Sonnet G4/350 + OS X enabler
  
• 128 MB RAM (to add to the 64 he already has)
  
• ATI Radeon PCI video card
  
• 2 port USB PCI card
  
• SCSI/IDE bridge card
  
• 40 GB hard drive

I've heard lots of bitching

I've heard lots of bitching and moaning about how disappointing last week's Expo was from the standpoint of new Apple hardware. I did some of it myself, as I would have liked to see LCD iMacs. But let's get a grip, folks. Apple took the top of the iMac line and made it the bottom, at the $999 level. It will always be possible to blow new Macs away with generic PC hardware that you build yourself, or with refurb hardware. But as this great comparison of sub-$1,000 machines shows, the current low-end iMac is an excellent value against brand-name, low-end PC machines.

I, of course, am solely

I, of course, am solely a force for good, but I know a few women who would like to benefit from Things I will do when I become Evil Empress. You know who you are.

Yeah, I know that this

Yeah, I know that this site's RSS feed isn't working. That's what comes of taking free services and trying to do more with them than they were originally meant to handle. The errors aren't actually hurting anything (to the best of my knowledge) so getting rid of the feed will probably wait until I switch back-end apps. And who knows? Maybe it'll go back to sort-of working.

As of today, we are

As of today, we are the parents of a teenager. Pray for us.

Happy birthday, Sean!

This could be useful: Go

This could be useful: Go here, put in a zip code, and out comes a list of the closest places to get free net access. As with Outside Counsel, who pointed to the page originally, it's all public libraries around here.