Not Dead Yet

As you can probably tell from my previous post, we're still alive. Yes, we really can go without blogging for a couple of days! We're here at ConJosé, the 60^th annual World Science Fiction Convention. Lots of cool stuff is going on, but sadly enough, our only two choices for bandwidth are for-pay dialup from the hotel, or wireless highspeed from a hotel two blocks away. I'm just so used to bandwidth everywhere that this is a real shock to the system.

It's good preparation, I guess, for the upcoming Web Builder Conference, where, I've been told, I won't have wireless access either. Could we just skip this part and get to the fun where there's ubiquitous highspeed wireless everywhere, please? I'd be happy to pay for it, if I could just get it when and where I want it.

Spam load

I just checked email for the first time in 48 hours. Results:

• 479 incoming messages
• 313 messages caught by Spamfire (# of false positives: 1)
• 12 viruses-bearing messages caught by Entourage
• 151 list emails
• 3 personal emails

No warez here, sorry

Between our site logs and Atomz (who handles our search functionality), we get regular reports on what people are looking for here. So, whomever came here looking for:

"Quicken 2003" download
"Quicken 2003" crack
"Mac OS X" office x serial
Office v.X looking for Download

Sorry, but you're out of luck. We have neither warez nor serial numbers here. For the person searching for

grandmother eulogy

you can find that here, and please accept our condolences.

This article from The New Republic details the Bush Administration's ideologically-driven reasons for opposing telecom reform, and how that is likely to lead to more consolidation in the broadband market, higher prices, and a continued weak economy. Check out Cable Access.

Caffeine lowers skin cancer risk

I've had basal cell skin cancer, and my mom's had both basal and squamous cell skin cancer. Or in other words, between that and having very fair skin, I'm high risk for developing future skin cancers. So it's good news to read this Salon story on how caffeine lowers skin cancer risk.

Unlike sun screen lotions, which protect against skin cancer by preventing the skin from absorbing ultraviolet rays from the sun, the caffeine's cancer protection works in the cells after exposure to the ultraviolet rays. Rays from the sun can cause genetic changes in the skin that can lead to skin cancer. Conney said caffeine apparently blocks this action by causing abnormal cells to kill themselves, a type of programed cell suicide that prevents the development of abnormal growths.

I need to find out how I can get in on the human trials (because I don't believe that bathing in Mt. Dew will count).

Mt. Dew, redux

The great Mountain Dew conspiracy discussion is still going on here. So far, the consensus seems to be that the cans are bad nationwide, but the plastic bottles are okay. Got a data point of your own? Add your experience to the comments under August 17's post.

It's a California thing

Maybe it's just a native Californian thing, but if you're going to write ConJosé, it's spelled (in HTML) as "ConJosé". Thank you for your future attention to this matter.

ConJosé good news/bad news

It's a good news/bad news kind of post. The good news:

• ConJosé is this weekend, or more precisely, Thursday through Monday
• Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar is out
• Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar includes the ability (previously in OS 9, but not in OS X) to use one Mac as a software base station which allows other Macs to use the first to get wireless net access
• We were able to get in on the Mac OS X 10.2 $79 deal from Amazon

The bad news: because we got the good deal from Amazon, we won't get 10.2 until after we get back from ConJosé. Which means no sharing wireless access for us. Dammit!

This Charlotte Observer story covers the Hawaii cruise that we'll be doing as part of the MacMania II Geek Cruise next June. Looks like there will be good and bad things about the ship, but we're really looking forward to the trip itself.

EPN World Reporter

This is old hat for the A-list bloggers, but it's new to us: we got mentioned in an article at EPN World Reporter: Top Blogs. The unnamed author is wrong about who runs this blog (it's a joint project by Tom and myself), but he ain't the first person to have made that error.

Serving Your Site From a Mac

I'm not trying to push the O'Reilly Mac OS X conference, really. It's just that relevant things keep coming up worth blogging that have to do with that show. In this case, Al pointed to Setting up a Site Server with Jaguar, in which James Duncan Davidson has basically written my Serving Your Site From a Mac session for me. Thanks!