Home at last

After way too many hours on the road, it's nice to be home. We spent the Thanksgiving holidays with our families in Southern California. It's normally an 8 hour trip for us, including gas and food stops. Going down on Wednesday, it took 12 hours, and coming back, 10.5 hours. Really nasty traffic; another post-9/11 consequence. In the past, we would have considered flying.

Blogging would have occurred if anyone in the homes of the family members we visited had broadband. As it was, I discovered that the T-Mobile wireless connection at a local Starbucks was sort of expensive, but worked really well. I didn't even bother to go into the Starbuck's; all I needed to do was drive up in back, lurking in the car with my iBook.

The next time some politically correct doofus says that "Islam is the religion of peace," I'm planning to point to this: Nigerian State Says Miss World Reporter Should Die. This poor woman writes something about a beauty contest, which sparks riots that destroy her paper's offices, cause as many as 250 deaths, and hundreds more injured. She then has to flee for her life to the US (luckily, the Great Satan is there to protect the persecuted), and now she has part of her country's government saying that she can be killed by anyone in the name of God. What I want to know is this: where are the responsible Muslim voices that condemn this barbaric religiously-sanctioned murder? Why should the world give thugs a pass because they are Muslim, or Nigerian, or Palestinian? There are people in all these groups that are horrified at the actions of the thugs; why do they not come forward and be counted? And why are non-Muslims who condemn the violence then accused of being "culturally insensitive" or racist by the PC crowd? When you see murder and death threats through the lens of moral equivalence, you've lost your way.

Too rich for my blood

Various people have chimed in saying (below) that we should trademark "Backup Brain," so for future reference: the USPTO Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS).

Replay 5080

Good news on the gadget front: we've just been told that our new ReplayTV 80-Hour Digital Video Recorder has shipped. We've been looking to replace the aging ReplayTV 2020 (upgraded to 80 hours) for a while, as the hard drive is quite whiny in it, and we don't have the unit in a cabinet. Plus, the new unit will allow us to offload shows to our Macs or PCs over the network. Because the 5080 has a broadband connection for the program guide, it also shows more days in the future, than the current ReplayTV. I'm looking forward to the Commercial Advance feature, too, just so I can spit in the eye of those network execs. I hope that I don't have to reprogram the Phillips Pronto remote control too much for the 5080.

MS working on a "back-up brain"

Microsoft plans online life archive :

Microsoft researchers are working on ways to create a "back-up brain" that will do a much better job of containing and cataloguing every picture you take, document you write or conversation you record.

So, our semi-serious question is, what do we do if MS tries to trademark "Backup Brain"? Do we have any common law rights? It's not like we've trademarked it or anything (should we?), as we've never planned on this going commercial. (via Brig)

Omniweb and iCab CSS2 support

MacEdition Guide to CSS2 Support in Mac-only Browsers. A useful chart of all those things that Omniweb and iCab have trouble with.

"French themed" book suggestions wanted

The kid (age 14) is taking French 1, and he gets credit for reading books "with a French theme." His preferences tend towards science fiction that clanks. Got any ideas as to a book or author that'd he'd enjoy? Let us know in the comments, and thanks!

Later note: sorry; it's clear from the comments that I wasn't clear enough. He's not looking for books in French, as he's only been studying the language for about 8 weeks. He needs books "with a French theme," i.e., books about France, or by a French author about France, etc. So keep the suggestions coming, and thanks!