GarageBand ringtones?

Here's something I hope is possible where I'm hoping that someone might read this and tell me how to do it: Can I create a track in GarageBand and output it such that it can be a ringtone for my SonyEricsson T610 cell phone? Wouldn't that be cool?

New IE/Win rendering engine?

Scoble says that Tristan Louis wants MS to replace the rendering engine in IE (aka "Trident") with the one from Mozilla (aka "Gecko"). Wow. The number of ways in which this is a dumb idea are just staggering.

[More about Tristan and his tech chops (or lack thereof) can be found here and here.]

There's several good reasons for not doing this:

1. Pulling out one rendering engine and replacing it with another ain't as simple as it sounds.
2. Why on earth would MS want to replace their 2^nd class rendering engine with someone else's 2^nd class rendering engine, gaining little but giving their critics tons of ammunition?
3. Given that MS has an under-utilized first class rendering engine lying around (see here and here), if they're going to replace Trident with anything, it should be with Tasman.

Dog bites man, film at 11

Watchdog study finds more criticism of Dean than other Democrats on network news. Ya think? That darn liberal media's at it again.

Cough? What cough?

In case you were wondering why you hadn't heard from me recently, here's a pic from my office:

CMB's a SF geek!

The mundane buzz today about Carol Moseley Braun will be her dropping her own presidential campaign and supporting Dean. But the real news happened last night on her appearance on The Daily Show. Turns out that Carol's a total science fiction geek. First she says (in a discussion of Bush's Mars proposal) "Live long and prosper." But she punctuated that with the Vulcan hand sign! And then, when talking about the way Bush pumps up the fear volume for the War on Terra, she explains it by saying "Fear is the mindkiller." For those not familiar with classic SF, that's from Frank Herbert's Dune. Carol, you're one of my people. May you get a job in the Dean Cabinet.

Color me unsurprised

Well, as expected, Bush gave his speech on future space exploration today, and it looks as though my misgivings of a few days ago were entirely appropriate; he's underfunded the initiative. He proposed a measly $1 billion increase in NASA's budget over five years. Let's contrast that level of proposed funding for the greatest human adventure with another news story from just yesterday: Bush Plans $1.5 Billion Drive for Promotion of Marriage.

For months, administration officials have worked with conservative groups on the proposal, which would provide at least $1.5 billion for training to help couples develop interpersonal skills that sustain "healthy marriages."

The officials said they believed that the measure was especially timely because they were facing pressure from conservatives eager to see the federal government defend traditional marriage, after a decision by the highest court in Massachusetts. The court ruled in November that gay couples had a right to marry under the state's Constitution.

It's difficult to tell from the news story, but it appears that the $1.5 billion is just one year's funding. So there you have it: a dumbass boondoggle that sucks up to his wacko homophobic far-right-wing buddies is, to the Bush administration, more than five times more important than human space exploration.

HP Deal = QuickTime for Windows

One thing that I haven't seen mentioned in analysis of the Apple-HP deal for the iPod is that it means that QuickTime for Windows is going to be installed on all those HP boxes, because iTunes is dependent on QuickTime. If it's true, as I've seen reported, that HP sells nearly one in six PC's, that's an awful lot of new machines that will come with QuickTime preinstalled. So many more computers will be able to take advantage of QuickTime Web content; developers will be more likely to consider supporting QuickTime for things like applications and games; and the deal sticks it to Real Networks.

Now, let's think about other things from Apple that use QuickTime. Of course, I believe that most, if not all, of Apple's software development is designed to move Mac hardware, but what if they decide to move some other software to the PC side? What would be the most likely candidates?

The Subwoofer

The subwoofer in question (Dori's post below) is an AudioPro, which is a Swedish make that has limited distribution in the US. The model I have is the B2-70, which was probably made around 1985 or so. It's got two 8" drivers in a big wood cabinet. It also has its own amplifier. I still like the sound of it; it's very nice for music, but is a bit thin for modern Dolby Digital DVD soundtracks. I originally got it around 1996 from my old friend Rob Hahn, who's a no-holds-barred audiophile. He had just upgraded to a subwoofer the size of a Volkswagen, and he offered to give me the Audio Pro; all I had to do was pay for shipping it to CA from CT. Well, that cost about $350 for packing and shipping, as I recall. But the sub served us well for several years. Three years ago, the drivers wore out and I found someone who was an Audio Pro tech who refurbished them. Just last year, I replaced the Audio Pro with a nice SVS subwoofer. The Audio Pro's been sitting in the living room ever since. It won't make your ears bleed when you're watching Terminator XII, but it's still a nice subwoofer. If you're interested, and you can pick it up here in Healdsburg, I'll let it go for a song.

Take our subwoofer, please!

Chuqui says:

The video setup back here had the TV, DVD player, two VCRs, the home theater receiver, 5.2 speakers (no subwoofer, that seems so, well, decadent, you know?) and blah blah blah, lots more stuff snipped

This seems like a nice time to state that if Tom would just give away his old subwoofer, I'd be thrilled. It's a big honking thing that's taking up way too much of the living room, and I'd love to see it find a new home somewhere else. Anyone? Please? Come here and pick it up, it's yours.

(For the record: the above is just the wife's opinion. The husband may or may not wish to charge the recipient for the subwoofer, and no claims are made as to his willingness to give away His First Subwoofer.)

"Security," this ain't

I was working on connecting my Palm Tungsten in my hotel room last week, hooking it up to my laptop via Bluetooth, when I was hit by the following dialog box:

Tip for the day: no, this doesn't count as security. Gave me a good laugh, though.

Today's must reads

Today's must reads:

• Study Published by Army Criticizes War on Terror's Scope

• NET SEND * Hey!

20 Important Macs

Owen Linzmayer is a smart guy, but his list of The 20 Macs That Mattered Most has some very odd choices. He includes failures like the Macintosh Portable (I can kind of see that) and the Powerbook 5300 (AKA the Hindenbook, because two of them burst into flame). But he also includes the Color Classic (never a significant Mac, in my view) and the Powerbook 165c (first color portable, true, but failed in sales).

But most egregiously, he leaves the Macintosh SE/30 off the list. This is perhaps the longest-lived Mac ever. We finally retired our SE/30 just about six months ago. Up until then, it was in 24-hour operation as our mailing list server. It had an Ethernet card, a whopping 200 Mb hard drive, and 20 whole megabytes of RAM, and it still pumped out 30,000 mail messages a day, between a dozen mailing lists. Not bad for a computer that rolled off the assembly line in 1987. We're not alone in keeping SE/30's that long, either; I know of several other folks that used them well into the new millenium.

Political support and pigout

Sometimes I love living here: the local county Democratic Central Committee is throwing a fundraiser. Sounds boring? Not when you find out that it's an all-you-can-eat Crab Feed. I'm willing to make that sacrifice.