Good news for me

From Macworld UK:

Mac fans are getting keyed up for the immanent launch of Tiger, which, according to Apple, will launch in the first half of this year.

Does giggling about the use of the word immanent in that sentence make me a bad person?

Macworld readers were asked: "What Tiger feature are you looking forward to the most?" in an online poll. With 1,532 votes cast it emerged that more than a quarter (29 per cent) were most excited about Dashboard.

And that's good news for me, because Amazon still says that I've got no competition on that front.

Friday Pope Blogging

Well, now that John Paul II has been laid to rest, I guess I can throw my funny-shaped hat in the ring. I hereby announce my candidacy to become the next Pope. If elected by the College of Cardinals in solemn conclave, I will travel to Vatican City and assume office. For my papal name, I'm thinking George Ringo I, but I'm flexible on that.

You might be wondering, "Hey, Tom! What are your qualifications to be Pope?" Good question. Well, it turns out that I meet all the official requirements. I was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church, and I'm male. And it's not a requirement, but I've even visited the Vatican once. Kind of casing the joint, as it were.

"OK," you say, carrying on the imaginary conversation, "But what about your wife and stepson? Don't they kind of, uh, disqualify you?" Not necessarily. You see, it's not dogma that the Pope, or any priest, must be celibate. And let me tell you, that whole celibacy thing is kind of a non-starter with me, if you know what I mean. Anyway, it's tradition, not dogma. And traditions can be changed by...wait for it...the Pope! Cause once elected, I'm infallible. I'm sure that Dori won't mind being whatever the role will be called. The Papal Consort? The Popess? Gotta get some guidance from the Big Guy upstairs on that one. Anyway, let's just say that there will be a few changes coming:

• Vows of celibacy no longer necessary for priests and nuns.
• Priests will be allowed to marry. Even the new female ones.
• Church bingo outlawed; replaced by church-run Texas Hold Em.
• Return of requirement to eat fish on Friday, but due to Pope's childhood trauma, the making or consumption of tuna noodle casserole shall be forbidden.
• Lifting of ban on contraception.
• Red Lobster and Long John Silver's required to run bargain shrimp specials for Catholics every Friday.
• Clergy forbidden to interfere in politics.
• Catholics required to switch to using Macs. This builds market share, and with one of the Big Religions behind them, Apple users no longer accused of being members of a mere cult.
• Popemobile to be lowered to bring Pope closer to people, have fuzzy dice installed, flames painted on the sides.
• I will produce lots of papal bull. As if that's a surprise.

So there you have it. For now. I'll update you on the progress of my papal candidacy next Friday, when Friday Pope Blogging returns!

For .Mac members

There's a new benefit to being a .Mac member: a free 30-day trial of T-Mobile HotSpot. Every so often I think about how it'd be nice to get out of the "office" and see if I could do some work at the local Starbucks, and this might help me actually do that. Good through June 29.

If you're a .Mac member and you're trying to decide whether or not to renew, remember that a boxed version from Amazon works for renewals just as well as re-upping online — and at $80 versus $100, it's $20 cheaper.

Of local interest

Two sites that are new to me:

• Healdsburg Central: Healdsburg's Community Calendar. I'm not sure where this fits into the picture, as there are already two other "what's happening" sites, but my guess is that they're trying to be less tourist-oriented than the Chamber of Commerce and more family-friendly than Stark Raving Beautiful. If that's the case, then there's room for it, although three sites sounds like a lot for a rural burg like this one. What I really ought to do is figure out a way to scrape all three and turn it into a single RSS feed.
  
  
• Healdsburg Menus: A Complete Guide to Local Restaurants, Wineries and Markets. Subtract a few bugs that I found, and the fact that they only appear to link to Web sites done by the people who run the site, and what's left is a useful dining out guide. It looks like the next time we have some serious extra cash lying around we'll have to go check out Cyrus Restaurant.

Look over to your right --->

This just came up again, and I figured I should mention it here: if you don't like the font, or you don't like the head in the background of the page, please realize that on this site, you have control over both those things.

Look over on the right, near the top of the navbar. If you think the font's too small, click on "Lg Serif." If you don't like the head in the background, uncheck the "Show background image" box.

And of course, if you're reading this via an RSS reader, you get to see it just the way you want it, too. But don't bother looking over to the right...

Advanced Whois

This is useful: whois.webhosting.info lets you look for more than just what the average WHOIS tells you. You can also look up, for instance, what other domains are using that same IP address. Handy, that.

Gizmodo's hiring

Gizmodo is hiring an editor. Here's the quick FAQ:

Is this something that you'd be interested in? Hell, yes!

Are you going to apply? Nope.

Why not? (1) We're both swamped with current writing deadlines, and (2) they want someone who (yikes!) can work NY hours. That's 6am-2pm Pacific. Mornings are not our best times. Hell, being able to not work mornings is one of the best reasons we know for being freelancers.

Should I apply? Yes, and if you get the gig, you should lend us toys after you're done with them.

No black holes?

My first guess about this article, Black holes 'do not exist', was that it was an April Fool's joke I was just seeing. But the journal is Nature, and the physicist making the claim is from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — so it's straight up. It's going to be an interesting next few years in Physics, I suspect.