Reason #438 why Dave Winer ought to read this blog

Reason #438: because I read this LittleWiki piece on Safari Canvas and said, "Hey, isn't this exactly what Dave was asking for in his LineTo MoveTo DaveNet eight years ago?"

Bonus links: a simple example of the code from that Wiki page in action, Safari canvas class JavaScript reference, Mozilla announcing their support for the Canvas element, and finally Dave saying that

Some bloggers complain that we don't point to women often enough. First, we don't hesitate for a nanosecond to point to worthy posts by women.

No, Dave, I don't think the problem is that you don't point to women. I think that the problem is that you don't read enough blogs by women. Because if you did, you'd point to them.

And the above is totally moot, because he won't read this, but it's kind of fun to needle someone when you know it's completely behind someone's back. His loss, because I think that he'd actually be interested to know that the stuff he asked for eight years ago is finally shipping (and it's darn cool, too).

Why you get my repeat business

A little over two years ago, I bought a Brother MFC-3200c Multifunction Printer from Amazon when I first moved into my out-of-home office. It's been a good little workhorse, considering that I do very little printing or faxing.

Recently it started to display a message: "Error 41. Please call Brother." I called Brother, and they asked me for the date of purchase. I told them it was over two years ago, and they asked me to fax them the receipt. Who keeps receipts that long? I don't. So I went to Amazon.com and found that they can give you a copy of a receipt for any item you've ever purchased from them. I was then able to fax that to Brother directly from my Mac — no printing required (remember, the printer's broken!).

Brother arranged for it to be repaired locally, free of charge. Sampson Typewriter Company (yes, that's really their name) called me and told me that they'd only need it for ten minutes or so, and we set up an appointment time. I brought it in earlier this week, and the guy fixed it on the spot.

Things break. That's not my point; things always break. It's what companies do after they break. In this case, Amazon (keeping purchase records around and available), Apple (and their faxing ability), and Brother (and their repair service) all performed perfectly. And now my printer prints just the way it did two years ago, without me being out a cent. They'll all get repeat business from me.

Plogress

Plogress.com "was built to provide current information on what our representatives are doing in Congress". Look up your representatives and subscribe to their feeds.

Tom, I've made life easy for you — just drag these into NNW: Mike Thompson, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer.

Thanks to Matt Haughey for the pointer.

Musical Baton

The meme that I was hoping wouldn't hit this blog has, courtesy of Meryl. Here goes:

Total volume of music files on my computer: my iTunes folder is 22.24 Gb with 4536 songs. Some of those are audiobooks, though, so I'm not sure how they count.

Last CD bought: According to Amazon, it was Weird Al Yankovic's Greatest Hits, Volume 1 which I bought for Sean for Christmas 2003. Or in other words, Tom buys most of the CDs in our house; I just buy occasional single tracks off iTunes.

Song playing: nothing at all. I can't work and listen to music. The music's only on my Mac so it will get to my iPod; I can't drive unless I'm listening to music. Loud.

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:

• Breathe (2AM) by Anna Nalick
• Under The Bridge by Red Hot Chili Peppers
• My Happy Ending by Avril Lavigne
• Lives in the Balance by Jackson Browne (okay, laugh — but listen to it and it'll sound like it was recorded last year, not two decades ago)
• Power of Two by Indigo Girls

Five people to whom I'm passing this baton:

• Tom (obviously)
• Al, because I'm curious
• Shirley, because she doesn't blog often enough
• Lisa, because she doesn't either
• Shelley, because I've wasted too much of her bandwidth lately ranting about gender over there

OS X 10.4.1, Safari, and Widgets

I'm not seeing any reporting about this, and Apple isn't documenting it, so I figured I would as a followup to yesterday's bit on the Mac OS X 10.4.1 update. Here's the story on what's up with widget security in 10.4.1 (click on any of the images to see the full-size version):

If you've turned off the "safe downloads" option (which you should), there's no difference. Widgets will download into wherever you've told Safari that downloads should go, and you'll have to install them by hand. If you haven't turned this option off yet, here's where it is:

If "safe downloads" are automatically opened/installed, note that the wording has changed. Here's the old version:

and here's the new version:

Also new (so far as I can tell): if you click "cancel" on the above it's implied that nothing has downloaded. That's not quite the case; there is still a file (widgetname.zip.download) in your downloads folder that you'll need to delete.

No big surprise

Here's something that should have surprised no one, but appears to have surprised at least one person: Apple just served WidgetWorld.nl with a cease & desist over their wholesale borrowing of Apple's trade dress and trademarks.

My guess is that the usual idjits and maroons will start the usual yelling about Apple beating up on the little guys. My opinion is that this guy was asking for it. If you can't do something original, why bother?

Next up, I'll bet, are Dashboard Lineup and Widget Developer, both of whom use the Apple Dashboard logo.

Mac OS X 10.4.1 Update

Apple has released a Mac OS X 10.4.1 Update. A quick look at the slim docs don't say anything about the recent hoohah regarding Dashboard (in)security.

WWDC Blogger dinner reminder

WWDC is coming up, and if you haven't RSVP'd that you're attending the WWDC 2005 Weblogger Dinner, you should do so. And then you should go chip in a few bucks to pay for it.

And for those who care about such things, the numbers appear to be (to my count) 63 men and 3 women attending. Yep, sounds like a typical geek conference to me.