Tope 10 photos of 2008
Mational Geographic has their top ten photos of 2008 up now. (Thanks to Guy Kawasaki for the link)
Mational Geographic has their top ten photos of 2008 up now. (Thanks to Guy Kawasaki for the link)
Thanks to Leo Laporte's twitter post of http://codeulate.com/?p=22 I found this wonderful function buried in the comments.
function s {
if [ $# -gt 0 ]
then
sudo $@
else
sudo $(fc -ln | tail -n1)
fi
}
~ $ portupgrade postfix
The pkgdb must be updated. Please run 'pkgdb -u' as root.
~ $ s
Password:
[Updating the pkgdb in /var/db/pkg ... - 431 packages found (-0 +2) .. done]
[package update begins]
OK, it seems like every blog, blogger, blogger dog, blogger cousin, and secret blogger alien pal hiding in the basement is posting a list of nifty neato holiday gifts. Bah, Humbug! Nertz to all those lists. Here's a practical list of what people REALLY need.
1) A clue. These are, admittedly, hard to come by. However, if you have one, it is best to share it with the people around you because, egads, they are in short supply.
2) Socks. I agree with Dumbledore, a nice pair of socks is a great thing to have. And hey, everyone needs them and no one wants to spend money on good ones for themselves.
3) Respect. Self-respect, respect for others. Whatever. Some sort of respect would be good.
4) Storage. DVDs are passé, USB2 is for n00bs. A Drobo from http://www.drobo.com/ might be cool for that friendly geek on your, "Oh crap, I'm never gonna get tech support unless I buy a nice present for Kreme!" list?
5) Humor, a sense of. As a friend of mine, now deceased, once said, "There is something to be said for grace and respect but humour alway helps".
6) Kit, digital. Be it a new iPod Touch, or maybe a nice dSLR camera, or heck, an iPhone. Everyone could use more digital crap in their lives. If you're truly desperate, maybe iTunes gift card.
7) Did I mention the needs for more clues? Oh, yes, I did.
8) A WiFi SD card for your less-techno-savvy friends. Automatically uploads the photos to the computer. http://www.eye.fi
9) Patience. Someone once said that, "Whatever business you are in, 95% of your customers are idiots; no matter how smart you are, for someone, somewhere, you are part of their 95%." Words to live by. Try to remember that, even if you are answering the question for the 579th time, this is probably only the 1st or 2nd time that person has asked the question. Maybe 5th, but still.
10) got lots of money? Everyone loves the MacBook Pro. sure, this is technically digital kit, but it's really expensive, so it deserves its own catagory. Even Windows Lusers.. er, users, covet the Mac Book, as it's simply the best laptop on the market. Sure, it's BETTER if you run OS X on it, but it runs Vista better than anything else. Don't believe me? Fine, how about PC World?
Now, getting back to that clue/respect/patience portion of the list:
Here's a good tip, if you use a Mac. Before firing off that email or making that blog post, have the computer voice Alex read it aloud to you. Do you sound like a prat? Do you sound like an asshole? Step back, try again. If you're on a lesser computer, you have to read it aloud yourself, and this will mean you will sometimes think you are being funny and clever when you're just being a shithead. Still, it will help.
Before firing off that flame, are you taking something personally that was meant as a joke? Is there even a chance that you are? Step the fuck back and reässess.
--I know that you believe you understand what you think I said but I
am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I
meant.
Sit back and read as Roger takes Ben behind the whippin' shed.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/win_ben_steins_mind.html#more
OK, so I've had my new iPod Touch (iTouch) for a couple of weeks now. Long enough for a friend to see me using it extensively and promptly go buy one for himself. I am still using it all the time. I even sometimes use it to check something while I am sitting at my computer. I can't be bothered to switch out of WoW to check the weather, check it on the iTouch!
OK, granted, that's just weird. But I use it everywhere I go, and I am already planning my day out around where I can go for free wi-fi.
The things I don't use it for, which I thought I would, are varied. Twitter, nearly never. Reading ebooks, on rare occasions. Listening to music (it is an iPod), almost never. Controlling my Mac, playing iTunes... sometimes, but I don't have the computer hooked up to the stereo, so not that much. Games, Pandora, Virgin Radio, NPR... not so much.
On the other hand, there are several things I do use it for that are unexpected, or where before I got it. First, alarms. I use them all the time. WHo would have thought. I also use the timer at least daily. The Notes app I use all the time to jot something down, the name of a book, something I need from the store, our Xmas list, etc. I also use Tomatoes, Now Playing, AND Flixster. They all have differing strengths, and flixster and now playing give pricing for different movie chains. Oh, and watching videos and YOuTube. Shockingly, I am finding my self watching quite a lot of video stuff. I converted a bunch of cartoons and watch them happily, have re-watched Season 1 of The Guild, and even a few movies (Elf, Ghostbusters). It's a surprisingly nice little video player.
Of course, my main use is email access and web-browsing, and the real need-feature is the ssh into my servers, but that is only needed when 1) I am away from my computers and 2) something is wrong. It happens, but rarely enough that this is not a critical, but not primary, use.
There are failings about the iTouch that I really dislike. It is impossible to change the date format to something sensinble like ddmmyy or yyyymmdd or dd-mmm-yy without changing your country. And changing the country has a whole cascade of changes that happen without your consent and out of your control. Google searches, YouTube searches, pretty much any searches, phone number format, and even the language of the date display, which ignores the language setting and uses the country's language.
Also, the inability of other email accounts to be 'push' based, and the inability of non-Apple apps to run in the background. I can listen to itunes while I read my email, but not to the nuTsi top-100 app. Eh, annoying.
Still, it's a wildly useful little bit of kit, and it's always in my pocket. I may upgrade to an iPhone next year, depending on how the 3G rollout in my area goes and what sorts of problems there are. Come June, I will be looking very carefully. Sooner if T-Mobile does anything to really annoy me.
Senator Obama has spoken a lot about how we oughta relate to the world, and yes, he'll get out and travel some in the first year, we should want him to do it. But he is going to have to be really focused on fixing this economy. That means that role of the Vice President in repairing quickly our relations with the rest of the world will be relatively more important in the first two years of the next presidency.
"And I am just telling you, you can talk to me or anybody else at any time in Washington, and they will tell you there is nobody, nobody in the entire United States senate that understands the political, the economic, and the security challenges and opportunities of the world better than Joe Biden does. He is a superb choice."
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/bill_clinton_lays_out_strong_c.php
I read, with some interest, Chris Parillo's post (mostly a repost of rules for IRC from "Mikee") and felt I needed to comment.
http://chris.pirillo.com/2008/09/18/how-should-you-act-on-irc-internet-relay-chat/
I've been on-and-off IRC since before eris joined. If you don't know what I am talking about, then lets just say it's been a very long time; longer than most people think IRC has even been around.
In addition, I've been on IRC continuously since 1999. Really continuously; my IRC client stays online pretty much 24/7. I don't specifically disagree with anything in Chris/Mikee's post with the possible exception of rule 5 "Be yourself". Being yourself is certainly the easiest way to go and if you aren't careful about NOT being yourself you'll screw up. But, sometimes you don't want to be yourself. SOmetimes anonymity is useful, or at least comforting.
Even if you are being yourself, you need to be careful not to reveal too much about the details of your life. If you don't understand why, perhaps you should go watch The Guild episode 1 at http://www.watchtheguild.com. I have a friend who's wife has revealed so many details of her personal life that anyone would be able to show up at their house, her place of work, her church, her health club, or several of her friends' houses. She's even had more than one person contact her based on information she gave them online. If you google yourself and any details you've given out, any information you see that applies to you is information that you need to assume *everyone* has.
If you're on IRC, you have to ask yourself why are you there, and the answer needs to apply to the NETWORK, not the channel. IRC is largely anonymous, and you can easily be a different person on one network than on another; however, within the same network your persona will follow you in public channels. Be very sparring in how much information about yourself you give out, especially in 'social' situations. If you're on a mailing list that is related to your job, particularly if you're an expert on the topic, it's fine to reveal professional details about yourself (name, business phone, email, etc) but you should still be cautious about revealing any personal details. And if you are posting as yourself, remember that every single thing you say can be traced back to you. We've seen countless examples where someone has suffered real-life repercussions for something they said on line.
In fact, keeping separate emails for work and personal contacts is a good idea in general.
And that really leads into the main 'cautionary tale' that so many people forget about the Internet, and that is that you really do NOT know who is on the other side of the screen. I have a friend who's in her mid twenties now, but was in her mid teens back in 1999, and I remember telling her way back then that EVERYONE on IRC was a 40 year old steel worker with a beer belly---even her.
Sure, she laughed, but the point is that you will do a lot better on IRC, and on the Internet in general, if you at least consider that possibility every time you are talking to someone online.
Now, there is a flip side to all this. If you are a bit of a celebrity online (An Adam Engst, Guy Kawasaki, or the aforementioned Chris Parillo) then, oddly enough, you have a little bit of extra protection. Yes, really. Since there is SO MUCH information about you out there, it can be hard for the casual stalker to find out where you live. Not hard, not impossible, just a bit harder. Searching for "Adam Engst" on Google yields over 50,000 hits. Searching for my full name yields less than 50 hits.
--"Katrina, $4 gas, a trillion dollar war, rising unemployment,
deregulated housing market, global warming...NO MORE!"
http://is.gd/2mxY
Not only is Sarah Palin refusing to answer questions about TrooperGate (or about anything at all, really), but now the GOP in AK is fully mobilized in covering up the TrooperGate scandal.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/ak_lawmaker_on_troopergate_i_d.php
--"Katrina, $4 gas, a trillion dollar war, rising unemployment,
deregulated housing market, global warming...NO MORE!"
http://is.gd/2mxY
...we need a nicer term than "bastard" for a child born out-of-wedlock. I suggest "palin."
I couldn't agree more. Not sure it is actually *nicer* though.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/us/politics/14palin.html?_r=1&partner=rssuserland&oref=slogin
--"Katrina, $4 gas, a trillion dollar war, rising unemployment,
deregulated housing market, global warming...NO MORE!"
http://is.gd/2mxY
Hi, I'm me. I'll fill something in at some point. Maybe.
