New York Press has another edition of the annual “50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers” list. Since I live in Osoyoos (or as I calls it, Tatooine) and not New York, a few of the locals are unknown to me. But there’s enough celebrity bashing and mean spiritedness to make the whole thing plenty entertaining regardless.
File this one under “horseshit”; a new study from the Pentagon says that the attacks in Iraq are primarily caused by Saddam’s secret service. C’mon. Suicide bombers for a guy that hid out in a hole for months? And what about Shia militants? What possible reason do those guys have to fight in Hussein’s name, or with their former torturers?
Call me crazy, but it’s just possible they could be acting against the Americans because they don’t much like being occupied by a foreign power. Just a thought.
First I go through bandwidth hell with Persona, and now my Telus connection has flaked out on me. It was working to a point yesterday, after all the rigamarole of getting the network to recognize my MAC address, but no more. Ugh.
I’m currently riding shotgun on the neighbour’s insecure wirless network, but who know how long that’ll last? Telus is sending someone out tomorrow. I guess I probably saw this coming. But as Chuck D once said, “Welcome to the Terrordome!”
After much struggle and strife, I’ve got my new ADSL connection up and running. The goofy thing about ADSL is that you have to register the MAC address of every device in order to get it to work right. I haven’t registered my router or Primus phone yet, so expect more cursing from me soon.
Still, once this stuff is all set up, I should (in theory) be able to use my VOIP phone again, and download more than my email without getting slaped with onerous capping from the bandwidth Gestapo.
So it looks like Iron Chef America is a big ol’ bust. Why don’t dorky TV marketroids (American and Canadian) ever realize that crazy crap from foreign lands must remain untouched to be cherished? Supposedly Chairman Kaga is nowhere to be seen, and there isn’t any of the wonderfully goofy overdubbing in the original show. Poopy.
Bush apparently has a huge war chest of campaign money. But he ain’t spending it on good advertising, that’s for sure. Check out these terrible ads. My favorite is the one making fun of John Kerry with old-fashioned black and white film and cheeseball saloon pianos (it’s the one called “Wacky” on the ad page.) I guess Republicans think that vaudeville is the next big thing with those mysterious “Gen Y” folk.
Also, check out the front page of this delightful bit of propaganda (if it hasn’t changed already.) “Bush celebrates Earth Day”??!?! By doing what, signing a few more oil contracts? Dipping seabirds in crude and setting them on fire?
Remember, kids, Communism=The Beatles.
Which must make the Rolling Stones something akin to anarchist moon-men who feast on lymph glands.
It’s official; Persona is the WORST ISP I’VE EVER DEALT WITH. These guys are worse than Telus, or Shaw. 18 days into the month, and they’ve already capped me. And I’ve been careful…I’ve only downloaded a couple of tv shows, which shouldn’t tip the scales. What’s the point of high speed internet if I can’t grab big files, listen to streaming audio or use my VOIP phone? Much as I hate Telus, I think I’m going to have to bite the bullet and sign up for their service. The idiotic thing with their service is that I HAVE to have a phone if I want ADSL. Even though I already have a VOIP phone which suits my needs just fine. I’d cancel my cell phone, but when I travel it’s pretty damned useful. On the other hand, even with the required phone, ADSL is only $10 more than the Persona service.
So I’ve owned a Mac in one form or another for the best part of two years now, and I’ve come across some software that makes life a hell of a lot easier. For the three other guys on here who also use Macs…
–Audio Hijack is a great Internet radio Tivo program. It grabs the audio signal before it hits your speakers, so you can grab from any source you want, be it Realplayer, iTunes or any other program that spits out sound. It also lets you time-shift. I use it to grab stuff off of CBC Toronto and NPR when I’m out, as well as a handy remote to jump between my favorite stations. I also like it for grabbing “Clockwork Orange Juice” off of CJSR.
–Quicksilver is a program that lets you circumvent the Dock when the mood strikes. You just hit apple-spacebar and then type in the file, program or whatever you want, and the menu pops it up for you. Hit ‘enter’ and hey presto, you’re done.
iSiloX grabs webpages and makes them viewable on a Palm Pilot. I scored it because Avantgo doesn’t support OS X anymore, or even Palm OS 5. iSiloX is actually better than Avantgo, so I don’t miss it one bit. Gave my Palm a new lease on life. The only drawback is a terrible Dock icon, so I replaced it with an icon of Homer Simpson as Mr. Sparkle.
Sidetrack, which I just installed, takes the Powerbook/iBook trackpad and lets you assign areas for scrolling and right clicks. The scroll function alone is great; it’s like I just got an invisible wheel mouse.
VLC used to be a clunky piece of junk, but it’s evolved into my video player of choice. There isn’t a codec (other than some flaky WMV files) it can’t handle, and I’ve thrown pretty much everything at it. It also plays DVDs and VCDs, though the Apple DVD player has a nicer interface.
World Clock Deluxe lets you set up a pile of clocks from around the world on a “clock strip”, which you can then call up or hide with hot keys. I use it for time shifting with the aforementioned Audio Hijack, and also to keep track of what time it is when I’m on MSN with friends in Ontario, or Japan. I also use it to see what time it is in Iraq and Kabul whenever there’s a live story from there on CNN or Newsworld.
Of course there’s the usual gang of Apple applications like Mail, Safari, and iTunes that make life easier too.
Oh, by the way, I just got a “thank you” on Boing Boing for recommending a NYT story about Mickey Mouse’s weakening brand. I’m surprised I beat Cory Doctorow to the punch, as I suspect he is actually connected to the net by neural interface and has a Googlebot searching for Disney ephemera 24/7. 🙂
Pure comedy gold to be had from the 10 worst album covers of all time. I have to get my hands on some of that “zip zap rap.”