Who Are You? What Do You Want? Where Are You Going? Whom Do You Serve – And Whom Do You Trust?!
Really? You think someone here at TDB would be interested in a Windows Vista Crack?
If you could get me a sneak peak at Leopard we might be able to work something out, but I’m not touching Vista for at least a year or two so you’re wasting your time and mine.
The past, of course. Near distant and far distant… and more alive than you would think, here.
(Check out the other links for other color photo archives. Courtesy of Photon Courier, and company.)
FireFTP is a super simple file transfer protocol (FTP) client that plugs right into your Firefox Browser. Once you install it, go to view, toolbars, customize and drag the lil seahorse to your menu bar.
If you can drag and drop in windows menus, you can use this.
So easy, even a Marine can do it.
Via Lifehacker.
I swear I’ve downloaded more stuff via Lifehacker in the past three days than I have through anyone else in over a month.
In case you were under a rock or not paying attention yesterday, Steve Jobs and his crew changed the world again.
Jeff Harrel probably has the best take on this.
Perhaps I’ve been too easy on Apple and too hard on MicroSoft. Mike Egan has some opinions that I can’t argue against too stridently, but I will.
Zune: So you want to be an iPod killer
Microsoft’s Zune finally shipped, and everyone agrees: It’s nice but definitely no “iPod killer.” But it could be. And should be. I’ll tell you how in a minute.
In my Computerworld column Why Microsoft’s Zune scares Apple to the core, I argued that, unlike Apple’s overconfident iPod fans, Apple itself is taking Zune very seriously. In that column, I listed Zune attributes and Microsoft capabilities that could hit Apple where it counts—profit margin and market share. I never argued that Zune would be better than the iPod, or even that Zune would succeed. My sole point was that Apple is taking the Zune seriously as a threat to its profitable and dominant iPod line and has good reason to do so.
…
How to kill the iPod
The Apple iPod is beautiful, sleek and simple. Microsoft will never sell a media player that is more elegant than the iPod. That’s just not going to happen, given the DNA of each company. What isn’t inconceivable, however, is that Microsoft could create a Zune that’s more desirable than the iPod. After all, the Mac is more elegant than Windows, but most people prefer Windows. And that’s how Microsoft can kill the iPod: Make the Zune more like a Windows PC.
Let me say that in another way: The Zune can succeed not by copying the iPod, but by becoming the “Anti-iPod.”
He’s got a point. While I love my iPod and am excessively pleased with my switch to a MacBook Pro for my laptop, I know some people want the ability to muck around with their computers. Me? I’ve become tired of mucking about a computer when I’m not getting paid to muck about. When I’m at home, I just want my computer to be stable and to work well. It doesn’t bother me a bit that I haven’t wanted or needed to access my Mac’s kernel. Writing scripts bores me. I find it tedious. One of our commenters in a previous post mentioned the difference between a Mac and a PC was like the difference between a new Mercedes and a 68 Mustang. You’re going to be messing around with the Mustang and you’ll enjoy it. You get the Mercedes because you want to enjoy your driving. That’s where I’m at. I want to enjoy my computing, I don’t enjoy all the mechanics as much as I used to. Besides, I can customize my Mac right out of the box much easier than I could my PC without having to dig through layers and layers of menus.
Later in the same article he asserts that we want a multi-function handheld, Phone, Camera, Music Player, Email receiver and that if the Zune turns into that, it may knock the iPod down. My answer to that is, it would have to do all of those functions exceptionally well. The thing about my cellphone/camera is that it’s a lousy camera. My iPod is an amazingly easy to use music player. With the iPhone in next year’s future, I don’t think, I know that it will be elegant and functional before it’s released.
Yes, I’ve become an Apple-phile. I prefer the elegance and functionality vs the kit/do-it-yourself mentality of the Windows PC community. Lazy? Okay. Maybe. But my Mac has locked up twice since I’ve had it, once when I was trying to install Windows Media Player and once when I was trying to mess around with a beta version of Seamonkey vs the stable release.
Give me a device that works as well, right of the the box as my iPod and MacBook did and I’ll consider whatever they throw at me. I know that sooner or later you’re not going to be able to find just a music player or just a phone. Trying to find a flat panel scanner that WASN’T a printer was damn near impossible a couple of months ago. Multi-function seems to be the deal these days.
I blame Gen X’s fascination with Transformers.
Microsoft has got to be cringing.
The folks over at CNN review the new Zune with a NYT Tech Editor.
Now don’t forget, Soledad OBrien used to be the face of the tech desk at MS NBC. I’m guessing it wasn’t a happy ending, but still, that was harsh.
Summer has been mild here in South Texas, and so has the fall been: unnaturally so, for today it was into the 90ies, which made it necessary to turn on the air conditioning one more time. Usually it can be done without sometime in late September, or early October; the heat breaks and it is cool at night. It has been so mild, that the leaves on the trees are just beginning to fall; we haven’t had that prolonged cold snap that briskly reminds them that they need to be letting go and moving on, chop-chop. I trimmed one of the grapevines in front a couple of weeks ago… and the poor innocent thing is putting out new leaves already, under the delusion that winter has come and gone.
This has been truly the year of butterflies; they are everywhere, about the puddles and in the late afternoon a whole fair of them orbits the almond verbena. I have two, the size of small trees now, and the ends of the branches are hung with tiny white bracts that smell amazingly sweet on still air…is this fall, now, or is it already spring? We have two gardening seasons in Texas, and this is one of them. My favorite, as it happens. For the next six months, the weather will be lovely and mild— there may be a freeze or two, after Christmas, but nothing much to worry over, and in the meantime, there are butterflies. There are the little brown snout-somethings, but now we have monarchs, great lovely tiger-striped things and more than I have ever seen before, orbiting the buddleia bushes as if they can’t bear to tear themselves away, while the snout-somethings monopolize the verbena.
The sadness that we are supposed to feel in autumn for the end of all green and lovely things is focused this year on the street behind the neighborhood where I live. Stahl Road was a narrow strip of blacktop, a single lane in either direction, which for the longest time seems to have been no direction at all. There were empty fields on either side and deep grassy verges, and the backside of other developments. A couple of churches, the elementary school which is our polling place, and the high school which Blondie would have gone to if I hadn’t packed her off to the tender academic care of the scholar nuns of St. Francis, the site of a pumping station and water tower, a cluster of gas stations and little businesses at the intersections, and Ernie the Veggie Guy, selling produce off the end of his pick-up under the shade of a tree at the corner… not much traffic and all of that easily accommodated by a narrow back road, shaded with a double row of trees. But then one cross road was cut through all the way to the highway, and a couple of other developments went in, and the development we live in was extended all the way to Stahl Road, and an exit road cut through to it, and the traffic has been all too much for that poor little back-road. The City decreed months ago that Stahl Road was to be widened, but our rejoicing was mixed. The project would eliminate that place at the intersection of Stahl and O’Connor that accumulated a puddle of water the size of Lake Superior every time it rained… but it would cost us the trees that lined the roadway for most of it.
The trees would have to go; no two ways about it. Not enough space between them to accommodate two lanes-plus-center-turning lane, no way around that. And the trees were not the sort that people chain themselves to, or institute lawsuits about. They were not very well grown, or attractive trees, to be baldly truthful… not oaks or cypress or redwood, even, or very well grown or cunningly planted…just the usual sort of Texas trash-tree that sprouts wherever hedges have been, in a neat line along the verge, and making valiant attempts to meet in the center over the road and shading the sidewalk. They weren’t much but they were there and familiar most importantly, provided shade against the sun. This is a commodity rare and treasured in what is essentially a desert.
This week, the city crew came and worked their way along, felling every one of them, chopping the trunks into sections and methodically feeding the branches into a chipper. Another crew, with a small bulldozer, followed in their wake, grubbing up the roots and leveling the mounds on which the trees grew, and now it looks quite terribly bare and raw… and new. Another crew has been staging great piles of conduit; a second has been ripping up the sidewalks which had been previously built, and a third, relocating the utility poles to a position giving wider room to the new and wider roadway. The backsides of all those houses which were sheltered by the trees must be feeling their nakedness most particularly this week. It’s all going very fast, as these things happen in San Antonio, and our fear is that at some point all this work will stop and be held in stasis for a three or four years. The road looks so terrible without those trees, poor things that they were. I hardly know my own turn-in, without the row of spindly and yet valiant trees to guide me, after dark. All this week, Blondie and I have been thinking of this song, whenever we drove along this road:
“All the Birds in the forest they bitterly weep
Saying “where shall we shelter or where shall we sleep?”
For the Oak and the Ash they all cutten down
And the walls of Bonny Portmore are all down to the ground”
No, it wasn’t much of a forest, but we were used to it, and now it has been all cut down to the ground. Perhaps they will plant new, when they are done with it all… something sturdy, and fast-growing, and maybe as rich scented as the almond verbena trees.
I’m not kidding, but I do so LOVE the irony… I’m trying to install Windows Media Player for Mac OS X. Seriously, locks up like Sheila Monahan’s legs in high school…before Homecoming 1977…then ummm, damn that girl learned to..ummm, dance, yeah, that’s it.
One of the things that I saw in Korea that I wish more than anything else I had taken a picture of was a young man who must have had enormous confidence in his own sense of balance, and in the strength of his (reinforced!) motorcycle, for I spotted him one day tooling confidently down the avenue outside Yongsan’s Gate #1 with a full-sized, American-made, 19 cubic foot refrigerator, lashed several times around with ropes and bunjee cords ,balanced and standing upright on the back of his motorcycle!
Let’s not even imagine how he got it up there, would be getting it down, and what would happen if he toppled over on a turn… but for your amusement and education, I present the Lords of The Logistic !
(link courtesy of 2 Blowhards)
So I’ve had my MacBook Pro for about a week now and thought I’d let those of you that care know what I think so far.
There’s definitely a learning curve. Things are in different places than on a PC. For instance, you don’t resize photos in the image information or edit area, you resize when you export an image to a different file. Kind of cool and useful in it’s own way, but hard to find. Same deal with mirroring an image. You know, flipping it? It’s not where the rotate functions are. It’s a control click function that’s only available after you put a photo into a book or other form of document. Again, makes a twisted sort of sense that it’s available where you might need it, but it wouldn’t have killed them to make it available in the iPhoto editing area. I’ve learned how to ctrl-click in place of right clicking and that’s not that big a deal. Actually, I’m finding the ctrl click, fn click, option click, apple click thing pretty easy. But a lot of that has to do with the fact that my first word processor on a computer was WordStar and there were tons of keystroke shortcuts.
Hardware wise, I couldn’t be happier. The whole, “It gets too hot.” issue that I read about doesn’t stand up because I own a Toshiba Satellite. THAT’s a machine that gets hot. I bought a cool pad to put between the Toshiba and my lap about four hours after the Toshiba came home. I’m one of those weirdos that actually uses my laptop in my lap. Usually in my oversized LaZ Boy recliner. The keyboards is very nice. The keys are bigger than on my Toshiba and that means a LOT to a guy like me. I’m an old touch typist. I don’t mean to brag because nobody cares anymore, but I can type wicked fast. I came in when speed and accuracy in your keyboarding mattered. Having a keyboard that doesn’t cramp my hands into little claws by the end of a writing session is HUGE in my mind.
Now I don’t know if it’s just because of the duo core processor or if it’s because it’s a Mac, but performance wise, there is no comparison to any PC I’ve ever used. It’s just FAST. Programs OPEN. Tabbing between open applications is freakishly seemless. Civilization IV in fully tricked out animation mode? Smooth as buttah.
So far the applications that came with the computer work just fine. I may look around for a more powerful photo editor just because I like to play a bit more than is allowed in iPhoto. For regular cleanup and “family” style stuff, it works just fine. For mashups and goofing? Not so much.
I bought mine with iWorks installed. I’ve read good and bad reviews about the Pages word processor. I’m in the “It works just fine.” category. Actually, I prefer it to Word in a lot of ways because it comes with in a plain vanilla editing mode and you have to tell it to do something before it starts getting “creative” on you. One of the ways I knew the Air Force was in trouble a few years back? We changed the way we formatted our correspondence to fit the MS Word Standard vs bothering to explain to our folks how to use the technology to fit our standards. I’ve only played a little with the Keynote Presentation software, but it’s very cool. Much easier to drag stuff out of the iPhoto app or iTunes than it is to do any of that in Windows. Formatting, grouping, centering, etc. is cake. No worries there at all.
So, I’m not angry at myself for not waiting for the core duo, I’m angry that I didn’t go Mac with my first laptop a couple of years ago. For me it’s just easier and more comfortable.
Your mileage may vary.
Well, the 250 GB external hard drive has arrived, and the Mac Mini should be here on Halloween. Last weekend I made a Herculean effort to get RHG’s computer (Gateway P4 2.0 – GHz) to a) work and b) access the Internet. I had partial success with a., but the Internet access was more challenging. I finally resorted to downloading IE7 to a thumb drive and installing it. No luck. The best course of action at that point was to reinstall Windows XP Pro, the unintended result being that I reformatted the hard drive, lost everything not Windows-connected, and was still Internet challenged.
Plan B. was to replace the whole box with Real Wife’s old machine (Gateway Celeron – a real piece of crap) which since new has been afflicted with the silicon version of Alzheimer’s disease. It could, however slowly, access the Internet, but her games simply would not run. I virus-checked it with no results. After being driven crazy with RHG’s boredom, I told her to use Real Wife’s computer when otherwise not in use. Understand that RW’s computer has Norton Internet Security, is update automatically every night, and is virus scanned weekly. To make a long story short, I spent the better part of last night rebuilding the Windows registry. Something caused a Norton error that read “TCP/IP Not Installed”, meaning that incoming email was not being scanned. This came after RHG reported that Lemony Snicket’s A series of Unfortunate Events kept locking up with some sort of email screen. I suspect this was somehow related to her Hotmail account, although Instant Messaging may also be a culprit. I got everything back up to speed (including getting rid of programs that were mysteriously self-installed such as Weatherbug and MyWebSearch), and promised Real Wife that RHG would be forever banned from that computer.
Plan C was to tell RHG that she was getting her birthday present early. I realized today that I do not have a USB keyboard, so I had Real Wife pick one up during her weekly 20 mile track to Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, it has bells and whistles that require that it be used in a Windows machine. I will therefore try to borrow a keyboard from work until next week or, failing that, buy one from our local Dell “Superstore” (yes, in a town of 2,500 people we have a Dell Superstore). I don’t particularly care for the proprietor (or Dell for that matter), but it will work out because I can tell him that I only need the keyboard – I bought the computer elsewhere.
Which brings me to the point of this post. It should be apparent that there is a common thread to this and related posts by yours truly. RHG is a pox upon every computer she uses. I love her dearly, but there you have it. I’ve looked at the history of her usage, and all I see are typical web sites that an early teen would be drawn to like a moth to a flame. I suspect that malware practitioners using human engineering have targeted her demographic. Hence the Mac choice. In addition to a different OS, I am now pondering what other safeguards are appropriate. I know that Norton offers security software for Macs, but is it necessary? I realize that the threat will increase as Macs become more popular, but I would rather not pay for another subscription until I have to. Nothing on her machine is mission critical, so I suppose I can afford to be a beta test for the first widespread Mac virus outbreak (RHG may disagree, but it’s my AMEX card). The real question is whether that threat is a) already present, or b) imminent. I’ll spend the money if it is well spent, but it is just one more thing to keep track of. I am taking other precautions as well, such as migrating RHG from Hotmail to Gmail and looking for alternatives to IM (I am guessing that a mass migration amongst RHG’s circle will please many other parents, and perhaps significantly reduce the revenues of our local computer superstore (many of which are derived from near terminal malware infections).
On a related topic, I’ve spent the remainder of the weekend doing work-related patent due diligence. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve downloaded IE7 and installed it on all of the machines in my domain. I know, I know, IE is considered to inferior to Firefox et al., and many of you will probably tell me that its use is probably the root of my problems. Nonetheless, I like IE7. Patent due diligence requires simultaneous access to several on-line databases, as well as a word processor and spreadsheet, and everything worked smoothly. I particularly like the tab system, where you can have multiple web pages open without clogging up the bar at the bottom that shows what programs are running.
Tomorrow after work I have to patch the tube on RHG’s bike. Finally, a project that is a more traditional “Dad Project”.
As I’ve been mulling over the how and when to buy a MacBook, I’ve mentioned it to some folks at work and in our circle of friends. There’s a SSgt that works for me that has looked at me with complete disgust and asked, “Why would anyone buy a Mac?” (His primary reason for owning a PC? Gaming.) The short answer is, “They sold their product to me and they did it well.” The long answer follows should you care to read on.
First of all, let me rave, yet again, about Apple’s best little salesman ever invented. Yes, I’m going to gush about my iPod yet again. Why? Because dear readers, my iPod works better than any other piece of technology I’ve EVER owned. That’s EVER. It’s a handheld item that (gasp) fits my hand. I can use it one handed with my thumb on the scroll wheel or two handed with the finger from the hand not holding the pod, my choice, either way works. Unlike so many Windows based updates, when you get an update for iTunes, things have changed for the better. I can put a bunch of photos on my iPod, or choose not to. I can watch videos, or not. I can put TV shows on it, or not. I can add album art to alllllllllllll of the selections, or not. I get to decide exactly how it’s going to look and act and I don’t have to go digging through menu after submenu after submenu to find out how to do it. I don’t have to research online for 45 freaking minutes to find out that once again, I need to download some form of powertools or another to configure it the way I want it to look. It works. It worked out of the box and it’s worked ever since.
Quicktime: Once upon a time, I hated Quicktime. Every time it autoloaded it’s way onto my computer for some sort of educational software we had for Boyo, it managed to cludge things up. It would open but not run the video or the sound would be messed up. These days, I’d rather run every video thing via Quicktime than WinMedia or RealTime. It’s smoother. It loads faster. The sound is cleaner. Clean sound is becoming more and more important to me. My hearing is NOT what it used to be. Living on the ends of and around flightlines has something to do with it I’m sure.
The commercials. On any given day as soon as I get out of uniform, I may not be as young as the Mac guy, but I feel and dress like the Mac guy. Not a good reason for dropping a grand or two. So let’s talk about the earlier commercials. I’ve got to buy a lot of additional software whenever I want to do what I do on my PC Laptop. The Mac comes with all the basic software I need to play with photos, music and video. That’s what I mostly do on my laptop. Windows is getting ready to upgrade, which tells me that I’m going to have to upgrade every damn piece of software in the next couple of years. There’s my photo editor, my sound editor, my video editor. Sigh. If I buy a Mac, I get the latest of everything for that system and I don’t have to worry a bit about it. I can upgrade to more powerful tools in increments instead of all or nothing. That’s just HUGE in my book.
And while we’re talking about software, let’s talk about all the CRAP that comes installed on your Gateway or Dell or HP as it comes out of the box. How many HOURS did it take you to clean out the crap software, the 30-day trial software, the “who uses this?” software the last time you bought a new PC? If you’re like me, you’re still finding stuff that you never use, taking up space, taking up RAM, taking up your time.
Mac Users. You know who I’m talking about. Them. They’re so smug. They walk around as if they don’t have a care in the world. Ask a Mac user what they think of their computer and they will gush forth expressions of purest love, dedication, and devotion. You can hear the arias in their heads as they sing the praises of their computers. And that my friends is my primary reason for buying a Mac. Mac Users L.O.V.E. their machines. You just don’t see that sort of dedication to a product anywhere else. They walk around like they know something the rest of us are missing.
When I was down in The Springs, I worked with a couple of Marine Comm Officers. I worked with more when I was out in Hawaii. Let me tell you, when it comes to Comm, no one does it better or smarter than our USMC. You wouldn’t think so just in passing, but then again, they NEED good, secure, stable comm. Every one of the really smart guys, the ones who solved problems, the ones who had their brains wrapped around what the net was doing for our military? They all had Macs and could not figure out why the HELL the military wouldn’t switch. They also preached, to all who would listen, the benefits of Mac ownership. They all felt like the change was finally coming, slowly, surely, but they were pretty sure that it was coming. More people would be buying Macs and soon.
And you know what…they were right again. More folks are giving up the PC headache and are switching. It’s not just longhairs and science geeks buying them anymore. They’re going mainstream. The iPod sold more folks than just me.
So that’s why I’m switching to a Mac laptop instead of waiting for the new Windows OS and getting a faster PC Laptop. I think I’m making the best decision and getting the most bang for my buck.
I also really really want to be that smug about the equipment I’m using.
I’m seriously getting ready to buy a MacBook. I don’t game on my notebook other than play an occaissional hand of cards online, and I mostly write and edit photos and graphics and stuff for other things I do.
Experiences?
Comments?
Perceptions?
Update: As if someone were reading my mind over at AppleInsider:
Apple to update MacBook lines in time for holidays
Apple Computer plans to update both its MacBook and MacBook Pro lines of Intel notebook computers in time for the holiday shopping season, but may take some time before it does so, AppleInsider has learned.
Why is it easier to buy something online than it is to pay a bill online?
Just as we were fixing dinner on Sunday (pot-roasted chicken with lemon, garlic and rosemary, should anyone be interested) I ran the disposal so it wouldn’t backwash into the dishwasher when I did a load of dishes, but the water kept filling the sink and emptying very slowly. Vigorous action with the plumbers’ friend did not help at all… in fact, it got rather worse. The usual sort of caustic chemical goo emptied down the sink did not help either, although the metal parts of the drain looked amazingly clean following application of the goo. The water would back up, and then drain veeerrrrrryyyy slowly, which was not good. It was good, however, that water or sewage was not emerging anywhere else in the house… like the master bathroom sink, which is what happened last time there was a clog in the main outfall drain a short way downhill of the master bathroom sink. All the other sinks, toilets and bathtubs drained normally.
I am, alas, no stranger to my household plumbing system (said she, laughing hollowly!) I have replaced all three faucet sets in the house, as well as the disposal and the kitchen sink. The last time I had a clog in the main outfall; when several gallons of waste sent down the kitchen sink disposal geysered disgustingly up in the master bathroom sink a few minutes later, it cost me roughly $100, and an afternoon off work to sort it out. But I considered that it was money well spent; not just for the work done, all twenty minutes or so of it, but for the educational value.
Yes, I stood over the roto-rooter man like a deranged stalker girlfriend, watching every move and asking heaps of questions. It did not look like brain surgery or rocket science, and I was damned if I would pay that much money again for something I could jolly well do myself, with the aid of the kindly neighborhood rental equipment place. Oh, yes, they know me almost as well as the hardware store people… it’s where I rented the nailer and compressor when I replaced the fence, a tall ladder to do something or other, the long-handled arbor saw and all those other things one only needs for an hour or so every two or three years. (Northeast Rental Center, on Nacogdoches… ask for Dan. He’ll ask questions to sort out what you need, and then tell you exactly how to operate it.)
The manual snake rented at $15 for three hours. I had it sorted in twenty minutes flat, but I wanted to run a load of dishes through the dishwasher just to make absolutely sure the clog was dislodged. Twenty minutes, fifteen bucks, plus another ten minutes either way to the rental place, plus a morning not spent waiting for a plumber to grace your household with his presence. Works for me, people, works for me.
That’s Digital Video Recorder for those of you who don’t pay attention.
It’s September. Football Season has kicked off. There’s a nip in the air. The new shows are hitting the major networks. There are new episodes of our old favorites shows. Survivor is weirder than ever.
When we first moved here and decided to try the DVR with our cable package, we didn’t think we’d use it much. I mean it was nice now and then to record something that was going to be on later that night so you could watch it at a reasonable time. Recording Letterman to watch at 6 P.M. because I simply can’t watch O’Reilly work himself into a lather over some other imagined offense made by a hippie no one else has heard of. That’s an invention I can live with. Recording Glenn Beck at 7 P.M. because he is a sick, twisted freak and I like that in a person.
Tonight is a prime example of why DVRs were put on this earth. 7 P.M. My Name is Earl/The Office is on opposite Survivor is on opposite Grey’s Anatomy. 8 P.M. Deal or no Deal is on Opposite CSI is on opposite another episode of Grey’s Anatomy is on opposite the UFC on Spike. 9 P.M. This is evil at it’s purest. What the hell were the networks thinking? ER is on opposite Six Degrees is on opposite Shark. In some time zones, I understand the second episode of Grey’s Anatomy is on at 9 P.M. making this all the more evil.
Why do the networks do this? Every damn year I get comfortable watching good shows on different nights. I’m fine with this. I’m guessing you all are fine with this. And then the networks decide they’ve got to muck it all up. They’ve got to get in there and mess with a good thing. Let’s put THIS really good show up against THAT really good show and make America decide which show is better. I don’t want to make that decision. I want good television, which is a rare and wonderful thing, spread out through my week. I want sprinkles of brilliance, not clumps. STOP PUTTING ALL THE GOOD SHOWS ON THURSDAY NIGHTS. I swear, the next thing you know, BSG will be on Thursday night. I can only record so many shows at once. There are only two hard drives in my DVR.
And then there’s the classic; Take a really good show that’s too expensive to shoot and bury it in a time slot that no one will watch. This killed Third Watch and almost killed NYPD Blue before they put it out of its misery.
So my DVR will be getting a work out tonight. The problem with this time of year though is when to watch everything you record. Do you stay in all day Saturday to get caught up? I don’t think so. I mean come ON, it’s only television and we haven’t started really hibernating yet.
So, my questions to you are simple. Which new show are you most looking forward to? Which old show are you ready for more of? Me? I’m already hooked on Smith. The bit with the ankle bracelet and the cat killed me. Didn’t you think the cat was gonna die? Come on, that was just funny stuff. And I have to say I’m a Grey’s Anatomy fan. That’s got to be one of the best ensemble casts ever put together. It reminds me of how good ER used to be and how badly it’s sucked the past few years. I KNOW it’s a soap opera, but it’s a FUNNY soap opera.
You’ll notice Battlestar Gallactica isn’t my most anticipated old show. No. I’m still pissed at the way last season ended and the previews for this season, aren’t filling me with anticipation but with dread. I might be done with it. It’s not even on my top five. I’ll have to see what’s up on Friday night or see if I’ve got any space left in my DVR.
I listened to a story on NPR this week, about the finding of the wreck of the Macon, one of the great navigatable dirigibles that for a time – or so the great minds of the early 20th century assumed – would give a run for their money to aircraft. For quite a long time, beginning with the Montgolfier brothers, it was assumed that various forms of lighter-than-air constructions were the wave of the future – not those fragile little mosquitoes that were the prototypical airplanes. From just before WWI, and for some time after, it looked like dirigibles would be the kings of commercial aviation, the seas patrolled, and the continents spanned commercially by luxuriously outfitted air-liners. Images of great silver airships are ubiquitous in commercial art, and futuristic visions throughout the 20ies and 30ies; the Empire State building, after all, was topped with a mast from which it was fondly hoped to moor dirigibles. (The thought of disembarking from a passenger liner moored there, and tripping merrily along some kind of walkway down to the observation deck is enough to give any acrophobic a case of the screaming willies, though, which may be why it never came to pass.)
The Germans had developed such rigid-framed airships late in the 19th century, and used them extensively during WWI, first as bombers, notably targeting London and Paris. They were huge lumbering craft, capable of traveling great distances and staying aloft for many hours. Alas, they were also slow and un- agile, which made them splendid targets in offensive operations – and they also burned spectacularly when struck, since they were usually filled with hydrogen gas. Although such aircraft with a variety of types of frames, or no frames at all went on being used throughout the war, they were more utilized for observation, or on ocean-going patrols. But when the war was over, it looked like the day for long-distance rigid-framed aircraft had dawned.
The British built a series of them, one of which was the first to make a trans-Atlantic round trip, in slightly less than 200 hours, in 1919. That craft, and its successor both crashed and burned spectacularly, as did an Italian-manufactured dirigible purchased at around that time by the US Navy. In 1923, the Navy built an entirely rigid-framed aircraft designed to be lifted by helium, the Shenandoah, the first such entirely built in the United States. Two years later, while on a publicity tour in the Midwest, the Shenandoah was caught in a violent thunderstorm and ripped into three pieces. The command cabin dropped like a rock, killing all in it, including the Shenandoah’s commander, but the stern and bow sections floated down more gently. Crewmen in the bow section called out to a farmer on the ground below to grab ropes trailing from the nose and tie them to a tree, and when everyone had slid to safety, brought shotguns for the survivors to use to puncture the helium cells.
Another dirigible manufactured in Germany and delivered to the US as part of war reparations was renamed the Los Angeles; fitted out as a passenger liner, with Pullman staterooms and bunks, it made over 200 uneventful trips, mostly to Puerto Rico and South America. An Italian semi-rigid airship called the Norge, fitted out by a scientific expedition flew from Spitsbergen, Norway to Teller Alaska by way of the North Pole in 1926: it would have been the very first aircraft to fly over the North Pole, but for Richard Byrd in an airplane, three days earlier. the Norge, and part of it’s crew was subsequently lost on another flight over the Pole, two years later.
But enthusiasm ran high during the mid-Twenties, regardless. Progress would always be a little bumpy, seemed to be the prevailing mood, and all these problems would be worked out, eventually. The American company Goodyear was granted certain patent rights related to dirigible construction, and began work on two more dirigibles for the US Navy, the Akron and Macon. They would be essentially flying aircraft carriers, capable of launching and retrieving four or five single-engine patrol airplanes from a hanger-bay equipped with a trapeze-like winch.
In the meantime, the British government launched a great project to build two enormous dirigibles, the R100 and the R101, which would be the largest in the world with accommodations for 100 passengers. The Germany Zeppelin firm had begun to recover enough to launch an enormous airship named after its founder. The Graf Zeppelin would be the first airship to circumnavigate the globe, and with it’s successors, partake in regular scheduled transatlantic passenger service. It was hoped that the British R 100 and R 101 would similarly expand passenger service: the R 100 flew to Canada and back, with no other event that being caught in a storm. On return, it was put into a hanger, pending return of the R 101 from it’s maiden voyage to India. But the R 101, plagued by technical problems and forced to fly too low in compensation, clipped a church steeple and crashed in flames near Beauvais, France early in 1930, with the loss of nearly all on board. The British government quietly pulled the plug on subsequent airship construction; so later did the US Congress. The Akron, launched with great hopes in 1931 was caught in a violent storm off New Jersey two years later, with the loss of all but a handful of its crew. The Macon, put into service at the same time was also caught in a storm, this one off the California coast near Monterey in 1935. Most of the Macon’s crew survived, and the wreckage of it and the patrol aircraft it carried, has just recently been located on the sea-bed.
The spectacular loss of the Hindenburg, two years after the crash of the Macon, only added to public misgivings, although the argument has been made that the great airships were doomed, by increasing competition from commercial airplane services and the coming of a new war, where conventional air craft would be of far more use. But the fairly constant series of spectacular airship disasters probably darkened the public and the political view, too. In the long run, airplanes may have been as much at a hazard, the development of air services just as rocky, and the cumulative casualties just as many. But there was enormous prestige placed in those few great dirigible projects, and great expectations by the public made the various disasters all the more public and crushing. It would have been as if over half the Mercury or Gemini flights launched by NASA had failed spectacularly in mid-flight. No matter what the prestige involved with dirigibles, or the lofty goals, a lot of people just quietly decided it just cost too much, even if it wasn’t a technological dead end in the first place. Now there are only a few places where you can stand, and imagine a great silver craft, hovering overhead, or being winched into a huge hanger: this great hanger at Moffit Field, near San Jose is one of them. And now the underwater wreck of the Macon may be the largest piece of interwar aviation history still identifiable on earth.
Reader Kaj added this comment, which was deleted in in my haste to clear out an accumulation of 30o auto-spam-comments this morning 9-29-06
“Admiral Byrds claims of being first to the pole by air are at best a bit
tenuous. The first undoubted crossing was by Norge, incidentally making Roald
Amundsen(and crew) the first, and the first to be on both poles.
I would have liked to refer to Wikipedia, but their page on admiral Byrd has
been used by hollow earth conspirazoids, claiming Byrd found the entrance to the
inner earth(!).
So much for Wikipedia credibility. ” – Sgt Mom
I can so imagine my Dad doing something as essentially demented, but completely logical as this… had he been been born somewhere like Cuba, instead of being a second-generation Brit and citizen of the US of A.
It’s a pity in a way that the “truckonauts” all apparently live now in Florida – Dad would love to swap tools and techniques with them. (Hey, Paul… you ever consider building something like this, out of an old car??!!!)
(found via Tim Blair)
HD or Blu-Ray? Why?
The Playstation 3 has been announced. In two versions, $499.00 and $599.00.
Five and six hundred dollars for a game box.
What the HELL are they thinking?
Tron (1982), on the SciFi channel. Considering how lame this show was branded, when it was made, it is amazing how well it’s held up. Actually, it seems far more prescient today than it did then. Singularity, anyone?
Update: How interesting that they followed this up with The Twilight Zone: A World Of Difference (1960).
If you aren’t already checking out Mark Tapscott’s Carnival of Cars every week, check out his new one now. It’s getting better every week – there’s even a link to this post by your’s truly. 🙂
The Military Channel has a new show, GI Factory, about our military equipment contractors. Tonight, on episode 2, they are at the General Dynamics plant in Lima Ohio, where they refurb M1s – cool!
Update: Oh man, I wouldn’t wan’t this guy’s job! In the second half of the show, they visit the Beretta USA plant where they make the M9. At the end of the line, they have the government “lot test”. They take 3 pistols at random off the line, and fire 5000 rounds through them (they didn’t say if that was total, or each). But it’s just some guy (with another taking notes) who slaps a magazine in, sticks the muzzle in a hole in a hopper, pops off all 15 rounds, and then slaps another in, and repeats. Jeeze, I don’t care if it is just a little 9mm – 8 hours of that has got to be hell on your wrist. They’ve got to be rotating, and/or taking some extended “cleaning breaks” every couple of hundred rounds, or something. Why don’t they have a fixture to do this?
In most cases, I have been a supporter of Glenn Reynolds’ Army of Davids theory. But, in this TCS Daily article, he has simply taken it too far.
Having done some stand-up comedy, I know something of this. C’mon Glenn: The Lazy Muncie video you site names several (not necessarily comedy) “luminaries” who hail from there. Drew Carey is from Cleveland, Roseanne Barr is from Salt Lake City, Jeff Foxworthy is from Atlanta and Johnny Carson was from Norfolk, Nebraska. All cut their teeth in local clubs before making it big. This has been true from the days of burlesque, and likely before.
In the world of comedy, the Internet is another channel of distribution, not a revolution. In a way, it may be counter-productive, as it will allow everyone with some talent, but no refinement, to “perform” for a relatively elite audience, without the instant critique which comes from “killing” or “bombing”. Again, Lazy Muncie is a great example of this; it shows lots of promise, but really is neither extremely funny, or seminal. But, as long just about every town and hamlet across the nation has a little club with an open mike night, flyover country will still be the great crucible of American comedy.
Update: After doing some background on on our two Lazy Muncie protagonists, Kerby Heyborne and Chris Cox (not to be confused with our new SEC Chairman), disabuses one of any conception of it as some sort of “Cinderella story”. Muncie native Cox has been making his way up the writer/producer ladder here in SoCal for about 11 years. Heyborne is newer to SoCal, but spent years busting his chops on the “Mormon Theater” circuit in Utah. In neither case can you call Lazy Muncie their “big break”, as they both are part of Fox’s new sit-com Free Ride (Cox as Supervising Producer, Heyborne in the part of “Dillon”).
Philip Chaston at Samizdata blogs on a new IVF clinic in Britain, offering genetic screening for congenital diseases:
The £5 million centre will bring pioneering embryo screening techniques for the creation of “saviour siblings” to Britain.
In addition, it will offer testing for up to 100 inherited gene disorders such as muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis.
Embryos found to be carrying rogue genes will be discarded and only “healthy” embryos implanted into their mothers.
Controversially, doctors at the centre have already obtained the first British licence to treat a couple with an inherited form of bowel cancer in the hope that their baby will never develop the disease. The centre is to be opened by the private Care at the Park IVF Clinic in Nottingham within three months.
But campaigners last night said it represents a further step by the IVF industry on the slippery slope towards eugenics and parents being able to choose characteristics for their children such as blue eyes or blond hair.
Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: “Paying £5 million for a state-of-the-art centre in order to eliminate more embryos with disabilities sounds like aggressive eugenics. We need to develop real cures for genetic diseases, not kill the carriers.”
This may seem a bit odd to us here in the US, where such procedures have been relatively commonplace for years. For all the talk of the antediluvian nature of America’s “Religious Right”, the medical regulatory environment in Britain is far more restrictive.
Eugenics is a term with a lot of emotional impact, due to its association with Nazi Germany and genocide. But the key difference here is the absence of state coercion. Indeed, to the clear thinking and amoral individual, this liberal eugenics lacks the ethical pitfalls of the lamentable chapter in human history. As I see it, only the hardcore Life Begins at Conception crowd could have objection to this. But they have a Luddite objection to IVF procedures in the first place, so nothing new there.
As well, the article uses the term designer babies quite liberally. To me – and I believe I’m in the majority, at least here in the US – genetic selection doesn’t imply design. A real designer baby would be one which has had its genome actually altered to achieve the desired (normal, exceptional or even superhuman) traits. We have a little ways to go with our science before we are there.
Glenn Reynolds seems to have been in a motorhead mood yesterday. First, he links to this Autoblog post, about the new prototype Mazda hydrogen/gasoline RX-8, then to this this Jay Leno article in Popular Mechanics. The Leno article, coincidentally, features a pic of Jay with the lovely original Mazda Cosmo.
But I believe Autoblog’s Chris Paukert is a bit misleading, when he says the RX-8s are “street legal.” I don’t know about the specifics of Japanese law. But here in California, factory prototypes (to say nothing of alternative fuel vehicles) enjoy legal loopholes that don’t apply to the cars they might sell to rank-and-file drivers. So Glenn, you might have a VERY long wait for your test drive. That is, unless you can exploit your “celebrity” status. 😉
But BMW is still way ahead of Mazda in hydrogen combustion technology. The reader should note here that, in either case, these are quite different than the hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, as, rather than electric motors (and the fuel cell, of course), they use a more-or-less conventional internal combustion engine.
Some commenters on the Autoblog post lumped the Mazda in with the likes of the Toyota Prius, calling it a “hybrid”; when the term is used in that context, it is a misnomer. But “hybrid” can be applied to a lot of different technologies, and it can be quite confusing to the layperson. The Prius is an electric/internal combustion motive system hybrid. The Mazda is a hydrogen/gasoline fuel system hybrid.
I find it difficult to get too very excited about any of this. Popular hybrids, such as the Prius, do deliver better mileage than their conventional counterparts, but not that great. This is particularly true if one adopts a more intelligent urban driving style than the constant accelerate/brake cycle common to most Americans. And, as for hydrogen, any way you get it requires so much more energy than gasoline, or any other fossil fuel, that it simply is not economical. As well, when deriving hydrogen from the hydrocarbons in fossil fuels (the more economical alternative, as compared to electrolysis of water), the point of airborne emissions is simply moved from the automobile itself to the chemical plant, which, in the case of the Honda Home Energy Station (which reforms natural gas), is in the same chunk of atmosphere as the automobile it fuels.
Of course, hydrogen vehicle fuel, derived by simple, Very High Temperature, or perhaps even plasma-phase electrolysis (PDF), using clean and abundant nuclear power, is the natural end point of it all – once all the fossil fuel is gone (and we realize the actual environmental impact of biofuels). But, for the moment, the Earth’s proven reserves of petroleum keep going up and up. And, while it’s far more expensive to extract and refine bituminous sand and shale oil than light sweet crude, the total well-to-wheel cost is still far below that of hydrogen.
Than there is the matter of complexity, and that’s where Jay comes in. In his PopMech article, he laments the fact that owner’s manuals never say anything about basic and emergency maintenance anymore. Well, while I can’t help a bit of nostalgia for “the good ol’ days” myself, we all must realize that we can never go home again. Cars are becoming more complex, and hybrid technology, ANY hybrid technology, promises only to accelerate that trend.
This brings us back to BMW. The hybrid systems in cars available to us today achieve most of their economy by recapturing the kinetic energy of the moving vehicle during deceleration. As such, there is nothing to be gained in steady cruising. In an earlier post, I made the mistake of stating that contemporary gasoline internal combustion engines were over 98% efficient, without stating that I was writing merely of the combustion of the gasoline itself, and was corrected by at least one reader. About two-thirds of that energy is lost to waste heat, about evenly split between the exhaust (part of which can be recovered by a turbocharger), and the cooling system. To recover more of that waste energy, BMW has developed a steam hybrid system:
The TurboSteamer has two separate components: a high-temperature loop [red] heated by the exhaust system and a low-temperature loop [blue] heated by engine coolant. The circuits follow different paths but feed power into the same place. In the high-temperature loop, an electric pump circulates distilled water. First stop: a steam generator that vaporizes the water. A superheater further heats the steam to above 1,000?F. From there, steam spins a piston-driven expander, which powers a belt drive that helps turn the crankshaft. Then, the steam hits a condenser, which cools it back down to a liquid state.
The low-temperature loop—which assists the high-temperature loop—works similarly but uses ethanol because it turns into steam at just 173?. Its pump drives the ethanol through a steam generator heated by engine coolant (the ethanol actually helps cool the engine) and then into a second steam generator that it shares with the primary circuit. Steam exits at about 300? and flows into its own expander, which adds power via a belt drive to that of the high-temperature expander. On exiting, the ethanol flows through the car’s radiator, which cools it back down to liquid.
Wow, three different systems, and none of it user serviceable. Jay must be delighted. 🙂
For those of you who liked my earlier post, of hybrids between the Chevy El Camino and other GM A-Body cars, I’m sure you’ll really get a tickle out of the “Benz-El”.
In case you didn’t notice the emblem on the right rear, it’s based upon the legendary 450SEL 6.9. 🙂