When I heard about the fire at the Cosmopolitan on the Canal apartments last Thursday morning, my first thought was “[it was arson][1]”. (Investigations have just announced that is the finding.) My second thought was that in this down economy, everyone is hurting, and someone wanted out of the huge luxury condo project. We’ll see where that one goes.
[1]: http://www.indystar.com/article/20090318/LOCAL18/903180381
Apparently, there is no way to directly run the new iMovie ’09 on a PowerPC G4 processor. (Not that I would blame them, since even the good G4s are fairly slow by today’s standard, and Apple wants to keep up a level of satisfaction with their products.) Anyway, [there is a work-around available](http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20090130074400511) if you ever want to try. (Which I probably will, so I note it here.)
> To patch iMovie ’09 so that it will run on a PowerPC G4, Control-click on iMovie and pick Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu. In the new window that appears, navigate into Contents » MacOS. Now you’ll need a hex editor such as the free HexEdit; once you have that, edit the file iMovie in the MacOS folder.
>
> Use the File » Go To Address function in HexEdit to go to the following addresses, and replace each existing entry at those addresses (7C 08 02 A6) with 4E 80 00 20. The addresses are 15fb9c, 15fc7c, and 15fe00.
>
> What you’re doing here is replacing the PowerPC instruction for mflr r0, which basically initializes the stack for the called function, with blr, which essentially causes the called function to always return, voiding the purpose of the function. So when the function is the PowerPC check, you’ve essentially patched your way around it.
>
> When done, save the file and quit HexEdit, and iMovie ’09 should launch on your G4.
When asked if I would be interested in pursing a opportunity to work on an overseas project (3 weeks in country, 3 weeks at home, with a projection of 2 or 3 trips), I replied in a manner which would make [Gilbert and Sullivan][1] proud:
> I am not adverse to further investigation of this opportunity.
(As everyone knows, Gilbert and Sullivan are famous for songs “full of words, and music, and signifying nothing”, as first noted by [Tom Lehrer][2] in his song Clementine.)
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_and_Sullivan
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer
If March Madness can be seen as a religious experience, then my [alma mater][0] was just crowned the King of Kings. The number one #1 seed. But this weekend there was a heck of a lot of talk about how the [Big East][1] wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. And how, no, they weren’t that good of a conference. I think the seedings and the math of the situation tell a different story. For the seven teams from the conference that made the tournament there are 3 #1s, 2 #3s and 2 #6s. This leaves
* The mean seed for the teams is a three.
* The median seed for the teams is a three.
* The mode seed for the teams is a one.
When was the last time that so many teams from the same conference had this good of a seed?
[0]: http://uoflsports.com/
[1]: http://www.bigeast.org/
A while back I thought it would be a good idea to list the sites I tend to look at every morning—my morning read. Then, or so the thought went, if I couldn’t think of a good description of why I read the site, I could take it out of my list and not have to worry about it. The sites aren’t out of the list (yet), but I have noted that some don’t have a good description. Maybe they will go someday.
First, I read the comics of the day for a bit of levity:
* [Questionable Content](http://www.questionablecontent.net/)
* [Daily Comics](http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/buildcp.mpl?v=3.0&quality=high&cpp=100&c=103&c=153&c=51&c=74&c=18&c=113&c=37&c=14&c=136&c=67&c=33&c=53&c=57&c=81) – An assortment of comics from the Houston Chronicle. I started with them back in the mid-nineties when they were about the only site that had the funny pages online.
And then take a look at some of the news and opinion out in the world:
* [Daring Fireball](http://daringfireball.net/) – All things macintosh and otherwise interesting
* [NSLog();](http://nslog.com/)
* [Greg in the Desert](http://greginthedesert.net/) – Since his site was named “For the H*ll of It”
* [The Unofficial Apple Weblog](http://www.tuaw.com/)
* [Consumerist](http://consumerist.com/)
* [LifeHacker](http://lifehacker.com/)
* [Unclutterer.com](http://unclutterer.com/)
And then there are the RSS feeds (courtesy of [My Yahoo!](http://my.yahoo.com/)). I keep thinking of switching to a better feed reader, but that always seems like too much work:
* [Rands in Repose](http://www.randsinrepose.com/) – Thoughts on Engineering Management.
* [SharkTank](http://blogs.computerworld.com/sharky) – Funny stories of IT with a bunch of crazies posting comments.
* [HawkWings](http://www.hawkwings.net/) – A site dedicated to Mail on the mac, which unfortunately has not been publishing in quite a while.
* [43 Folders](http://www.43folders.com/) – All things Merlin
* [Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes](http://dougscripts.com/itunes/) – A reminder that I need to gte back to editing my AppleScripts. Unfortunately, they got to the point where they were “good enough” and I have mostly given up on them.
* [Mac OSX Hints](http://www.macosxhints.com/) – Full of hints that I never have the time to implement, but I still try to scan the headlines occasionally.
And, on Sunday I check out the new cards at [Post Secret](http://www.postsecret.com/), to make me feel a little better and help me realize my life isn’t nearly as screwed up as it could be.
I have hated [Quicken](http://quicken.com/) for a long time. (In fact, my [third post here][1], was a rant about the 2004 version beta test ending before any real changes had been made or bugs reported being fixed. And that was the second beta test cycle I had been a part of.) The Mac version of Quicken has been a red-headed stepchild for a very long time.
The only thing that has kept me with it has been that I have known the user interface and didn’t want to learn a new one. Assuming that the version of Quicken eventually does come out (it’s been over 2 years since the last one), it will have a completely different interface. So I might as well look at switching. But that is for another post. This was just supposed to be a rant about this dialog box in Quicken 2007:
If the only option I have is to save the report, then don’t popup a box asking me if I want to save. Just bring up the box where I actually need to save (so I can hit cancel anyway). I really need to start looking at the other options again.
[1]: http://moo.plaidcow.net/2003/07/quicken_2004_beta_test_ending
If you ever have an doubts as to why [Comcast][1] is evil, check out the latest update to the terms of service:
_Customer equipment consists of software or services that you elect to use in connection with the Services or [Comcast][1] Equipment._
Anything that you connect to the [Comcast][1] equipment is considered customer equipment. (Fair enough.)
_You agree to allow us and our agents the rights to send software and/or “downloads” to the Customer Equipment._
Yep, we can install anything we want.
_Comcast has no responsibility for the operation or support, maintenance or repair of any Customer Equipment to which Comcast or a third party has sent software or “downloads”._
And we’re not responsible if anything breaks.
_You are enabling and authorizing [Comcast][1], it’s authorized agents and equipment manufacturers to send updates to the Customer Equipment at any time is it determined necessary to do so as part of the Services. Such code updates may change, add or **remove** features or functionality of any such equipment._
Any we may intentionally break things, so neener, neener, neener.
[1]: http://www.comcast.com/
As a sort of making small talk at work, I usually ask some form of “how’s it going” to at least half a dozen people a day. THen I got the bright idea of writing the responses down. I think they can tell you a lot about a person. So, here they are. The answers to “How’s it going?”:
* Slowly and squirrelly
* However they tell me it is going
* I’m here
* Just another day in paradise
* Doing pretty good, thanks
* Great! _And if you reply “That’s good”, the retort “No, that’s great!” comes back_
What’s your favorite retort, or have you even thought about it?
There was a [Consumerist][0] article talking about the real cost of a cell phone. [Are You Actually Paying More Than $3 A Minute To Use Your Cellphone?][1] looked at an article (which seemed to discount all of the discounts) that found some people are paying $3 a minute for their cell coverage.
This got me thinking about how much we pay for ours. Of course, I took the simple way out. Last month, the three lines we have used 2606 minutes for a total of $100.70, or 3.84¢ a minute. Not too shabby, especially since we don’t have a home phone.
[0]: http://consumerist.com/
[1]: http://consumerist.com/5166762/are-you-actually-paying-more-than-3-a-minute-to-use-your-cellphone
I’m starting to think that [Google][0] can read my mind. I told it I wanted to search for “[hoem epot][1]” and it figured out what I actually meant and made the link I actually wanted the first one one the page. How much better can you get?
Of course, along this same lines, if you ever have need for a spell checker, or have a word and you can’t get close enough to the correct spelling to get your spell checker to suggest the right one, try pasting it into [Google][0]. It does a pretty good job of figuring out what you meant.
[0]: http://www.google.com/
[1]: http://www.google.com/search?q=hoem+epot
