randomwalks/dj

Command-Tab has some nice illustrations of lesser known iPod commands.

I grew tired of Googling each time I needed the correct button sequence to put iPods into their various modes, so I've put together this little interactive display. Click on one of the three darkened buttons above to display the key presses necessary to put the iPod in the selected mode. To use, Reset the iPod using the first combination, then use the Diaagnostic Mode or Disk Mode combination as soon as the Apple logo appears.

Hidden iPod Commands [Command-Tab]

 
Comment on this post

Originally from Lifehacker, on March 31, 2006 4:35 PM

I don’t know much about illustrator Yamauchi Kazuaki, but I’m really enjoying what I see. Yamauchi has a top notch sense of color, an incredible knack for design, and illustration skills that are sharp enough to kill a man… or something like that.

Originally posted by Jared from Drawn! The Illustration Blog, on March 31, 2006 4:35 PM

put your baby in a milk crate, tie a scarf to it [the crate], and drag it down the sidewalk.

Originally from serenalarogers, on March 31, 2006 4:34 PM

This morning Dav took me out for breakfast. Then he drove me to work...I was distracted on the phone as I prepared to get out of the car, but Dav frantically tapped me on the shoulder to look at the construction zone boards that are across the street from my work. Just as I peered over, I saw 2 construction men take down and carry a big board with "Dav 'heart'"....and below where that board was, there was another board with "Mie." In beautiful spray paint!

ht, he had snuck over here to spray paint that! Luckily, in the nick of time, he got me to work to see it. I ran over and took pictures of the romantic evidence, telling the construction guys they were taking down a love note.

Then when I sat down at my desk, Garth IM'd me:

nibblet: hehe "dav heart mie"
nibblet: just saw this
Kokochi: hey!!
Kokochi: you did?
Kokochi: they "just" took it down
nibblet: mhmm
nibblet: really?
nibblet: who took it down?
Kokochi: and I ran over and took pictures of the boards
Kokochi: the construction dudes
nibblet: oh, this is a different one
Kokochi: Dav drove me to work...and was going to show me...but then they were hammering it off!
Kokochi: but I saw it!!
Kokochi: isn't that the sweetest?
nibblet: This is another one ;)
Kokochi: huh?
nibblet: just walk downstairs and enjoy the fresh air for a moment
Kokochi: i'm talking about across the street
Kokochi: right?
nibblet: nope
Kokochi: oh?
Kokochi: um
Kokochi: walk outside 6A?
nibblet: yah, like you're having a smoke
nibblet: or like you're with jay while he's having a smoke
Kokochi: ok, I'll try

...

Kokochi: omg!!!
Kokochi: It's right there!
nibblet: I thought I should tell you before they took the containers back in
nibblet: otherwise, I would have left the surprise
Kokochi: i didn't see it...he had done another one across the street on the blue boards around the construction site
nibblet: heh
Kokochi: :)

My beloved husband spray painted 6A's garbage container that's right outside! [oi, are we gonna get in trouble for property destruction?? oh boy]

I love my husband.

Originally posted by Mie from Kokochi, on March 31, 2006 4:34 PM

Last Thursday marked the inaugural session of Jelly, a new semi-weekly work gathering Amit and Luke will be hosting at House 2.0.

Here’s the deal: Luke and Amit both love working from home, but they find that spending the occasional day working with others really helps get the creative juices flowing. Even though everyone’s working on their own projects, they can bounce ideas and problems off of each other and have fun doing it.

What’s Jelly? Jelly’s our attempt to formalize this weekly work-together. We invite you to come work at our home. You bring your laptop and some work, and we’ll provide wifi, a chair, and hopefully some smart people.

While you’re here, you can discuss and work with others, or move somewhere where you can work solo without distraction. It’s up to you. The goal is to give you a good, productive workday.

Our friends Ian and Jakob have already been over a bunch of times, and last week we tried a larger gathering with Ian (working on Notonomy before he left for his Gawker dayjob), Joshua Keay (worked on a really cool new OS X Dashboard widget), Amit (worked on Notonomy), Luke (worked on Joyent), Kellan (worked on Odeo), and Gil (worked on Squidoo). It was a blast.

We’ll be getting together most Thursdays, including this Thursday, March 16th. We start at 9:30ish (you can show up later) and run till whenever.

It doesn’t matter who you work for or what you do, if you think you’d benefit from working with a few other smart, friendly, creative people, email us and come to the next Jelly!

Originally posted by amit from House 2.0, on March 31, 2006 4:34 PM

Make your own commercial for the Chevy Tahoe. A few environmentally aware users have already made good ones skewering the SUV. (via)

Originally from Social Design Notes, on March 31, 2006 4:33 PM

While everyone talks about content being king, there is no doubt that design and aesthetics are a big part of what makes an audience sit up and take notice of a blog. Designers are often the unsung heroes of the blogosphere.

One Design Works for Millions of Blogs

Last year, we made our first big step in helping designers who use Six Apart platforms by standardizing the layout and structure of templates across all three of our products, Movable Type, TypePad and LiveJournal. With support for this new standard template, designers now have one set of guidelines to follow to reach the biggest possible audience. Instead of learning the details of one particular system, you can focus on what you do best: Creating beautiful, useful designs.

Since the debut of the standard templates last August, the total audience that can be reached with a single design has expanded to include over ten million blogs.

Introducing The Style Contest

In order to demonstrate the benefits of these new styles in a real and practical way, we decided to have a design contest. At the same time, three other driven and talented individuals from our community — Arvind Satyanarayan, Elise Bauer and Jesse Gardner — had the same exact idea.

So we joined forces and today are announcing the fruits of that labor: The Style Contest for Movable Type, TypePad and LiveJournal has launched! Designers: Start your browsers!

Design for millions of blogs. Or just make a few thousand bucks

Sponsored by Six Apart, Adobe and StyleMaster, this contest features over $17,000 in prizes, which includes $10,000 in cash to the Grand Prize and category winners as well as other great prizes. What's more, every qualified entrant gets discounts on some awesome in-demand design products.

The prize winners will be chosen by five excellent designers who have agreed to serve as the contest's judges: Derek Powazek, Jason Santa Maria, Kathy Scoleri and Joelle Reeder and John Allsopp.

So whether you are a designer or someone who loves a great design, The Style Contest is for you.

Acknowledgments

First, we'd like to thank all of you who use TypePad, Movable Type and LiveJournal. We at Six Apart recognize that design helps tell your readers who you are, and we want to make sure our blogs are as attractive and pleasing as our customers.

We are extremely happy and thankful to have our talented and creative judges on our team. In selecting them, we know that we've chosen people who not only understand design at a visceral level but are people who are well-respected and well-known in their field. They know their stuff.

All of us at Six Apart also want to thank and recognize The Style Contest team — Arvind, Jesse and Elise — for their Herculean efforts in making this contest a reality. They've already put in hundreds of hours in making sure this was the contest was the best it could be. Thanks to those efforts, we're sure we'll be seeing some exciting and beautiful designs.

And finally, we'd like to acknowledge you, the designers. Without you we would all still be using Comic Sans, technicolor horizontal rules, animated under construction gifs and blink tags. We thank you for rescuing us from that visual hell. This contest is for you. We can't wait to see what you come up with.

Related announcements:

• Jesse Gardner's post
• Arvind Satyanarayan's post
• Elise Bauer's post

Originally from ProNet, on March 31, 2006 4:32 PM

I’ve gotten a fair number of incoming links to my separate entries relating to MacBook Pro noises, and as I continue to make new discoveries and add new entries, I’d like users who are linking in to have a consistent target to link against. So I’m adding a new page to my site specifically to summarize my findings to date and point to other posts I’ve made. Please use this page as a link if you decide to send information about any of my MBP Noise related posts to a friend.

Thanks for reading!

Originally posted by Daniel Jalkut from Red Sweater Blog, on March 31, 2006 4:32 PM

"Spotlight benefits can also be enjoyed on the commandline, and this article explains how you can take full advantage of it from inside the OS X Terminal window."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on March 31, 2006 4:32 PM

Paul Graham on patented software. There's too much meat in this essay to excerpt any one quote, so just read the whole thing.

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on March 31, 2006 4:32 PM

"In a world full of bloated, grossly over-featurized software that still doesn't do quite what you want, Blosxom is a spectacular counterexample. It's a slim, compact piece of software that doesn't do quite what you want--but because it is slim and compact, you can scratch your head over it for couple of minutes, take out the hammer and tongs, and get it adjusted the way you want."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on March 31, 2006 4:32 PM

The bondholders, the city, and now the NBA seem to feel there is not much they can do to help. Here's the latest from David Stern:

"Over the past six weeks the NBA has attempted to broker an agreement between the Trail Blazers and the owners of the Rose Garden to sell the team and the arena to one of several prospective purchasers that we had identified. Unfortunately, the arena owners have not offered any constructive response to these efforts and recently advised us that they are satisfied with the status quo. Accordingly, we have advised both parties that we have withdrawn from the process."

If the Portland Tribune is right that the Blazers really can't move, it's hard to imagine what options Paul Allen has left.

Thank you, Mr. Uppercut for the heads up.

UPDATE: VERY INTERESTING STUFF! Here's David Stern's full letter. He outlines that he thinks the Blazers could be sold for about $300 million, with Allen and the bondholders splitting the proceeds. If those numbers are remotely possible, this situation isn't so dire after all. There's a deal to be had here somewhere.

Originally from True Hoop, on March 31, 2006 4:32 PM

As of OGLE 0.3b, it is possible to capture texture coordinates (UV) for vertices that have them. This is enabled by the CaptureTextureCoords flag. Coupled with the fact that GLIntercept writes out to disk images for all the texture maps, this allows you to re-texture your capture in Maya with a little menial labor, eg:

This has tested to work accurately on some applications (World Of Warcraft) but on others it seems to misbehave, so it is disabled by default. I am working with Damian Trebilco, author of GLIntercept, to give OGLE the power to do this image-texture-assigning work automatically. Give it time...

Originally from OGLE: OpenGLExtractor by Eyebeam R&D blogs, on March 31, 2006 4:32 PM

There's a brilliant sex column in this week's New York magazine that argues an interesting point: SMS text-messaging encourages New Yorkers to have more quick hook-ups, because it eases the emotional risk thereof. To quote: It's just the right level of intrusiveness: Your target gets the message even in a noisy bar, but unlike a phone call, it won't wake him up from a snooze in front of The Daily Show. You can successfully express interest, but texting's short format allows you to maintain an air of aloofness. And text rejection is much easier to get (and give) than struggling through an awkward booty phone call. "It's by far the best way to set up a sex date," says Kate, a 34-year-old designer in the East Village. "No worrying if your voice sounds needy or desperate or neurotic. In texts you can be blunt, erotic, funny -- all the things you want to be." Texting isn't just easy -- it's sexy too. By its very nature, texting is quick and dirty, so you can get away with MY PLACE OR YOURS? and nothing else. Plus the very private can happen in public -- call it exhibitionism for the shy. New technologies, of course, are always harnessed most aggressively at first for the purpose of porn: The photograph begat nekkid 19th-century pictures, moving pictures begat more of the same, and the first corporations to launch voice-mail technology en masse were phone-dating services like Lavalife. I'd been waiting for someone to start offering porn via SMS texting, but I clearly was missing the point. The value of texting is in mediating relations between two live people -- not delivering static ASCII smut. (Thanks to Emily Nussbaum for this one!)

Originally from collision detection, on March 31, 2006 4:32 PM

RSS died today, as its last sane evangelist walks away. -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on March 31, 2006 3:32 PM

Originally posted by miyagawa from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on March 31, 2006 1:49 PM

I just put this piece up on the IFC channel. It's rough footage for a larger installation work called Assembled Cinema. Actually they vetted the piece and put it up so now there is a voting process. I'm pretty excited about this piece. If you get a chance to vote on it please do.

http://medialab.ifc.com/film_detail.jsp?film_id=1354

Civilization stands on a precipice. A series of disasters can unravel the built-up infrastructure of a country. This is the way empires fall. Water supplies dry up and cities are abandoned. Storms and earthquakes destroy food supplies and roads. Disasters are always about disruption of normal routines. Think of an anthill. The ants are busy bringing food back to the nest. You come along and destroy the hill with your foot. The ants now have to shift into emergency response to get back to normal. What had taken them a certain amount of time to build is ruined in a moment. If this happens enough times the ant colony becomes unsustainable and is abandoned. It’s every ant for himself.

Originally from post.thing.net - A lean, mean, media machine., on March 31, 2006 1:49 PM

Facebook, the Palo Alto social networking company, has gotten a lot of buzz lately. It claims to have wrapped up the college crowd, one of the more lucrative groups (long-term) for advertisers, and recently expanded to offer its product to high schoolers. We took issue with Om yesterday for relying on statistics supplied by the unreliable Alexa to show that growth in Facebook's user traffic was beginning to stall. But now Om has gotten more data to back up his argument. Word is that Facebook will shortly open its network to people beyond college, and include Linked-In type features....

Originally posted by Matt Marshall from SiliconBeat, on March 31, 2006 1:49 PM

It's this Saturday. All the major engines compete for the funniest prank. Keep yer eyes peeled....

(I still think the King of all these pranks was Google's Pigeon Rank...Prank for short, natch)

PS - Track all the pranks at new FM Site Museum of Hoaxes...

Originally from John Battelle's Searchblog, on March 31, 2006 1:49 PM

Over on the Babbo website there's a section of staff picks. I especially like this older one from May 20003, Spring at the Greenmarket. Though it focuses on only three items, they're three things you hear foodies talk about a lot in the spring: ramps, sweet onions, and green garlic. I haven't been to the Greenmarket in Union Square recently but I imagine it's starting to get pretty good. By the time I'm back from Mexico, I hope it's in full-on spring mode. Perhaps I'll see if I can pick up some ramps. Also when I return, perhaps I'll check out Babbo, as I've never been and that's another thing you hear foodies talk about a lot here in New York.

Originally from megnut, on March 31, 2006 1:49 PM

I don’t always agree with Scoble, but the man doesn’t have an ounce of malice, near as I can tell. I think that, by and large, he towers over the people who’ve been giving him a hard time, and I’d advise him to tune ’em out unless they’re really adding value. To address a couple just in the last week: Note to Vogels@Amazon: There’s a word for companies that base all decisions on ruthless quantitative ROI metrics: Bankrupt. I’m an engineer and value numbers, but in business, sometimes anecdotal evidence is all you’ve got, and the anecdotal evidence that blogging produces good results for some companies is pretty voluminous. You don’t want to hear it, that’s your privilege; me, I tend to want to consider all the inputs. Note to Nick Carr: This perils of blogging piece is really poorly considered. Carr introduces his lengthy list of Things That Can Go Wrong with “Last year, the San Francisco law firm Howard Rice provided a useful overview of the legal risks inherent in employee blogging”. As a thought experiment, replace the word “blogging” with “email” or “conference presentation” or “teleconference” or “sales presentation”. Or “barroom conversation” for that matter. Quick, quick, you wanna be safe, you better lock all your employees up and never let ’em say anything to anyone! The point is that qualitatively, blogging requires no new policies and introduces no new risks. If your employees are going to say stupid things in public, you’ve got a management problem and a policy problem, not a blogging problem. Note to executives who are frightened of hearing what their employees have to say, or finding out what the world really thinks about their company: Carr has done you a real favor. Just go and ask your attorneys if they think blogging is safe, and slip ’em a copy of that list, and you can rest easy knowing you’ll never hear anything uncomfortable.

Originally from ongoing, on March 31, 2006 1:49 PM

---

From the comments:

Why, if there are so many interesting things in this [Cory Arcangel] interview and also this excerpt, the discussion will always start with "I like Flash", "Flash ain't bad", "I like Flash", "it is a tool" etc?? ... i have seen this with 98% of all articles where Flash is mentioned.

Strangely, Photoshop is still out of this circle. Photoshop is also mentioned here, but never anybody jumps in and says it sucks or it is gr8 or just a tool or whatever. Actually Photoshop is mentioned everywhere and never such strong opinions as about Flash pop up.

Let's change that! Who will start?
- drx (guest) 3-31-2006 3:15 am

Allow me to say as strongly as I think you'd like to hear, I hate Photoshop. I hate its characteristic '70s airbrushed look, I hate the "bicubic mush" from resizing (your term, drx, and it's great--I'm thankful Paul Slocum told me about "nearest neighbor" resizing or I'd be screwed with these pixeled bitmaps I do), I hate all those "artistic" paintbrushes, I hate the instantly recognizable effects ("mezzotint," "craquelure"), I hate the lazy "surrealist collages" people make with Photoshop, I hate working with layers, I hate the un-intuitive interface, I hate Adobe, which has criminalized the gray area of intellectual property disputes, I hate the constant upgrades that add features no one needs (I'm still using a version of 5 that came bundled with a scanner)--I mainly use Photoshop for cropping and maybe tweaking the contrast of a photo for the blog. I hate making art with it.

- tom moody 3-31-2006 3:40 am

I also especially hate the "smudge tool."

Originally posted by tom moody from Tom Moody, on March 31, 2006 1:49 PM

chapter from the Voyage of the Beagle

Originally posted by maciej from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on March 31, 2006 1:48 PM

Originally from hustler of culture, on March 31, 2006 1:48 PM

I'm an idiot. Thanks to everybody who wrote in with the secret hidden on JWZ's home page. A hint: It's less a mathematical decryption problem than it is a Zawinski social engineering problem. -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on March 31, 2006 1:32 PM

If God does exist, is He a jerk? "The moment that Adam and Eve ate that fruit, wheels were set in motion that would ultimately result in the doom of mankind. Without some kind of intervention from God we would all be damned. God does promise to intervene, but it's like building a nuclear bomb and setting it to go off in a large city at 12:00. Then, when all of the people of the city come to you for mercy, you disarm it for them. Does that make you a hero for disarming it or a lunatic for building it in the first place? The whole thing was orchestrated to make us feel dependent upon God. That says a lot about God's character." A rebuttal. -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on March 31, 2006 12:33 PM

"1. There is a website that successfully argues for the existence of God. 2. Here is the URL. 3. Therefore, God exists." -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on March 31, 2006 12:33 PM

AP: "Just six months after the Pentagon agreed to reimburse soldiers who bought their own protective gear, the Army has banned the use of any body armor that is not issued by the military."

In a new directive, effective immediately, the Army said it cannot guarantee the quality of commercially bought armor, and any soldier wearing it will have to turn it in and have it replaced with authorized gear.

e Associated Press on Thursday the order was prompted by concerns that soldiers or their families were buying inadequate or untested commercial armor from private companies - including the popular Dragon Skin gear made by California-based Pinnacle Armor.

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, which is usually mega-critical of the Pentagon's higher-ups, agrees with the Army this time. "The Army has to ensure some level of quality... They don't want soldiers relying on equipment that is weak or substandard," executive director Paul Rieckhoff tells the AP.

But Soldiers for the Truth contends that, "Despite all the evidence to the contrary, including [Army Program Executive Office] Soldier's own ballistic tests conducted at two Army research laboratories that irrefutably proved Dragon Skin was a superior product, the officers charged with providing America's warriors with the best protection possible continue to maintain that the Army's home-grown Interceptor OTV body armor is superior." The site also has the internal Army e-mail telling commanders to diss the Dragon Skin.

A. There may be Soldiers deployed in OIF/OEF who are wearing a commercial body armor called "Dragon Skin," made by Pinnacle Armor, in lieu of their issued Interceptor Body Armor (IBA). Media releases and related advertising imply that Dragon Skin is superior in performance to IBA. The Army has been unable to determine the veracity of these claims.

een involved in the development of Dragon Skin and the different technology it employs. In its current state of development, Dragon Skin's capabilities do not meet Army requirements. In fact, Dragon Skin has not been certified by the Army for protection against several small arms threats being encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan today.

Originally from Defense Tech, on March 31, 2006 10:45 AM

1. There is a website that successfully argues for the existence of God. 2. Here is the URL. 3. Therefore, God exists. -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on March 31, 2006 10:32 AM

Leet. A disturbingly comprehensive WiIkipedia entry on l33tsp33k. -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on March 31, 2006 10:32 AM

If you can believe its numbers, Clean Edge, an alternative energy research group, is showing that an additional $110+ billion market will be created in alternative energies (fuel cells, biofuels, wind power and solar) over the next eight years. That's more than $13.5 billion each year. Where else in the global economy are you going to see such creation? Where else are venture capital firms going to find companies to invest in that can target a $1 billion market? Beats us. That's why Doerr & Co. are beating the drum. (Courtesy Red Herring) (Via Rob Day) ....

Originally posted by Matt Marshall from SiliconBeat, on March 31, 2006 8:58 AM

Originally posted by djacobs from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on March 31, 2006 8:58 AM

---

From the comments:

Why, if there are so many interesting things in this [Cory Arcangel] interview and also this excerpt, the discussion will always start with "I like Flash", "Flash ain't bad", "I like Flash", "it is a tool" etc?? ... i have seen this with 98% of all articles where Flash is mentioned.

Strangely, Photoshop is still out of this circle. Photoshop is also mentioned here, but never anybody jumps in and says it sucks or it is gr8 or just a tool or whatever. Actually Photoshop is mentioned everywhere and never such strong opinions as about Flash pop up.

Let's change that! Who will start?
- drx (guest) 3-31-2006 3:15 am

Allow me to say as strongly as I think you'd like to hear, I hate Photoshop. I hate its characteristic '70s airbrushed look, I hate the "bicubic mush" from resizing (your term, drx, and it's great--I'm thankful Paul Slocum told me about "nearest neighbor" resizing or I'd be screwed with these pixeled bitmaps I do), I hate all those "artistic" paintbrushes, I hate the instantly recognizable effects ("mezzotint," "craquelure"), I hate the lazy "surrealist collages" people make with Photoshop, I hate working with layers, I hate the un-intuitive interface, I hate Adobe, which has criminalized the gray area of intellectual property disputes, I hate the constant upgrades that add features no one needs (I'm still using a version of 5 that came bundled with a scanner)--I mainly use Photoshop for cropping and maybe tweaking the contrast of a photo for the blog. I hate making art with it.

- tom moody 3-31-2006 3:40 am

Originally posted by tom moody from Tom Moody, on March 31, 2006 8:58 AM

This from an interview with Robert Caro, author of The Power Broker (fantastic), and a 4 volume biography of Lyndon Johnson in the April Harvard Business Review:

As far as I'm concerned, biography is a tool for understanding power: how it is acquired and how it is used...We're all taught that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But the more time I spend looking into power, the less I feel that is always true. What I do feel is invariably correct--what power always does--is reveal. Power reveals. When a leader gets enough power, when he doesn't need anybody anymore--when he's president of the United States or CEO of a major corporation--then we can see how he always wanted to treat people, and we can also see--by watching what he does with his power--what he wanted to accomplish all along.

You see this with lottery millionaires all the time. They ditch their wife of 35 years and spend their money flying back and forth to Vegas in a Learjet with 5 hookers, a tub of 40s and a bucket of cocaine til every penny is gone. Or Michael Jackson. Or Dennis Koslowski.

This was interesting: Caro described LBJ as a pragmatist, a realist who also managed to remain an idealist. I didn't know that he had voted against civil rights again and again. He voted against it for over 20 years, because the group holding the most power in the Senate were the Southerners, and he had to ally himself with them to accrue power to himself. Then the first thing he did once he was in office was pass a civil rights bill.

Originally from Caterina.net, on March 31, 2006 8:57 AM

How to make Vegan Twinkies (via rw)

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket, on March 31, 2006 8:55 AM

Bring Them Home Stamps. Valid, anti-war postage. For instance, for mailing your taxes.

Originally from Social Design Notes, on March 31, 2006 8:55 AM

"If you eat lunch with the same group of folks every day, eatlunch.at might help you!" I'm voting for Tacos Por Favor. They even have Mexican Coke. -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on March 31, 2006 2:33 AM

The Great Taco Hunt. One man's lonely but delicious quest to rate every taco in Los Angeles. -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on March 31, 2006 2:33 AM

Turns out the US Navy is the iRobots' largest customer. I'm not surprised or particularly worried, but it's a funny juxtaposition with some other news today: US government "intelligence" is investigating Lenovo for fear that "Lenovo [could] equip its PCs so that the U.S. can be spied on." Too bad the TALON doesn't dust surfaces, because then the military industrial complex would pwn my home even more than it already does.

You can read more about iRobot godfather Isaac Asimov over on the occasionally updated snarkout.org.

Which robot do you fear more? Thinkpad or Roomba?

Originally from hello, typepad, on March 31, 2006 2:32 AM

Happy birthday Kate!
Originally uploaded by gjs.

I hope it's the same Kate!

Originally from hello, typepad, on March 31, 2006 2:32 AM

The Blazers didn't hold a real practice Thursday, but coach Nate "Sarge" McMillan had the players come in, watch tape,...

Originally from Behind the Blazers Beat, on March 31, 2006 1:46 AM

We waste 26 million on robots no one uses.

Originally posted by mathowie from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on March 31, 2006 1:46 AM

Originally posted by jayirwin from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on March 31, 2006 1:46 AM

Originally posted by sudama from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on March 31, 2006 1:45 AM

Besides the always amusing browse through the SkyMall catalog, I was fairly bored and restless on the flight back from JFK to SFO, and I had the aisle, and my seatmates were popping up and down like jack in the boxes, so I had to get up every 10 minutes, and the only thing I could concentrate on was HEMISPHERES, the inflight magazine, which included an interview with David Lynch, famous movie director and director of Twin Peaks, which I loved, and who, if you haven't heard, refuses to talk about anything BUT Transcendental Meditation these days, and how it's going to save the world. Wasn't he a gun nut or something? He is an odd and funny guy:

Q: What does it feel like, this beauty through meditation?

A: It's the superhighway to the gold. People think that peace is the absence of war, but peace is the absence of all negativity. This causes negativity to go like sunlight causes darkness to go.

Q: I read that you drink lots of coffee. How much do you drink in a day?

A: I try to get 20 in.

Q: Cups? You know, there are people who say that caffeine is evil.

A: It's a funny world.

Originally from Caterina.net, on March 31, 2006 1:45 AM

No substitute for justice, but I'm glad she's getting paid.. and that The Man is taking a much-deserved L: L.A. to Pay Notorious B.I.G. Family $1.1 Million The Los Angeles City Council approved a $1.1 million payment to the family and estate of Notorious B.I.G. for legal costs incurred during the botched civil case brought against the City of Los...

Originally posted by jsmooth995 from hiphopmusic.com, on March 31, 2006 1:43 AM

Originally from Lifeblog, on March 31, 2006 1:43 AM

Originally posted by moth23 from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on March 30, 2006 11:28 PM

OH yeah

Originally posted by blackbeltjones from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on March 30, 2006 11:28 PM

several graphic design studies that focus on the information dashboard of the coolest car of the 80's, & its talking voice: KITT. dozens upon dozens of freeze-frame images of “Knight Rider” episodes were used to meticulously document the positions, colors & labels of buttons, read-outs & displays on the KITT console.
[juhaterho.fi|via dashboardspy.wordpress.com]

Originally posted by infosthetics from information aesthetics, on March 30, 2006 9:11 PM

"A designer makes a dancing baby and is completely taken aback that it spreads everywhere. Or a silly video circulates all over the web. Much of that is completely unintentional. But now people are thinking, How do we do this intentionally? It's still more an art than a science."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on March 30, 2006 9:11 PM

In what ends up being a great post on self promotion, graphic designer Neil Tortorella tells us how to write a great proposal.

For a lot of folks, writing a proposal is often wrought with angst. Where to start? What to include? Don't sweat it. You've come to the right place. I'm going to walk you through the process so you'll be whipping out potent proposals that close the big deals.

The potent power of proposals [Inside the Marketing Mind]

 
Comment on this post

Originally from Lifehacker, on March 30, 2006 9:11 PM

So, what industry are we working in again?

We got a message from our supplier who said he'd send the stuff. He sent the stuff. But it was the wrong stuff, totally bogus, we couldn't sell it. So then he re-assured us, "no problem kids, that's fine, I'll send another batch and if it doesn't arrive in time I'll let you have some from my private stash."

Hopefully he'll bring the right, good stuff to our show tonight. Otherwise, we won't have anything for our clients.

Originally from massless, on March 30, 2006 9:10 PM

ass="caption"> This post is part of Part of the MacBook Pro Noise Series. Instead of linking directly to this post, consider linking to the series link, which includes a summary of all findings to date and direct links to the pertinent downloads that users may find useful. Thanks for reading!

In my last post on the subject of the MacBook Pro noise dilemma, I dismissed with borderline contempt the notion that “opening and closing Mirror.widget” was a reasonable workaround for the CPU whine problem. I felt pretty certain after my experiments with tweaking CPU usage that any workaround would necessarily equate to equivalent CPU usage or battery draw behind the scenes.

I may yet turn out to have been right, but I’m now using the “Mirror Widget Hack” (MWH) instead of my own QuietMBP. Why? I just got the feeling that my machine was running hotter, mooing more, and generally behaving less amicably when QuietMBP was used to alleviate the symptoms instead of the magical Mirror.widget. The damned computer feels like a wise investment when I use the MWH! I love it again (mostly). So, to all the readers who felt dismissed by my jarring rejection of MWH: mea culpa. I’m sorry.

I don’t like magic, though. At least not when I can’t understand it. I’m ready to admit that MWH does something that brings my computer into a state of calm, but if MWH can do it, surely some other piece of software, that is more convenient to run than a dashboard widget, can do the same thing. I decided to start looking carefully into what exactly happens to the computer when you apply this hack.

First of all, Mirror.widget contains no code. Well, that’s no fun! How the hell does it fix my system, then? The widget is largely implemented in the form of a special QuickTime movie “mirror2.mov” that is somehow configured to automatically reflect the incoming iSight image in real-time. Great, so I can get the same system-calming affects by opening the movie in QuickTime Player, right? Right. But as soon as I quit QuickTime Player, the noise comes back. When you close the widget, the noise stays away forever (actually until you use some app other than Dashboard that opens and then closes access to the iSight). I thought I’d try to open the widget in Safari. No dice. Even after editing the widget so it would attempt to operate despite not being in the Dashboard - it silences the noise while the movie is visible, but the noise comes back after closing the web page. Get this: even turning off the movie in Mirror Widget, by clicking the little “i” in the lower left corner causes the noise to come back. Something about the (perhaps clumsy, but beautifully, wondrously clumsy) way that Dashboard closes up shop for the widget while the movie is active causes the system to get “stuck in good mode.”

I decided to whip out Shark, Apple’s profiling tool from the CHUD toolset. I figured there must be something different about “my computer doing nothing” before and after the magic MWH. To get a fairly straightforward sample, I quiet all visible applications except Shark and the Finder. Then, with the noise blaring, I took a 2 second timed sample of “Everything.” This means all processes on the system that are using any CPU time at all for anything. Then I silenced the MBP with the MWH, and grabbed an identical 2 second sample. I did this a few times to make sure there were no statistical anomalies coloring my view of what’s going on. The difference between the two samples? Almost absofrickinlutely nothing. In fact, nothing of interest I can pinpoint after multiple sessions of sampling at different rates, over different durations, and using different sampling configuration.

The Mirror Widget is magic. I use it and love it. Be warned that as soon as you use your iSight again in another app, and then quit, the noise will come back. But other than that, I now switch my allegiance to Mirror Widget. I just wish I knew why it does what it does. Maybe somebody