Real quick-like, ’cause then we gots to go buy Tiger and some shoes.
- Virtual Stapler, for all your virtual staplin’ needs; and
- Getting in Touch with your Inner Al Swearingen, a seminar by frontier phrenologist Dr. Philo Elihu McGraw.
Enjoy.
Monthly Archives: April 2005
We don’t know what they advertise, but we’re pretty sure we don’t want it
Germans Take Lead in Exploding Toad Technology
Even more reason to loathe Microsoft
You thought the Ralph Reed bullshit was significant? Try this bit on for size, where Chairman Bill outright lies to NPR about Redmond’s flip-flop on the Washington gay rights initiative. Fuckers.
BBEdit: It Sucks
While it’s laudable that BBEdit has only crashed a very few times for me, it is absolutely unacceptable BBEdit possesses no autosave/autobackup/working-copy-recovery feature to preserve unsaved work in the event of such a crash. Deeply immersed in a problem, I hadn’t hit the magic save key in about 45 minutes — and then BB went away, and so did all my work.
BBEdit has famously used the “It doesn’t suck” tagline for years (it’s a registered trademark for them, even). Having now been bitten by this jackassery, I realize that such boasts are in fact false advertising. Every other serious editor of which I’m aware either has an autosave feature (of which some are justifiably wary, since it implies overwriting the previous version automatically) or some kind of working copy file from which one may recover from a crash. BBEdit appears to have neither, and this earns it a spot on my Shit List.
Update: In email back from support, their answer turns out to be “Yeah, we don’t do autosave. We might add that someday. Our advice is to save a lot.” Um, right. How about I just use an editor that doesn’t think it’s 1985, and that is FREE besides?
“An American Heresy”
That’s the title of Al Gore’s piece in Salon (from a speech on Wednesday). It should be required reading for all those who think the “nuclear option” — as the GOP termed eliminating judicial filibusters — is a good idea. Hell, everybody ought to read it.
Daring Fireball Speaks Truth
In our experience, John Gruber over at DaringFireball is occasionally too much a Mac partisan to be taken seriously, but more often than not he’s spot on. This time, though, he completely nails just exactly what is fucked up about the Adobe-Macromedia merger: it’s more evidence that the sales guys have taken over. Simply put, this invariably means more marketing bullshit and less technical excellence, or as he puts it:
Now that it’s run by a sales guy [Bruce Chizen, who took over from the founders], it has turned into a company that seems more interested in the sales and marketing of its products than in the products themselves.
Word. Gruber concludes with:
Like most sales guys, Chizen seems like the sort of person who believes that what matters most is not the quality of the product itself, but merely the marketing in which you package it. Marketing does matter, and so does salesmanship. But the main reason Adobe Systems has been a success is that they created and developed terrific, innovative software. Engineering talent isn’t enough; you need passion for innovative products at the top of a company. If that spirit continues to wither, Adobe will continue its slide into mediocrity, and will become just another software company. But if it becomes a bigger company while doing so, I suspect that will suit Bruce Chizen just fine.
Meanwhile, I suspect more and more folks will opt for the Gimp.
The nod to Gorey is implicit
We love ’em and all, but this is a little funny
Apparently, a certain Dell flatscreen monitor and the Apple 20″ Cinema Display use exactly the same LCD (a Phillips model). It sort of begs for a head-to-head, doesn’t it?
Fortunately, Engadget can point us directly to one. The verdict? No material difference, except in price. The Dell? Sometimes as low as $350. The Apple? A cool grand.
We never really wanted to, either, but the process is sort of interesting
Remember that Voodoo Knife Holder?
It’s apparently now available.
Must. Restrain. Self. We do, however, wonder if Mrs Heathen To Be thinks this would make a fine addition to the Registry.
And, frankly, we’re hard pressed to argue
Ol Triple-F points us to the Ten Worst Album Covers of All Time, or at least what Pork Tornado considers them to be.
We’ve given it thought, and have a hard time arguing with his selections. Particularly No. 7.
What you need to do if you live in Houston
See this play. My friends at IBP have staged the best goddamn Medea you’ll ever see, as God is my witness. I’ve seen it twice already, and I’ll see it at least twice more. It’s fucking AWESOME; it may be the best thing they’ve ever done, and we’re talking about a group over a decade old with a cover of American Theater to their credit already.
See. This. Play.
Even more reason to loathe Microsoft
They’ve been using Ralph Reed’s lobbying company.
And now, via Rude Pundit, the single most NSFW thing ever posted here
In which we contemplate the wholesale collapse of society
There now exist bras designed for unaugmented women to give the distinct impression to observers that they have in fact joined the silicon masses.
The Evolution bra is aimed at “women who lust after the look of cosmetic breast implants,” according to Brastraps Inc., a Florida-based company that introduced the new bra on Friday. The Evolution features a sculpted, graduated cup “specially designed to mimic the appearance of cosmetic breast implants.”
In other words, they produce ersatz fake breasts.
Like Sisyphus, but without the boulder, and only downhill
Mmmm, delicious creepiness
Yet Another Talking Head
Via Boing Boing:
It amounts to a kind of cultural censorship. Call me paranoid, but given all the manipulative tricks the Republicans have gotten up to recently, I am prepared to believe that this has less to do with Homeland security and more to do with keeping the American public ignorant and free of foreign influence and inspiration. An ill-informed, isolated, ignorant populace is a populace easily manipulated. Fed a diet of reality shows coupled with faith-based reasoning (an oxymoron if ever there was one) and you have a perfect recipe for a country in which the government that can do more or less whatever it wants. [Emph. added] Democracy becomes a farce without access to information. David Byrne
We think this might be more fun than Presidents and Assholes.
Mao sounds like an interesting game.
In which urge discretionary spending
Amazon is selling the Canon Digital Elph S410 for $249, which is (notionally) about $200 off. This is a 4 megapixel camera just shy of the top-end for its year. It’s also accessory-compatible with the prior Elph generations (batteries, memory cards, etc.).
Presumably, Canon is trying to clear the channel for the new SD500/400/300 Elph line, which are nicer — bigger LCDs, higher resolution — the SD500 is a SEVEN megapixel point-and-shoot) — but which also use the (more expensive) Secure Digital storage medium, so we’re happy to take last year’s model on the cheap.
Ah, the shame builds
Apparently somehow threatened with the frequency with which our native state embarrasses us, our adopted state of Texas has elected to step up the bigotry. Lovely.
Everything old is new again
“Seaside is a framework for developing sophisticated web applications in
We’re posting this just because they use the term “faith-fucking”
Dept. of Geeky Shit We’re Not Sure Is A Good Idea
Rhino: an implementation of Javascript written entirely in Java for embedding in Java apps.
Um.
We understand there’s a joke here at Heche’s expense, but, frankly, it’s below us
This guy put together a video clip of the original Psycho shower scene and Van Sant’s 1998 shot for shot remake superimposed. Cool. (Local copy here; via jwz.)
Presumably, this means we may now repurpose the term as a disparaging name for our Roomba.
Best. Headline. EVAR.
“Police in Ariz. Seek Monkey for SWAT Team“
(Thanks, Triple-F!)
What you see isn’t what you think you see
As it happens, our eyes are fucking liars. Bastards.
More Wrong Badness
Remember “doing a Lynndie?” Well, now there’s “doing a Schiavo.” Enjoy. But if you do, you’re goin’ to hell. (via)
In which we discover some amusing bits about Google Satellite Maps
We pointed out earlier the cool and somewhat creepy fact that satellite imagery of Heathen Central is available online. Turns out, we’re not the only ones who think this is at least slightly creepy; some images have been obscured to frustrate terrorists or attackers who might target somewhere like this or this; what’s odd is that a certain 5-sided DoD structure southwest of these two didn’t get similar treatment.
Dept. of Satirical Popery
Ol Diz has a whole category of Guest Popes lined up until those Cardinals get their little conclave done; our favorite should be easy to ascertain.
NOTICE
Just because we here at Miscellaneous Heathen are, paradoxically, Christian in nature does NOT mean we cannot be amused at Rude Pundit’s use of the phrase “batshit insane Jesus babblers,” especially when used to describe folks like Roy Moore and the Family Research Council.
He’s talking about the, well, batshit crazy Jesus babblers who are now all up in arms about the “out of control” judiciary who refused to keep the Florida state vegetable drawing breath. It is difficult to overstate how wrong these goons are when they start this crap. Ol’ Mr Pundit puts it this way:
See, the difference is that the legislature and the executive branches are elected, by majorities (allegedly), and thus the majority of the nation has a voice through those branches. The judiciary exists, ideally outside the realm of elections, to give the minority a voice. The logic’s simple: the majority will always have a voice through elections. But there’s others, up to 49.9% of the population, who’d like to be considered as part of the nation. And, sure, sometimes the judiciary will piss off the other branches, but, fuck ’em, welcome to the Republic, you know? Isn’t this basic civics class? Didn’t we all learn this back in middle school? Admittedly, the Rude Pundit was taught the Constitution without a Bible present to coordinate the articles with, but, still, and shit, this ain’t brain surgery. Hell, it ain’t even temperature taking.
Noo-ne-noo-ne-noo-ne-noo…
Here’s a fine listing of someone’s 25 favorite Sesame Street moments. The only thing that could make this better would be Quicktime clips.
Just too damn fine not to port over
Check out BoingBoing on the subject of Unintentionally Suggestive Comic Book Covers. Example at right.
Remember when we said Ridge was a useless dufuss?
Our recollection of Ridge’s speech makes us view this Wired piece as “astoundingly charitable” with respect to former Secretary and current Dufuss Ridge. However, the balance of the story is worth reading, as the writer spoke to industry experts with a more reasonable view of RFID in security.
Why travel?
JWZ points us to Google Sightseeing, which is darn cool.
How we at Heathen feel about the RIAA
(via, but being build on in several places.)
Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright…
We suppose they may have a point, but it’s still cool as hell.
At least some people find Google’s satellite integration a touch creepy.
[He’s] Lost Control
Twenty-five years ago today, Ian Curtis committed suicide.
Dept. of In-No-Way Surprising Developments
Back in the boom, serious web application development more or less began and ended with some kind of application server and lots and lots of Java. Now that many simpler technologies are growing more and more capable, though, plenty of folks are reconsidering this assumption, and with good reason. While Java is great for some things, when it comes to complex or demanding automated web applications, there’s almost no reason at all to touch Java. The LAMP architecture (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/Python/PHP) replaces it very, very well and much lower development costs and much greater flexibility. Don’t like MySQL? Use Postgres. Don’t like PHP? Use Perl and a framework like Mason. There are even whole new frameworks (with real-world examples) coming up behind LAMP, too, that will further push Java aside in this market.
(Obvious in the above is that there’s also no reason for most people to consider paying good money for a database server. This is why Microsoft is glad it has other products, and why Oracle has been busily finding other database-based businesses to move into as the database server itself becomes a commodity item.)
In which we explain why we’re quiet.
We’re in Chicago at a trade show, where we learned many things, among them “Tom Ridge is a terrible, incoherent speaker.”
April 8, 1915
Today is my grandmother’s 90th birthday. I spoke with her on the phone just now, and she sounds better than she has in months. It was a rough year for her, and we weren’t sure she’d make it this far, but we’re damned glad she did.
Happy Birthday, Mom.
Joe has a blog.
(Shut up. It is too a blog.)
It’s Two-Snark Thursday!
On the heels of Mr Diz’s bit below, we find this delicious smackdown in response to more blathering from Paul Graham. You have to be sorta geeky to get the context, but the actual bitchslapping is accessible to all.
In which we tease the Catholic Heathen
We link because we care
We care, that is, enough to make you watch the final scene from Seven as performed by stuffed animals.
Uh-huh. Somebody gettin’ bitch-slapped.
Mr Diztopia — not to be confused with briquet magnate Ol’ Diz, who is oddly appropriate just now — has turned both barrells of his snarkotron on some silly little filly foolishly babbling on in the Observer about being Southern in New York. Enjoy. We certainly did.
Why We Love Living in the Future
Our friend Rob just moved from Austin, where he lived for many years, to Chile to write code for a telescope. This is exciting for him, but sort of sad for those of us left in Texas. Or it would be, but for the whole “living in the future” thing. See, we here at Heathen Central won’t really notice Rob’s absence except under some very specific circumstances. He and his wife have an Austin-based VOIP telephone number that rings in his house in South America, and he still surfaces on iChat just like he did when he was in Austin, complete with the voice chat option.
When would we notice? If we went to Austin, in which case they would be unable to meet us for dinner without substantial notice and cost, or if we decided to visit Chile, in which case their location would be very, very convenient indeed.