July 2009 Archives

Maybe I've just been in a bad mood lately, I don't know... BUT!

When it takes me more time to get the damned AppleTV up and running so I can watch it while I work out than the amount of time I spend working out, something is wrong. And AppleTV technical support has the nerve to tell me that they hardly ever get any calls because the device "just works." Bull!

Mine so rarely works when I first turn it on that I actually hate using it!

And while I'm griping about Apple...

Version 3.0 of the iPhone/iPod Touch operating system is almost up to what I expected from version 1.0 of the OS. Why did it take Apple so long to get it right?! Even in version 3.0, Apple is missing a feature I expect: the ability to show everything on the device screen (not just movies, so don't tell me it can;t be done) through their cable connected to an external projector. That feature still is unavailable, and the work around to get a satisfactory result for teaching and demonstrating the use of the device is nothing less than sheer horror itself--involves downloading and installing the software development kit for the iPod Touch/iPhone?! Get real. Most of us are mere mortals!

And let me blow off steam about one other thing while I'm in a mood with this company I have loved for so many years. Every time I connect an iPod Touch to iTunes, my iTunes screen is taken over by this horribly annoying full screen advertisement to purchase the new OS 3.0 for the device?! How many times must I decline before you leave me alone?!

How rude! How in your face! How disgusting! Jerks, I say!

Then there's the Final Cut Pro suite upgrade... The only thing remarkable about this minimalist, completely unimpressive upgrade is steep upgrade cost! And Apple just quietly drops Shake as the Final Cut Pro upgrade is released? By the way, where is an upgrade to Aperture, which hasn't seen any improvements for at least two years and has some really significant performance issues that need to be addressed? (I've mentioned before here and here that I stopped using the product because of them.)

And finally, why the hell does Apple insist on protecting the wretched AT&T when they deny us MMS (a function they offer non iPhone users!!) and unfettered access to the tethering functionality of the iPhone as well as a truly high speed, pervasive, ubiquitous network access over 3G, and charge us insane prices (not even thinking about the absurd text messaging fees) for the poor network we get! Other carriers around the world offer this to their iPhone customers!

I hope the FCC eats both companies for lunch*. Fat chance in hell!

* Federal regulators want to know if AT&T and Apple worked to together to reject mobile apps for Google’s innovative Voice service, sending letters to the companies asking them to explain this incident and the policies behind the secretive and lucrative iPhone App store.

via Wired News: Top Stories

Amazon's mp3 store has another one of those deals today where you can get hours and hours of classical musics for pennies a song: 99 Bach masterpieces (8+ hours!) for $2.99. Even though Bach's works preceded copyright protection, this is a good example of how our culture benefits from sensible copyright term limits: eight hours of some of the finest music ever composed for about the price of a Happy Meal. More good classical music mp3 deals here.

via kottke.org

I've actually been thinking about the horrid outcome of making beauty nothing more than vacuous atmosphere requiring no cognitive interaction whatsoever, just vague mindless awareness devoid of the rich attention of soul deserved. Then when I read Jason's comment about 99 works of Bach, arguably the greatest composer to ever have walked the face of the earth, for the cost of a happy meal, I laughed out loud--a laugh of sadness.

It's outrageously sad that such beauty is so unappreciated, that so many people living today, in a time when they have access to so such of the earth's beauty don't see, hear, or sense it in any way.

Somehow I totally missed Boz Scaggs' music, but I love it! Check out this one at last.fm! I was just listening to it.

Breakdown Dead Ahead by BOZ SCAGGS

As iPhone users outside the United States begin to enjoy tethering and multimedia messaging services (MMS), AT&T’s exclusive hold on the iPhone angers existing customers and may be irritating Cupertino as well. The cellular provider is slow to provide tethering and MMS, and it’ll likely charge a hefty sum once it gets around to adding them. Add long service contracts, higher data rates, and unfair usage conditions, such as the inability to use SlingPlayer over 3G even while other AT&T phones can, and you’ve got plenty of good reasons to hate your wireless carrier.

Ideally: AT&T’s exclusive deal with Apple could come to an end, by contract or by Congressional action, and Apple would take its business elsewhere, namely to Verizon. That, or AT&T would stop treating iPhone users like second-class customers.

link: Top 10 iPhone annoyances -- and how to fix them | iPhone | iPhone Central | Macworld

I don't hold any hope for Congressional action! Hah!! I suspect they are in bed with corruption iteself.

This title has the ring of truth: Beleaguered Microsoft in decline; Windows-maker the digital equivalent of General Motors.

Why does corporate America find innovation so difficult?! Oh, that's right, we need to cut art, music, theater, dance out of the public school curriculum and test basic fact memorization.

I need to curse!

When I think of Michigan, I think of the failed auto industry, unemployment, and what has gone wrong with capitalism for the past 50 years.

This is really a shame, because I had completely forgotten the two summers I spent as a counselor at Interlochen Summer Music Camp, two of the most awesome summers of my life. I've blogged about this before, back in 2004.

I recall how beautiful this place is: the lakes, the sunsets, the sand dunes. Wow! How sad that I quickly let go of the good memories because of the current economic malaise.

So how did I have my memory jolted to recall the beauty of Michigan? I came across Richard Thompson's photo stream on Michigan Lighthouses. He's a brilliant photographer kind enough to share the location and settings information of his photographs. You absolutely want to check out his photos. Click the thumbnails above to go to his flickr stream. The words "gorgeous" and "stunning" do an injustice.

Click to view

The people at Six Apart need to get their act together. They send out an email encouraging MT users to upgrade to their latest version, but the directions that are provided all over their site are for new installations. FRUSTRATING!

They are not idiots. They have to know that a large user base will be upgrading, not starting from scratch. Why not provide the directions for those who will upgrade?!

I finally got the upgrade to work--I think! This post will be the first post using 4.3. We will see if it indeed posts.

I hosted timtyson.us at DreamHost for several years--since the beginning of my blog back near the beginning of 2004, about 5 years.

After several years, I began noticing that my blog was slow to publish, then infernally slow. Then I began getting emails from DreamHost offering an upgrade to a more expensive hosting plan. After the publishing issue got so bad most posts would fail to publish, in a rage, I fired off an email to DreamHost demanding that I get the same service from them I had been getting for years at the price they had contracted to provide it.

They did something on their end, and my server responsiveness improved significantly. Then I began getting the repeated emails that I needed to upgrade, for a bargain price. I was told that MovableType, my blogging system, was "resource intensive."

Finally I got disgusted with their emails and moved all of my blogs and domain names to MediaTemple. I have been pleased with MediaTemple's server responsiveness and customer service--you actually talk to live humans 24/7!

So I canceled my account at DreamHost--a rather annoying process filled with messages like, "Are you sure?" "This will permanently end you account." "We hate to see you go.". They just need to get over it. However, I'm now being told by DreamHost that I never canceled my account and now owe them money.

DreamHost needs to get their act together as this doesn't just feel like sham-poo. This feels like poo authentica! Today I told then that if they charge my credit card anything, I will treat it as fraud. And I damn well mean it, too.

I'm disappointed that DreamHost has chosen to end our working relationship on a sour note.

I was just recently in Atlanta. The construction that was underway when I left has just about all been completed. Buckhead looks great. The new construction along Peachtree looks spectacular. However, it appears that nothing is selling at all. The vast majority of the new properties appear, if not completely, then certainly mostly empty--even the high rise condos that were to start at 2 million. I suspect the banks have a lot of skyscrapers on their hands.

I saw a couple of condos that had gone to auction and the financing had fallen through. They are nice, and the price is almost half the price for which they were originally expected to sell. One of them is selling at about $100 per square foot! Still, I'm not convinced these would be good investment purchases during my lifetime. So much property remains available.

I also drove up to the mountain house in North Carolina. So quiet. So peaceful. And it is still about 15º cooler than Atlanta.

My last night in town, I stayed at the Ellis, downtown Atlanta. Very nice!

OK... well, a lot crazy! The video is too weird not to watch. It sums up a lot of what is wrong with advertising!

As far as I am concerned, the governor of Texas should be tried as a terrorist. His irresponsible statements during the Republican sponsored so-called "Tea Parties" that the state of Texas should secede from the union are more than irresponsible, they are creating a threat to the sovereignty of the nation, an issue that was settle in the 19th century.

Yesterday I saw a pickup truck with Texas plates that had a bumper sticker with the Texas star and a single word on it:

Secede

I also saw a tag on a car with Louisiana plates that said:

Make Levees
Not War

Yes, the great and mighty Animaux Sauvage did a huge roar before having his glamour shot--or was that just a yawn...

OK, so actually, I'm just learning to use the flash.

Blogo has Lightbox functionality as a selectable option built into the editor. I had Lightbox enabled my site some time back, but I stopped using it because I could never remember the tag I had to type in to the image parameter. But with Blogo, it can be set as a default option. Now, I never have to remember anything. Nice!

To see this feature in action, just click on the dead bull or, in the post below, the maze. Each image will automatically open in it's own lightbox.

I've been experimenting with Blogo, a blog editor for the Mac. I've used ecto for years. However, ever since Adriaan sold it, development has seemed to crawl and is now apparently at a stand still.

So, for this post, I'm including a few pictures to check out the way the editor functions. I still haven't gotten the hang of working with media in the post.

One of the things I really like about Blogo is the ease with which it handles bringing content from the web into a post. For example, the slideshow below was a snap. I just went to my Flickr page of favorites and clicked on the browser button that sends content to Blogo. A snap!

I absolutely love eating at the Veggie Grill. I've mentioned this before.

I didn't realize, until today, that the Santa Fe Chicken Sandwich really isn't made of chicken at all. And it's delicious! I would never have known, having eaten it three times before, if I hadn't read a review of the sandwich.

Aside from the fact that it is called the Cripsy Santa Fe Chickin' Sandwich, one would have no hint that anything is other than chicken.

I also really like the natural ketchup. I like it a great deal more than regular Heinz ketchup, which is all the ordinary restaurants seem to serve any more. Annie's Naturals Organic Ketchup is significantly more tasty, but not in an obtrusive way--just delicious. It tastes fresher.

I recently needed to replace my toothbrush. I only have a few criteria in this order of importance:

• Medium bristles
• Some plastic or rubberized bristles
• Comfortable, over-sized grip
• Colorful and cheery

I was having a most difficult time locating brushes with medium bristles. Almost all of them were soft. The soft bristles don’t work well for me and certainly don’t last. The only one I could find didn’t have any plastic bristles and, of all things, was battery powered!

What? A battery powered toothbrush? How ecologically responsible is this? But, needing the medium bristles above all else, I decided to get it.

The vibrating brush is novel if nothing else. But what I found shocking is the fact that 2 of the 3 other toothbrushes in the house were also battery powered, and I had no idea. All this time I could have vibrated my teeth, and yet I didn’t realize my toothbrushes were electrified. One of them even has spinning bristles (pictured here).

I just thought the thicker handles were a fad. Little did I know.

I saw two bumper stickers over the past two days in New Orleans that I found interesting. Well, one of them was disturbing. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that the governor of the state of Texas should be considered a terrorist.
He is the one who is publicly fanning this terrorist threat to the sovereignty of the United States. This issue was settled in the 19th century. The idiot governor or Texas needs to remember we are now in the 21st century.
The bumper sticker, on a pickup truck with a Texas license plate, that brings this issue forward simply had the Texas lone star and said:
Secede
The other bumper sticker of note was on a car with a Louisiana tag and said:
Make LeveesNot War

I love this! Unfortunately they are not available for purchase. And why not? Someone should set up a website in which you design and purchase your own.

I think I would change the one about ants to: "Look twice. Save a life. Ants are everywhere."

Fascinating!  

This development from the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Science Institute in Germany has made the creation of human skin much cheaper:

The basic skin production system, which Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft hopes to start selling next year, can produce 5,000 little swatches of human skin a month, for a total of over 600 square inches of mass-produced tissue. Each 0.12-square-inch section of skin would cost around $49 to produce, far less than the current cost.

The system, which should be available in 2010, is fully automated, with computers controlling the solution that the skin grows in, monitoring the vats for infection, guiding the blade that cuts the swatches, and even testing the quality of the final product. So far, this project has generated 19 patents for Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.

[From Scientists Find Way to Mass Produce Human Skin - Neatorama]

without Walter Cronkite (92). Unlike the opinion peddling oafs that we have in the tabloid television news machinery of today, Walter had a sense of deep integrity to his craft, to an inclusive audience, and to the facts. As news anchor from 1962 - 1981, he was respected for that integrity and sense of fairness. The American people rewarded his craft with trust. He was not about promoting himself. He was about advancing journalistic integrity. This is who he was and what we need in news reporting today--a dead craft now solely focused on shaping opinion and maximizing profit through higher ratings and entertainment--truth, integrity, grappling with complexity be damned.

I feel as though I grew up with Mr. Cronkite, who walked with the nation through the civil rights era, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, landing on the moon, the war in Vietnam, the impeachment of a crooked president. I will miss him.

But you know, If there's anything I've learned, it is that we Americans do have a way of rising to the challenges that confront us.

Just when it seems we're most divided, we suddenly show our remarkable solidarity.

The 20th century may be leaving us with a host of problems, but I've also noted that it does seem darkest before the dawn

There's reason to hope for the 21st century.

And that's the way it will be."

Walter Cronkite 1916 - 2009

The dude rocks!

I had the opportunity to watch the American Idol Live concert tonight at the Staples Center in LA and shot this video of Adam's first performance. You can't really see how completely awesome the visual effects were. You can see everyone had their cell phones and cameras out recording it.

Uploading the video immediately after he performed it took 10 minutes. So I wasn't able to shoot any others. But the visuals for this one were the most impressive. The audio, for much of the concert, was just too loud for me--too much distortion. (Research actually shows that most Americans equate louder with higher quality.)

Hate that I didn't get to shoot Mad World!

Everyone knows Lambert really won American Idol. The crowds were insane over him--but not the "winner."

Also of interest is the number of comments, views and ratings that happened before I even got home from the concert. I had no idea he was such a hot search on YouTube!

Today, Bastille Day, of all days, I had a visitor here at timtyson.us from Paris, France--and not just that, but from the Ile-de-France.

Happy Bastille Day! Take a moment to celebrate by visiting my Paris Gallery.

This evening we had a nice stroll in the ocean.

This is posted to remind my old brain of how to fix a maddening error in Transmit, my favorite Mac FTP client.

To keep the downloads connection from apparently continuing to attempt to download an already downloaded file on an open connection in passive mode until the server terminates the connection, simple keep the Preview sidebar closed. Panic software says this issue will be addressed in some future release--no date specified.

I got the impression they plan to completely eliminate the preview sidebar, which would be a pity. I really like it. In addition to giving a visual of image files, it also provides file dimension--a feature that often comes in handy!

Now that the program doesn't lock up and require a disconnect/reconnect almost, if not, every time I double click a server side file to edit it on my desktop, it returns to my pile of "most favored apps!"

Doug is a sharp guy. I read his blog often. I think his giving to the Democratic party is telling.

I read somewhere that she may have raised more money for Barack Obama than she did for McCain last fall. That resonated with me since I did give a few bucks to the Democrats for the first time in my life after hearing her talk at the Republican convention. If anyone had asked me about Sarah Palin a year ago, I’d have said that she’s our governor; so what? She was unremarkable. After her performance last fall, though, I felt the best thing we could do was to keep her tucked out of sight here in Alaska, but that is not going to happen, apparently.

[From Reading Sarah Palin]

I shot, edited, and uploaded this little 12 second video using only my iPhone 3Gs today and published it here in less than 1 minute! Very cool!

Click to enlarge

Source: Visual Economics

What did you notice? Supposedly this is for real on the MotoCzysz E1pc: the iPhone plugs in to become the dashboard. Source: Gas 2.0

And now I absolutely must try it! Very clever. Very creative. A few stitching artifacts, though... For the best viewing experience, go to full screen.

America still, all these years later, can't control a renegade president in office who wants to wage war against the will and reason of the people. Our government has been self serving and out of control for 40 years now, at least.

I suspect McNamara felt he was doing some sort of penance by serving as the president of the Wold Bank for 13 years where he focused on doing some good in the world with his massive intellect.

Others are not so charitable:

Robert McNamara, who died this week, was a complex man—charming even, in a blustery way, and someone I found quite thoughtful when I interviewed him. In the third act of his life he was often an advocate for enlightened positions on world poverty and the dangers of the nuclear arms race. But whatever his better nature, it was the stark evil he perpetrated as secretary of defense that must indelibly frame our memory of him.

[From Truthdig - Reports - McNamara’s Evil Lives On]

No, no, no. I'm not talking about Sarah Palin. I'm talking about Rachel Maddow. She talks horse sense and nails the issues on the head in this short about Sarah Palin--who has the courage to quit her job because she is not a quitter. (Me thinks Alaska, even the conservatives in the state, have felt humiliated by their soon to be former governor one time too many.)

Oddly, this post from last night did not publish any contents. So here it is again!

This post over at deputydog highlights some gorgeous ceilings around the world. They are each so varied, so intense, so different, and so gorgeous, I simply couldn't decide which one to highlight in my post. Click on the picture to open the original size below to get some tiny sense of scale. Then check out the incredible ceiling architecture highlighted by deputydog.

I can't stand this moron. What's really going on? Bank on the fact that she's being dishonest--talking too fast, rambling too much, babbling the same cheap, hackneyed, empty sound bytes. GO AWAY!

Astounding!

In the last six months, we've seen uploads from mobile phones to YouTube jump 1700%; just since last Friday, when the iPhone 3GS came out, uploads increased by 400% a day.

This growth represents three things coming together: new video-enabled phones on the market, improvements to the upload flow when you post a video to YouTube from your phone, and a new feature on YouTube that allows your videos to be quickly and effortlessly shared through your social networks. It takes just a minute to connect your YouTube account to your Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader accounts. Complete a simple, one-time connection on our upload page to allow all your friends and followers to get a real-time stream of your uploads to YouTube, which can be essential in this age of citizen reporting and ubiquitous sharing.

[From YouTube Blog]