Tuesday, March 24, 2009

BSG Is Over


http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWIwNzkyMmZkZTc0Y2NiZDAyZDkyNDkzYWIyZTVhMjg=

In fact, going by the series finale, Ron Moore is the sci-fi equivalent of a creationist. God is in every gap. Every unexplained detail can be explained by the fact that God says so. In theology, there's an argument somewhere in there. But in screenwriting such deus ex machina punting is letting writer's block substitute as demiurge. 

Now let me be clear when I say that I actually like the idea of turning to religion and, for want of a better word, the supernatural. But it still needs to make sense. [...] Ron Moore [...] thinks letting actors explore their characters and work out morality tales [...] makes for more compelling television. I think that what made the first couple seasons so great is that he was able to contain or restrain this tendency within the larger storyline. Once that blew up, the show squandered its greatness.

I thought the first two seasons of BSG were great.  I didn't particularly like the third, but I figured the writers' strike had caused a lot of problems, and I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.  I watched this season without much enthusiasm.  The only thing that kept me going was that I wanted to see how they would wrap everything up.  Let's just say I was unsatisfied with the Starbuck explanation.  She should have been a replicant created by the last great computer left on the old Earth, who had to sacrifice his own power source to save Starbuck's soul with some sort of human cloning mechanism.  Work in some of that old-time prophesy to connect it back to the Colonial Gods.  The musical stuff was fine, but that could have been the computer's universal programming language.  Everybody together: "I'd like to teach the world to sing..."

It's totally crazy to think that you can get thousands of people to return to the stone age in search of a better way of life.  Maybe Ron Moore is channeling Al Gore and the Global Warming alarmists, but I'm not buying it.  Would it have been so difficult to let a few hippies follow Apollo in going native while the rest of them conquered some unpopulated continent?  Then maybe their ship could have accidently exploded leaving only a handful of Colonials to mix with the proto-humans.  Similar result, but with a slightly more tragic and understandable ending.

Oh yeah, the Chief should have been shot by a Cylon when he choked the other one during the resurrection technology seance.  It didn't make sense for him to survive and become the first King of Scotland or whatever.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

‘Star Trek’ Fans Put Kirk’s Command Chair in Their Homes


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/garden/19trek.html?_r=1

Serious Trekkies have long fashioned copies of their favorite costumes and props, and, back in the '70s and '80s, a few even put together homemade knockoffs of the captain's chair, using reference materials like the "Starfleet Technical Manual" and "U.S.S. Enterprise Bridge Blueprints."

But lately fans like Mr. Veazie have been building or buying more sophisticated versions of the command module from which James T. Kirk, played by William Shatner, ordered "Ahead, warp factor six." Moreover, they are making them the centerpiece of their homes, thus conquering what is for them a final frontier of domestic décor.

Not sure my wife would approve.  Maybe for my office?

Friday, March 6, 2009

Apple a Day: Prediction: Snow Leopard release date is June 8



Prediction: Snow Leopard release date is June 8

The prediction is based on his research about when WWDC might be.  Maybe, but WWDC could be a setting for a beta rather than a final release.  I suspect that the ship date will depend more on Mac sales than anything else.  If Mac sales are down, they'll figure that everyone is waiting for Snow Leopard so they'll have to ship something.  If sales are OK, they'll hold off on shipping the OS until they need a revenue bump.

Personally, I want to buy a new iMac, but my practical wife is making me wait until Snow Leopard ships.  She simply doesn't understand the coolness of buying a new Mac on the day it's announced.  She also won't let me have an iPhone just because we can't get AT&T service where our new house will be.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Microsoft boss Bill Gates bans his children from using Apple products... but his wife admits she'd like an iPhone | Mail Online


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1158905/Microsoft-boss-Bill-Gates-bans-children-using-Apple-products--wife-admits-shed-like-iPhone.html

She told Vogue magazine that the couple's three children Jennifer, 13, Rory, 10 and Phoebe, seven, are not allowed Apple products.

'There are very few things that are on the banned list in our household,' she said.

'But iPods and iPhones are two things we don't get for our kids.'

Like any forbidden fruit, however, Mrs Gates, 44, admitted that some Apple products do have the power to tempt her.

'Every now and then I look at my friends and say 'Ooh, I wouldn't mind having that iPhone,' she admitted.


If Guy Kawasaki still worked at Apple, he'd be dropping off a free iPhone for Mrs. Gates this morning, and free iPods for all the kids.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

App Management in iTunes ~ concept

Great idea for how iTunes could let you organize the apps on your iPhone or iPod Touch...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wfv0OJ1oMQ

Monday, February 23, 2009

Fotonauts beta

I'm trying out Fotonauts. Here's a widget that displays an album from Fotonauts...

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Wanted: Layout System


http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/02/17/wanted-layout-system/

All this is why the old "only use tables for layout" argument keeps coming up over and over: strip away the overheated rhetoric and obvious link-baiting, and you find the core of a real need. Because as powerful as CSS can be, table cells do certain things very easily that CSS makes very, very hard. Cells stretch vertically, keeping equal heights as a matter of their intrinsic nature. They stay out of each others' way, while still being allowed to sit next to each other and use any sizing dimensions. They tie their layout to their parent elements, and vice versa.
There are no equivalents in CSS. There have been various very clever attempts to replicate bits and pieces of those capabilities using CSS. What CSS does, it does very well: if you don't need equal-height layout blocks, then no problem. If you do, it's a massive pain. Clever techniques provide substitutes, but can't replace what tables already do.

Monday, February 16, 2009

P. G. Wodehouse's short story: Ordeal By Golf


http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1471/

How few men, says the Oldest Member, possess the proper golfing temperament! How few indeed, judging by the sights I see here on Saturday afternoons, possess any qualification at all for golf except a pair of baggy knickerbockers and enough money to enable them to pay for the drinks at the end of the round. The ideal golfer never loses his temper. When I played, I never lost my temper. Sometimes, it is true, I may, after missing a shot, have broken my club across my knees; but I did it in a calm and judicial spirit, because the club was obviously no good and I was going to get another one anyway. To lose one's temper at golf is foolish. It gets you nothing, not even relief. Imitate the spirit of Marcus Aurelius. "Whatever may befall thee," says that great man in his "Meditations", "it was preordained for thee from everlasting. Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear." I like to think that this noble thought came to him after he had sliced a couple of new balls into the woods, and that he jotted it down on the back of his score-card. For there can be no doubt that the man was a golfer, and a bad golfer at that. Nobody who had not had a short putt stop on the edge of the hole could possibly have written the words: "That which makes the man no worse than he was makes life no worse. It has no power to harm, without or within." Yes, Marcus Aurelius undoubtedly played golf, and all the evidence seems to indicate that he rarely went round in under a hundred and twenty. The niblick was his club.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

rumor: Apple Store coming to Augusta Mall

Consider this a rumor, but they're usually right...


Augusta Mall - Augusta (GA) - The General Growth Properties mall has 1.1 million s.f. and 134 shops along I-520 and near I-20. The mall just finished an expansion area, which may be where Apple locates. Job listings appeared Dec. 12, 2008. The store could open by July 2009.

PeachMac opened a shop in Evans last October.  We're becoming a Macintosh hot spot!

Monday, February 2, 2009

Super Bowl review

Great game! I was hoping for the Cardinals to win, but it was a fun
game to watch. Congratulations to the Steelers. That 100-yard
interception return was the longest play in Super Bowl history.

At half-time, Bruce Springsteen sounded like he had just made that 100-
yard run. His voice was gone. He skipped the refrains most of the
time, apparently trying to catch his breath. I think he's getting too
old to be bouncing around the stage. "Glory Days" was a fitting
finish to the show. They've passed him by...