Some of you might be interested in this: With the launch of Vista, Microsoft is beginning an effort to supplant the jpeg image format. Evidently, Adobe has plans to support the format in their products, which will help. It seems like the new format might be good for digital photos in general, I only wish Microsoft was more open about standardization.

link to this | comments (0) | File:  Web  Tech 

Vista came out in stores today. Do you feel different? I'd like to play around with it, as I'm curious, but I'll have to wait. Anyway, 'a story' (on MSNBC.com) about a Mac user who defects to Vista.

link to this | comments (2) | File:  Vista 

Saturday morning, a small group of war protesters marched down Mass Ave right outside our building, yelling and making noise. It wasn't a very large group, but they had police escorts nonetheless, and it piqued our curiosity. Was there something larger going on? We felt a little out of it to learn that there was a indeed a larger war protest rally going on at the Mall. So we decided to go down and take a look. Here are the pics.

There's nothing much I can tell you about the rally that you can't read in the WaPo, but here are a few observations:

I have to say, it was a pretty impressive showing. Not as large as the March for Women's Lives back in 2004, but still pretty darn big. I thought I had pics from the 2004 women's march online, but I just realized they were part of my 'old' gallery system and I removed them a while back. I'm slowly moving those old photos over to the new system. The pivotal word being 'slowly.'

This weekend's rally didn't have any catchy slogan or banner associated with it, and this was good. It was refreshing. It was just a gathering of people protesting the war. Different people from all different backgrounds. The result was a diverse range of voices and unique messages on signs. Not everybody was carrying the same sign. This was nice. It felt a little more like the 70s, or at least what I've seen of it on TV. I mean, even Jane Fonda was there.

Although the day before the rally was freezing cold, and the day after was dreary and wet, the day of was a beautiful, sun-shiny, light-coat-wearing type of day. I'm not an expert in these matters, but if we wanted to talk about a 'higher power,' which, after all, this president is keen on doing, we might go so far as to say there was tacit consent, if not outright approval, of the protest. Either that, or he just wanted a good view.

link to this | comments (3) | File:  DC  Politics 

I was tagged by Reya. I've never done one of these before. And when you blog, saying this is kind of like a musician saying, "I've never played a scale before." In the past, if I was tagged by somebody (sorry Mat), I would sort of pretend it never happened. It somehow seemed like too much pressure. Pressure to be unique or interesting, and in the case of this particular objective, weird.

Six Weird Things is the idea here. When I got this, I immediately worried that my six things would either be too weird or not weird enough. So again, my temptation was to ignore the request. But recently somebody reminded me that confronting my fears is the best way to get over them. Actually, it might have been a commercial I saw. In either case, it's probably pretty good advice. Besides, you can't say no to Reya. She's likely to give you the Reya Penetrating Look ^TM, which I've never actually witnessed, but I understand can be pretty intimidating.

So, I don't know if these are weird or not, but they're six things to remember about me:

1. Between the ages of five and eight (or thereabouts, it's getting kind of foggy in my mind), my best friend and I used to play a game called Can't Touch the Ground which, true to it's name, was a game that involved not touching the ground while traversing every square inch of my house. We had to climb on furniture, swing on doors, jump across wide chasms of floor and carpet, you get the idea. I'd really like nothing more than to play a game of Can't Touch the Ground again.
   
2. Realizing this makes me sad because I used to have an endless supply of imagination and could pretend and play and act at will. But as I've gotten older, it's harder and harder to tap that well. But you need that in life. And you need it in work, too. And when you lose it, you lose everything.
   
3. While I love olive oil, I'm not a huge fan of olives.
   
4. Someday, I want to be a dirty old man.
   
5. I consider knowing when to let go to be one of the most important things I've learned. And yet, I have to re-teach myself this lesson over and over again.
   
6. When I'm not on a low-carb diet, I can not eat cereal unless I'm mixing two or three different varieties together. One cereal at a time is freakin' boring.

Alright - I've broken my X Number of Y Things cherry. I know the idea now is to pass this on to other bloggers, but I'm not sure I'm ready for that step. Hopefully that's not bad karma or anything.

Have a good weekend.

link to this | comments (6) | File:  Things 

Colbert had a great riff on the State of the Union address last night. This clip is about 3 minutes long total, and worth a watch, but I direct your attention to the part at about 1:07 left. The blink war. Hilarious.

link to this | comments (0) | File:  Video  Politics  Colbert 

In case you were wondering, eating Ranch-style dressing that is one year and four months beyond its expiration date will, in fact, make you physically ill. Cath confirmed, and I bore witness to this around midnight last night. That's my baby: doing the hard science so the rest of us don't have to. Of course, to take advantage of this knowledge you must be able to successfully employ a skill most often referred to as 'reading.' Sadly, neither Cath nor myself can help you in this area. We can confirm, however, that relying solely on your sense of smell will get you nowhere.

link to this | comments (4) | File:  Cath  Food 

Please. I beg of you. Any kind will do, really. It doesn't have to be sugar sugar. It doesn't even have to be sticky sweet. Honey, molasses, brown sugar - sure, these would be nice. But how about, oh I don't know, a nice bowl of cheerios, maybe. It's only got one gram - one stinkin' gram - of sugar. But it's got 20 glorious grams of carbs per serving. And that's how hard up I am. Okay, no cheerios? How about bread? Plain old bread would be divine. You see? I'm not asking for a lot here. It could be a chunk of baguette, or some ciabatta, or just some sliced whole grain stuff in a bag. Some jam on top. Smother me in that shit. Of course, if you're feeling especially generous, I could go for a nice tall glass of Cap City Pale Rider Ale, full of hoppy, grainy goodness. I'll tip my head back like this, see? - Hold on, let me just tie back my hair. - Okay. We're all good. Now let me get into position. There. Na, ja pu ii eun ma oen ouw . . . sorry . . . I guess it's kind of hard to hear me like that . . . I said, just pour it right into my open mouth. You might hear me make some unpleasant gurgling sounds. You might think I'm choking. But don't let that stop you. Please.

I'm sorry. I know I sound desperate. Or slightly deranged. I've got a little bit of the sugar withdrawal going on. So please excuse anything I say. See, Sunday I started a low-starch, low-carb (read: low sugar) diet. This might sound absurd for those of you who know me, that is, those of you who see me on a regular basis. I've never been one who needed to 'diet,' and I'm still not. I'm not exactly sure what my 'recommended weight' is, but I'm willing to bet I'm under it. This has nothing to do with pounds. It's got everything to do with sugar. And did I mention I kinda like that stuff?

Actually, it's not that I really love sugar or anything, I mean not any more than the next guy. It's just that, well, try to get through a normal day in America without eating something loaded with sugars. It's hard as hell. Let's begin with my usual breakfast: cereal, toast, maybe some jam, yogurt, and orange juice. We're not exactly talking about Cocoa Puffs here, but you know what? It's all still loaded with freakin' sugars. Even things that don't really have to contain sugar - like the yogurt. Okay, how about lunch? A sandwich. Deli meats. Maybe a bag of chips. Perhaps a tasty oatmeal cookie from Potbelly's. All sugar, brother. Even most deli meats have sugar in them, so getting rid of that bread doesn't mean shit. Potbelly's calls it 'skinny' with half the bread. My ass. Okay, let's move on to dinner. Great! How about a pizza? Sure, that's my favorite! You really know how to charm a guy. Okay, well how about 100 grams of starch? Aw, come on. You're no fun.

What this means is that, in a typical day, without even trying very hard, I might as well be main-lining starch and processed sugar into my system. And I don't even eat a lot of 'sweets.'

So what's the deal, Dave? Why have you become this big no-sugar zealot? Good question. If you've been reading this blog for any amount of time, you probably know that I have some recurring back issues. They're not consistent back issues, though. The issues tend to shift and change shape and move from one part of my spine to the other. I have also had a previous operation in which I had a portion of disc and bone removed. So this, combined with the ever-shifting focus of the pain usually leads most doctors to write my complaints off to 'general back pain.' They pat me on the head, give me some anti-inflammatories, and send me home. But lately, the pain has been something different. Deeper, and more alarming. I know I'm a borderline hypochondriac, but even I could tell something was seriously not right when I would wake up in the morning barely able to move, back and chest tight with a deep uncomfortable stiffness and a stomach full of lead. So I did some research and found something that just about perfectly described me: low-back pain that is worse at night, in the morning, or after inactivity, stiffness and limited motion in the low back, hip pain and stiffness, limited expansion of the chest, limited range of motion, especially involving spine and hips, shoulders, neck pain, fatigue, chronic stooping. It's called Ankylosing Spondylitis, which is as fun to say as it is to talk about. If you're wondering where you can sign up, you can't. There's no waiting list. You have to have a specific antigen present in your blood called HLA-B27, which is hereditary. So if you want in on some of this fun, don't come whining to me, take it to your mom or dad. HLA antigens also happen to be found in about 7% of the population, so just having them in your blood doesn't necessarily mean anything. However, if they are present and you wake up each morning with the sensation of a giant steel meat hook inserted into your spine, your chances are pretty good. So I asked my doc for the test. She gave it to me, a bit begrudgingly, not convinced. She actually seemed a bit surprised when it came back positive. Sometimes I wonder if doctors ever lift a medical reference once they're out of med school.

AS is a type of arthritis, so I'm seeing a rheumatologist next week. But in the meantime, I've been doing some research, including scouting out all the different AS sites that are out there, which is about as great a way to spend a Friday night as you can imagine. While it isn't officially recognized as a treatment, one thing that seems to keep popping up again and again from various people is that cutting back on starches helps alleviate symptoms. One doctor has done some research and even published a diet. It hasn't proven effective for everybody, so it's not universally accepted as a treatment option, per se, but some people have found it to be really helpful.

So I'm going to give it a couple of weeks of very low carbs and starches and see what happens. While I'd love for it to work, a secret part of me hopes that it doesn't. Then I could go back to my old sugar-infested dreamworld where I lounge in a pool of syrup while women in French maid outfits hand feed me powdered-sugar coated crepes. But if nothing else, this will force me to eat a little better for two weeks, and maybe some of it will stick, even if there's no great reason to do it other than the whole 'better overall health' thing. I really do think Americans eat too much starch. Period.

Already, I've noticed some positive results of the low-starch diet. For one thing, it's made me appreciate food in an entirely different way. I never thought my response to a broccoli and cauliflower casserole mixed with chicken and bacon and smothered in cheese would be, "Hell yeah! Pile me up some of that." If you mash it up, cover it in cheese, and close your eyes, cauliflower can seem a lot like potatoes. Yum.

I'm also learning new smoothie recipes. Plain yogurt (no sugar added), plain soy milk, blackberries and strawberries mixed up in a blender makes a crazy good breakfast treat, and helps wash down those cholesterol-filled eggs and bacon that you're substituting for cereal.

Finally, as Barry Schwartz and Daniel Gilbert have suggested, having fewer choices in my diet has, in many respects, made me much happier. No kidding. For instance, when I'm at the store in the soda aisle, I no longer have to decide between the Pepsi brand of dark carbonated sugar or the Coke brand. Also, when I'm at RFD or Brickskeller, I no longer have to torture myself over which of the hundreds of beers I should drink. In both situations, the answer is simple: water. In other words, none of the above. Which is a wonderful answer in that, since there's only one choice, I can never make a wrong decision! Moreover, I can never really be disappointed with the outcome, unless the water smells funny, or has ants floating in it.

The same choice vs. happiness principal applies with food. I no longer wonder what I'm going to eat for dinner. The answer is always simple: not starch. This narrows down the options considerably and makes me much happier with what I do end up eating. In fact, since yesterday, I've discovered I'm not so much concerned with what I'm eating as whether or not I'm eating at all. I guess you could say that my lack of food choice has made me much happier with the concept of food in general. Of course, I'm not sure if this really has to do with my lack of choices, so much as with my ravenous hunger.

link to this | comments (10) | File:  AS  Health 

A great animation-video. The style is beautiful and strange. (via Michael)

link to this | comments (0) | File:  Random  Video 

There's snow in Austin and none in Moscow. Something is very wrong.

link to this | comments (0) | File:  Environment 

Okay . . . another Mac post. I'll switch subjects eventually. Previously, I had been complaining about keying wrong combinations after switching from the PC. The problem is even worse when I'm using my PC-oriented external keyboard. Well, to make things right, there's a neat utility called DoubleCommand. I just installed it and I now have CTRL-C and CTRL-V back! It's easy to use and appears in your 'System Preferences' pane after installation. Go get you a copy. Yee-haw!

link to this | comments (0) | File:  Mac 

Cough, cough. Sputter. E-hem. Wow. The last week has been a whirlwind of computer configuration, file copying, and hardware fixing. One disadvantage of being self-employed is dealing with hardware downtime. It's not that I haven't prepared for the possibility. I've backed up my files. I've set aside money for new hardware and software. But it's the lost time that's killing me. From now on, I think I'm going to keep a back-up computer, with all the necessary software loaded on it and ready to go. Because going through the troubleshooting process with any computer vendor is not the quickest thing. It requires a pretty snazzy patience cap. My PC issue is still not completely resolved with HP. I'm close, but now I've got a completely new hard drive, no software installed on it, and the built-in wi-fi card isn't working. And even though my MBP, which finally arrived Monday, is set up and (for the most part) ready to go, it's taking some getting used to.

Which brings me to the topic at hand. Over the past several days, I've noticed there are a lot of blog posts written by people who have switched from PC to Mac and who have written about their 'switching pains.' There seems to be a common thread to all of these posts and I've noticed that PC users seem to go through five distinct stages of transformation when moving from their old PC to their new Mac. I thought I'd document those here, and in the process describe a few of my own personal switching pains.

Stage One:
This is the 'Oh, wow it's so shiny and cewl - I absolutely love it' stage. It begins when you first take it out of the box and lasts through the initial boot where you check out all the nifty programs and the slick interface. Theoretically, it's possible to remain in this stage indefinitely, making funny faces in front of Photo Booth, laughing hysterically, and wondering why your eyes are all dried out. And while this seemed like a perfectly reasonable option, I'm a long way from college, and there's projects that need doing. I needed to get down to brass tacks. And coming to this realization is probably where Stage 2 begins for most people.

Stage two:
I call this the 'Oh shit, what have done - this was a huge mistake' stage. To hell with the slick interface and shiny exterior! You're quickly discovering things which used to be easy to do on your PC, which are actually harder to do on the Mac. A-ha! The ads lied! And even though you knew this going into the whole thing, you're now faced with the cold reality that there are certain beloved PC programs you used to have on your PC which are not available for Mac. Two important examples for me: Note Tab Pro - a great and simple text editor which I used for, among other things, writing blog posts - and Picasa. And for all you long-time Mac users who go on and on about iPhoto, let me tell you: Just taste of the Picasa goodness and you'll be convinced. A taste is all you need. It's faster, has more functionality, and simply put, it's better. Hopefully a Mac version is coming soon. Google? Mac version of Picasa? Can you get on that please? Snap, snap.

Stage two is also marked by finger cramps and furious cursing at the keyboard. You're constantly doing things like hitting the CTRL key instead of the Command key for functions like copying and pasting. In this way, you begin to understand that the advertising for the Mac was actually spot-on - it really does make you more creative! You know this because you're finding ever more imaginative ways to use the word 'fuck' in a sentence.

Stage Three:
This is the 'I'm really enjoying using this here Mac despite the fact that I can't use certain software on it - and, oh, I found out how to do such and such, and even though it's a little convoluted, it's really not that bad' stage. (Pretty catchy, eh?)

One thing I used to do on my PC all the time is alter my 'hosts' file so that I could do development work on a client's server and be able to direct my browser to a domain of my choosing without having to mess with entering any new values into a DNS server. I know there are several of you who read this blog who might not know (or care) what this means, so I'm not going to go into it. But I'll just say this: it was simple to do on WinXP. On Mac OS X, it's a little harder. (JP, if you know an easier way, which I'm hoping you do, please let me know what it is.) For one thing, it seems you have to learn a little Unix command-line voodoo. And for another, it's more than just a single edit to a single file. I don't really mind learning the Unix stuff. In fact, it's kind of interesting. And eventually this is something that'll be just as easy as what I used to do on WinXP. But it's just an example of how there are some real differences between PC and Mac, and sometimes those differences don't always spell 'e-a-s-y' like the Mac commercials lead you to believe.

Stage Four:
This is the 'Okay, I'm getting the hang of this stuff now - I'm learning the shortcuts and the interface - even a few Unix commands - and you know what? I kind of friggin' like it' stage. I'm sure I'll get here soon, but it hasn't happened yet. The most important aspect of this stage is that normal productivity resumes.

Stage Five:
Generally referred to as the 'Microsoft who?' stage. Your friends begin to notice that you are dressing cooler, eating healthier, and generally living better. Every morning, your spouse prepares a full breakfast, which is followed up by some toe-curling morning sex. You are never tired. Or bored. You are constantly riding the crest of a morphine high. Your house cleans itself and, amazingly, your shit stops smelling. For some reason, you find yourself putting the letter 'i' in front of everything, most notably, your life. You begin decorating your house in a modern, unornamented style. Lots of whites, blacks, and straight lines. You begin to speak of time in terms of 'pre-Mac' and 'post-Mac.'

Stage Six: (shhhh!)
I know I said there were five stages, but I think there's actually a sixth, which most Mac people don't talk about, mainly out of The Fear (with a capital 'F.') If you ever hear a Mac person say they're getting 'The Fear' don't worry, it's got nothing to do with drug use - at least not the usual drug use we've come to expect. Man, I'm really putting myself out on a limb even talking about it, but here it goes: Stage six has been known to occur after an extended camping trip or some other vacation where you're out in nature and away from civilization for an extended period of time. You come home and look around at all your iCrap and realize that you're still drinking kool aid, only it's a different color (metallic blue) and it doesn't come from Redmond. It's Cupertino's finest blend and it tastes pretty damn good. Here you were thinking you were shunning the corporate monster, only to find he's right here in bed with you, giving you sweet caresses in the middle of the night.

It's a harsh, glaring reality. You feel 'The Fear' begin to set in and you begin to shake. You could probably get help, but you're really not interested in any of that. Instead, you pour yourself a big glass of that yummy blue cocktail, load up iTunes, and watch some iTV. By the time your friend calls you on your iPhone, you've forgotten all about that big corporate giant controlling your thoughts. It's cozy in here. That's all that matters.

Bottoms up!

link to this | comments (15) | File:  Mac  NoteTab  Picasa 

Dear Apple: Why o why must you keep making things that are so damned cool? Please stop. At least for a little while. So we can replenish our wallets. Or you could make your cool things be free. You know, like Google does.

link to this | comments (1) | File:  Mac  Tech 

Time: Saturday afternoon, January (a month known to be a part of the 'winter' season in the Northern Hemisphere)

Location: Washington, DC

Situation: Walking outside

Attire: One t-shirt, shorts, tennis shoes, hat, light-weight long-sleeved shirt (tied around my waist), sunglasses

Body climate while moving: Slight perspiration

Temperatures are back to normal today - kind of. "Normal" is relative and the word tends to get applied to temperatures that are much higher than usual this year.

Still, the radiators in my apartment have begun their hissing. The windows are shut. There's a gentle rain. I guess it's "winter like."

But last week - particularly Saturday - had me convinced: the end of days is near.

What's crazy is that, while I was wearing shorts, this was going on. I guess you have to live at least a mile above sea level to still get winter. Pretty soon we'll all be moving to Canada.


link to this | comments (8) | File:  DC 

As this video proves, we can learn a lot from studying spider behavior on drugs. (thanks jeff)

link to this | comments (0) | File:  Ho_Hum 

I intended this post to be a somewhat thoughtful reflection on the past year, and possibly a statement of resolutions for the coming one. I also intended to post a photo album or two from the holidays. But this was last week - before The Fall. And what is it they say? Something about best-laid plans of mice and men? I'm surely one of those.

It started last Thursday when I came back from the gym to find my PC had gone to a black screen, upon which the words 'Non-system disk error' were written, innocently enough, at the top left. I tried rebooting. It took about 25 minutes. Excruciating. Gnashing of teeth. Biting of nails. Windows finally came back up, only to generate further cryptic errors like this one. Then it blue screened. I did some fancy windows ninja tricks - stopped unnecessary services from running, rebooted into safe mode, restored to a previous state. But no matter what I tried, the results were pretty much the same. Painfully slow processing followed by abrupt system failure.

Data loss was not a concern. Thanks to the backup routine I began last Spring, I had a fresh backup of all my files. Hardware and support costs? No worries there either. As luck would have it, I'm on the last month of a three-year extended warranty from HP. The timing really couldn't be better, in that sense.

But lost time and productivity? This may be a problem. I've already spent a few hours on the phone with HP trying various troubleshooting methods, all of which I was fairly certain would not work even as they were being offered to me. I think what this comes down to is a hard drive failure. I'm not sure what gave it away. Probably the scratching and grinding noises which began the morning of that first breakdown. Today, I can't even boot into windows anymore, but while I still could, the error logs read 'disk error' and 'atapi error,' both of which seemed to point to a disk problem. And when I tried to run a disk check outside of windows, it told me the drive 'did not support it,' which doesn't even make sense. But I guess all those clues are code for 'You need to try to re-install windows,' which is what the HP support staff recommends I do. They're sending me updated system disks in the mail. My guess is shortly after I try those, HP will be sending me a new hard drive. But I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I'm willing to go through the troubleshooting process. In the meantime, however, I've got two active Web projects and a couple of other pending ones and no computer with the right software on it to do the work. That's got me a little on edge. Just a little.

Now, I'll probably get the windows laptop back up and running eventually, but I decided that, despite this, I needed to heed the signs being hailed at me by the quarterbacks of computing: It's time for a change. Damn all the uncertainty. Damn the new software I'll have to buy. It's time to take the plunge. It's time to switch to a Mac.

So last Saturday night, on the brink of a new year and all the promise and anticipation a time like this holds, I ordered a MacBook Pro. And come Thursday, I'll be a part of the family. I'll be able to play with the cool kids. And thanks to Parallels, I'll still be able to drink the Redmond kool-aid from time to time, if I really really really need to, which I might just have to do so I can use my favorite photo application, at least until Google wises up and makes a Mac version.

As some of you know, I've been wanting to go Mac for a while, and had always prepared to do it right around this time, anyway. We bought an iBook last February, which C uses, and I've been envious of her OS X tricks ever since. But as the time approached, I began to get cold feet and I wound up ordering this. Then, despite my best attempts to sabotage the effort, I managed to send it back because it really wasn't what I wanted. Now I'm following through with the original plan - get a Mac - and it feels good. But there's still a lot of work to do: Configurations to implement. Files to convert. Lots of exporting and importing. New software to order and install. New shortcuts and work-flows to learn. When your entire life is in digital, switching platforms is no easy task. There'll be a period of dust and noise around here, which I hope you will excuse. But when it's all over, I should come out on the other side renewed, reborn. And at the start of a new year, what more can you ask for?

link to this | comments (7) | File:  Mac  Tech  Work