General

Stitch

Originally uploaded by mike3k.

My friend’s puppy ran out of her apartment and got hit by a car around 8PM tonight. He died immediately. Everyone loved him and we’re all in shock.

I’ve noticed that more than two thirds of the spam I receive contains a Thread-Index header beginning with the characters Aca6. Filtering on that header can eliminate much of my spam. Since I use Procmail on my DreamHost mailbox, I added the following rule and found that it got rid of most of my spam with no false positives:

:0
* ^Thread-Index:.*Aca.*$
/dev/null

New Favorite Bumper Sticker

Originally uploaded by JBW Music.

This isn’t my picture, but it was posted on Flickr. I really want this bumper sticker.

Our current mass hysteria reached its most ridiculous point when a marketing campaign triggers a city-wide terrorist alert in Boston. The guys who set it up did absolutely NOTHING wrong. The hysterical overreaction by the media & authorities is what was wrong. What ever happened to the ‘home of the brave’ when a simple marketing prop will make people soil themselves?

Thanks to The Landing Pad, I’ve discovered Kiva.org, a site which lets you lend small amounts to individual entrepreneurs in developing countries. I just lent $25 each to two business owners in Ghana. This is the easiest way to get involved in microfinancing and actually do something that can make a difference.

The Dark Side of HDCP – Why is My PS3 Blinking?:

FloatsomNJetsom writes ‘High Definition Content Protection is supposed to make sure you’re not playing pirated content, but sometimes your devices screw up the HDCP ‘handshake’ (over an HDMI cable) and nothing works. This happens with some regularity with the PS3, and Popular Mechanics investigated and found a quick and dirty workaround. From the article: ‘We then checked with Leslie Chard, president of HDMI Licensing, which owns the rights to the standard, who told us that HDCP is one component of HDMI that has been plagued with interoperability issues. HDCP (high-bandwidth digital content protection) is designed to prevent the interception of data — specifically copyrighted Hollywood movies — between an output component and a display. As Steve Balough, the president of Digital Content Protection, the licensing company for HDCP explains, the two pieces of hardware must exchange a key, a sort of certificate of authenticity unique to each individual device, to verify a secure connection.’ The problem isn’t limited to the PS3 — many HDTV cable boxes and have the same problem. The fix there? Unplugging the power cable.’ (Via Slashdot.)

I survived Macworld Expo, although I came home with a cold like I do every time I go there.

I spent most of the day yesterday traveling. I left San Francisco at 11AM and was stuck several hours in Dallas/Ft Worth. My connecting flight was at the other end of the airport, although I had at least two hours between flights. Unfortunately the second flight was delayed more than an hour because the flight before it at the same gate was delayed. Once we got on the plane, we waited 45 minutes for the baggage to get loaded. I finally got home after 1AM.

I won an iPod Shuffle at one of the booth give-aways and got 4 free T-shirts. The shuffle was great for traveling home. Instead of packing it in the carry on bag, I simply wore it. On one of the flights, the man next to me was watching a DVD on a Sony Vaio. Soon after he started playing the DVD, he got a Blue Screen of Death and had to reboot Windows XP. I managed to keep from laughing out loud.

There were some really great looking games at the gaming booth in the North Hall. Prey, which won a Macworld Best of Show, looked really awesome. I’ll definitely buy it when it ships. I did buy XIII, a first person shooter with very innovative comic book style graphics.

MacAlly was showing the keyboard I always wanted for my Mac Mini. It’s a bluetooth keyboard with a built-in trackpad, so I can easily use it from across the room.

I looked at cameras from HP and Nikon and I really liked them. I’ve always owned Canon cameras and I’ve been thinking of getting an A630 to replace my A75. I like the A75’s battery life and that it uses easily available AA batteries, but I’d like something more compact. After looking at some of the PhotoSmart & Coolpix models I’ll most likely buy one of those instead of another Canon.

I spent the day traveling to San Francisco. After a 5 hour flight from Fort Lauderdale, I had 3 hours in Los Angeles before my connecting flight to San Francisco. It was a very long day.

In the morning I got to the airport 2 hours early and breezed through the security checkpoint. I learned that I should wear shoes without laces that I can slip in and out of easily. Usually I have to find my way to someplace I can sit down with my shoes untied. This time I was on my way as soon as I passed through the checkpoint. Fort Lauderdale has nice free wireless internet, unlike LAX.

The hotel is great, although the first room I got was tiny – there wasn’t even a desk where I could use my MacBook Pro. Fortunately they were able to give me a larger room for only $10/night more. This room is like a small apartment with a separate living room and bedroom. The hotel has a very nice courtyard which is surrounded by the rooms.

I had to have my Prius jump started today, after I ran down the 12v battery by using an air compressor with the car in IGN-ON, not realizing the headlights were on. The tire pressure light came on, so I checked the tires and used the 12v compressor to adjust the pressure. Before I could finish, it shut off and the car was completely dead.

Luckily one of my neighbors had a cable and was able to jump start it. When the 12v battery is dead, you can’t open the trunk, where the 12v battery is located. Luckily there’s a dedicated 12v charging terminal under the hood (under a plastic cover, which made it difficult to find). My friend sells car parts, but even she wasn’t familiar with the Prius, so we had to check the manual to figure out how to start it.

Once we figured that out, it’s just as easy to jump start as any other car, and it started easily. She kept asking if it was running, since it’s almost completely silent. After that I had no further problems.

After 5 months and despite today’s experience, I still love this car. Since I take lots of short trips, my gas mileage isn’t too good, but the car has a lot more going for it besides that. I love the quiet, smooth, comfortable ride and it has a lot more passenger space than my old Corolla. Although I was afraid the hatchback might be too small, I find that it can fit anything I need to carry, even 8 bags of mulch. I really like the smart key system. I never have to fumble for my keys; I simply touch the handle to open it and press a button to start it.

The Prius has one of the smoothest rides I’ve ever experienced. You never feel it shift, and when I’m stopped it’s completely silent. At first I found the shudder when the engine shut off disturbing and thought it had stalled, but I’m used to it now.

For a long time I’ve been on a quest for a one cup coffee machine that didn’t use pods yet was as fast and convenient as the pod machines. Today, I finally found one: the Mr. Coffee Simple Brew. It takes either regular ground coffee or pods from other machines. After trying it with ground coffee, I’m happy with the result.