Category: Thoughts

  • Wow, 10.4.7 sees my Verizon Novatel card

    I’ve been successfully using a Verizon wireless broadband card (the Novatel v620 pc card) since April in my Powerbook thanks to a software hack from the good folk at the EVDO Info web site. It basically made the Novatel card look like any other modem, showing up on a pull down list on my menu…

  • New camera needs lots of accessories

    For a recent business trip to Alaska (sweet!), I determined that my trusty & wonderful Canon SD 400 Digital Elph wasn’t up to snuff. So I splurged on a digital SLR that was on sale at Best Buy, Canon’s Rebel XT. Va-va-voom. It’s big and bulky but takes me back to the days of my…

  • Boo-hoo, Civ IV Mac

    Well, it seems you need a G5 or Intel-based Mac to play Civ IV. Looks like I’m outta luck since I’ve got neither and the whole idea was to play on the commuter train on my Powerbook G4 (ps don’t ever, ever buy 1st generation hardware like round I of the new Macbook Pro). At…

  • New stuff floating my boat

    Catching up on a bunch of feeds at Bloglines this morning, I found my inbox filed with news of cool stuff. The 1.5.0.2 upgrade of Firefox on my Powerbook g4 renders page with super speed that puts Safari to shame. Next, and I can’t quite decide whether this is great or insane, a service called…

  • Where oh where is an iPod recorder

    I’m loving my iPod “with video” more than ever, but I am missing big-time the recording capability of my old 3G iPod with its Griffin Technology iTalk accessory. I’ve been waiting for months for a replacement. In January, a small company called Xtrememac pre-announced a product called the Micromemo that looked cool, was a bit…

  • Amazing vid of Berkeley radical helps explain BSG

    Some years ago, I watched a great documentary called Berkeley in the Sixties that used all manner of archival footage to help explain how a bunch of middle class white kids got radical. In particular, a 1964 speech given by then 21-year-old student named Mario Savio has always stuck with me. The money quote: “There…

  • Verizon and Tivo, so greedy together

    I owe a post on Tivo, or on the Toshiba-made RS-TX20 combo Tivo DVR and DVD burner that arrived on Christmas, but that will have to wait for another day with more free time (short version – it’s awesome except for the way it changes channels on our cable box). Instead, I’ll just loudly complain…

  • Canon wisely chooses to back down megapixels

    The bane of my existence, or at least the part of my life devoted to being a gadget hound and early adopter, is feature creep — the annoying tendency of tech companies to pile on feature after feature with each new iteration of a product until the original usefulness is buried. This tendency explains why…

  • Hooking up with Spam Karma 2

    All of a sudden, the bad guys have discovered my blog, the spam bad guys that is. Everything had been hunky-dory with this blog’s administration since I switched over to WordPress just about two months ago now. I set WordPress to email me every time I received a comment so I could moderate posts. Posts…

  • iPhoto 6 speed-up is real

    So says web developer Garrett Murray on his blog. Like Garrett, I buy the iLife suite updates almost exclusively for iPhoto so this is happy news: “Application Loading (from launch until all thumbnails appear) iPhoto 5: 14.1 seconds iPhoto 6: 3.0 seconds Application Closing (from quit command until gone) iPhoto 5: 9.4 seconds iPhoto 6:…