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Archive for April, 2006

The 29th Year

Published at Sunday, Apr 30th, 2006 in Journal. 83 Comments

I was born on April 30th, 1978 which by my calculation makes me 28 years old today. Feels good :)

Google Calendar Tips

Published at Sunday, Apr 30th, 2006 in Clippings. 6 Comments

Douglas Bowman has a whole stack o’ nice tips for Google Calendar (I’m a full-time user by now, despite having wished for Apple to have done something like this a long time ago).

A Couple of Automator Shortcomings

Published at Saturday, Apr 29th, 2006 in Journal. 6 Comments

So I hit on a site I with a bunch of files I wanted to download. The procedure would take too long to do by hand, so instead I turned to good ol’ Automator to do the hard work for me.

Now I’ve used Automator a few times in the past, always for scraping sites for images and the likes, and I really dig its workflow. This time around however I ran into two obstacles that made life considerably harder for me.

Now I’ve got the 1.66Ghz Mac mini with 1GB RAM, which in my mind should be more than enough to run Automator under anything but the most extreme circumstances. Yet playing around with the workflow slowed to a pathetic crawl on numerous occasions. Basically whenever I wanted to mock about with the workflow, the interface would freeze up and I’d get the spinning beachball. It usually took long enough that I could read a column or two in Wired before it’d free up again.

That just ain’t right.

Secondly, in this particular instance, the URL’s I wanted to download happened to contain spaces. Safari doesn’t care, as long as the anchors are formatted correctly (and they are) it’ll happily download whatever you point it to. Yet Automator chokes on the first space or apostrophe, thinking it’s the end of the link…

Took me a while to figure that one out by the way.

So dear Automator guys at Apple (who invalidated the O’Reilly Applescript book I’d bought just before Tiger came out) could you please have a look-see at this?

Da Vinci Code is Anti-Christ

Published at Friday, Apr 28th, 2006 in Clippings. Closed

Alright, so a giant Da Vinci Code poster has been taken down in Rome (Italy you dolt!) because:

““It advertises something that is against Christ and against the church,” St. Pantaleo’s rector, the Rev. Adolfo Garcia Duran, told The Associated Press.” #

Binary Bonsai Podcast #7

Published at Thursday, Apr 27th, 2006 in Podcast. 8 Comments

I’ve got some bad news about Shuttle and me as well as something on Kubrick and Napoleon, Reboot and some quick thoughts on burning hot news items that ticked in while I did the show.

As usual I would love to receive some feedback from you, either in the shape of a comment on this entry or as an audio comment on Odeo (real easy, check it out).

m4a version | mp3 version | Podcast Feed | iTunes Music Store

Battlestar Caprica

Published at Thursday, Apr 27th, 2006 in Clippings. 9 Comments

Okay, so I’ve gotta admit, I hadn’t seen this little twist coming; Sci-Fi channel has announced the intention to do a Battlestar Galactica spinoff called ‘Caprica’:

Caprica would take place more than half a century before the events that play out in Battlestar Galactica. The people of the Twelve Colonies are at peace and living in a society not unlike our own, but where high-technology has changed the lives of virtually everyone for the better.

But a startling breakthrough in robotics is about to occur, one that will bring to life the age-old dream of marrying artificial intelligence with a mechanical body to create the first living robot: a Cylon. Following the lives of two families, the Graystones and the Adamas (the family of William Adama, who will one day become the commander of the Battlestar Galactica), Caprica will weave together corporate intrigue, techno-action and sexual politics into television’s first science fiction family saga, the channel announced.

First science fiction family saga?… What about Lost in Space? (via Joen)

Reboot 8.0 Google Calendar

Published at Thursday, Apr 27th, 2006 in Journal. 11 Comments

I’ve set up a Reboot 8.0 calendar with Google’s Calendar system. It will contain a detailed overview of the conference (current it’s kinda sketchy as the plan is still up in the air) with room locations and everything (wow!). You can subscribe to it with any ical enabled application (Like OS X’s iCal) or whatever wizardry you schedule your life with, if any.

Let me know if you’d like access to maintain the calendar, and I’ll add you to the list of admins.

Choose between ICAL or XML.

Update: I’ve put up a a more thorough walkthrough of how to use this calendar.