“I kind of miss #odwick”
sade:
And that’s why…you always tie down your weather balloon.
One Week.
(via my favorite rabble rouser, Merlin Mann)
Living and Working with the World’s Most Advanced Operating System
So far, it’s been easy to provide steady updates. So, that’s good.
*WASCs (it’s a Jesuit high school).
The 7:15 from Stamford to Fairfield. 90% of our fellow passengers are students at Fairfield Prep.
Facebook just got promoted to the front page. Took the place of the Google voice web app.
“He is one of the 10 most important people in the history of the Internet” —
Jason Calacanis on Josh Harris
i think Jason’s right on this one. Josh ran the first mass media experiments with chat, streaming audio, streaming video, and saw the lifestreaming thing long before anyone else
For a Digital Pioneer, the Web Was No Safety Net - NYTimes.com
(via fred-wilson)
While I can’t personally attest to the importance of Josh Harris, this article is worth a read.
Apparently I like people born at the end of August. Also, none of you are getting gifts.
I noticed the same thing on my Facebook account and had to check with the internets. A conception calculator said that probable dates were November 23 - Dec 10.
So, unless people are celebrating Pearl Harbor or the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in kinky ways, it seems Thanksgiving might be the culprit.
New wallpaper is up for Season 3, Episode 1.
The pigeons who help each other sup from a water fountain
After waiting for the fountain to be free, one bird jumped on the lever and pushed it down to fill up the bowl, while another kept watch and the third splashed in.
When it had drunk its fill and cleaned its feathers, the third pigeon hopped up to the handle and let his friends have a go.
The three birds continued their bathing ritual for ten minutes, entertaining passers-by in Post Office Square, in Brisbane’s bustling business district.
From today’s NYT profile on Rahm Emmanuel, quoting some of his favorite aphorisms:
“‘A man never stands as tall as when he is on all fours kissing’ rear ends.”
“This is where we blow stuff up.”
Jamie Hyneman — who, to be honest, did not actually use the word “stuff” —
Right. He used the word “shit”. The New York Times protected the world from that.
Richard Dunlop-Walters found this gem the other day:
As a reminder of the stakes, several staff members have affixed over their work spaces a color photocopy of Paul McCartney pointing at the camera and the warning, “Don’t foul this up.” (Actually, only one of these posters says “foul,” where the employee, like an editor at a family newspaper, has taped it over the original word.)
This marvel of awkward writing obfuscates the actual text of the posters, which read, “Don’t fuck this up.”
Their full policy for profanity is explained here. But this explanation, in an article about “word-bombs” and containing the word “cuss” in the title, is more enlightening:
The New Yorker and this newspaper both address an educated readership, but the magazine prints the actual profanity, while The New York Times does not. And very rarely does the paper print those obvious, winking, letter-word stand-ins. As The Times’s two-page stylebook entry on obscenity says, “An article should not seem to be saying, ‘Look, I want to use this word but they won’t let me.’ “
We’re all civilized people here. We’ve heard it all. What are we trying to protect by not using swear words where appropriate?
The children? They know all of the swear words already. They learn most of them through occasional slip-ups by their parents. And when they get to school, they share knowledge with the other children and quickly learn the rest.
Granted, they may not know some of the lesser-used, more sexually-charged terms — and even if they know the words, they probably don’t know their detailed meaning except that they’re “bad words” and can be saved up and used for ammunition in playground arguments.
But I guarantee that your children have heard you say “fuck” at least once. You’ve definitely said “shit” within earshot, and they’re likely to be even more familiar with its more useful counterpart, “bullshit”. And, if they go to a Catholic school, they can probably tell you exactly where the Bible contains “ass” and “cock”.
So they know them. We know them. We know they know them. They sure know we know them. What’s the big deal?
Moreover, why is the artful dodge considered acceptable? We can tell, without a doubt, that Jamie Hyneman really said “blow shit up” and the Beatles Rock Band developers really hung posters that said “Don’t fuck this up”. So could any child capable of reading The New York Times. If everyone knows what they really mean, is that really any nicer, more civilized, or more pure at all than just reproducing these quotations faithfully?
Is there any question as to why the sequel to Meet The Parents, which frequently played on the joke that the main character’s last name was “Focker”, was called Meet The Fockers and was a tremendous hit among the same kinds of soft, pious, embarassed parents who won’t say “fucker” to save their lives but would laugh like crazy every time they said “Focker” in the movie and brag to their friends that they saw “Meet the… FOCKERS!” twice last weekend?
It just feels like, as a culture, we’re getting a bit too old for this sort of thing.
via Fake Steve
I’ll second that, Marco. My MacBook goes through hard drives very quickly — still can’t determine if there’s a cooling problem in the machine or if I’ve just been unlucky, but I’m on my fourth or fifth internal hard drive in two years.
Other services allow you to back up individual folders and files. When your hard drive craps out, you have to reinstall all your applications (CS4, Office, dozens of freeware apps) and try to remember all your idiosyncratic settings and preferences (intricate Growl notifications, Mail rules, folder hierarchies and conventions, etc.) All of these tasks could take an entire day or two to complete.
I think that’s the hidden value of Time Machine: after a two-hour “set it and forget it” restore, you’re done; you have your old computer back, good as new.
I can’t recommend it enough.
This icon means: My hard drive is dead.