Saturday, December 27, 2003

It's a lot like these site updates, actually.

The available domain name of the week is spastically.com

Posted 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sunday, December 21, 2003

Last one to the party.

Just a quick update to my previous widget clicking post. Ok, so maybe it wasn't such a wondrous discovery after all. Kevin Conboy from Alternate.org pointed out that command-clicking the toolbar widget to change views has "...been around since 10.0, except 10.0 didn't have the small icon view(s)..." as illustrated in this post of his going way back to April 10, 2001. Likewise, Waferbaby reminded me that you could do this little dance in Jaguar as well. Oh well, it was new to me. That's what I get for being a tardy adopter. Perhaps my documentation will serve as a nifty little trick for a bunch of other folks, regardless. I'll just keep on clicking things and maybe something else will turn up.

Posted 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saturday, December 20, 2003

Tricky clicky widget flipping.

I've been running Panther for a full week on my Mac at the office. Needless to say, I'm tremendously impressed by the increase in speedi-quickness. Application launches are almost nearly as fast as they were under OS 9 for programs like BBEdit. Finally. But as with any change or update, there comes the part about getting used to a few new things. For instance, it took me a while to figure out that the Process Viewer utility is now called Activity Monitor. Dang, I'm sure that utility was in this folder before, wasn't it? And I now know how easy it is to quit and relaunch the SystemUIServer when Panther mucks up all those useful Menu Extras that had behaved so nicely under Jaguar. Certainly, Unsanity's updated Menu Extra Enabler helped smooth out a few of those winkles.
 
Not everything this past week was about fixing busted stuff. I also discovered the following little trick using the lozenge-shaped toolbar widget in the top right-hand corner of all Finder and most preference windows. The default behaviour of clicking on this widget toggles the visibility of the toolbar - and in the case of the new Finder windows, the sidebar as well. But if you hold the command key down while clicking the toolbar widget, you can cycle through all of the various icon and text view options available. These are not limited to Finder toolbars, but can also be applied to any window with a toolbar where you do not normally have the ability to customize the appearance. This includes the main System Preferences window and application preferences as illustrated in Safari below. Pretty cool, eh?
 

Posted 2:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

One year ago.

On this day last year, my mom collapsed due to a massive aneurysm and subsequent intracranial hemorrhage. At the time, we all thought that we'd be saying goodbye to her before Christmas arrived. We didn't say goodbye, but we prayed a lot. Other people prayed a lot too. We appreciated that. We also appreciated all the people who helped our family - and especially my dad - cope with the blasted reality of it all. Frankly, my dad's faith and strength has been amazing. Twelve months ago, we tried not to get ahead of ourselves and begin wondering what would happen next. But time marches stubbornly on, and what happened next was the realization that it's one year later and my mom is still with us. And she's still getting better - not the same, but better. That goes for December 16th as well - not the same, but better.

Posted 9:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sunday, December 14, 2003

Digital damage report.

 
This is a summary of the currently state of my digits as of the second week of December. As you can see from the accompanying image, many of them have seen slightly better days. I offer for your perusal the following documentation:

1. Residual discolouration from a blood blister caused by embedding fork tine under left-hand thumbnail whilst emptying cutlery from dishwasher.
2. Another subdermal blister resulting from pinching tip of right medius between an s-hook and an eye bolt while securing door at off-site storage facility.
3. Standard issue hangnail located on right thumb. This fine example procured via effortless snag on a piece of loose clothing. Currently healing without any indication of paronychia infection.
4. Large divot of skin removed from first knuckle on right index finger during preparation of Christmas tree.

It's a darn good thing I don't work in a sawmill.

Posted 9:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

Photo of the day.

 
Partially frozen river edge. Louise Bridge, Calgary.

Posted 3:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saturday, December 06, 2003

What's that smell?

It's just another internet opportunity wafting your way, my friends. It's time to scratch, sniff, and click - because the available domain name of the week is nosehole.com

Posted 2:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Biff. Bang. Pow.

No, I'm not talking about the band or typographic Batman trivia. The word on the street is all about Veer's creative slug-fest, Lightboxing. Yes, this was a promotional plug for my place of employ. Want to make something of it, punk?

Posted 1:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Friday, December 05, 2003

Regarding your recent message.

Hi there. What can I do for you today?
 
> Your Email Client does not support MIME encoding.
 
Hmmm. Actually, it does support MIME encoding. That's why I received the attached images you sent me. However, it doesn't support non-standard, single-part encoding that your email client apparent mangles the text component of your message into. The fact that I can read the previous notice indicates that your client is quite capable of delivering multi-part content, but instead of encoding your original message as text, it inserted a generic warning instead. Rather odd, wouldn't you agree?
 
> Please upgrade to MIME-enabled Email Client.
 
Why? Just so I can read your messages? You must think they're pretty darn important to warrant someone changing email clients just to read them. However, I suppose I could upgrade. I'd finally be able to view all the MIME-encoded spam that comes down the pipe along with the legitimate email. Thanks for the suggestion, but hitting the delete key is so much easier.
 
> (Almost every modern Email Client is MIME-capable)
 
First of all, what is the definition of 'modern' here? Quite frankly, being able to view HTML and rich media within an email client shouldn't be a criteria for being modern. It should be a criteria for being bloated and a security risk. Secondly, being 'capable' of something doesn't automatically imply being 'functional'. Just because your client can send MIME-encoded messages, doesn't mean you should. If you want me to read your messages, send them as plain text. If you want me to filter your messages, just keep on doing what you're doing. Thanks for stopping by.

Posted 9:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

Turn your head and cough.

This server was temporarily offline this evening while I did a bit of minor maintenance and ran the venerable Norton Disk Doctor through its paces. Don't worry, it was good OS 9 Norton - not evil OS X Norton. And at the end of the day, the best part is that it didn't find anything amiss or critically broken other than a few dozen cattywumpus bundle bits. Nice. We now return you to our regular schedule of programs.

Posted 9:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

Beebed.

I was more than a bit bemused when Stephen Van Esch pointed out that I had been mentioned (albeit briefly) in a BBC News article on the literary value of spam. Considering that it's been nearly eighteen months since I last posted one of my Three Line Poems from the Subject Lines of Spam, I'm honestly boggled at how I even managed to be included as a related link. Somehow, it's Google's fault.

Posted 8:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Monday, December 01, 2003

By your command.

Mad props to Phil Dokas who managed to absolve me of one more niggling OS X quirk that had been stuck in my craw. He pointed to this handy tip on how to reinstate Command-N as the default keyboard shortcut for creating a new folder. The beautiful thing about this tip is that it doesn't require any third-party software like Menu Master. As slick as Menu Master is, I'm really trying to cut down on my third-party software intake.

Posted 9:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)