Brain Drippings

Firefox, the alternate browser of choice, has released a fairly major update this week, bumping their version from 3.0.11 to 3.5. (continue reading…)

Dear mike.moncrief@fortworthgov.org

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In a recent Op-Ed piece in The New York Times, Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote about the sloppy state of marriage in the US, especially in the case of transgender people. (continue reading…)

When I was a child there was a riddle that went something like this:

A man and his son are in a car accident and are seriously injured. They are both unconscious when they arrive at the hospital.  The son is sent into surgery and the doctor says, “I can’t operate, this is my son.” How is that possible? (continue reading…)

I’ve been using Safari off and on since it first came out in parallel or in place of Firefox. I used it exclusively for quite some time because Firefox did not support the OS X keychain, but now I have 1Password, so that is not an issue.

Well, the 4.0 version of Safari has finally been released and it features a lot of improvements. In fact, with the addition of Glims and Adblock and ClicktoFlash it is a worthy replacement for Firefox in nearly every regard. However, there is one thing that I really hate in Safari, and that is how it handles typing in the address field. (continue reading…)

Apple announced some new pricing on it’s MacBook Pro 15″ models, along with the addition of FireWire  800 and and SD slot.

• $1699 – 2.53 GHz 4GB DDR3 250GB 9400M Graphics,
• $1999 – 2.66 GHz 4GB DDR3 320GB 9400M + 9600M GT
• $2299 – 2.8 GHz 4GB DDR3 500GB 9400M + 9600M GT

But the biggest announcement is that the 13″ MacBook has been upgraded to MacBookPro with the addition of FireWire 800 and the aformentioned SD slot and up to 8GB of RAM. And this MacBook Pro?  yeah, it starts at $1199. Outstanding!

Oh, and the update to Snow Leopard (10.6) is coming in September for $29. Yes, TWENTY-NINE, not $129.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.

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Completely overblown HDR of clouds at sunset, but I still kind of like it.  Next time I might use this new invention called a Tr-iPod? Not sure where they sell these Tr-iPods, but I’m assuming the Apple Store is a good place to start.

Basil Rathbone 1892 – 1967

One year, two films. Five Years, twelve more films. Fourteen Sherlock Holmes movies over 50 years ago and still the definitive Sherlock Holmes actor.

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But then we knew that.

Here’s an analysis of his latest lie-fest.

As summer is fast approaching we find ourselves with a  lot of ‘download this, fill it in, and fax it to us’ forms to fill out. Permission forms, waivers of liability, membership forms, &c. the usual detritus of scheduling activities for the kids over the long break. The trouble is, almost all of these are PDFs that are not setup as PDF forms, so we have to physically print them and physically fill them out, and physically put them in a fax machine (19th Century technology still hanging on by a thread in the 21st Century!), and send them off.

Or do we?  I have a computer, and I’m not afraid to use it.  Here’s what I do.

First off, I open up Pages (but this will work in Open Office or maybe even Microsoft Office) and I drag in the PDF ‘form’ in, essentially making it a background image to my page. I set it to 100% size and I make it fit the page. Then, I create text boxes for each field. I have to turn off wrap-around (”Object causes wrap” in the Pages inspector), but that’s about it.  I position each field right where it needs to go, and then I print the form to a PDF, all filled out.  I even have a screen capture of my signature saved on my computer (stored on an encrpted disk image) that I can put in, so no paper ever needs be involved. I can then fax the form, or if I whine enough, I can usually get a email address to send the form in via email. No muss, no fuss, no phonelines, no paper. As an added bonus, I have a copy of the permission form or application on my computer and I can go back to it anytime I need to (like last summer when one day-camp lost the liability waiver and idn’t tell me until I was dropping the kid off. I begged a couple of minute son the computer and printed it off right there).

On the other hand, I could just learn to write legibly, but that doesn’t seem very likely.

Over the last decade the average person’s need for passwords has increased at a phenomenal rate. It’s quite possible that in 1999 you didn’t need a password at all, or you just had a password for your email account. Today, most people online have at least a couple of email accounts, a Myspace page and/or Facebook page, a Paypal account, an ebay page, and maybe as many as a couple of dozen websites where they login. Add online banking to this mix and  maybe a twitter account and most people with much of an online life are juggling at least a dozen and maybe up to a hundred logins. (continue reading…)

he just draws like he is.

The top Sci-Fi Television Series of all time
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