thoughtlets

"good news!" she exclaimed. robert had carefully prepared himself for this moment. he had a script in mind, a performance he had planned to give, but he knew that the realization of michelle's dream meant the death of his own, and now that the time had come, forcing a smile proved far more difficult than he had imagined. her face sank and he realized he had betrayed himself. suddenly, the haze of denial lifted and robert could see the future clearly for the first time in a long time. he felt alone.

"she's lovely, isn't she? her eyes, her hair, her smile, everything about her's just what the doctor ordered" he cooed with all the softness of a doting parent reading a fairytale to a child. "but she's mine, and if you keep it up, i'll make you go away" he added without skipping a beat.

everything rattled on the old train: the windows, the doors, the seats, the various shelves and compartments. it was as if the screws had been removed and the pieces were just resting in place, ready to come apart with one good jolt. though, screws or not, the train would certainly be in a thousand pieces shortly after reaching the station. the TERRORISTS had made certain of that.

it was certainly a different sort of charisma that jessica possessed. she wasn't charming, per se, and she certainly wasn't an electrifying speaker, but somehow she exuded a sense of belonging, as if she intuitively understood what was happening and she was naturally qualified to put everyone's fears to rest. she was the sort of person that would be perfectly suited to reassuring and quieting children, but she was a dangerous leader, willing and able to lead the team strolling happily off a cliff.

the moss was always wet. even on the hottest, driest day of the year, with the noon day sun glaring down on it, that moss could still soak your sneakers in a few steps. but the trek had to be made because the berries were on the other side of the field and there was every possibility that this would be the last season for them. today could easily be the last crumbly, gooey slice of pie-a-la-keith. the berries would still be there next year, of course, but kate had recently learned the hard way that a sense of having all the time in the world can be a costly indulgence.

handicapple

myth: a mac isn't just another pc
reality: a mac is just another pc with some hardware interfaces broken for the sake of vendor lock-in

myth: a mac can do anything a dell can do
reality: you can't format the hard drive for a standard os because bootcamp won't let you, windows needs special drivers from apple but some things simply don't work, and the situation is even worse in linux

myth: osx and mac hardware are tightly/vertically integrated to work well together
reality: nothing about the hardware has been enhanced for osx, but apple has specifically locked osx, thus it runs fine on other machines if you remove the locks. taking away your choices is not a benefit to you, and if using a mac was really your best option then they wouldn't need to cripple the os to limit your options

myth: apple embraces open source, osx is open like linux
reality: you can view the source for maybe 1% of apple's code and you can't recompile any of it. even the 3rd party "open source" stuff (a small portion of osx) can't be recompiled for the most part

myth: apple "thinks differently" and embraces individuality and personal expression
reality: osx is by far the least customizable desktop, having fewer options for layout, fonts, colors, and so on than windows, and much less than linux. also, interesting things like building a computer with a nano-itx board in a rosewood humidor or a hello kitty lunchbox are simply not an option for mac users, unless they want to break the law

myth: photo editing, graphic design, music production, and anything/everything "creative" is easier on a mac
reality: apple's ilife/etc.. software isn't used professionally for the most part. professional software (particularly adobe's creative suite) always has windows versions, and is typically better supported on windows. for example, adobe released 64-bit photoshop on windows months ahead of its mac release because a number of mac programming interfaces don't support 64-bit software (carbon in particular)

myth: osx runs on the mach microkernel, and microkernels are more stable than monolithic kernels
reality: that feature has been removed for performance reasons

myth: macs have excellent security
reality: osx has fewer security features than any other major os, far less than windows or linux, but it is true that macs have security through obscurity due to having a small minority of desktop share and almost none of the server market

i love that sense of mystery when you first meet someone

where you have no idea who they are or what's on their mind, and sometimes it can be so surprising what you discover

tonight i decided to try: blood oranges in gin

the second law of thermodynamics

is that entropy can't be destroyed, or in other words, order is an illusion and we only create chaos when we try to control things

malicious wares - lemme into your mac.m4a

according to an apple security update, it's possible to hack into a mac by sending someone a malicious sound file. doesn't safari play these files in web pages without asking?

why the iPad is a day late and a dollar short

apple finally entered the tablet PC market today with the announcement of the iPad, and of course, like all apple products, it's being marketed as a revolutionary device

i couldn't agree more that a touch screen tablet is a revolutionary device, i love mine

i've been using a 12" laptop called the HP Tx2 for a few months. it's slick, shiny, beautiful, all rounded and grey-black with a splash of monochrome vector art. it's slim and light, has a dual core processor, 4gb ram, 500gb hard drive, a decent graphics processor that runs top tier studio games fairly well at its native resolution. but here's the kicker:

the Tx2 has a multi-touch screen that pivots 180 degrees and closes facing up as a touch-interactive tablet (or pad)

this one device does everything. at home, i connect it to a 24" display at 1920x1200 with a wireless keyboard and mouse (i also bring the mouse with me when i'm out), its hd playback for tv and movies is perfect, photo and video editing is smooth and attractive, and my web experience is full featured, responsive and crisp, with a choice of any browser and plugins

the last note about browsers is particularly important for me. i like opera, but i'm addicted to firefox addons, so i'm constantly switching between the two. i also use chrome for testing silverlight applets because it's light-weight and it runs plugins in their own threads which makes debugging easier

the screen is also pressure sensitive, and it can detect the tip of a stylus in mid air, in three dimensions, so you can raise or lower the tip of the stylus to control things like pen pressure in adobe illustrator. you don't even need to make physical contact with the screen to draw on it

though, i could rant all day about why i love my device, but how does any of this relate to the ipad? well..

from my perspective, this is a repeat of history. when the iphone came out, i was already using a phone called the htc x7500. it had a 640x480 touch screen, full gps, front and rear video cameras, free and open development, background processes, multiple browsers, and also, it could play flash

but a lot of people were still using crippled motorola flip phones, and the iphone was their first smartphone experience, they were easily convinced that apple had invented features that i had been using for over a year

this is more of the same. apple fans are ranting about the user experience that apple has invented in the ipad, and from my perspective, it's a completely unoriginal and horribly crippled version of my existing hardware

though, the ipad is smaller, thinner, and lighter than my Tx2, but it isn't pocket sized, and i'm really not craving a reduction in my already small 12" screen

wow!!

i'm also certainly not in a hurry to enter apple's proprietary world and to give up the computing freedoms i enjoy in the Tx2, like choosing my own browser and viewing flash, running any software i please in any configuration i like, supporting every file format and codec on earth, and even having the option of switching operating systems

so while i have no doubt that the ipad sports a few interesting features, from where i'm standing, it's yet another apple device that is at best a cute niche experience, and in truth, it's just a huge step backward

3am and bored

victoria at night

 
more..

my theory on religion

is that people experience grief over the human condition, they go through the predictable motions of denial, anger, bargaining, and depression, and religions are support groups that cater to those impulses, especially denial and bargaining

for me, there is no such thing as trendy or current

something is automatically cliched and an affront to individuality and free expression if a large number of people are doing it

wow what a great lip sync video

can you guess which one was born with male anatomy and had gender reassignment surgery at 16?

dramatic onions

i love watching the sun set and the city lights come out