Tuesday, 02 February 2010
ATPM 16.02
The February issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
Mark laments how the technology of his employer isn’t quite there when it comes to telecommuting when the weather’s bad. Then he laments how his home entertainment technology isn’t quite where he’d like it to be, either. Mark also ponders if anyone still cares about the browser wars.
Ed updates the Next Actions master list. If you can’t find something on there to help you get things done, then I suppose you’re content with pen and paper. (And there’s nothing wrong with that.) ATPM reader Stanley Jayne was kind enough to share with us his first experience with the Mac, which began with, well, the first Mac.
Yours truly is responsible for this month’s desktop pictures, which come from our trip to New England in May of 2006. At Weiser Graphics, Chad deals with a finicky printer and the changes in technology, while there appears to be an irrepressible march toward “green products” no one’s heard of. Or may need.
Finally, Sky King Chris has a pair of iPhone-related reviews, checking if the Element iPhone Stand and i.Tech’s SolarCharger 906 can measure up.
As always, About This Particular Macintosh is available in a variety of formats for your enjoyment:
Thanks for reading ATPM!
Monday, 01 February 2010
Thanksgiving 2009, part 1
So I’m finally getting around to doing some photo processing. For Thanksgiving this past year, we spent the week with my parents at their home in the Birmingham, Alabama, area.
Click on Samuel sitting in my old high chair to see the full set.
Sunday, 31 January 2010
Shootout at the Allen Corral
Our son Davis’ hockey team was invited to hold a shootout during intermission between the first and second periods of Friday night’s (1/29/10) Allen Americans hockey game.
Davis is the sixth shooter, skating at the 2:15 mark.
Tuesday, 26 January 2010
links for 2010-01-26
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Filing for future reference.
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Shooters, free targets, mostly in PDF format. You'll have to use larger sized paper than 8.5 x 11 for some.
It’s the Enemy, Stupid
The laws of war are the rule of law. They are not a suspension of the Constitution. They are the Constitution operating in wartime. The Framers understood that there would be wars against enemies of the United States—it is stated explicitly in the Constitution’s treason clause (Art. III, Sec. 3). The American people understand that we have enemies, even if Washington sees them as political “engagement” partners waiting to happen. Americans also grasp that war is a political and military challenge that the nation has to win, not a judicial proceeding in which your enemies are presumed innocent. The rule of law is not and has never been the rule of lawyers—especially lawyers we can’t vote out of office when they say we must let trained terrorists move in next door.
As for privacy, Americans are not as self-absorbed as ACLU staffers—who, by the way, reserve the right to search your bags before you enter their offices. If you fret about privacy, it’s Obamacare that ought to give you sleepless nights. The lefties who’ve told us for nearly 40 years since Roe v. Wade that the government can’t come between you and your doctor are now saying you shouldn’t be able to get to a doctor except through the government, which will decide if you’re worth treating—that is an invasion of privacy. Penetrating enemy communications, on the other hand, is what Americans think of as self-defense. It’s what we’ve done in every war in our history. It’s what common sense says we must do to win. And when America goes to war, Americans want to win.
And our reputation in the international community? Reputation with whom? Sharia states where they stone adulterers, brutalize homosexuals, and kill their own daughters in the name of honor? Rogue regimes where exhibitions of American weakness are taken as license to mutilate? Euro-nannies who rely on us for protection because they’re without the will and the resources to do the job themselves? They ought to worry about their own reputations. In the United States, only the blame-America-first crowd gives an Obama-dollar what they think. That crowd does not include about 80 percent of Americans who look around at their country, look at the teeming masses trying to get into it, and figure this is a pretty good place after all.
Tuesday, 26 January 2010
Silent encroachments
“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” —James Madison, speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788
I would posit the encroachments have been not-so-silent these past 80 years.
Friday, 22 January 2010
Obama Loses It
Dennis Kneale, CNBC Media & Technology Editor:
In so doing, the President has shed his usual, becalmed visage of judicious intelligence and what-me-worry confidence. In its place is an unpleasant portrait of a sulking, vengeful politician lashing out at Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and their brethren on Wall Street—the only target that, his polls say, might resonate with the voters who are forsaking him.
The Obama folks “don’t accept that banks perform a necessary function in the system: to get the economy going again,” says one senior executive at a Wall Street giant. “This business has a social benefit, and it’s how we make money. The two are not exclusive.”
Yet the White House is deaf to complaints that burdensome new rules would hurt bank profits and hamper the recovery. “When you tell them that reduces our profits, they just don’t care,” this exec complains.
That’s the big problem: All of us, especially the Obama Posse, should care a lot about profits at the banks. Healthy banks provide the fuel for a healthy economy. They line up hundreds of billions of dollars a year in syndicated loans for businesses and directly loan out hundreds of billions more.
[…]
Obama’s new proposal to ban banks from trading for their own accounts cracks down on a practice that contributed, in no way whatsoever, to the housing bubble and the tumultuous tumble that followed. A recent Goldman Sachs report shows that, simply put, faulty and loose bank lending practices caused 98 percent of all losses, not the banks’ proprietary trading.
Emphasis in bold added by yours truly. This is class warfare on the part of the Obama administration, plain and simple.
Thursday, 21 January 2010
Get well soon, Charlie.
Because: “That’s how you do it, son.”
(I love the little point with the breadstick at the end. My favorite part.)
Monday, 18 January 2010
links for 2010-01-18
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Okay, this is pretty cool.
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"On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the Lincoln Memorial and admonished America to return to its First Principles. In his I Have a Dream Speech, he announced his dream that 'one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."' He longed to see a day when all 'would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."' Dr. King did not talk about remaking America. His dream was one which, in his words, was 'deeply rooted in the American dream.' It hearkened back to the principles upon which our country was founded. It was not a rejection of our past, but a vision of hope based on the principles of our past."
Sunday, 17 January 2010
Friday, 15 January 2010
links for 2010-01-15
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"If Republicans continue to be intimidated into not engaging minorities out of fear of being called racists, it is unlikely they will ever compete for the votes of racial minorities. Democrats can take blacks for granted because they know Republicans rarely engage them, even though conservative values are much more in line with those of many racial minorities on issues ranging from crime prevention to abortion and same-sex marriage."
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"Americans learned last year that President Obama discards campaign promises like most people discard used Kleenex. Among the pledges he cast aside were reducing the deficit, reining in federal spending, not allowing lobbyists to work in his administration, increasing taxes only on those who make more than $250,000, and opposing 'government-run health care' because it is 'extreme'."
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"Once we have tasted success for a season, we tend to become bored with the fundamentals that made us successful. We become increasingly excited by innovation and pioneering. We become eager to expand."
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Handy list of files which use metadata, which is incompatible with Dropbox.
Monday, 11 January 2010
links for 2010-01-11
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Proud to say, "I know him!" Congratulations on the mention, Michael!
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I've got three different kinds of notebooks I try to take around, though I don't always have one with me. I have a small hardcover Moleskine (black), several Field Notes (Noteses?), and even a couple styled as mini composition books.
Setting brushfires
“It does not take a majority to prevail … but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.” —Samuel Adams
Friday, 08 January 2010
IMG_0769
Big rain collector behind the WinKids building in Flower Mound, Texas. I liked the typography.
Thursday, 07 January 2010
links for 2010-01-07
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Tuned by the Smith & Wesson Performance Center, aimed at the competition market, but certainly applicable for personal defense. Droolworthy.
Yep, too late.
“[A] rigid economy of the public contributions and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive.” —Thomas Jefferson, letter to Marquis de Lafayette, 1823
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