retrophisch

lsuverse: Memorial Day, an American holiday observed on the...

Mon, 28 May 2012 14:22:18 -0500

Memorial Day, an American holiday observed on the last Monday of May, honors men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military. Originally known as Decoration Day, it originated in the years following the Civil War and became an official federal holiday in 1971.

http://www.history.com/topics/memorial-day-history

©Eddy Perez, LSU University Relations

In Remembrance of Those Who Have Given All. [photo courtesy of...

Mon, 28 May 2012 14:02:00 -0500

In Remembrance of Those Who Have Given All.

[photo courtesy of The Patriot Post]

Newsarama.com : Star Wars 35th Anniversary: Timeline (Infographic)

Sun, 27 May 2012 16:19:00 -0500

Newsarama.com : Star Wars 35th Anniversary: Timeline (Infographic):

“More than a mere blockbuster, the Star Wars franchise became a record-setting media empire. Six live-action films and a computer-animated movie have filled theaters. An animated Star Wars TV series has been on the air for four years, with a fifth season set to debut in the fall; a live-action series, ‘Star Wars: Underworld,’ is in preproduction. Profits from licensed merchandise have dwarfed box office revenue, and an estimated $20 billion worth of toys, clothing, prop replicas and other memorabilia have been sold since 1977.”

lsuverse: The LSU Aircraft Memorial, a T-33 “T-Bird” jet,...

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:44:00 -0500

lsuverse:

The LSU Aircraft Memorial, a T-33 “T-Bird” jet, stands as a memorial to all LSU graduates who have lost their lives while defending the nation during the jet age.

"There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more..."

Fri, 25 May 2012 12:10:56 -0500

“There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.”

- James Madison, letter to James Monroe, 1786

The United States is a nation of laws, not men.

City Skyline by United States Marine Corps Official Page on...

Thu, 24 May 2012 14:35:18 -0500

City Skyline by United States Marine Corps Official Page on Flickr.

PEBKAC: On Being Locked In, And Getting What I Want Out

Fri, 18 May 2012 23:49:24 -0500

This column originally appeared in the January 2012 issue of About This Particular Macintosh.

While I own a Kindle e-reader, I find I still do most of my electronic reading on my iPhone. Whether it’s in the Kindle app, or Barnes & Noble’s Nook app, or Apple’s own iBooks, I always have my iPhone with me, thus, I can always read an e-book, even if I left a dead-tree version, or my Kindle, at home. At any rate, I’ve noticed something about these three reading apps.

Before we get to my observation, a quick word on these apps’ respective libraries and purchasing systems: yes, you are locked in. A Kindle book cannot be read in the Nook app, nor can the Nook book be read in iBooks. And while iBooks books are based on EPUB, Nook’s are based on eReader, and Kindle books are a derivative of the Mobipocket format, all of these are wrapped in digital rights management (DRM) software which is unique to that particular app/vendor. In other words, when you buy a Kindle book, any reading of that book has to be on a Kindle device or app. Forever.

For many folks, this isn’t a problem. They have a long history ordering paper books from Amazon, or buying them at a brick-and-mortar Barnes & Noble, and they’re comfortable continuing to give that company their business. I am one of those people, and I’ve given both of those companies part of my book-buying business over the years. My problem with the whole e-book thing is that, unlike the dead-tree edition of a book, I can’t—with limited exceptions—loan it to a friend, or donate it to a library or other organization when I’m done with it. The other problem is, what if this vendor goes out of business? Or shuts down this component of their business? Sure, that doesn’t sound remotely possible with the three companies in question, but who among us would have thought, fifteen years ago, that Leahman Brothers wouldn’t exist today? Yes, they can take up a lot of physical space, and are susceptible to the elements, but a well cared-for paper-based book may just have a better of chance of making it to the second half of the century.

This is a continuing problem authors, publishers, and readers have to dance around. To not have DRM means books are more easily pirated, and authors lose out on royalties, while publishers’ costs increase. As a content creator myself, I’m fully aware of the need to protect one’s work. Yet at the same time, I’m a content consumer, and I find myself at war within, given that I’d rather have the same easy choice with e-books that I have with paper-based books.

So, to my observation: While reading a book in iBooks, I came across an interesting passage, and I have long been a note-taker. In iBooks, it was no big deal to highlight the passage, copy the text, then paste it into a plain text file on Dropbox with Notesy for future reference. Yet this simple process is not at all possible with the Kindle or Nook apps, should I find an interesting passage while reading within either of them. Oddly enough, to take notes from something I’m reading in the Kindle or Nook apps, I have to revert to the same process I would use if the book in question was paper-based: I’d touch-type the note into a relevant file while reading from the device propped up next to my iMac.

This, on the face, seems like a simple fix: the Kindle and Nook app developers need to include a copy text function. However, knowing several programmers, I know that things are often not nearly as simple as they seem. These developers may also be restricted in some way by Apple’s rules for iOS apps, who can say? Still, I’d love to see them implement this in their respective apps.

But why not just highlight the passage that’s caught your attention, you might ask. Because, so far as the Nook is concerned, this means you’re still stuck always having to flip through the e-book to find what you’ve highlighted. Amazon gets around this somewhat with the Kindle, however, by collecting your annotations. Whether you highlight, or make a note, it’s kept for you at kindle.amazon.com. From there, you can copy and paste directly from a web page, which is a reasonable alternative to doing it bit by bit on your iPhone.

The only issue with that solution on the Kindle, however, is what if you have a book you didn’t buy from Amazon? In the week between Christmas and New Year’s, I downloaded a novella from an author’s blog. He had put it out as both a .mobi file for reading on a Kindle, or EPUB for apps and devices capable of that format. I can put this .mobi file on my Kindle, and highlight all I want, but those won’t be available to me at the above web site. Built-into-the-app copy abilities would help solve that. Because you never know when an interesting passage is going to come along.

tiffanyb: kayakingupstream: The Grilled Cheese Toaster Bag. I...

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:22:23 -0500

tiffanyb:

kayakingupstream:

The Grilled Cheese Toaster Bag. I feel like this took longer for us (as humans) to figure out than it should have.

Dave blogged this, but utterly failed to include a link where one might purchase this revolutionary product.

I wonder how well this will work with the bread buttered, as we do in our household before we plop it down on the frying pan…

First time he’s pulled himself all the way up! (Taken with...

Mon, 14 May 2012 15:08:42 -0500

First time he’s pulled himself all the way up! (Taken with instagram)

Photo

Thu, 10 May 2012 13:09:30 -0500

For Maurice. Rest in peace, and thank you. (Taken with...

Tue, 08 May 2012 09:34:00 -0500

For Maurice. Rest in peace, and thank you. (Taken with instagram)

PEBKAC: Staying Connected in Africa

Fri, 04 May 2012 15:58:27 -0500

This column originally appeared in the December 2011 issue of About This Particular Macintosh.

Greetings from Rwanda! As this issue goes to press, my wife and I are in the African republic finalizing the adoption of our third child. We’ve been here for two weeks, and have up to another week in Kenya to look forward to. (Procedural muckety-muck with US Immigration; not everything can be processed in Rwanda.)

Staying connected with back home and the larger world has been a challenge. We each brought our iPhones, but they’ve been locked in airplane mode since we boarded our initial flight out of Dallas. We checked with AT&T about using them internationally, but the costs of doing so were just too great. Thanks to a Facebook group devoted to adoption in Rwanda, we learned it was relatively cheap to buy a simple phone for texting and local calls. So we set our sights on doing that.

Our first full day in-country we performed our first currency exchange and immediately sought out one of the myriad cell phone sellers. And when I say myriad, that’s not an exaggeration. Take those half dozen or so cell phone kiosks you see at an average American mall and multiply it by a few hundred. Thousand. A few hundred thousand. (Okay, that may be an exaggeration, but it seems that every where you look there are booths or larger stores devoted to selling mobile phones.

Mobile is huge here, as it is in much of the developing world. A mobile infrastructure is much easier to build out than a wired one. Everyone here has a mobile phone. Not many people have a land line. Heck, even the Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Children (under the Office of the Prime Minister) has her mobile number on her business card. And that’s all. (And yes, this means that we do, in fact, have a business card from the Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Children.)

So, mobile phone acquired, along with two SIM cards, each with about nine US dollars worth of time and texting, total cost: US$35. Why two SIM cards? Turns out this no-name phone from China or Korea or wherever has two SIM slots. There are two mobile providers in Rwanda, the original MTN, and the relative newcomer, Tigo. It’s cheaper to call internationally, especially to the United States, on Tigo. Most everyone we’d be in contact with in Rwanda is on MTN. So the dual-SIM card capability would benefit us greatly. (An eight-minute phone call at 4 in the afternoon, Kigali, back to Dallas cost about 300 Rwandan francs, or 50 cents US.)

On every street corner, in every other empty space of a strip mall or building, there are men and women selling cards for time and data on MTN and Tigo, usually under yellow umbrellas of the former and purple umbrellas of the latter. They are fairly aggressive, but not obnoxiously so. They won’t hesitate to come up to ask if you need to buy, but back off quickly if you decline. It’s very cutthroat, however, as the percentage they receive from each card sold is their livelihood. They won’t hesitate, once a buyer has been identified, to try to sell over one another to earn that percentage. While we haven’t had to engage in an on-the-street purchase, our local attorney has, and it was interesting to watch.

So far as Internet access is concerned, we brought my 11-inch MacBook Air, plus an iPad 2, which has proven handy for watching US TV episodes previously downloaded when your only choices in the hotel room are Al Jazeera English and a sports channel that shows nothing but football (soccer, fellow Americans). Our hotel has Internet access in the room, usually served via wifi from a router mounted out in the hallway. Unfortunately, that wifi hasn’t worked since the day we moved in. Enter a wired connection and Mac OS X’s Internet Sharing feature.

Though I always carry a 25-foot Ethernet cable in my pack, I heartily accepted the hotel staff’s offer of a cable to plug in with. I consider the Apple Ethernet-to-USB adapter for the Air to be one of those “better to have and not need, than need and not have” pieces of kit, and it indeed saved our bacon. With the MacBook Air plugged in, it was off to the Sharing pane in System Preferences, and after turning on Internet Sharing, our iPad and iPhones could access the outside world over wifi. Problem solved!

Well, kind of.

Two days prior to the writing of this piece, our hotel’s connection went down about 8:00 PM local time. And has yet to resurface in our room, despite the tech sitting at the front desk, plugged in, forty-eight hours later. So while we were happily checking in on Twitter, Facebook, and e-mail in the mornings and evenings, that was no longer possible, wired connection or not.

So lunches and dinners have been spent at places with known free wifi, and the staff of two institutions now recognize us on sight. Just this evening, while eating steak kebabs and sambusas (local version of the meat-filled, deep-friend pastry), the Air was on the dining table, purchasing tickets through KLM’s web site for our flight to Kenya. (And zapping some spam from my e-mail inbox.)

So while staying in contact with our family back home, and with our friends around the world, hasn’t been as easy as back in Dallas, it has not been an insurmountable challenge, either. The people of Rwanda have been very friendly and accommodating, and we have, to a degree, fallen a little in love with our newest child’s homeland. We will certainly return in the years to come.

lsuverse: From @si_vault: Pete Maravich makes a sweet no-look...

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:53:48 -0500

lsuverse:

From @si_vault: Pete Maravich makes a sweet no-look pass during a 1968 LSU-Tulane game. Check out Tulane’s socks.

A quick, 1.4-second test video using the Frameographer app and...

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:51:00 -0500

A quick, 1.4-second test video using the Frameographer app and the Glif, both from Studio Neat.

Japanese TRON Lightsuit Dance. Okay, this is pretty cool.

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 19:04:56 -0500

Japanese TRON Lightsuit Dance.

Okay, this is pretty cool.

Jen Hatmaker - Dear Trayvon's Mom

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 18:44:11 -0500

Jen Hatmaker - Dear Trayvon's Mom:

tiffanyb:

I kept looking for a quote to pull for Tumblr, but every paragraph was better than the last, and just… read the whole thing.

My wife tweeted this link earlier today, so I only thought it proper to include it here as well.

Secret door inside this wardrobe leads to a Narnia-themed playroom

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 18:41:00 -0500

Secret door inside this wardrobe leads to a Narnia-themed playroom:

tiffanyb:

*swoon*

Suddenly wishing I knew where the load-bearing walls were upstairs…

PEBKAC: On the passing of Steve Jobs

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:16:00 -0500

This column originally appeared in the November 2011 issue of About This Particular Macintosh.

In 1996, I was working for The Computer Shoppe, in Metairie, Louisiana. The Computer Shoppe is distinctive in that it was one of the original Apple retailers signed up nearly twenty years before. That year Apple Computer, Inc. celebrated its twentieth anniversary, and there was much hullabaloo. One such bit of hullabaloo was the visit by Apple bigwigs and Steve Wozniak to our humble shop. Then-Apple CEO Gil Amelio had enlisted Woz, as one of the company’s original founders, to act as the face of the company for the anniversary goings-on.

Woz spent an entire day at the store, and the entire staff got to go to a dinner that night, where The Computer Shoppe’s owners were presented with a crystal apple as thanks from the company. Some time during that day, I got Woz’s signature on the mostly-blank side of one of The Computer Shoppe’s tri-fold flyers.

I’ve attended two Macworld Expo keynotes where Steve Jobs was presenting. The first time I was in the same (albeit very large) room as Jobs, I thought about that flyer with Woz’s signature, and how neat it would be to get both founders’ autographs together.

These were the heady days of two Macworld Expos a year, and I knew I’d be attending the very next Expo, so for that time, I dug through the box of momentos and found the flyer. It was with me in the keynote hall, and it was in my hand as I got within about fifteen feet of Jobs after the keynote had concluded and the hall had mostly emptied.

That flyer still bears only Woz’s signature.

I don’t remember who Jobs was talking to. It didn’t appear to me it was a media-related conversation, and my memory isn’t deep enough to recall whose badges said what, so it very well could have been a less-publicly known Apple executive. Or just a friend.

What I do recall is that Jobs appeared at ease. Comfortable. He wasn’t having to be “on” for the keynote presentation. He was more relaxed now. There were a few other people were milling about, waiting for a chance to talk to Steve, shake his hand, whatever. I looked around at them, and the thought occurred to me, This just doesn’t feel right. I cannot recall there being anything specific triggering that thought, but I do remember the thought. This just doesn’t feel right. So I stuck the flyer back in my laptop bag and headed out, no looking back, no regrets.

There may have been a time to ask Jobs to sign the flyer, to get his John Hancock next to his former partner’s. But that wasn’t it. Not when he was coming down from arguably some of the toughest in-the-public-eye work he did each year. It was time to let him bask in the finish, to relax, to enjoy.

Many words have been and will continue to be spilled about the life of Steve Jobs. He will be called many things: visionary, leader, driven, egotistical, asshole. He will be remembered fondly by many. He will be remembered foully by some. Love or hate, he will be remembered.

The first computer my family owned was a used Apple ][e, purchased from a teacher at my high school. I distinctly remember going with my dad to the teacher’s house to pick up the system, and I distinctly remember seeing my first Macintosh in person, for that was what had replaced the ][e for this particular teacher. I remember buying my first Mac in the Tulane University book store while my wife was in law school. And I remember going into the Dallas metroplex’s first Apple retail store to buy the first iPod.

Like many of my friends, I would not have had many of the experiences, the jobs, I have had were it not for two Steves getting together to build a personal computer. Which led to another. Which led to another. And another. And so on.

What we should remember most about Steve Jobs, for all that he accomplished, is that, in the end, he’s just a man. A man with family and friends who loved him deeply, and who will mourn his passing more deeply than any one of us outside that circle. For me, tomorrow is just another day in my life. For them, tomorrow is another day without the dear one they loved.

So I do not mourn Steve Jobs for myself, despite what his life’s work meant to mine. Instead I mourn for his family, who now face life without a husband and father.

And for the rest of us, tomorrow will be just another day. Tomorrow, there is no chance of Steve returning. Tomorrow, there is no amount of mourning and what-iffing that will bring him back.

Tomorrow is the time to turn to the ideals Steve believed in: striving for perfection, though it is never attained; demand the best in yourself, and strive to bring it out in others; and to live your life to the fullest in pursuit of your dreams.

"The other option is to forget about creating rules and lists and instead get an effective anti-spam..."

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 10:00:05 -0500

“The other option is to forget about creating rules and lists and instead get an effective anti-spam utility. And when I say effective I do mean C-Command Software’s $30 SpamSieve. We don’t dish out five-mouse ratings lightly, but in this case it’s completely deserved. I’ve relied on SpamSieve for years as have many of my colleagues. It really is the best way to deal with this crud.”

- Christopher Breen, Macworld

Admittedly, I’m biased, as Michael Tsai, the man behind C-Command, is a personal friend. I was on the original beta test team for SpamSieve, and have used every iteration since 1.0 hit the ether. If you’re a Mac user, this is the first app you should buy.

lsunews: Members of the United States Air Force Honor Guard...

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 23:33:10 -0500

lsunews:

Members of the United States Air Force Honor Guard performed a drill routine Thursday (3/8/12) on the Parade Ground.

This marks the first time the 16-man honor guard drill team visited the campus. The team is led by 1st Lt. Alexander Stanton, an LSU alumnus.

By Tyler Daniel, The Daily Reveille

Once upon a time, that was almost me. I served two years in LSU’s Pershing Rifles, the combined honor guard component of LSU’s ROTC programs. We never did anything as fancy as these moves, however. Nor did we get to mount bayonets.

This is radically cool.