Month: January 2010

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FWIW–not suchabigdeal

Folks over at the Win7 Forums are making a big deal out of the Windows Experience Index. My Win7 Pro box that’s cobbled together from a base of a 3-year-old HP Media Center PC is a kinda low-middle-of-the-road PC. Not so much a powerhouse (although by changing out the memory and primary hard drive, it could be a lot hotter), but Good Enough for most purposes, including running several VMs on top of the host Win7 OS.

FWIW,

I don’t know what the deal is with the Aero score. 1GB of discrete video RAM on the nVidia vidcard; Aero never bobbles or hesitates; smooth as silk. Something arcane I don’t care about. Son&Heir’s monster Asus gaming notebook scores higher on gaming, memory and hard drive marks but about the same on Aero scoring, so I’m not at all sure that the Aero score matters at all to my own experience.

Especially since I do much of my computing in Linux Mint in a VM. *heh*

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A Lil Book Searching for Its Raison D’être

I guess you’d have to be me (or someone who’s tired of grading “grad” papers from subliterates) for this to bother you,

“But the Dock is so much more than just eye candy. It’s an ever-accessible venue where [sic] your frequently-used applications can call ‘home’.”

Sadly, this is typical of the writing in the otherwise excellent and useful (to newbies and those who need even more hand-holding than the Mac straight jacket already provides), “The Mac Manual” from makeuseof.com.

While there’s nothing really ground-breaking, and really nothing that someone of average intelligence cannot figure oput on their own, for those who find Windows just toooo hard and those who just want to know how to use the oh-so “intuitive” Mac interface more quickly, this is a very nice cheat sheet.

69 pages with loads of nice white space makes “The Mac Manual” from (makeuseof.com) and really quick read and even a handy enchiridion for incurious or lazy newbie Mac users.

But yeh, I have a copy of it and may even carry it with me for the next Mac user I meet who needs some help. 🙂

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Ahh! The Blessings of “Junk Builds”

My home office desk is a build consisting of

  • -a 3’X6′ top I slapped together from (mostly) scrap about 17 years ago.
  • -four legs made of (average) better than 10″ diameter sycamore logs from deadfalls off our trees from The Great Ice Storm of 2007, with
  • -oak 2X4 (from old pallets) and sycamore limb bracing
  • -and a 2’X3′ “keyboard drawer” made from a piece of castoff formica counter and the only purchased item, a heavy-duty drawer glide.

Why is this such a blessing, apart from the fact that it was built for about $12? Oh, well, when I stumbled and fell on the extended “keyboard drawer” a few minutes ago, I broke one of the free oak pieces I used to attach the drawer glides to the desktop, along with the drawer glides.

Cost to repair? Maybe $10. (I can get better, heavier-duty glides now for less at one of my fav “fell-off-the-truck-pricing” stores. *heh*) I have plenty of pieces of oak 2X4, so since I’ll recycle the 3″ brass screws, I’ll need only the drawer glides. Sweet. Heck, I’ve been meaning to replace these now worn (over 10 years old) drawer glides, anyway, what with all the wear I’ve given them using my keyboard drawer as a footrest… 🙂

But… broke the oak support. Man, I have to lose a few pounds… 🙂

Oh, and when the “drawer” fell, I also broke my plastic trash can. S’all right. Pulled it out of a dumpster almost 10 years ago, along with its companion paper shredder (which I repaired and used for five years until it died again… and was replaced by another dumpster paper shredder). I have more such freebies with which to replace the trash can.

I tell ya. Folks toss out the most useful stuff. (I’m about to use a discarded horizontal file cabinet as a “build-in” to a full room height bookcase. What was wrong with it that it was discarded? Oh, the back–cheap, thin mahogany plywood–had been broken. I replaced it with better: a peg board on which things can be hung behind the horizontal file drawers! It was brand new but “broken” in transport. Thrown out. Asked the business owner, and he appreciated the removal.)

OK, this is more than just an “I broke my desk, but I don’t really care” post. Catching wise? Don’t need to be a hoarder, but why just throw out stuff? Put it on Craigslist or something if it doesn’t sell in a garage sale! Here are some Craigslist listings just today for a locale near me:

  • Free firewood pic
  • A Bunch Of Stuff – Couch, Lamps, Gardening Stuff And More
  • puppy
  • Golden Retriever pic
  • FREE Wooden Treehouse/swing playset
  • Car/Truck Hood
  • 36 In. Screen Door pic
  • WOODEN SHOP TABLE
  • Free 20+ inch TV

Think what a blessing some of your junk might be either to someone in need or just some tightwad like me. *heh*

Still, didn’t even shake the desk. Just tore off the keybd drawer. My lap and a lil side table are working fine as keyboard rest and mousing surface for my wireless input devices. I frequently use ’em that way anyway when I have my feet up and am leaned back, comfortably “computing” from about a 5′-6′ distance from my monitor. Now, it’s reduced a tad, cos my feet are on the desk proper. I’m amazed i can find room for ’em there, though. The thing holds an awful lot of junk…

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More Kind Than Deserved

Dennis Prager, in excessively kind and gentle fashion, takes Charles Johnson, of Little Green Nutballs (which I will not link) to the woodshed (kindly, gently) with, An Open Letter to Charles Johnson.

For those of y’all who may have missed the blogospheric kerfuffle, Charles Johnson once ran Little Green Footballs (still not linking it), which, once upon a time, long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, used to be a place where he fought against the evils he today defends. No, not just defends; virulently, slanderously–in many folks’ opinions–attacks those with whom he once allied himself.

Prager reiterates Johnson’s list of “justifications” for his switch and rebuts them all. Here’s #9, a typical example,

9. Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.). [Johnson]

I saw Pamela Geller’s site (The New York Times Magazine article about you cited it — Atlas Shrugs — and mentioned nothing remotely approaching your charges against her or her site) and I’ve interviewed Robert Spencer. Your charges against them only cheapen the words “fascism,” violence” and “genocide.” [Prager]

As I said, Prager takes Johnson to the woodshed most convincingly (read it for yourself) and, IMO, all too gently, especially given the fact that I have read the positions and assertions of all the parties Johnson condemns and have a good idea of their place in “the right”. Johnson’s place? IMO, Little Green Nutballs is juuuust the place for him… until someone can get commitment papers in order, for his own good. Then, of course, if a physical etiology for his psychological issues can be diagnosed, perhaps medical treatment could return him to sanity.

Of course, if there’s no one in his family who cares enough about him to begin commitment proceedings, he’ll likely spend the rest of his life frothing at the mouth and baying at the moon.

Continue reading “More Kind Than Deserved”

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Lamest President Ever

President Bush got piled on by some leftards for reading to grade school students and not scaring the children by jumping up and running off in all directions on 9/11. But at least he was never caught using a teleprompter to speak to elementary students…

The TOTUS at Graham Road Elementary School in Falls Church, Va., Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2010, with the useless appendage behind the podium, playing parrot.

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What a Chuckle

What’s so humorous? Apple’s $80+ “Magic Mouse” (with prices all the way up to $130!). For $80+, IF you have a compatible Apple product to use it with (otherwise, you can shell out even more for a Bluetooth interface), it can almost duplicate–after making modifications to the way the OS normally uses a mouse (why! you can actually have it emulate a TWO-BUTTON MOUSE! *pfui*)–what my lil $30 Logitech wireless RF mouse can do. Oh, wait. That was $30 with the wireless keyboard as well… And with shipping.

*feh*

Well, I do have to admit that it will do a couple (but only a couple) of things my setup won’t, but since it’ll ONLY do them with compatible Apple products (and some very recent Apple products will need additional–can you say, “More $$”?–hardware just to use this “Magic Mouse”), and even then, are “features” more searching for users than features users search for. What? I need something that lets me, “swipe left and right along the Multi-Touch surface to advance through pages in Safari or browse photos in iPhoto”? First of all, I can do the mouse gesture forward/back in Opera now, and only use one finger, so why make things harder for myself? Second, iPhoto? Who wants to use iPhoto?

Wait. That two-finger gesture thingy doesn’t count, since I can do it with one finger, so that’s only ONE thing this over-priced dummy-catcher can do that my cheapo Logitech wireless mouse can’t. What’s the other thing? 360 degree “pan”. I’m still trying to imagine a use I might put that to. Sure, it’s a “gee-whiz” feature, but useful? I can scroll up n down (and left-right in most apps) with my lil cheapie Logitech mouse. Good enough. 360 degree “panning”? Sell me on it, if you can.(You can’t)

Apple’s Magic Mouse: just the thing for folks with more money than brains and worth a few chuckles for the rest of us.

N.B. Apple does make some very fine hardware. MacBook Pros, for example, can make very nice Windows machines. Well, apart from that quirky Mac keyboard. Which just highlights the main issue I still have with Macs. Why not just buy some very fine hardware (for less than equivalent Apple hardware) and if one wants a BSD-based OS (like OS X) just install PCBSD? A very nearly bulletproof OS with LOADS of free software, suitable for almost any user’s needs: what’s not to like. Heck, it can even be “skinned” to be more maclike, if one should desire such a thing.

And it works with real mice and keyboards. 🙂

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Winter’s Brew

What to do…

I love coffee,
I love beer,
I love cocoa when it’s cold around here.

I know! Make some semi-instant “2Xhot” cocoffee.

  1. Brew coffee.
  2. Add coffee to
  3. Hot cocoa mix* with
  4. a couple of drops of vanilla
  5. a pinch (or two) of cayenne pepper or a few drops of your fav hot sauce
  6. about 1/8-1/4 tsp freshly-ground cinnamon
  7. stir (I use a whisk) n sip
  8. sweeten to taste, if needed

Enjoy. The extra spiciness gives this a triple kick: the cocoa, the coffee and the cinnamon/cayenne really go well together! BTW, my first time, I had no cayenne handy, and I didn’t want to use the hot sauce I had available, so I used some chipotle chips, ground fine in a bladed coffee grinder I use for “hot” spices. The cinnamon was ground in a bladed coffee grinder I use for “sweet” spices, although given that I was using them together, I suppose I simply could have used the “hot” spices grinder.

Careful with the pepper, though. It’s easy to get too much for some “gringo” constitutions.

I suppose I really need to come up with a coffee-cocoa-pepper beer, though, cos 3 of 3 is bound to beat 2 of 3, right?

🙂

*Hot Cocoa Mix

Ingredients
10 cups dry milk powder
4 3/4 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar (I used sucralose–“Splenda”–just not made by the company that makes Splenda)
1 3/4 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
1 3/4 cups powdered non-dairy creamer

Directions

In a large mixing bowl, combine milk powder, confectioner’s sugar, cocoa powder, and creamer. Stir till thoroughly combined. Store cocoa mixture in an airtight container. Makes about 15 cups mix, or enough for about 45 servings.

For 1 serving, place 1/3 cup cocoa mixture in a coffee cup or mug, and add 3/4 cup boiling water. Stir to dissolve. Top with dollop of whipped cream or a few marshmallows, if desired.

Note: I did the “stir thoroughly” bit, but I believe from now on I’ll do that, then put the mix through a small food processor to make it into a very fine powder, as I do with a chai mix I make.

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A World of Meaning

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.“–Inigo Montoya

With appreciation for the language adopted by the King James translators of the New Testament, I offer this use of the structure of I Corinthians 13:13,

“Now there abide these three: phonemes, syntax and semantics; and the greatest of these is semantics.”

Continue reading “A World of Meaning”