Blog Battered Least of All

PDFcasting

2005-10-13T16:41:00.000-04:00

Adam mentioned something about this. PDFcasting has been done—-after all, iTunes manages PDFs, though they can’t open in iTunes itself—-but it’s a novelty. I’m certainly not going to say it will never happpen, but here’s the prediction I will make:

PDFcasting will not take off until someone comes out with a “PDF iPod”. And then it will rock.

Because the “PDF iPod” will not be like an iPod at all. It will have a large screen, and display essentially magazine content. And with luck, it will be made of electronic paper.

It’ll come. Just wait. It’ll come.

Line of the day: 9/16/05

2005-09-16T01:17:00.000-04:00

Today’s line is from an actual email, recieved as a campus-wide annoucement at my school. The email is from the Rabbi regarding weekly shabbat services. The line itself appears in bold:

Shabbat Services will take place this Friday (Sept. 16) at 6:30.
Following services we will have wonderful dinner.

Discussion topic: “Does God Bring Hurricanes? And if not What is God doing all the time?”

Everyone is welcome

Technorati tags: Line of the Day, shabbat, humor

Daring Fireball Wins

2005-09-12T16:59:00.000-04:00

Excuse my language, but this is fucking priceless. John Gruber reports on the fallout of the new iTunes 5.

Thank you, Mr. Gruber.

Technorati tags: iTunes, humor, GUI

Woody's cell ring

2005-08-26T22:25:00.000-04:00

I have to get this on the record before I forget. I’m watching Crossing Jordan. Great show, by the way. Woody’s cell phone rings.

His ring is a Newton alarm tone.

Aw, hey, Newton. I just pulled mine out again. It’s been almost a year. I’ve missed the little guy,

Technorati tags: Apple Newton, Crossing Jordan

Line of the day: 8/26/05

2005-08-26T13:15:00.000-04:00

I’m back! About time, too. Today’s line comes from the forums at LinuxQuestions.org, where jspenguin asks about DTMF detection and uses this sig:

The trouble with bite-sized cookies is that you can only track 256 people with them.

Now I sit back and pray someone else gets it.

Technorati tags: Line of the day, geek humor

From here on...

2005-08-23T12:06:00.000-04:00

Ok, look: the phrase is “from here on in”. Not “from here on end”. It can be said “from here on out”.

But not “from here on end”.

Am I clear? Am I wrong? Am I insane?

Technorati tags: grammar, usage, English, nit-picking

Comment spam

2005-08-21T12:11:00.000-04:00

From the looks of it, I just go hit with a butt-load of comment spam. I’ve deleted it all. If you posted a comment to the last post and I deleted it as spam (and shouldn’t have), drop me a note on this post and I’ll put it back. It can be hard to tell sometimes.

And here I thought I was getting all popular.

Technorati tags: spam, blogging, blog comments

Cindy Sheehan Vigil pictures

2005-08-19T13:33:00.000-04:00

Child at Sheehan Vigil
Originally uploaded by Peeja.

I attended the Cindy Sheehan vigil in Amherst, MA on Wednesday. I managed to get a few good pictures. So far I’ve only satisfied myself with two. This one is my favorite; the other one (and any future picutes) are available as a Flickr set.

Technorati tags: photo, Cindy Sheehan, vigil, child

Line of the day: 8/16/05

2005-08-16T12:04:00.000-04:00

I have to get my wisdom teeth extracted. Excellent. But there’s one nice thing to come of this: today’s line. It comes from the preoperative instuctions for general anesthesia I recieved. The last instruction is:

5. Please reread the above instructions.

That’ll keep a blonde busy…

Technorati tags: Line of the day, wisdom teeth, surgery, anesthesia

Line of the day: 8/15/05

2005-08-15T20:34:00.000-04:00

Ever wanted to run OS X on your Intel box? Now you can. This article explains how. And step #1 is our line of the day:

Authorized users should obtain the OSX files from Apple. It is illegal to obtain them from torrent sites by searching under the following keywords: “VMWare files for patched Mac OS X Tiger Intel”

Such responsibility.

Technorati tags: Line of the day, OS X, Apple, Intel, BitTorrent

It had to be.

2005-08-11T23:48:00.000-04:00

Oh, lord. There’s a SlashGoth.org. It had to be.

Technorati tags: goth, geek

I just don't understand the Postal Service.

2005-08-11T21:58:00.000-04:00

I got a letter in the mail the other day. Apparently I can get $30,000 worth of life insurance for only $1.00. Great. What interests me more is the address they sent it to:

To:
Head of Household Pre-Selected Residence Major US Market Area

WTF!? And this got to my mail box? What the hell kind of address is “Major US Market Area”?

Technorati tags: weird mail, junk mail, postal service

Line of the day: 8/11/05

2005-08-11T11:36:00.000-04:00

Been a while, hasn’t it? Oh, well. Today’s line comes from an older post over at Merlin Mann’s truly wonderful 43 Folders productivity/lifehacks blog. Here, Merlin explains why tabbed browsing is so damned worth it:

Whatever your browser is, if it doesn’t support tabbed browsing you’re missing the boat. If you have no idea what this means, please just get Firefox, and thank me later. Tabless browsing is like having to check out a library book one page at a time.

Yeah, that about covers it. Check out his site if you haven’t already. You may learn a thing or two, and your self will thank you.

Technorati tags: Line of the day, tabbed browsing, Firefox, lifehacks

Who the bleep is Liza Ramlow?

2005-08-09T16:54:00.000-04:00

I’m working on a paper about Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, which contains a character named Liza. I just installed Microsoft Word a couple weeks ago (I caved; Apple, get off your ass and write a decent word processor already…). Logically, I started one of my paragraphs off with “Liza”.

Word suggests I was writing “Liza Ramlow”.

Who the hell is Liza Ramlow? I have no idea. The name sounds a little familiar, but I have no idea who she is or why Word knows about her. A search of my hard drive reveals nothing. Google isn’t much help either.

If you’ve ever heard of Liza Ramlow, please, please leave a comment. Save my sanity.

Technorati tags: Liza Ramlow, Microsoft Word

One what under chicken fries?

2005-08-08T17:40:00.000-04:00

Anyone else noticed that Burger King just changed the lyrics to “Bob Your Head” from “One nation under chicken fries” to “One kingdom under chicken fries”? I wonder who pushed them to do that?

In their defense, though, “one kingdom” makes more sense for a place called “Burger King”.

Technorati tags: advertising, politics, Burger King

Thank you random hot-spot! (Please don't sue me!)

2005-08-03T21:45:00.000-04:00

I’m in New York. With my parents. Being away from my desk and TV and the Internet leaves me with no distractions from the simple fact: I’m lonely. Aside from a wonderful freak sushi incident with Ian the other day, I haven’t had real social interaction in a long time.

So when I opened up my PowerBook to the greeting of “Would you like to connect to ‘belkin54g’?” I was ecstatic. My face lit up. I may not have any friends around for a while, but at least I’ve got blogs and podcasts.

That’s sad, I know, but at least I’m happy.

I hate cell phones

2005-08-02T11:34:00.000-04:00

I have a new cell phone, the LG VX3300. It’s a piece of crap. But then I get the feeling that most are. What a god-awful mess of an OS. Why can’t it use something like Linux, something even remotely inteligible.

I wonder if that sounds like a joke. It’s not. Linux can only be understood by those who have taken the time to understand it, true. Traditional cell phone OSs can be understood by no one. They’re just there to make it theoretically possible to operate the phone. And the manual? Forget about it. It doesn’t explain what any of the features do or mean, it just tells you how to activate them—by which I mean it tells you the numbers to press to get through the menus to a feature. Great help that is.

By the way, on one of these phones, the default lock code starts out as ‘0000’, but after activation it becomes the last 4 digits of your phone number. The book doesn’t mention that last part. Thanks, LG.

Bonus Lines!

2005-08-01T22:03:00.000-04:00

I just couldn’t resist a couple more. The first is from the NBC show “Medium”, which I’m enjoying quite a lot. Here she momentarily relives a certain public figure’s execution and thinks:

Ungrateful bastards. Have you ever tried cake? It’s not like I said, “Let them eat Brussels sprouts.”

Line #2 (really #3, but who’s counting…) is the fine print from a new Post-It ad:

Not intended to be worn.

Ok, some context might help: a guy is in fact wearing Post-Its in the ad. Just the same…

Line of the day: 8/1/05

2005-08-01T11:29:00.000-04:00

Happy August, everyone. Happy Lughnasadh, as well.

Today’s line is the headline of a story from vnunet.com about “audio hallucinations,” hearing songs when there’s nothing playing. The article is entitled:

iPod hallucinations face acid test

Brilliant.

PSA: How to cancel your AOL account in 10 minutes

2005-08-01T10:48:00.000-04:00

I normally don’t like to just point to things without having much to add, but this needs to be spread around as much as possible. If you have signed up with AOL, get the hell out! If you haven’t picked up on it yet, you’ll soon see why it’s just no good (and never has been). I hate those adds where they talk abut their spam filtering—just talk to my girlfriend about AOL spam filtering. I don’t know how they get away with those ads.

So do yourself a favor: get out now (in just 10 minutes), before it’s too late.

Where everybody knows your name

2005-07-30T21:54:00.000-04:00

Looks like the most common search leading people to this site is “peter jaros”. So who’s looking me up by name? I don’t know. But you know who you are.

One from the Bronx. (Dave?)
One from Kentucky. (Kentucky!?)
One from who-knows-where.
And three (three!) from Illinois. (Anne, are you one of those?)

So, if you found my blog by my name, leave me a quick comment. I’d like to know who’s here. For that matter, I’d love it if anyone dropped me a line. It’s nice to get a little feedback now and then.

I wonder if there’s some famous Peter Jaros in Chicago…

Line of the day: 7/30/05

2005-07-30T21:33:00.000-04:00

I found this one earlier today. I don’t remember where I saw it, but it looks like it’s been on a few different bumper stickers. Your line du jour ce soir is a piece of sage wisdom from the ages:

Remember: pillage, then burn.

Dang, I always get that one wrong…

Line of the day: 7/29/05

2005-07-29T23:20:00.000-04:00

Today’s line comes from Brian Geiger’s article “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to ADHOC” over at O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter.com:

I can’t tell you what most of it was. No, most of the memories are gone, like yesterday’s pizza. (For those of you who take more than a day to finish off any arbitrary amount of pizza, I welcome you to make your own analogy.)

If you have any interest in AppleScript, text adventure games, or writing Macintosh software, read the article. I myself have dreamed of going to ADHOC (neé MacHack), and this article made me a bit jealous. Actually, I’m tempted to try to rewrite his code to spec. I'd better restrain myself.

Hot stuff for the masses: p2p IPTV

2005-07-28T13:56:00.000-04:00

Presenting ACTLab TV and their technology Alluvium. It’s TV distributed over a p2p Internet model, which as we all know means less bandwidth needed and a much more accessible “transmitter”. It’s p2p IPTV.

There’s a land that I see where the media’s free / And I say it ain’t far to this land from where we are

(Was that too obtuse? 10 bonus points to the first one who gets it.)

Line of the day: 7/28/05

2005-07-28T13:28:00.000-04:00

This one comes to us from the comments on Engadget’s post “NEC to make eco-friendly corn phones”. It’s the begining of Ben’s explanation of why phones made of corn-based plastic are worth pursuing:

Millions of phones get trashed every year. Governments and unelected psuedo governments like the EU (bit of social comment there) have decided to make the producers take responsibility for the waste, kind of like enforced recycling. In Europe it’s called Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment or, and I’m not making this up, “WEEE”.

Yeah, you probably though I was going somewhere meaningful with that. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love that companies are doing something about the terrible e-waste problem, but I really can’t believe they gave it that name. Considering the money our congressmen must have spent to come up with a title that spelled out “USA PATRIOT Act” (“Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”). I guess that’s the difference between the US and Europe…

Update: An alternate line of the day from the bottom of the post’s comments, by Rocket Punch:

MAN! I was excited for a few sec as I thought I read “porn phone”!!