found_drama

The return of the Sampo Method:

1. Lush “Thoughtforms”
2. Jamiroquai “Canned Heat”
3. Death Cab For Cutie “We Laugh Indoors”
4. Lush “For Love”
5. Lush “De-Luxe”
6. Lush “Etheriel”
7. Spylab “Music Box”
8. Spylab “Celluloid Hypnotic”
9. Spylab “In The Shade”
10. Spylab “Breathe Easy”

currently playing: Daft Punk “Rock ‘n Roll”

iBook Design Flaw: The battery pops out a little too easy.

Biggest problem with that? About 20% of the time, if the battery pops out, it throws the system into a state of panic. Symptoms include (1) a very long wait on the “Starting Login Window” phase of the boot cycle, (2) a very long wait for the core system services to load after logging in, and (3) overall very crummy, sluggish performance. I have not found this to be uncommon.

My guess is that this is due to something getting screwed up with OS X’s system caches in some way. What’s more, I think it might be specific to Journaled volumes — but I don’t have enough information on that yet.

Anyway, the step-by-step recipe for getting things back to normal:

1. Restart the computer (basically moot since the battery will have fallen out and you’re turning it back on).
2. Get into “Single User” mode via Cmd+S.
3. On the command line hit /sbin/fsck -y — but be prepared for that to error, in which case you’ll want to do /sbin/fsck -fy
4. Let fsck do its thing and when you’re back at the # prompt, give it a good ol’ fashioned exit — and pay attention for any particularly cruel and unusual errors (though you should be about half-way fixed by now).
5. Once you’re back at the OS X login window, login as yourself (assuming you’re an Administrator account). Clear out the following:
   • /Library/Caches/
   • ~/Library/Caches/

   …but remember to leave those directories intact — you just want to clear out their contents.

6. Give it an Administrator password if/when prompted — clearing those “Caches” directories is crucial.
7. Empty Trash
8. Restart
9. Log back in — you should be in pretty good shape at this point.
10. (optional) Verify and/or Repair Disk Permissions in Disk Utility. But this shouldn’t be necessary.

currently playing: Mogwai “Yes! I Am A Long Way From Home” > The Pixies “Dig For Fire”

From the “Truth Really Is Stranger Than Fiction” Dept.: A Chicago-area woman is being sued for emotional distress consequent to sperm theft. Though the court has pretty much already agreed that “it was a gift — an absolute and irrevocable transfer of title to property from a donor to a donee [...with...] no agreement that the original deposit would be returned upon request.”

currently playing: The Pixies “Where Is My Mind?”

Gruber (condensed): Apple slashes iPod prices across the board but makes a few changes along the way — namely switching from an included Firewire cable to an included USB2.0 cable and all-together removing certain accessories from some of the higher-end packages. Oh, and the shuffle uses a FAT32 filesystem.

We’ll return to the FAT32 issue in a moment.

USB2.0’s replacement of Firewire (I agree with Gruber) is a nod to the fact that they’re moving these things out to PC users left and right. The PC world never really adopted Firewire. Who knows why this never happened. Expense maybe? (Or is that one of those chicken-in-egg questions…) Now that you can charge the iPod over USB2.0 there is little advantage to shipping units with the Firewire cable. It becomes an added expense for PC users to run out an fetch some 3rd party Firewire card and drop it into their machine. And that’s assuming it works out. (I’ve had no end of trouble with it around here. Especially when trying to use the Dock!) The bummer two-fold: there are lots of Mac users out there (e.g., yours truly) that don’t have USB2.0 on their machines. The other bummer? It’s an image thing. “Firewire” is a sexy name with a cool logo and a proud history. Plus, it sites more snugly in its port. /sigh

TUAW is commenting on Gruber’s article as well. They quickly re-cap the top-half of Gruber’s argument and go on to comment on the “special character” restrictions of the FAT32 filesystem used on the shuffle.

The character restrictions aren’t a problem when it comes to transferring music to the shuffle. iTunes has had this stuff programmed right into it since they started offering PC support for the hard drive-based models. The sync’ing routine gets the filesystem of the destination volume prior to transferring the files and replaces incompatible characters with underscores to be safe.

What’s a little vague in the TUAW article is whether they’re more concerned about being “bitten” by the limitation w/r/t/ transferring music to the shuffle or transferring files to it as if it were a drive. I could see the latter circumstance being a potential issue. However anyone accustomed to working in a mixed environment already (or someone who came up on PC filesystems to begin w/) has committed all those “no-no” characters to memory quite some time ago. To this day, I can’t use a “|” or “,” in my filenames w/o a cold shiver running down my spine.

currently playing: God Lives Underwater “Lonely Again” > The Pixies “Is She Weird” > Nitzer Ebb “Into The Large Air”

“Grounded…” is a decent article in the Post-Gazette of Pittsburgh, PA about John Gilmore and his fight against being required to show photo ID to board planes. I’ve said here before how there are parts of Gilmore’s argument with which I do not agree — mostly that I don’t think personal privacy should (and this word is key, now) necessarily trump the safety of the larger public. However, there are two elements brought up in this article that I had not really realized before:

1. That Gilmore is saying “we (as a Nation) need to dialogue about this first”
    
   (and)
2. That Gilmore is challenging a law that the government refuses to produce written proof exists.

These two points taken together pretty much radically change the way I view Gilmore vs. Ashcroft — turning me into a bit more of a believer. (Though I’m not sure “believer” is the right word.)

The part from the article that stuck with me the most:

Yes, he said, there is a certain odd flavor to the notion that someone shouldn’t have to show ID to board a plane, but with magnetometers at the gates, guards with security wands, fortified cockpit doors and sky marshals abounding, Gilmore is asking just how much citizens are giving up when they hand their driver’s licenses to a third party, in this case an airline, where it is put into a database they cannot see, to meet a law that, as it turns out, they are not allowed to read.

And so while I still feel an odd remorse that he’s only able to do this b/c of his wealth and reknown, I’m a little less contrary about it.

Still, there are lots of moments where I wish Gilmore had just done what my dear ol’ Granddad had done:

Airport Security: Sir, your ID please.

Granddad: One second, I’ve got it here somewhere. Here you go.

AS: Concealed weapons permit?

G: It’s all I had on me. Everything else is in my checked luggage.

(or something along those lines)

currently playing: Thievery Corporation “Heaven’s Gonna Burn Your Eyes” > Gus Gus “Love vs. Hate”

Me & A & my parents & and a grown-up version of this kid Jeremiah that I knew when I was a kid were all at the beach. We broke for lunch and on our way back from lunch, we stopped off at this liquor store to get some beers for the rest of the afternoon. When we were inside the store I couldn’t decide what I wanted. This girl that was working there was trying to convince me to buy these half-price Olde English 800s (b/c she’d taken them to a party last night and couldn’t finish them). I didn’t see anything that I wanted (not even the 64 oz. can Heinekens…) so I decided to just leave. The store was right across the street from the beach anyway, I said. And so we went back down to the beach and kicked up our feet. And right around then some dude came walking by with a big tray of snacks and I bought like $50 worth of chocolate chip cookies.

Hit Amazon noted the “Your Watch List” beta off on the right hand side. Where I caught this: Amon Tobin’s “Chaos Theory: Splinter Cell 3 Soundtrack”.

It just seemed kind of… “Wrong” isn’t the right word but it’s the first word that comes to mind. I suppose it’s no different from Orbital and Sasha appearing on the Wipeout soundtrack.

currently playing: Amon Tobin “Sordid” (how eerie…)

Weekend on-call shifts are always a slight drag. There have been very few that I’d call “busy” or “catastrophic” but it’s just enough responsibility to keep a man a bit down. Mostly it’s these two thoughts: (1) that at any moment I might get a call where I can’t provide immediate relief and (2) that there’s going to be things that should really just wait until Monday b/c there’s really isn’t any way it’s going to get done between Friday night and Monday morning…

That being said, I’ve already done way too much work tonight for someone that ought to be kicking it after some fine risotto for dinner. (NEWS FLASH! Sean & Nora’s in Barre is perhaps the best restaurant I’ve ever been to!)

currently playing: Spylab “Music Box”

February 2005:
(strictly from the top 10)

soy un perdedor
error starting a service
nuclear winter

currently playing: Spylab “Celluloid Hypnotic”

Why is it that I always get my best writing ideas when it’s least convenient? Not looking forward to the next few consecutive nights of on-call action. (ugh) Need to figure out a way to sneak in some writing. Take the dream from the other night and get that flipped some way into a short. There’s potential there. More so though, mind is bent toward “citydeep” (againsosoon) w/ some swirling complications that need penned out.

currently playing: Underworld “Skym”