Monthly Archive for July, 2003

I’ve Made the Switch!

My new (old) G4This is old news to anyone who speaks with me reg­u­larly, but I’ve finally made the switch — to a Mac.

Yes, I know, apolo­gies go out to my par­ents and every­one that I berated over the years for fool­ishly buying Macs – I just couldn’t resist any longer. I’m now the proud owner of a G4, with a diminu­tive 350mhz chip, new 80gb drive, 896mb RAM, OS X 10.2, and all the open source soft­ware I care to install. I was relieved to see that all my periph­er­als were easily installed, and I’m get­ting better at nav­i­gat­ing the OS.

A couple of peeves, that I’m sure I’ll get over:

  • + How do I min­i­mize all win­dows to the desk­top with a key­board shortcut?
  • + Work­ing with files in direc­to­ries is a bit weird — though I’m get­ting used to the column view.
  • + It’s con­fus­ing dis­tin­guish­ing between “home” and “computer”.
  • + window focus: why do you have to click on an inac­tive window first, and then select an item? That’s 2 clicks! In win­dows, you can click on a file in an inac­tive window, and it will select as it sets the window focus.
  • + Safari ren­ders type really really small — i don’t mind, but it wor­ries me that my web­site has such tiny type.

With the com­plaints out of the way, I have to say that I’m beam­ing with pride… some­thing new to evan­ge­lize on. And I’m not the only one.

July 31, 2003 » Tags: , , . » 3 Comments

Refer makes it’s return!

Finally, I have access to detailed Refer­rers… cour­tesy Dean. Our increas­ingly pathetic server was chok­ing on writ­ing to MYSql before.

Also, I’m get­ting really annoyed with a bug that causes IE 5 on the Mac to crash. I can’t tell if its CSS or in the markup… Looks great in Safari and WIN IE 6.

July 30, 2003 » Tags: . » Closed

A Quincy BBQ, Part I

Kim and her scooterI decided to post another photo album up on my Type­pad, because they make it easy and ele­gant. These are mostly Presley’s shots, as it was her camera, and she’s the one into that whole analog thing.

Our friends Jason and Kim­berly invited some cowork­ers over for A Quincy BBQ.

The Cool Whip brand whipped top­ping prod­uct didn’t come out untill after this roll was spent… so there will be a Part II! (I don’t know why I’m not in any of these…)

July 28, 2003 » Tags: , . » Closed

Eye-ball

My left eye is twitch­ing today, and I can’t get it to stop. I can’t wear my glasses or do my work, it’s just so annoying!

July 23, 2003 » Tags: . » 1 Comment

Blur in a blur

blur liveLast week was Blur Week.

We were given tick­ets to see the boys tape a few songs on Last Call w/ Carson Daly in New York on Wednes­day, and were able to catch them live at Avalon in Boston on Friday night. And the best part was that there were no mishaps this time ’round.

Carson Daly is really mis­un­der­stood by music fans – espe­cially those who fancy them­selves hipper-than-thou. Maybe it’s because they blame him for the dom­i­nance of boy bands and Brit­tney in the past few years… or, maybe it is just that they think he’s a mas­sive tool.

I think this is unfair – the guy is doing more with his little 1:30 am show than most other talk shows… he has ter­rific bands on, many that you won’t see on MTV or Jay Leno, and I think he’s truly a music fan first. I mean — they guy is always play­ing air drums in-​between com­mer­cial breaks… I’m there with ya Carson!

Anyway, Blur. They played an acoustic set of Out of Time and Good Song from their excel­lent new album Think Tank. Make sure to tune in to NBC Friday, July 25 after Conan. We’re the two embar­rassed jerks sit­ting in the second row, with plastic-​rim eyeglasses.

Fri­days show was really spe­cial – they played a wide rang­ing set that stretched back more than 10 years, includ­ing favorites For Tomor­row, Girls and Boys, the Uni­ver­sal, and the ever-​moshing Song 2.

Damon was in top form, jump­ing around and really singing better than I’ve ever heard him sing. He doesn’t really play key­boards any­more, which is a minor peeve, but he’s doing his front­man thing well with the help of an elec­tric guitar.

At 35 years, post-Goril­laz, he seems to have some­thing more to prove — and 2,000 people and I were glad for it.

July 23, 2003 » Tags: , , . » Closed

Slight Site Tweaks

Our domain has been a wreck in the past couple of weeks — which is why I started post­ing on Typepad.

Thanks to Ben at Mag­net­box for kindly men­tion­ing this site. I love vis­it­ing Mag­net­box every day… wish I could find an RSS feed.

Also, thanks to Jason Kottke for adding this site to his “not recommended” sidebar.

And, since we’ve been dump­ing and import­ing MySQL dbs like ban­shees around here, it made sense to also upgrade the usabil­ity of this site:

  • Titles now link to the full entry
  • Graph­i­cal head­ings on the side­bar link to their rel­e­vant page
  • Text-​size is now fluid, for accessibility
  • Leaner & Meaner CSS and XHTML tem­plates
  • Removed the webrings, because they’re sooo 1996
  • Trimmed-​up the Daily Book­marks list
  • And finally, you can get here by typing NEDWARD.ORG (caps optional)

And, in the future, I’d like to:

  • swap most of the images out of the source code, and put them in the CSS using background-image
  • val­i­date as valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional
  • fre­quent back­ups, in case we have db trou­ble again!!
July 20, 2003 » Tags: . » 2 Comments

Full Throttle Boredom

Lucy looking juicyCharlie’s Angels: Full Throt­tle is the most point­less movie I have ever paid money to see… and, yes, I did see Show­girls in the cinema.

Some­one explain to me what the hell this movie is about — because I have no clue. Here are my ques­tions:
  • Who is that "Leo" kid?
  • Why is there unre­al­is­tic CGI fight scenes every 35 seconds?
  • Who is Bruce Willis’ character?
  • Why did that guy from the X-Files sud­denly switch sides?
  • For a fol­lowup, why did Crispin Glover switch sides?
  • Why is Drew Bar­ry­more in Mexico?
  • Why does Demi Moore play with her gun like she’s never touched one before?
  • When did Justin Ther­oux get jacked? Seri­ously, he’s got some muscles.
  • Why does Bernie Mac turn into more and more of a car­i­ca­ture, as he gets more famous?
  • And yet, why was I laugh­ing at his one-​liners?
  • What are those fuck­ing rings, and why would such low-​level gov­ern­ment work­ers have them?

That’s all I got right now. Oh, and one more thing: I think Lucy Liu is incred­i­ble – but I hope she has better mate­r­ial in Kill Bill.

July 6, 2003 » Tags: . » Closed