Category: observations

OS X: Free up Hard Disk space:

Really good advice here. I saved 1.4 GBs using just the Delocalizer app.

I saved 1.2 Gb: good deal.

Now playing:After All by David Bowie from the album “The Man Who Sold The World” | Get it

Trust me, he said, it’s going to be fun:

The pain in our legs this morning, I like to feel, is because we spent yesterday kicking away at the horizon. It broke. The view’s great.

But they can turn a phrase . . .

Now playing:Oh, Sister [Live] by Bob Dylan And The Rolling Thunder Review from the album “Live 1975 – The Rolling Thunder Revue (Bootleg Series Vol. 5) (Disc 2)” | Get it

The Dare – Making the 24-Hr Comic:

To create a complete 24 page comic book in 24 continuous hours.

That means everything: Story, finished art, lettering, colors (if you want ’em), paste-up, everything! Once pen hits paper, the clock starts ticking. 24 hours later, the pen lifts off the paper, never to descend again. Even proofreading has to occur in the 24 hour period. [Computer-generated comics are fine of course, same principles apply].

No sketches, designs, plot summaries or any other kind of direct preparation can precede the 24 hour period. Indirect preparation such as assembling tools, reference materials, food, music etc. is fine.

Sounds fun but 24 hours? I suppose you could make it 24 one-page panels, but still, that’s 24 good illustrations: not sure how much easier that is than smaller ones (more detail vs less, etc.).

My NaNoWriMo exercise ended early when the vertigo hit me: I got some good ideas out of the experience and with any luck, I’ll push them around a little more.

Following up on an earlier post on graphic novels, I have since read Persepolis, put the sequel to it on hold at my local library, and just finished Reinventing Comics. Persepolis is great, wonderful art and a compelling story.

Reinventing Comics will take another reading before I feel like I understand it all: the book comes in two parts, a review of the past and preview of the future. The past section is fine, lots of stuff to learn from and like. But the forward-looking part was published in 2000, and reliant as it is on the internet as a key component, it seems a little dated. I don’t think it can be helped: McCloud is quick to admit to the “under construction” aspects of this part of the book and promises updates at his website. A quick glance tells me he’s walking the walk: he sees digital delivery and micropayments as a Great Leveller for comics artists and creators, and right now you can get Part two of his novella The Right Number for a cool quarter (US$.25).

1077 The End:

Green Day/Oasis/ Travis/Aerosmith Mash Up!

You heard it first courtesy of Dick Rossetti, now hear it on-line: Win | Real.

I didn’t really understand what this mashup stuff was all about, until today when I heard this. Check it out: it’s fun even if you don’t know or care for the tunes that much. It’s clever how they work together, especially the big finish. Don’t miss that . . .

Seen on FreeCycle/Seattle:

Hello, my friend has recently come into approximately 30,000 records(!) many of which are old enough as to be public domain, i.e. their copyrights are expired. He has offered to let me digitize them so that they may be distributed, to undermine the record companies and their patterns of re-releasing albums periodically in a “remastered” cd so that the copyrights never expire. I have the computer and software necessary to digitize these records (which include crazy rare ethnic and folk music, as well as odd “mood” atmospheric music), but need a record player with component outputs, ie a linelevel output, so that i can hook it up to my soundcard. I can afford a needle, I just need a decent record player. Help the world, give me the old record player in your garage. Recordings will be distributed on an ftp site and on peer to peer programs (people actually do use these for legitimate purposes!).

Reply directly (I’m not the guy doing this.)

Someone just grabbed one of these shirts:

I need to come up with some more ideas, more funny, less mean (but I yam what I yam: sometimes I’m meaner than I am funny. I need to work on that.)

The New York Times > Business > Your Money > Gates vs. Jobs: The Rematch:

“If you sit down next to me and say you have 1,000 songs and you pay $10 a month, how cool will I feel to say I paid $1,000 for 1,000 songs,” asked Jonathan Sasse, the president of iRiver America, a subsidiary of ReignCom, a Korean maker of portable players that has endorsed Microsoft’s format for subscription services.

How cool will you feel when I tell you I already owned all the music on my iPod and didn’t pay anything for it?

Still, dethroning the iPod won’t be easy. One reason is that none of the rival electronics companies have made a player that is nearly as attractive and easy to use. “It is not an MP3 player; it is just an iPod, and it’s only made by Apple,” said Frank Sadowski, the head of Amazon.com’s consumer electronics department. The proportion of Amazon.com customers who buy iPods continues to increase, he added.

The iPod is not an MP3 player? Well, if you insert the word “just” after “not” you would be correct. But yes, it is an MP3 player, MP3 being just one of the formats supported by the iPod.

It’s articles like this that make you wonder how well the Times covered the election or the war: the iPod is not just a standalone player. the iTunes application adds quite a bit of value, and I can understand the people at iRiver not mentioning it. But the Times reporter should know enough (perhaps he owns one or knows someone who does?) to realize the customer experience aspect of iTunes and the iPod.

hack an etch-a-sketch:

using an etch-a-sketch is hard, hooking it up to a mouse might seem harder, but in the end, likely more appropriate

and accurate. here comes the electr-o-sketch—hack a mouse to control and draw on the classic and ever present

etch-a-sketch.

Jeez, I have no idea why anyone would try this. I see cool and compelling ideas most days (I have the feed in NetNewsWire) but this is just too odd.

It looks like the end of the line for FreeBSD 4.x, now that the 5.x branch has stabilized with 5.3. Upgrading to 5.x on production systems has not been recommended before now, but the procedure seems pretty severe all the same.

FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE Migration Guide:

Probably the most straightforward approach is that of “backup everything, reformat, reinstall, and restore user data”. This eliminates problems of incompatible or obsolete executables and configuration files polluting the new system. It allows new file systems to be created to take advantage of new functionality (most notably, the UFS2 defaults).

Sensible, though. The lazy man’s way would be to install on a new disk in a spare chassis (I have an old Pentium II that would work) and then just swap it in to minimize downtime and add storage into the bargain. Time to sniff around on eBay and see what’s available.