Posts from — May 2007

Frank Rich on the Republican presidential debate:
“Aside from tax cuts and a wall on the Mexican border, the only issue that energized the presidential contenders was Ronald Reagan.”

Definitely true. I watched it and declared Reagan the winner.

I bought a keyboard yesterday:

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Since I stopped using windows, I’m moving away from Google’s Picasa and switching to Yahoo’sFlickr for photos. I still like Picasa better overall, but since its client is windows-only, I’m left only with the online part. Comparing websites, Flickr is definitely better right now.

They both have well-made uploaders for OSX, though!

This article from Fortune is pretty scary. A patent war between Microsoft and the free software community would be a terrible setback for the computer industry. I don’t think it would benefit Microsoft in the long term, anyway, especially since the biggest targets are also Microsoft customers. Joining the ranks of SCO and the RIAA doesn’t seem like a good business plan to me.

The oddest quote in the article was:
“Brad Smith, 48, became Microsoft’s senior vice president and general counsel in 2002, the year the company settled most of its U.S. antitrust litigation. A strawberry-blond Princeton graduate with a law degree from Columbia, Smith is a polished, thoughtful and credible advocate whom some have described as the face of the kinder, gentler, post-monopoly Microsoft.” (my emphasis)

Is it just me, or is it strange to refer to a man as “strawberry-blond”?

My favorite line from the Democratic debate came from John Edwards:
“We ought to ask Americans to be patriotic about something other than war”

Unless I’m reading too much into the phrasing, my least favorite response was Barack Obama’s reply to “What have you done recently in your personal life to make for a better environment”:
“… We’ve also been working to install light bulbs that last longer and save energy…” (the rest of the answer wasn’t relevant)

How much work does it take to only buy energy-efficient bulbs? It’s not like you need to draft a bold 5-year plan for switching, you just screw them in. It’s not any more work than replacing bulbs used to be.

Soda vs. Pop vs. Coke map by county.

Every place I’ve lived is a soda area, thankfully. St. Louis seems to be in one of the only soda regions in the midwest.

A thightrope walker crossed the Han river alone:
Skywalkers in Korea cross Han solo

What an awesome headline.

The power adapters for Apple’s laptops should be called “Apple Juice”.

These are the important issues I ponder on my way home from work.

UCLA police department has tips for what to do if there’s a shooter on campus (pdf). Surprisingly good ideas, I think.

I got a camera last week (Canon PowerShot SD800 IS 7.1MP etc etc)

I haven’t taken many images yet, but here are a few.

My room (one of the stitched photos is blurry, unfortunately, but I’m too lazy to fix):

My bike:

Bike closeup, for some reason:

More to come, hopefully..

I hadn’t thought about this: “More people now know how to crack HD-DVD than own an HD-DVD player.”
(from boingboing)