As I’ve written before, RealOne is a crappy application by a ridiculously mercenary company. Jogin writes a few days ago about his experience with Real and I found through Kottke’s message boards that the BBC offers a free, ad-free, painless, and simple version of RealOne so one can listen to the Beeb’s programming happily and without real problems.

After much research (e.g. talking with friends and scouring websites), I purchased a little Canon PowerShot Elph, and the thing is a wonder to behold — others. Its small size, its ability to take very vivid, beautiful photos of even unextraordinary events is fine. It’s a wonder because it so easily captures life, the passing glimpses of active faces and bodies, in digital video. With a push of one top-mounted button, the default memory card records about 1.5 vainglorious minutes of moving sights and synchronized sounds. To me, it’s as if the Lumiere brothers had come to visit, with their great-great grandchildren in tow.
Here’s a gratuitous link to the Canon Camera Museum.

For so many years, folks complained that it was the Walt Disney Company that unselectively was homogenizing the cultural space of the world. It turns out that Disney is a shrinking violet and that the new corporate love is going to be Comcast. If they purchase Disney, that means that the one company would have a market capitalization of about $125 billion. Wouldn’t that be cool?
Back in 1980 or so, Comcast started rolling out cable television in our neighborhood in suburban Philadelphia. I loved watching Triumph and Billy Squier stroke their instruments every hour on the half hour on MTV. Little did anyone know that Comcast, the pipsqueak delivery boy of Buggles videos, would come to outlive and outlove big, heartless Disney.

After many months trying to keep track of my projects via my watch, the little time window in the corner of my monitor, and an egg timer, I broke down and spent a few too many dollars on DesignSoft’s StopWatch Plus.
I have to say, it’s quite a nice tool — it neatly keeps track of the seconds, minutes, and hours spent on a given project and records those times in a sharp little spreadsheet. The data can then be imported to Excel or Calc and fondled — I mean massaged. It’s geeky and ridiculous but because I can no better keep good track of hours than I can remember what I ate for breakfast, this thing might Cheerios. I mean help.

I’m used Alsoft’s DiskWarrior today to fix a problem with an external harddrive. Not interesting.
But when I looked at the product’s software license, under Paragraph 2, Permited Uses and Restrictions, the text reads:
“…THE ALSOFT SOFTWARE IS NOT INTENDED FOR USE IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION, COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, OR AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL MACHINES IN WHICH CASE THE FAILURE OF THE ALSOFT SOFTWARE COULD LEAD TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE.”
This raised two scary-ass questions for me: a. What kind of software do they actually use at nuclear plants? And, b. If it’s not good enough for air traffic control machines, why am I using it?

The spam I’ve been getting recently has been getting really interesting for some reason. I’m fascinated with the poetics of three emails in particular and I refuse to delete these three in particular from my Junk inbox.
The first one has a subject line which I adore. “Brandy Mcneill” writes:
“purl candlestick disastrous.” This is gorgeous.
The second begins with the following message and is written by “Jeremy Conrad“:
“clubhouse fredholm spellbound handclasp viceroy hedonist edward acquaint haw death fanfold batchelder amber hutchins wrought
adoptive juncture chenille demurrer jubilate burial chariot prothonotary pollux heel plebeian boric paramagnetic par polarography immobile promulgate autistic allegiant teat bloodstream baldy boutique dihedral tungstate arise price cytolysis canna array thrust prohibition allison cocklebur suffolk trapezoid
questionnaireJust a way to CANCEL your DEBT.defrock
abolition congregate versailles presentational bosom bstj bayesian lin worm antoinette cheesecloth declaratory cowan dreary cayley explosive cycle icy contravene brent wiggly windbag oneida abed downstate stardom contention acclimate alpheratz fruition consist cox affinity basket battalion freemen hillbilly cortical rebelled consort” I have never seen these worrds in this order except for the finest poetry.
The third message is from “Mohammedan E. Coastlines“:
Good morning.
muscle relaxers
Your way to more info
http://www.hu6yre5f.jinhai.info/m001p/index.php?id=m0027
Qil xin
http://www.j8tWe.jinhai.info/m001p/byebye.html
online medication its easy to use
no waiting in line for your meds
relax easy today

I’ve solved a lot of my problems with Panther, and I’m now quite thrilled with the results. Althought I went from A to D by going by W and X first, the system is pretty stunning. I realize that one unforeseen benefit of creating an entirely new login for myself is that I started afresh – all old caches, files, and preferences that I no longer treasured are gone. For the record (and this will be the last time I talk about it for a while):
– All my apps launch and work more quickly under Panther.
– The updated printer and scanner drivers (from Epson) are much more professional and clearly designed for lots of use. Same goes with the print dialog boxes one finds throughout every app now.
– The overall visual framework of the system is much smoother, more elegant, and importantly, clearer. Text renders better everywhere though I question the much higher contrast that was seemingly ordained by Apple in order to achieve this effect.
– I’m impressed that every app, except for Suitcase (Extensis are you listening?), had zero problems with the new system. Apple did its homework in this regard. Even Microsoft Office runs better on Panther.
– Logging a user in and out (and watching the respective desktop spin in and out of place) is not as cool as people think. Nor is the highlighted aura that goes around desktop files when you select them. Nor is the new Finder window, though I appreciate the fact that you can actually Find files in this window now.
– Safari is still awesome. But I am definitely going to play with Camino, thanks to many readers’ recommendations. That is, once I feel confident again behind the ol’ keyboard again.

This from an email to my technically smarter friend. Warning: not interesting at all unless you’re using Apple’s new Panther and Extensis Suitcase X1.
I updated to 10.3.2 first. No problems with Safari. (I checked Safari all along the way as it’s kind of the canary in the coalmine.) Because I’ve been cautious about Suitcase and Panther for the past three months, I’ve also taken care to make sure my files and fonts are in order.
Then, I opened and reregistered Suitcase X1. NO problems. Then, I moved the com.extensis.Suitcase.plist Preference from the old archived user to the new one. Again no problems with Safari.
I somehow intuited that the next thing might be problematic. I moved the folder Suitcase Preferences from the old to the new user Preferences folder and voila, Safari hung, hung, hung. It was fascinating and horrifying at the same time – as I saw my two day old problems come back.
This is what I did next, for what it’s worth. I noticed that all the fonts in Suitcase were pointing to my old user — there’s a great “Reveal in Finder” function in X1. So, I deleted all of the fonts from X1 completely. Quit and relaunched X1 — and then added all fonts to X1 from a new copied folder in the new directory. These are the same exact fonts, same order, but importantly, this time the index of fonts in X1 point directly to the actual fonts in the new directory, not the old.
I quit and relaunched Suitcase and it was fine. I opened Safari — fine. System — fine. Me — fine.
Now, I just have to move all those old files and preferences one by one to the new login, which sucks a lot.

Thanks for all the help I’ve received over the past 1.5 days re: Safari and Panther and other Apple apps. You can see my tepid reply to posters today.
Got to get some work done and pretend my system isn’t wacked.

I bit the proverbial bullet, installed the new Panther on my G4 machine, and everything works well except:
1. Safari. I get nada. That sucks because I love Safari and I can’t find, for the life of me, a fix. The application opens but it’s as if there is no Web to connect with it’s little, beating heart.
2. Help Viewer. This sucks because when I need help from the desktop, there is none.
3. Internet Preferences. Can’t find it. Doesn’t exist. Where’d it go?
I guess I should be happy that things print, scan, and fonts work, thanks to Extensis. And the whole system works more speedily, apps loading quicker, and programs like Dreamweaver stalling very little now. But cheese and crackers, why is it so hard to solve these little app issues?