Caoine

Odds, Ends

The Iconfactory has launched StockIcons, designed to let developers buy sets of slick, royalty-free icons - for Win XP as well as OS X. (IF actually did the OS icons for Win XP, as I mentioned a while back.)

There are photos of a surprisingly ugly pyramid-shaped G4 case mod floating around, as pointed out by Slashdot. I guess modification for its own sake is all well and good, but why bother making something less attractive than the stock case?

A "newcomer weblog" over at Gotham Gazette claims to have rounded up the best NYC-centric blogs and sites - inevitably including both Gawker and Gothamist, while overlooking pretty much every local site I actually read. Awesome!

I'm told the Sex Pistols (or what's left of them) are playing Jersey in August. I find that confusing, and vaguely alarming. And speaking of confusing and vaguely alarming: there's going to be another Indiana Jones movie?

And finally, how could I not point out that the Times considers the book business the spinster aunt of the entertainment industry? (Not that it isn't. Who doesn't love a spinster aunt? They make the best cookies.)

Less Woeful

The heat's a little less brutal this weekend, which is a relief. Still, my goal is to stay as cool as possible until the new air conditioner arrives. To that end, I spent a quiet evening last night in front of several fans in the lair of the fearsome and formidable Crispy watching bits of Platoon and Backdraft while waiting for the temperature to drop. Which eventually it did, and I managed to get some sleep for the first time in a while - I can't sleep at all when it's as vile and humid as it has been for the past few nights. I know we lucked out with the weather for most of June, but I think it's making up for lost time now.

More Heat Woes, and Vertigo

Thanks to those of you who have helped out with the air conditioner so far. I'm on my second cold shower of the evening and I've only been home for an hour, so I appreciate it more than you know. I'm getting closer to having enough to end this suffering, but if you haven't donated yet and would like to, by all means - my eternally damp towels will thank you for it. My shiny new air conditioner has been ordered! In a couple days I'll be basking in its Arctic chill, hooray!

Last night I caught Reloaded once more, with the luminous Crispy (who is equally lacking in climate control) - this time at the IMAX theater near Lincoln Center. It's probably the last time I'll see it in theaters, but it was definitely worth it - this movie was made for a large format screen. It's an incredibly visceral experience, since the images take up your entire field of vision, and there are no heads blocking your view of anything. I'm not usually susceptible to motion sensations in that kind of setting, but I was definitely holding onto my chair for dear life every time Trinity fell out of that god damned building. The effects were, surprisingly, significantly better this time around - I would have thought that being able to see every pore on Keanu's face would have left the rendered stuff looking more fake, but that wasn't the case at all. Definitely worth seeing if you aren't already sick to death of the movie, and definitely the venue I'll head to first when Revolutions comes out this fall.

Heat Woes

With the heat index expected to reach well over 100 degrees this week (obscene temperatures plus obscene humidity), I've decided it's really not civilized at all to live in New York City without an air conditioner. Longtime readers may recognize this complaint from last summer, or the summer before that, or the summer before that - I haven't had a working air conditioner in over three years, and now that the weather finally merits one I'm ready to curl up and die at the prospect of sweltering through another July like the past few. The unit I've currently got ceased functioning as an air conditioner years ago - without any cooling capabilities, it's nothing more than a crappy, power-sucking fan. I've found a bargain on a new one at Amazon, but with rent day fast approaching, my budget won't stretch that far. However, if you'd like to chip in, I'd be tickled pink (instead of purple from heat stroke).

It's Not So Much Orwellian As Just Dumb

An article today over at Salon on the supposed Google backlash. Parts of it are interesting, although it does of course dredge up the same tired old theories and paranoid fantasies about Google's machinations and nefarious plans for the fate of weblogs. Inevitably, the author discusses that idiocy a while back, with Orlowski and his rambling proclaimations about the relegation of weblogs to a separate tab in Google results. I've mentioned that already, so I won't get into it again. In the end, Salon writer Farhad Manjoo decides that some of the people who obsess over Google are nuts, some are rightfully concerned, and some may in fact be onto a big conspiracy related to Google's purchase of Blogger. (Wake me when it's over.)

Also at Salon today, however, is a new short story by Cory Doctorow. Much less tiresome than the Google article - although that's not saying much.

Not at Salon today is this collection of screenshots from the last days of the dot coms. Included is the parting message posted by my beloved Kozmo, and many, many more. Grab a six dollar latte and party like it's mid-2000.

Settle Down There

In non-interface related news, several people wrote in to point out that article on the dubious nature of the benchmarks Apple was using to back up their claims of the new G5's impressive speed. Accordingly, I'd like to point out the response from Apple VP Greg Joswiak, which just went up over at Slashdot. Joswiak confirmed what I'd hoped myself was the case - the alterations noted in the original complaint were not intended to give the G5 an unfair advantage, but were intended to bring the stats of the prototype that was tested in line with the model that will actually be shipped. The original author's biggest complaint was the apparent disabling of SSE2 in the rival machines, but this assumption turns out to have been mistaken: "As to not using SSE2, Joswiak said they enabled the correct flags for it, as documented on the gcc web site, so that SSE2 was enabled (the Veritest report lists the options used for each test, which appears to include the appropriate flags)." All in all, I'm not surprised that this has turned out to be not really a big deal at all. If Apple's primary goal was to use deceptive, fudged benchmarks to mislead potential Mac customers about the capabilities of the G5, using an independent lab to produce the results and then publishing the entire report in full would be a pretty goofy way to go about it.

Cats Like Cheese Too, I Guess

You have, of course, already seen those Panther screenshots, and that snazzy new cheese grater it runs on. And you do, of course, already know how I feel about the brushed metal interface.¹ My position on the GUI hasn't changed, but I do admit it matches the new case - which, I'm told, is more impressive in person. I think that's probably true, given that the close-ups of the front and rear panels look much more rivet and much less Martha. And for that matter, the case could be a beige box for all I care - look at those specs! Sign me up for the dual 2Ghz (with a little 8Gb RAM on the side, if you don't mind). Thank you, educational discount.

¹ Well, since you asked: I think the brushed metal interface is the most depressing design decision to come out of Apple in the time I've been a Mac user, and we're going back to elementary school here (so that includes the entire Performa series). When Aqua first appeared (specifically the graphite version), I thought it was the sleekest, cleanest, prettiest windowing system I'd ever seen. It was fast, it was translucent, it was positively delicious. Brushed metal, on the other hand, is slow, clunky, awkward, and old-fashioned. These are not qualities I associate with Apple, or with OS X. I've hated brushed metal since it was first introduced with Quicktime player, years before OS X, and I still hate it now. Please, make it go away.

You Could Use It As A Stirrer

Tampax's ad for their new Compak line of tampons has the distinction of being the stupidest god damned commercial I've ever seen in my life. Pubescent girl and her pubescent boyfriend are arguing at a diner about whether or not she has some unnamed item, and her purse is emptied onto the table to verify that she doesn't. A dramatic pause as boyfriend picks up what is obviously a yellow plastic-wrapped tampon and girl's eyes widen in horror. Oh no! What if he figures it out! Girl implies that it's somehow a sugar packet and suggests that boyfriend shouldn't be having sugar in his coffee, since he's on a diet.

Okay, firstly, in no way does a wrapped tampon - even a wrapped tampon that is very slightly smaller than most wrapped tampons - resemble a sugar packet. Sugar packets are small, rectangular, made of paper, and usually say SUGAR on them. Tampons are larger, cylindrical, wrapped in plastic, and do not say SUGAR on them. Secondly, if the very presence of acoutrements associated with female reproductive processes instills such horror in the male you're dating, it's not the size of your tampon you should be worried about. If your boyfriend's such a wuss that you have to protect his innocence with fanciful stories of sugar packets, he deserves to get a tampon in his coffee. Thirdly, if you're that big on menstrual discretion, buy OB. Applicators are for the weak, anyway. (Note that those tampons are about a third the size of even the Tampax Compak line.)

The Chef Will Explain Later

In addition to providing a tiny ray of hope that the Times does actually print articles that are not about The Weblog Phenomenon (sometimes), this story on veggie cuisine in Japan makes me even more keen to visit Tokyo at some point: "All meals at Gesshin Kyo are omakase ('leave decisions to the chef') and begin with a sesame pudding that Mr. Tanahashi insists on making with traditional equipment. Considerable physical strength is required to grind the sesame seeds to a smooth, nutty paste in a grooved ceramic mortar known as a suribachi, with a prickly ash pestle. Buddhist culinary philosophy suggests that effort enhances the merit of one's deeds, and Mr. Tanahashi's worthy cuisine is not about shortcuts."

Also The Rain

Both Crispy and I are feeling a little under the weather this weekend, so I've been watching movies between bouts of Warcraft. Last night we saw Enter the Dragon, which I'm ashamed to say I'd never seen before. I've seen heaps of Jackie Chan flicks, but not so much of old Bruce. Maybe I'll remedy that situation over the rest of the summer. Tonight I'm watching Muppet Treasure Island, which I know I've seen before but not in years. Amazon says it came out in 1996, which would have made me a freshman in high school - I think I remember going to see it with some of my theatre geek friends.