Nemo Finds Nemo in Los Angeles
MONDAY
Los Angeles is a city of vibrant neighborhoods, connected by busy thoroughfares and roaring freeways. I’m rarely afraid of earthquakes, but I trotted under L.A.’s mighty I-405 underpass not to be crushed if the roadway overhead decided to collapse. I have a birthday coming up next month, and I’ll feel much better if I’m able to celebrate than if I’m lying in a pulverized mass of concrete and steel.
Monday it seemed I was the only person on foot in the entire city. The previous day I wasn’t, because Sunday is market day in Hollywood. Ivar Street connects Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards. A weekly produce market fills Ivar Street with color, sounds, and smells in an unpretentious neighborhood atmosphere very different from how the rest of the world envisions Hollywood.
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I aught to know what its like. I am a writer myself. I have gone searching fruitlessly for something to write when there just wasn’t anything. I have taken dictation from my muse, when she was speaking faster than I could type. I have gone without sleep, writing, waiting to see what would happen next in my stories, eager to get to the end to see how it all turns out.
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Recently, I noticed a television commercial for BuyMusic.com, a new per-song download store on the web. In the commercial, people sing along, sans music, to Rappers Delight. This is, of course, a direct rip-off of Apple Computer, Inc., commercials for the Apple Music Store. The background is white, with just the people listening to a MP3 player singing along.
Later that day, I receive an email via MyMac.com’s online feedback form from Drew Dallet, the president of Boom-Creative.com. Here is the email from Drew:
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The Call for a Constitutional Convention
In our country, a clerk making change at a convenience store makes $7.00 an hour in a high-risk situation, and a toll taker making change on a state toll road makes $22.00 with health insurance and pension benefits. The same person making change at a cafeteria could expect yet another different wage and benefit package. We attribute this situation to the free market, but really it’s about power. The unionized toll collector has power, the convenience clerk and the cafeteria workers have less power, relative to the strength of the organizations that they work for, unionized or not.
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Wiebe Fire800 Hard Drive
Company: WiebeTech LLC
Price: $299.95 to $549.95 case only $169.95
http://www.wiebetech.com
The FireWire 800 floodgates have cracked open, with more manufacturers shipping FireWire 800 products. MyMac’s first FireWire 800 review was the LaCie BigDisk d2.
If you found the BigDisk too rich for your pocketbook, or simply more capacity than you need, WiebeTech’s Fire800 drive series may be right for you.
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Synchronize Pro X
Company: Qdea.com
Price: $99.95 (two year license)
http://www.qdea.com
Keeping files synchronized across multiple computers has been a problem for many years. The explosion of laptops and networks has made the syncing problem even worse. How do you make sure that you have the right version of the right file on the right computer, especially when you travel with a laptop, and may not have easy remote access to your desktop computer?
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There’s been some controversy about the G5, some folks aver that this is a computer so powerful you’re grandchildren will be using your hand me down Mac long after you’ve reached thermal equilibrium, while others proclaim that developers will soon find a way to tax the G5 to the point where you’ll be begging for a G6. Who’s right? How would I know,? I’m a pretty bad prognosticator, I picked soap to win the battle against France. Hence I won’t make a bold prediction about the longevity of the G5 but I will opine on another issue: If you’re spending your own money you don’t need a G5, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get one.
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Molly, Paul and me
Well, I guess it is official. I now tell people that I am a writer, and that I have a column. This is a radically new self-image for me. Writing is something that I always wanted to do. Now I am actually doing it. I have held my tongue because I did not believe I could add anything useful to the debate. Now I think maybe I can add something of value.
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I gingerly walk down the step, almost tripping. I feel as though I am losing my balance. I feel a rush a wind and I look up, what is it? A car drove by. I would have never seen it coming. Then suddenly my cat, on a leash with me on the porch, makes a sudden move, she peeks over the bushes, almost standing on her hind legs. I don’t know what she’s looking at. She chases flies and hears them upstairs while she is downstairs – I most definitely do not hear them when downstairs. She has some keener senses than me. So I look up. A dog! A boy is walking him, ignoring the local leash law. “Hey I have a cat here,” I said, probably so loud the whole block could hear me, I do not know. “You need to put that dog on a leash.” “OK” he said and went on his way putting that dog into the legally necessary leash. I fall back in my chair in on the porch. If it had not been for my cat I would have jumped out of my skin when that dog came around the corner.
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- Product Name: Fire-i
- Company: Unibrain
- URL: http://www.unibrain.com/home/
- Category: Webcam
- Price: $99
- Requirements: OS X or OS 9 Mac with FireWire
- Rating: 3 bounces – Lustworthy
Webcams are among my favourite computer accessories because they are inexpensive and versatile. They can be used to take stills of adequate quality for webpages and the like, and as movie cameras they are great for recording family events for burning to CD and sharing with others. I’ve used webcams to film kittens for a cat breeder, to produce movies for kids to share with their parents, and to photograph astronomical equipment for my web site. But my favourite use of webcams is for simple astrophotography. Although inferior to cooled, long-exposure CCD cameras, webcams do have the benefit of costing far less and being simple enough to get good results with almost at once.
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Augustine said that ‘lust’ was “inordinate desire.’ He was half-right. Lust is defined not by kind but by degree: It is reducible to desire, it is a desire. But what makes one desire lust and the other not? I think it is a question of degrees, not kind. It is merely a normal desire taken to an extreme degree. Instead of ‘inordinate’ I prefer to speak of ‘unbridled’ desire. That is lust. Lust is desire that runs loose like an ill-mannered child in public. Lust is certainly a symptom of that 20th century ‘mental illness’ psychologists call ‘borderline personality.’ Though some say it has nothing to do with borders or lines, one thing is sure – the borderline is extreme in all he does; there are no limits, no borders to what he can do; he is intense in everything. The neurotic will think about stealing your car; the psychotic will steal it and drive it home’ the borderline will steal it and drive it across country. He can’t just have half or a little, he must have all. He would not buy a single Mozart symphony but the complete symphonies. I know, that’s what I did the other day.
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Switching To The Mac: The Missing Manual
by David Pogue
PoguePress/ O’Reilly and Assciociates, Inc. , Sebastopol, California
434 pages, black and white
ISBN 0-596-00452-4
$24.95 (USA) , $38.95(Canada)
This is the second book John has asked me to review on the subject of switching to a Mac. Perhaps he is trying to tell me something. Believe me, I need no subtle encouragement. My inferiority complex grows daily as I peddle artwork knowing was created on a PC – while all my clients are using Macs. (I have, of course, told no one of my dirty little secret). But ten years ago I needed AutoCad and 3dStudio and there was no support for them on the Mac. So I invested in these programs back when they would run only in DOS and, later, when they converted to Windows, thinking all was okay.
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The Call for a Constitutional Convention
The Modern Society and our Agrarian Beginning
Adam Smith described a system where some work little and receive a lot, while others work a lot and receive little. It did not take into account the plight of the slaves, accept perhaps as property, and is a model based on an agrarian society. Its primary analysis was an explanation of how commerce would prosper more effectively without a king as the primary arbitrator and hoarder of wealth. The king controlled everything, and claimed ownership to every item, even every apple on every apple tree. We have reached the same point today, except this time we are a modern society and the corporations have assumed the role of the king. Copyright law and the litigious nature of our society show how aggressive we have become to claim an equally perpetual ownership.
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Bravo Disc Publisher
OS X Compatible
Company: Primera Technology, Inc.
Price: $1995.00 for CD-R; $2495 for DVD-R/CD-R
http://www.primera.com
INITIAL COMMENTS BY NEMO
David Weeks unpacked, setup, and installed everything necessary to batch-process quantities of professional-level custom CDs, using high-speed burns and imprinting high-quality labels using Bravo, by the time Nemo arrived at Weeks’ home office. David said the procedure was straightforward, with help from Primera’s well-written printed Quick Start Guide. This manufacturer wisely includes both the necessary FireWire 400 and USB cables, but provides only one special printable 52x CD-R blank. “For two grand, they could be a little generous with the media,” says John.
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OWC Mercury FireWire 800 3 Port PCI Card
Company: Other World Computing
Price: $79.95
http://www.macsales.com
When Apple introduced Macintosh computers with the new FireWire 800 standard, my first thought was GOOD! Faster transfer speeds! Then I thought, shoot, I only have two FireWire 400 ports. How can I expand my Mac to FW800? Enter: The OWC Mercury FireWire 800 PCI card.
The Mercury FireWire 800 PCI card sports three FireWire 800 ports. It is easy to install. In fact, there is no drivers needed, thus no software to install. Unfortunately, the OWC Mercury FireWire 800 card only works under Mac OS X 10.2.3 or later. So for those OS 9 users out there, this is simply yet another wake-up call to make the switch of OS X.
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OWC Mercury Elite Pro FireWire 800/400 + USB 2.0/1.1
Company: Other World Computing
Price: $479.99
http://www.macsales.com
Imagine 250GB of storage space on an external drive. Now add in the ability to connect the drive via FireWire 400 or 800, as well as USB 1.1 or 2.0. Make the drive a respectable 7200RPM with a 8MB Data Buffer, as well as Oxford922 chip-set, and you have one mean drive.
Coming in at a price-point of $479.99 US for the unit reviewed, you get a lot of drive for that price. You can, however, spend as little as $249.99 for a similar drive, with most of the features as the reviewed unit, but with 80GB if hard drive space and only a 2MB Data Buffer. Other World Computing has seven different drives in the Mercury Elite Pro line, so chances are you can find a price to feature drive to suite your needs.
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Big Disk d2 USB 2.0 & FireWire 800 Hard Drive
Company: LaCie, Inc.
Price: $449-$1099
http://www.lacie.com
LaCie, the hardware vendor with that funny French name (it means “the company”) has come out with a series of capacious hard drives that use the new FireWire 800 standard.
The Weeks division of MyMac.com labs spent several days with a review unit, and came away with some interesting conclusions about FireWire 800. Friend and fellow reviewer John Nemerovski opened the Big Disk d2 shipping box with me. If you put any stock in first impressions, you’ll be a big fan of the d2 drive. The sleekly gorgeous hard drive enclosure is brushed aluminum, and it has a great tactile, non-skid feeling. Even if you have sweaty palms after paying the (expensive) purchase price for this baby, its grippy feel will prevent you from dropping it. Appearance and Setup
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The Call for a Constitutional Convention
Historical Stalemate
Legal evolution is slow because the worker-slaves are too busy working to focus or fight to change the system. Their position as worker-slaves highlights their inability to challenge the system. The seeds of revolt, ironically, are often planted by the wealthiest. Most revolutionaries come from the middle and upper classes. They are the ones with the time resources and self-confidence and education to challenge the status quo. The slave-masters are convinced their actions are just because society requires the goods and services they produce, but their children often see a world of indulgence. The first generation uses the system to be successful, but some of the following generations try to change the world. Buddha was among the first to resist the life of luxury. The bourgeois planted the seeds of the Russian Revolution. The Rockefeller’s, the Kennedy’s, and Osama bin Laden are all from families of great wealth. The easy life of tennis, lounging by the pool, and polishing expensive autos was as boring 4000 years ago as it is today. The inner voice of Hope that we all share speaks louder to some than it does to others, but not all revolutionary utopians are peace-loving and wise.
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I received the announcement a week ahead of time, along with some other spam I regularly receive. Let me say that it’s a damn good thing I check that junk mail box, just in case. The letter was colorful, and straight to the point, as mail from Apple tends to be.
It told me that the newest Apple Store would open at the Chestnut Hill Mall, on Saturday, June 14th, at ten AM. In all these years of being a Mac fan, I had yet to attend one of their retail store grand openings, so since this mall is only a few miles away from my residence, I simply figured, “Why not?”
Let me explain a few things: I don’t like shopping malls. I don’t like the way people behave in parking lots at shopping malls. I’ve used the expression “Shopping Mall Nation” a few times, and I don’t mean it kindly. The Chestnut Hill Mall is located in Newton Massachusetts. Newton is a very rich, snobbish suburb, and the Chestnut Hill area is among the most snobbish, elitist, and arrogant parts of this city, which is just outside Boston. But, Apple chose to expand their retail operation by putting a new store here, and it’s only a few miles away, so I must say, “Thanks Steve”. (I just hope the rent on this prime retail space is not going to soak all the profit potential. ) So, for this occasion, I broke one of my own personal rules, and went to the mall. (Hey look, they’re my rules, and I can break them, OK? )
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The below pictures are a few taken of the Springfield Lions, the little league teams sponsored exclusively by MyMac.com. “It is important to give back to the community” said Tim Robertson, the founder and publisher of MyMac.com. “We have to encourage these sorts of community sports programs, as we feel it helps build character and life skills. We are happy to sponsor the Springfield Lions, as well as our time, to the team.”
We will post more pictures as the baseball season progresses. If you are interested in watching a game, please email Tim Robertson for game times! And remember, cheer for the Lions!
Comments. Be heard!
MyMac Podcast #385
MyMac Podcast #384