l-dopa

I love these things* — ultra-portable, ultra-indelible.

That is all.

* keep out of reach of children.

link.

Luckily, we scored a press pass for the new Apple product announcement today, and we’ll be providing a transcript of the event as it happens:

Steve Jobs is entering the room
“Lots of great products to show you today”
Shows Keynote slide showing iPod success
14 Billion iPods sold Q4 alone
That’s 2.3 iPods for every man, woman and child on Earth
Jobs has “no idea who is buying 1/3rd of an iPod”
Those people are messing up his figures
He wishes they would “cut it out”
Shows slide with iTunes Music Store sales
700 Quazillion songs sold this month
Not certain that Quazillion is a real unit of measurement
Shows graph comparing iTunes Music Store and Napster
Everyone points and laughs
Jobs calls Shawn Fanning at work on his cell phone
“Hi Shawn, it’s Steve”
More laughing
Awkward small talk
“Shawn, I’ll let you go so you can get back to manning the drive-through”
Low blow
Jobs shows slide with .Mac subscription numbers
1,000,000 .Mac users forgot to cancel their subscriptions last year
“A testament to the ongoing lethargy of spoon-fed, indolent America” — kind of harsh
Audience shifts uncomfortably in seats
“Enough of that boring crap”
“Now here’s what you came for”
Something Apple has been working on for over 15 years
“It’s smaller than a breadbox”
Shows slide of breadbox
“Totally revolutionary”
Shows slide of Mao Tse-tung
It’s right backstage
Jobs says he will go get it
Jobs disappears backstage.
Sound of footsteps, door slamming, car revving, tires screeching
Long silence
Audience shifts uncomfortably in seats
People shift their gaze from side to side nervously
Drumming fingers
Audience is staring at slide of Mao Tse-tung
Finally Senior Vice President Phil Schiller comes out
Schiller is visibly drunk
“Someday your hero Steve F’n Jobs won’t be around”, Schiller says
Schiller swigs deep off a Diet Tequiza
“Then what are you gonna do?”
“hic.”
Actual bubbles around Schiller’s head
Long silence
“Huh?”
Long silence
“I can announce products too, you know.”
Fumbles with blue presentation remote
“I’m smart! I can run things.”
Shows slide of Fredo from Godfather II
Long silence
Schiller tips forward, falls off stage
Thud
Loud snoring sound
Anti-climactic.
Nervously whistling members of press take all the Sweet & Low from the complementary coffee table and slip out

Some years ago I either purchased a gift for Jeff, or I played a prank on him. It was too long ago, or I’m too high, to remember, but either way, my actions culminated in the consumption of a can of Tab, by both Jeff and Evan. Neither one fared well, if memory serves. . . something about stomach aches, crawling skin, and a permanent and far reaching apathy, which I’ve heard continues to afflict each even to this very day. So it was with glee that I received news that biochemical engineers and chemists have finally set aside their age old rivalry, and come together to gift us with the cure for lethargy and listlissness. One that’s pink and low calorie to boot! New! Tab Energy Drink.

Sadly, it would appear that not every state in this fine country has been blessed by the budding good will between those great men in lab coats, and, um, those other great men in lab coats, as this holy grail of energy has, as of yet, only been sighted on the hallowed shelves of Stop&Shop in the 203.

Or is it the 860?

~S

At some point soon in your life, someone you know might try to convince you that the show “The IT Crowd” from the BBC Channel 4 is a good television show to download and watch. But it is actually not a good television show to download and watch. Please believe me when I tell you that person is wrong. You might want to put your hand on their leg, look them square in the eye and ask them something like: “How does it feel to be so wrong?”.

I couldn’t make it through even one episode, but for future reference, here some problems I discovered as evident right off the bat:

1. Studio audience/laugh track. That alone should be a deal-breaker in 2006… so unhip.
2. Terrible, ugly, charmless characters. Hard to look at.
3. Stunningly weak script with unrealistic, Three’s Company style “back-and-forth” dialogue; except Chrissy had far better lines than these.
4. Wheezingly tired jokes about computers and computer geeks.

…quite seriously, there are far funnier things in Cracked Magazine.

~jeff

While playing around with building a web interface for my deeply closeted media server, I uncovered a nifty how-to that lets you send osascript commands — essentially, AppleScript commands executed on the command line — via php. This allowed me to create a web page which passes AppleScript commands to iTunes which then streams music to my stereo: pretty cool.

The downside? Welp, long story short, to be able to fire off AppleScript commands via php exec statements, you’ve got to run Apache as “you”; normally, Apache runs as an unprivileged user called “www”. Setting up Apache to run as “you” is pretty unsecure, even by my horribly loose definition of secure; there’s got to be a better way to integrate AppleScript and the web…

~jeff

Is this Microsoft’s answer to the iPod? You gotta suspect that at some point they are going to have to take a stab at it. I bet it is, because just like every piece of hardware Microsoft designs*, it is remarkably ugly — styled and colored like something you’d find in a dentist’s office.

~jeff

* …except for their optical mice. They make very lovely optical mice.

CBS4 in Florida has a fantastic article and companion video on the local area police departments’ refusal to provide citizens a complaint form for logging an official complaint regarding an officer.

Watch as much of the video as you can stand; notice how everything about the police officer’s attitude, voice and body language are combining to say I’m just about five seconds away from kicking your ass. This guy’s a straight-up thug. The first police officer featured here, Sergeant Peter Schumanich of the Lauderhill Police Department, tried to file an injunction in a Broward County court to stop the airing of the story where he appears on the air and online. He failed. This guy should be fired, like, now-ish; when you’re an embarrassment to the state of Florida, well, that’s just about as bad as it gets.

Also: nice work, CBS4. This is exactly what local news media should be doing, all of the time. I’d be in favor of a “Department of Hidden Camera People” whose job it would be to go around to any service we all pay taxes to fund and record what goes on; it’s amazing how some people act when they’re not accountable whatsoever for their actions.

~jeff

NOTE: There were comments here, stoooopid comments. Now there are not. You are smarter for not having read them.

1). The Winter Olympics

~jeff

1). Sam Beam a.k.a. Iron & Wine

2). Will Oldham

3). Devendra Banhart

~jeff

not pictured: uteruses
Link.

~jeff

from 101zenstories.com:

A Cup of Tea

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”

“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

“What a sanctimonious prick,” the Professor thought, “just like all Buddists.”

Google has released three Mac OS X Dashboard widgets for Blogger, GMail, and Search History. Nifty! These alone will bring that share price right back up, I reckon.

~jeff

Link (requires QuickTime), found on the excellent site the Panopticist.

~jeff

Ben: So, doctor Oktobr, we meet again, but this time the advantage is mine.

Me: It is?
Me: I think you’ll find…
Me: that the advantage…
Me: (don’t move until I finish my speech)
Me: is…
Me: MINE!
Me: (SUDDENLY I DO SOMETHING!)

Ben: Foul treachery
Ben: You’ll not get away with this, Oktobr. CAPTAIN JANARY will save us!

Me: I’m afraid Captain January is a little… tied up at the moment!
Me: IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!

Ben: Hah! That’s not captain January at all! That’s simply my sidekick, Lucky, wearing my old costume. I’m Captain January!
Ben: DRAMATIC REVEAL!
Ben: PUNCH!

Me: No!
Me: I’ll not be defeated so easily!
Me: You’ve punched me, but I’ll live to fight another day!
Me: GETS IN THE ESCAPE POD WHILE YOU WATCH AND ESCAPES!
Me: WHILE YOU WATCH!
Me: ESCAPE POD LANDS AND WINDOW ROLLS DOWN!

Ben: Well, Lucky, once again we’ve made the Universe safe for Freedom!

Me: Also, I think you’re relationship with Lucky is a little suspicious!
Me: ESCAPE POD TAKES OFF AGAIN!

Ben: “You bet, Captain January! Now can you please untie me?”
Ben: I don’t know about that Lucky…
Ben: *FADE OUT*

Me: DUN DUN DUUUUUUN!