• WWW::Mechanize::Examples
• hiptopSync – for OS X
• Danger Developer Wiki: user data calls – pimsync via XML-RPC

I’ve long thought about programming some airtime usage calculators. There’s some out there (DialStat, Comet, Treo Call Log), but it’d probably be a worthwhile learning experience to program my own.

Capturing entire tapes certainly makes the whole process easier. Much faster to go back and subclip online than shuttling tape back and forth.

• Ordered to Love – teen-age girls forced to submit in secret nazi mating camps; my new desktop image
• Oh yeah! – see mefi discussion, photo in yahoo news (fwiw, it doesn’t appear to be overly photomanipulated – be sure to take a look at the MPEG on Sea Sheperd page )
• HotelChatter – Rusty’s new site; reviewing hotels
• Long Wait for Taste of Home
  

  Hoping to capitalize on this phenomenon, the chain opened restaurants in Los Angeles and Houston last year. The first outlet in Los Angeles did $1 million of business its first seven weeks, the company said. Barahona said she expects $1 million in sales after five weeks.

  Hmm, looks like there’s one at Olympic and Union. That’s really close, will have to check it out sometime.

• Friendster Spurns Google – interesting…
• Pumpkin Carving DRM
• Inside Fox News. Charlie Reina, employed by Fox News from 1997 to 2003, tells it like it is.
• Better iTunes handling of M3U playlists – haven’t figure out why iTunes handles m3us (especially streaming ones) so badly; I’ll take WinAMP over iTunes any day

I did my first Panther install last night. First thing I noticed, bootups are significantly faster, going from three or four times slower than my PC to probably 2x faster. Also, the Panther upgrade CDs I had required a previous OS X install… As the 2x800MHz system I was upgrading was running Gentoo, this presented a problem. I was about to break out the Jaguar CDs (tedium), but the Netboot servers that we (USC ISD) run came in supa-handy. Hoo-ray.

(Originally, this Quicksilver machine was running OS X server as our workgroup file server. This caused no end of problems, and I inherited it and threw Gentoo on it. Better, but Linux PPC definitely has some issues; I just got a replacement IBM x335 running Debian in our rack set up, using this machine now for editing while my 12″ PB is in the shop. Having 135GB of 10K SCSI-2 RAID-0 goodness is definitely good fun)

• PC Gamer interview: Half-Life 2 – interesting interview w/ Valve’s Doug Lombardi on how various game elements emerged from user testing, derived behaviors (physics, ai)
• EOS 10D 2.0.0 Firmware – getcha firmware right heah
• Reboot an iPod
• Hercules USB DJ Console Reviewed – whoa, looks cool; wonder how well it’d work for video?
• Yahoo Groups: LAVA, Los Angeles area Video Artists – site soon @ la-va.org
• The Best Page in the Universe – via Intellectual Whores (hmm, Ladder Theory)
• Apple previews Java 3D, Advanced Imaging APIs
• Q: What’s a good halloween costume that will get lots of attention? – definitely NSFW, not for the prudish
• Zimran on Longhorn/WinFX
• check out rc3.org for continuing good stuff
• Sony news: 20,000 layoffs, including 7,000 in Japan, 25% 3rd quarter drops, not as bad as the 98% plunge last quarter
• Linux Media Arts – LMA is building its entire product line of broadcasting and film software and hardware products to be optimized on the AMD OPTERON and ATHLON 64 bit processor technologies.
• Cinelerra – will need to give it a spin sometime (see also Kino, etc)
• Voicemail: don’t phone home – from Telepocalypse, Telecom strategy in the age of end-to-end networks
• Everything in Moderation – Creative ways to manage online communities and user-generated content. Wow, times are good when you find a new blog dedicated to an area of interest
• 1-800-Annoy me now – 12 ways to get out of recorded-message hell and get a live customer service rep. A CNN/Money article that’s useful, wow, thanks boingboing
• Mac DVD software: iRipDVD, DVDibbler, D-Vision, OXEx
• Setting the Record Straight: An Analysis of the Justice Department’s PATRIOT Act Website

• What’s New in Mac OS X 10.3 Panther – pretty comprehensive
• How good is Google? – the Economist on Google’s IPO
• How to Take Your Number With You – NYTimes on WLNP. see also: NumberPortability.com
• How Cell Phone companies are fleecing us? – the 10 largest wireless carriers have taken in $629 million from the consumers… see my rant from around this time last year
• The Road to Babylon – Searching for targets in Iraq; from Dec 2002, a comparison of the Iraq quagmire to the Peloponnesian War
• Whose War? – a Pat Buchanan (!) article from Mar 2003 that names names, tracing neocon ties
• After the Flood – article on how China’s Three Gorges dam is affecting the country

• BoingBoing – temp IP (see also: Cory’s post on mefi)
• Cory’s iCal rant (time zones)
• Mitch Kapor on iCal pub/sub weaknesses – I encountered a similar issue, will be working around w/ convoluted diffing/synchronization plans – may be even more complex than that though…
• Google: samba configuration testing smbclient

Yay WMD: U.S. Continues Biological Warfare Research. From the New Scientist writeup:

Now Buller has engineered a mousepox strain that kills 100 per cent of vaccinated mice, even when they were also treated with the antiviral drug cidofovir. A monoclonal antibody that mops up IL-4 did save some, however.

smart keyboard flip: