• Mondo Rescue – comprehensive Linux-based disaster recovery
• Stealitback.com – police auctions online. wackiness

• Date String Handlers – fast AppleScript date handlers (including ISO date handler)
• Date String info – all you wanted to know about AppleScript Dates
• Getting Short Dates – not as good, alternate methods
• Droplet for Processing Dragged-on Files – AppleScripts for processing filetypes
• Handler Info – how/when to use handlers
• AppleScript Primer: Subroutines/Handlers #1
• AppleScript Sourcebook
• Apple: UI Element Inspector

Stupid IE DOM note: to appendChild() table rows, must be attached to tbody, not table

Entering CasualSpace… – John Barlow muses about how zero-cost calls (iChatAV) changes things. For me, having presence information is a big plus. Also, I hate making phone calls because it’s so intrusive; dropping an IM seems much better in that regard.

Of course, the presence doesn’t really work that well for me because I’m always signed on w/ multiple computers (still not sure I like AIM’s new routing algorithm), and of course if you’re using iChat, then it does the AIM client thing of popping up incoming messages directly onto your desktop, which is quite intrusive (but at least you can still multitask while that conversation goes on.

(perfect im routing algorithm for me: route based on least idle time, that’d get a message to me 90% of the time; also, cache on server – I should just run my own Jabber server, will be getting hip-deep in that stuff soon anyway)

Linkdump:

• ftrain: Graph Narratives
• NYTimes: So Much Clutter, So Little Room: Examining the Roots of Hoarding
• notfriendster – Social Networking Community Alternatives
• Social Networking Vendors Aim for the Enterprise
• Defenses lacking at social network sites – defense goes further than protecting logins. how does one protect the trust network, and more importantly, restricting propagation of personal data (encrypt data, hook up to decentralized credentialing system, say using keyservers [subkeys vs crl].)
• The Circle – an open source scalable decentralized peer to peer application (IM, IRC-chat, file sharing, trust-based news service)
• PLINK – FOAF searcher
• Visualizing Blogs – with Treemaps
• JavaScript OSA – JavaScript OSA is a port of the Mozilla JavaScript 1.5 scripting system to the Macintosh in the form of a OSA (Open Scripting Architecture) component. You can use JavaScript OSA as a scripting language in any Macintosh application supporting OSA languages, such as the Script Editor included with the MacOS or our own Script Debugger product
• X vs XP: Scriptability – hard to decide which is more retarded
• America ®: The Ultimate Killer App
• Scanning Tunnelling Microscope Construction Kit – build your own
• Can’t lose with bargain DVD player, but low cost carries price – $30 DVD players carries moral price tag
• Amazing Amount of Time Wasted Repairing Computers in December – logging amount of time spent troubleshooting computers in 1 month; I should try keeping track of that, although some of it I get paid to do

• AppleScript FAQ
• AppleScript: The Definitive Guide
• ADC: Open Handlers
• Apple: AppleScript Documentation
• MacCentral: AppleScript Primer
• AppleScript Workshops – Conditionals – working w/ string comparisons

Andy did some good link-hunting on his Clear Channel Goes Indie? write-up about “Indie 103.1”. If I ever tune in to the radio, it’s mostly KCRW (89.9) or KXLU (88.9). Not too much new stuff in the sample tracklistings, but it doesn’t completely suck. Maybe I’ll have another channel to flip to when I forget to charge my iPod.

–>

Oops, looks like I probably should have gone with 3ware 8506, not the LSI
MegaRAID… I should try running some bonnie tests sometime…

• The Death of Horatio Alger – Paul Krugman writes about income distribution trends and decreasing income mobility in the US
  

  According to estimates by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez–confirmed by data from the Congressional Budget Office–between 1973 and 2000 the average real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers actually fell by 7 percent. Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 percent rose by 148 percent, the income of the top 0.1 percent rose by 343 percent and the income of the top 0.01 percent rose 599 percent. (Those numbers exclude capital gains, so they’re not an artifact of the stock-market bubble.) The distribution of income in the United States has gone right back to Gilded Age levels of inequality.

• Business Week: Waking Up From The American Dream – editorial that spurred Krugman’s
• Tour of the US Income Distribution, “The L-Curve” – 99% is about $300K, 99.9% is $1M
• INEQUALITY.ORG – recent article entitled Homer Gets a Tax Cut which explores why the average American supports really bad financial policy that only benefits the rich:
  

  What in the end is going on here? Most Americans, Bartels suggests, “support tax cuts not because they are indifferent to economic inequality, but because they largely fail to connect inequality and public policy.”

  

• In the Ownership Society, Were All Equal (But Some Are More Equal Than Others)
  

  Whats the solution? Give everyone access to a 401(k) plan and make it easier to save? Nah. Thats what silly Democrats would say! Since some are more equal than others, the sensible thing is to create a new category of tax-favored accounts with higher contribution limits ($7,500), so that the affluent, who already max out their retirement contributions in 401(k)s, can save more without being taxed. Not only that, they get a bigger break for doing so, because their marginal tax rate is higher. Perfect!

• What if Bush is a Nixonian Liberal? – interesting analysis of Bush policies
• EPI: JobWatch – Bush Administrations tax cuts falling short in job creation

My ThinkGeek order arrived the other day. I’d picked up some Chargers Caffeinated Espresso Beans. These are pretty damn addictive. I wonder how much caffeine is in each bean? I just popped about a dozen of these this afternoon…