Apple

April Fools

No, I’m not going to write some farce in trickery, I just need to update, and it happens to be today.

Today is also, btw, Apple’s 30th Birthday.

Tuesday I skipped speech, and half of electronics. It was really nice out and I decided I should have a day off, since I was sick through spring break. I went down to the end of Johnson and explored the bit of trails hidden there and shopped a bit at Meijer, then drove around with the windows down for a bit. Then some homework to make it all even out. It was quite nice out the past few days. Kinda cool and wet today, but better than winter.

School is coming closer to a close, which means an increase in final projects and such, which I am not appreciating.

I did a little biking Wednesday, 5.5 miles. I was a little tired when I left so not that far, I know, but is a start. I really really want to do more biking this summer.

So, that’s about it for now. I will try and be back within a week.

nick.

All Gone

So, I was finally on google, I was listed, and then… I ruined it. I updated my sitemap, which is where google gets the listing of where my pages are, and google de-listed me till it reindexes. Few days I should be back up though.

I just saw the Wendy’s commercial again for their dollar menu, and part of it really bugs me. At the end, a man tells his wife “you look like a million crispy chicken nuggets.” Wait, the proper expression is a million bucks, and throughout the commercial they replace dollar menu items for dollars, so it seems right. When you think though (I know, you should never think, it takes away the funny, I’m probably the person who told yo that in the first place so you can’t quote it to me) there are 5 nuggets in a $1 box. That means he implied $200,000, not $1,000,000. If I was his wife, he wouldn’t be getting any for a while.

My speech for Oral Communications went OK I think. She said that since we barely covered anything yet, grades would be fairly lenient.

If any of you don’t know, and honestly 2 out of my 3 readers don’t, I am car shopping. I have been mostly looking at Volkswagens, and noticed something, power windows are actually rare. Believe it or not, the majority of the cars I have found have keyless entry and no power windows. Why would you get not just power locks, but keyless, and not get power windows? It just seems really odd to me.

Disney, yesterday, announced that they are buying Pixar for $7,400,000,000. I could have said $7.4 billion, but the zeros add drama. Steve Jobs, also CEO of Apple, owned 51% of Pixar, and thus gets 51% of the stock in the deal. He will now be, with a 7% share, the largest stockholder of Disney/Pixar/ABC (though just called Disney). We will see if that is a good, or bad, position to be in.

OK, that’s all for now.

nick

Notes

A few of notes for you.

First, I did some looking, and the PowerBook has been named so since October 21, 1991 when the PowerBook 100 replaced the Macintosh Portable. It did not have a PowerPC until August 28, 1995. it is, therefore, Apple’s oldest brand name, as the Power Macintosh name didn’t debut until March 14, 1994, the iMac on May 6, 1998, and the iBook on July 21, 1999. It is one of their most recognizable brand names as well. So, with all this, I think we have a reason to be pissed if the name disappears, and I know I am not the only one who will always think of Apple’s high-end laptop as a PowerBook, no matter what name they put on it.

Second, after fretting and writing for a few hours this morning about my Oral Comm. class speech, I accepted my fate and went to leave for school. On the way outside I realized just how slippery it was, and decided that since I have gone to Delta before only to find the campus closed on my way in, I should check one more time. Sure enough, Delta had moved from a delay until 2:00 to all day closure. So, I get to go through all the worry again next Tuesday.

Third, to the person who commented at 7:17 AM EST on 1/16/06 (you know who you are), I consider that post to be spam, and if you do anything similar again, you will be banned form the site. I know you are a frequent visitor by your IP address, and am sure you don’t want it to come to that. Keep comments on topic, please. I like comments, I enjoy receiving and reading them, especially since none of you have blogs for me to read.

Sorry

Anyway, that’s all.

Oh, wait, I wanted to also mention, I like Craig Ferguson.

nick

MacWorld Expo 2006

So, the biggest day of the year for the Mac community, with the possible exception of the WorldWide Developers Conference, was today: the keynote address of the MacWorld Expo San Francisco. There was good, and there was bad. Here’s a summary:

    the Good

  • iWeb WebPage Editor/Blogger
  • Garageband Podcast studio
  • New Laptop includes iSight and FrontRow/Remote
  • Massive sales of iPods and itunes songs

    the Bad

  • New Laptop not named PowerBook, name going dead
  • still no spreadsheet in iWork
  • Updated systems were iMac and PowerBook, that were just updated, not mini and iBook that need updates

I can live with it all, mostly cause I have no choice. I am still peeved about the intel switch, because IBM does have a lower power G5, and no matter how much Apple screws with the numbers to make it seem better, the Intel platform can’t touch the G5. I can nearly guarantee that the PowerMac will go much longer unupdated than normal before going over to intel, so Intel has a chance to catch up with an 8 month old G5. Also, it seems it will likely get a name change as well, to something along the lines of Mac Tower Pro or something equally goofy.

Anyway, enough of that.

School is kinda blah so far. CAD seems OK, Electronics is going to bore me to death because it’s all intro stuff compared to Skill Center, and oral Communications is public speaking, which I don’t much like. Oh well.

Work is going OK so far. Will work again Friday noon to 5.

Notice my word count is now up to 90,641.

And in closing, hello “sweets”, and yes, I know who you are.

Happy 3rd Birthday iBook

Yes, the ibook is 3 today. It has held up rather well too. It could certainly use some more RAM, and it lags at playing MPEG4 due to an aging video card, but it’s not doing too bad.

I switched over to the new template. If you notice anything funky, let me know. I will do work on it here and there as time passes.

Quintoquadagintillion

Math test today was not good. I knew 99% of the stuff, but I couldn’t finish due to spending too much time on a problem I didn’t remember how to do. Will see on Monday how I did.

Apple released updated Powermacs and PowerBooks, and a new program. Program sounds like somewhere between iPhoto and Photoshop, and is $499. Powermacs are now dual core 2.0, 2.3, and dual dual core 2.5GHz (thats 4 2.5GHz processors). Also have 16x PCI Express graphics and an open 8x and 2 4x PCI Express slots, dual Gigabit ethernet, and support for up to 16GB DDR533 RAM and 1 TB of HD. Powerbooks had 2 models dropped (those with combo drives), and the 15″ and 17″ got graphics updates as well as higher def displays and DDR 533 support,. Still no 13″ widescreen though (my dream to replace the 12″, not that I will buy till intel switch and I have $$ anyway).

Speaking of GB and TB, Scott found this cool numbers site. Sexoctagentillion, hah!

Not a lot else.

I am overall liking my current update schedule, approx. every Sunday and Wednesday, give or take. Let me know what you think.

I have work planned for the site over the weekend, so if you have troubles or see something weird, no worries. And I have a surprise for you all coming too. 🙂

New Toys

OK, I don’t have new toys, but Apple announced new ones today. First up is video capable ipods. Also, is the additions of more music videos as well as TV episodes to the iTunes Music Store. Currently, they only have Pixar shorts and a selection of Disney/ABC series including Desperate Housewives, Lost, That’s So Raven, and a few more. But, you can view them on your computer or iPod, or transfer them to your iPod and view on your TV.

Other new toy is new iMacs. Now up to 1.9 or 2.1GHz G5, 512MB RAM (DDR-533, ooh), faster ATi X600 128MB Vid. Cards, and 160, 250, or 500GB HD. The big new features though are that they ship with a remote to control your songs, videos, and pictures, including a new interface for browsing them all in one place and direct access to the online move trailer collection. Also, is a now-integrated webcam in the top of the iMac, for video conferencing, taking your pic for a buddy icon, or whatever else you want. I really like these, but still don’t see me buying one since A) I don’t have $1599 and B) the Intel switch will obsolete all PowerPC based Macs, despite them being better chips.

That’s all for today, check all the new stuff out on Apple’s site. General update tomorrow.

Because Mini Was Too Big

Apparently, “Mini” is too big for Apple, as today the iPod mini was discontinued in favor of the new iPod nano. Along with being smaller, it also sports a color display so you can view pictures and such, as well as swapping out the mini’s 4 or 6GB HDs for 2 or 4GB flash ROMs. It keeps the old price though of $149 and $249 respectively, or $129 and $179 for students (like me). Also (it was a big day for Apple) they released a new version of iTunes to support the new iPod and the new Motorola ROKR (rocker) cellphone, which supports iTunes songs. I am not totally sure on all it’s specs, but know it only works with Cingular in the US.

School is going well still. I had a Pre-Calc quiz today that went well. I have some homework for Man. Tech to work on when I am done here.

RadioShack interview went, well, whatever. The whole commission based thing I wasn’t real happy with, so just winged the interview and didn’t care much either way. We will see, whatever happens happens.

Not much else.

Haven’t worked on entry conversions, because of homework and such.

My Birthday is tomorrow. Woohoo to 23!

I guess that’s it.

Will let you know how birthday went on Saturday.

What was that?
A flaming burp.
Does it always do that?
It’s not always a burp.

Decisions Decisions

Well, let’s see.

I have been thinking about moving. No, not my person, but my blog / site. I have reasons for staying, reasons for leaving, reasons against what I have now, and reasons for what I want to have. I even have a poll for you to help me decide. So, let’s get started, shall we?

First and foremost, is cost. My .Mac subscription is nice, I get an email address, 250MB of space, a cool automatic web page builder, free copy of Virex, Back-Up space and software, and some other stuff. Problem is it costs me $99 a year. Other problem is it’s a mac, there are no viruses to protect against, and I make my own web pages. So we are down to backup, server space, and email. Well, free email accounts are easy to get, I have a Yahoo, Hotmail, GMail, Excite, Netscape, Delta, and probably more somewhere, and can get another in about 2 minutes. Backup is nice, but I seldom take anything from the server, just put backups to it. I use my iPod as a hard drive, and CDs all the time to back stuff up, and that’s what I actually retrieve from. The one thing I would miss most, is that I can access my bookmarks anywhere, just go to the site, click a link, and I have a window with all my bookmarks right there, on any computer. Yahoo is making something like this available though, so I might be OK.

So, Server space. I found Nearly Free Speech.net. They charge $1 per gigabyte of data stored per month, and $0.01 per megabyte of data transfered. That means my 5.4MB of monthly transfer (an estimate, but I think is pretty close), and 25MB of data will cost me about $0.26/month, or $3.06 per year. Thats almost 97% off! Even if I went WAY up, from 300 to 3000 visits a month, I would only be at $3.63 a year. Or, if my site grew (which it always does, but this is extreme) from about 25MB to 250MB, it would take me to $30.06. Now, as you can see, space will be my concern, but thats still only about a 3rd of what I pay now, and for the same amount of space. I would need to put 700MB on the server to match what I pay now. Sounds like a deal, huh?

So, next issue is iBlog. Yeah, it was better than Blogger, but it has it’s issues. For one, I kinda settled for iBlog. My .Mac account doesn’t allow php, which is what most blogware uses. That’s why I need a FreeFind search bar, a SiteMeter counter, and a Haloscan comment system. Good php blogware has this either built in, or available as php apps that I can add to the server, rather than relying on some other guys server. (By the way, php is a scripting language for servers, it’s similar HTML or JavaScript, just different, and more powerful.) Next, is the fact that since I started with iBlog, what, almost 2 years ago now (Sept 1, 2003), I have been promised a version 2, with all these new features. Yet, here I am with v. 1.4.3, because 1.4.4 is too buggy. Nice.

Over the time I have had iBlog, I have looked at alternatives, like BlogWaveStudio, Tangelo, and RapidWeaver, but they are all still .Mac, no php, need other companies and more usernames and more reliance on other servers for comments and counters type Blogware. But now, no, if I am going to save myself a heapload of money and move to a server, and it supports php, why not look at GOOD Blogware, POWERFUL Blogware. Yes, that’s what I shall do.

My first instinct was for the Blogware I wanted 2 years ago, MovableType. Now, back then, MT was free, and was a good choice. But since then, WordPress has come along and matured. It’s open source, free (yes, I know, I can get MT free, but I get no support, and I may need it), and very customizable IF I learn php, which I probably will.

So, I can move to a server that will cost me less, and lets me keep iBlog or move to a more powerful Blogware, add my own service apps like a wicked cool tracker that kicks what I have now’s ass, and yet I am hesitating? I have my reasons.

First of all, it means a new address. That means I need to let all of you, and all those that used to read the blog know that I moved, meaning a big top-entry post, and emails, and such and such. Then, I come to the hard part. If I switch Blogware, I loose my old posts until I redo them all. I did this once, when I moved from Blogger, but I only had 4 months worth then, now I have 26 months to convert. Plus, all comments would be lost. This means paying $10 to Haloscan for Premium membership, exporting all my old comments, and retyping them as you into the newly transfered post, making sure they all go to the right post etc… Is it worth saving $97 a year? Yeah, probably.

Then, though, that new address thing hit me. Yeay, I would have a cool address like nslyax.nfshost.com or something equally no better than what I have now. What if I wanted something actually cool though? Not just sarcastically cool, but actually geek cool, my own domain. Yes, at $3ish a year, I could afford a domain, and it would only be another $15.75 a year for registration and hosting. That means you could go to blog.hooji.net (hooji.com was taken, but has expired, but was then bought by advertisers that just have redirects on it, and will be available late 2006, but I don’t want to wait) and view the blog. Now that’s cool.

So, I have till October 1st to decide (I think) as that is when my .Mac expires. It would certainly but a lot of work. I may just move iblog to the new server, but that still means comment transferring, and whenever I moved to WordPress I would need to retransfer. I may switch to WP and leave the domain alone for a while. I don’t know. Leave me your opinion, and i will think it all over.

Addendum:

In the 2 days I have thought it over (it was really wracking my brain Wednesday afternoon, I couldn’t wait) I think I have came to the conclusion that with a $5 minimum, I wouldn’t loose much by at least trying it out. No domain or anything for a while, just a trial run. Still though, let me know in the poll, comments, whatever.

nick

It’s conjugal visit day, and you know how I like doing a chick in the can.

Free Songs, Yay!

First of all, this will probably be shorter that it could be. A few hours ago I had the energy to write a big long update, but started playing SC4 and am now tired and not caring enough.

Anyway though, Slurpees now have free iTunes codes on them. On the white 32 oz. cups, there is a (12 digit, I think) code that can be entered into iTunes for a free song. Every cup has a code, its down toward the bottom. This kicks the ass off the Pepsi promotion, cause A) All cups win, 1 in 1 chance. And B) It’s summer, so we drink a lot of Slurpees. And finally C) You can walk in the store, grab some cups, and write down the codes, they are very visible. Anyway, if you buy a slurpee, write down the code and email/IM them to me, please.

Uhm,…

I guess like I said, played SC4 most of today, went to Rudy Js with Jenn and Mom earlier. Roger is out of town through Monday so I am released from the backyard for a while.

Jenn has Thursday thru Monday off, so we might go to Alpena or camping or something.

That’s about all.

nick

Sorry, still getting over the whole Intel in my Mac thing.