22 Jun 02 If You Don’t Have Mac OS X …

If you do not have Mac OS X, then this journal entry will be of very little interest to you, I imagine. But I drafted this for another submission elsewhere, and I wanted to put up here.

Internet

• There are really four decent browsers out there: MSIE, Chimera, Mozilla, and OmniWeb.
• Adium is perhaps the best instant messaging clone out there, although it only works with the AIM protocol.
• MT-NewsWatcher is a truly kick-ass newsreader.
• SlashDock lets you browse news headlines off any site that gives you an RSS feed (like SlashDot or Mac OS X Hints).
• Transmit brings the Mac interface to the FTP protocol.
• WebPics is a great way to handle image galleries on your website.
• Watson lets you get information off the Internet in a very Apple-like, intuitive interface.

Graphics

• FontViewer is a nice and simple viewer of all the fonts on your system.
• Gnuplot is the most adept graphing program out there, although it’s very complex to learn.
• GraphicConverter is the poor man’s Photoshop, although PixelNhance’ll sure give it a run for its money.
• Iconographer handles Mac OS X icons most facilely.
• Pic2Icon is a freeware application that does a great job of making custom icons.
• SaverLab is a nice application to preview, manage, and goof around with screen savers.
• For posting screenshots to the Web, Screen Dump is nice and simple, but SnapperHead is more full-featured.

Music

• Aquisition needs some room to grow, but as it matures, it becomes more and more a fantastic Gnutella client … although Limewire still (at the moment, at least) seems to produce more results (but its Java interface is clunky, slow, and generally sucks).
• If you’re looking for an iTunes interface, you can go with the skinable iTunes Remote or the cleaner and extremely small interface of iTunes Tool.
• MP3 Rage is a real toolbox for your MP3s, letting you do a lot of various editing, renaming, and so on to your files (working with ID3 tags).

Games

• Classic games like Hangman, Tic Tac Toe Plus, and asteroidsX are fun …
• But you’ll also get a kick out of this Bejeweled clone, JewelToy.
• MacSolitaire, methinks, is the best of the various Solitaire games out there for Mac OS X, and it’s freeware.

Miscellaneous

• BBEdit Lite is, methinks, the best text editor out there.
• Black Light can invert or dim your screen, either independently or as a screen saver.
• DOCtor will convert your files from DOCs to PostScript or PDF files.
• DragThing is a very configurable and useful menu program and/or dock replacement.
• GEDitCOM is good if you have a family member who has Family Tree Maker.
• How Much Longer figures out just that, between two dates.
• OmniOutliner is a very, very good list-making program.
• Solscape lets you see the latest NASA photographs from the sun.
• Son of Weather Grok lets you keep the current temperature and conditions for many different cities, but I like WeatherPop much better.

Utilities

• A Better Finder Rename adds a contextual menu that lets you rename big batches of files very creatively and flexibly.
• Locator is a nice GUI for Unix’s “locate” command, faster than Sherlock but with its own limitations.
• LoginBackground will change the background to the login screen.
• MacJanitor can handle the daily, weekly, and monthly tasks needed to keep the Unix underpinnings running well, although eventually you may want to just install anacron and set it up to run automatically.
• Memory Usage Getter is a nice display of what program is taking up how much memory.
• Monolingual will clear out the language files you specify (you don’t speak Finnish, do you?), reducing application sizes and routinely saving you many megabytes of memory.
• OmniDiskSweeper helps you figure out where all those damn gigabytes went to.
• Overseer gives you a lot of basic statistics on your system.
• Pseudo lets you run certain applications as the system administrator.
• I own but will no longer recommend QuicKeys.
• Space lets you keep multiple desktops for separate projects.
• TransparentDock is, hands-down, the best way to configure the Dock.
• X Font Info is a pretty good freeware font utility.
• xFiles is a very good tool for manipulating basic information about a file (date, time, creator code, etc.).
• Xoptimize helps you speed up your system by updating the prebinding.
• You can restore a lot of the good stuff from Mac OS 9 by installing ASM, FruitMenu, and WindowShade X.
• MouseZoom lets you really speed up your mouse (if you find the Apple tracking too slow),
• Silk lets you add anti-aliasing to all Carbon applications (for 10.1.5),
• TinkerTool lets you access a lot of the configurable options that Apple has under the hood but not accessible via the GUI.
• I also recommend Open Terminal Here.

Screensavers

Try out:

• BumpsCoral, Dim, Galaxy, NerveRot, and RocksGL;
• Circuit, Impossible Cage, Infinite Stairs, Moebius Ants, and Rubik;
• SkyFly and Smoke;
• Fluid,
• Sno,
• miPong,
• ShowOff,
• Fireplace, and
• StratWars.

16 Jun 02 So, What Were YOU Doing Friday?

So, what were you doing on Friday?

If you were a senior at Ohio State, or one of their professors, you were probably attending this year’s commencement ceremony, at which George W. Bush was speaking.

And if you were participating in a planned nonviolent protest of simply standing up and turning your back on him, you were threatened with expulsion by Richard A. Hollingsworth, the Associate Vice President of Student Affairs. (Expulsion meaning not only removal from the stadium, but supposedly also refusal of students’ diplomas — a heady threat for someone who’s just spent four years and $80,000+ for that!)

If you went through with your plans, you were escorted by Ohio police officers out of the ceremony, under the charge of ‘disturbing the peace.’ You were told that if you left quietly, no charges would be filed. That’s what happened to this individual.

Anyone want to hold a wake for the First Amendment? I’ll bring the beer.

Thanks to actor Wil Wheaton for letting me know of this, by writing about it in his journal. Please, pass along word of this; the mainstream media is, of course, not covering this.

“Carelessness about our security is dangerous; carelessness about our freedom is also dangerous.”

— Adlai Stevenson (10/7/1952)

* * * *

And if you were the Chief Justice of the United States, one of the ones who put that usurper into power, you were giving a speech to federal judges in Williamsburg, Virginia, in which you said, “One is reminded of the Latin maxim inter arma silent leges — ‘in time of war, the laws are silent.’ These cases suggest that while the laws are surely not silent in time of war, courts may interpret them differently then than in time of peace.”

* * * *

Speaking of such disquietude, I recently saw another gem from those fascist f—ks at the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Has anyone noticed how the very last person in that montage is a young woman who looks into the camera and justifies this litany of homicides (murdering Colombian families, kidnapping people’s dads, killing policemen and judges, helping bombers get fake passports and blow up buildings) by smugly saying, “My life, my body”?

How extremely f—king sneaky to use that phrasing! You can’t convince me it’s an accident that the commercial just happened to use phrasing that is nearly identical to “my body, my choice” — the primary argument/slogan used by those who support a woman’s right to have an abortion.

Not when our government’s executive branch is currently being led by an usurper who once said, “I will do everything in my power to restrict abortions.”

05 Jun 02 The “South Park” Me

I saw this entry in the Anachronic Army’s journal.

It’s about a very fun little website where you can make a South Park version of yourself.

Here’s mine. I don’t actually wear glasses, but it gave a certain look to the character I felt was more appropriate.

Also … you’ve heard about it for ages. After that fateful day (November 17, 1978, from 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm on CBS), George Lucas has vowed that no one will ever see it ever, ever again. But you can still read it, thanks to the Web!

It’s the Star Wars Holiday Special, starring Bea Arthur, Art Carney, Jefferson Starship, Diahann Carroll, and Chewbacca’s family: his wife Mallatobuck, his father Attichitcuk, and his son Lumpawarrump. (Gesundheit.)

Ah, go check it out. I know you want to. Where else are you going to read the lyrics to the “Life Day Song”?

Well … here, I suppose:

[To the tune of the "Star Wars" theme:]
We celebrate a day of peace,
a day of harmony,
a day of joy we can all share together joyously;
a day that takes us through the darkness,
a day that leads us into might,
a day that makes us want to celebrate the light;
a day that brings the promise that one day
we’ll be free to live,
to laugh,
to dream,
to grow,
to trust,
to love,
to be.

(No, I’ve never heard it. I count this as one of my blessings. By all accounts, it is extremely painful to hear Carrie Fisher warble this one.)