Snow in Seattle 2008

Around here, in the great city of Seattle, we have snow as I write this.

Seattle doesn’t get snow very often. So I’m excited that we got some. More is predicted to come on Wednesday. So enjoy the snow on my blog. If you’re on an iPhone or iPod touch, the snow is disabled due to performance issues. I will enable it on a dedicated snow page.

Should I use Google Reader to subscribe to RSS feeds?

I don’t use RSS like I should. Why? Standard techniques don’t work for me. Firstly, my screensaver only will activate on my command. Secondly, Mail refused to subscribe to either the Slashdot feed or my blog’s. Third, Firefox & Safari don’t have a big enough of an indicator for new entries. So now with Google Reader, which is on Springboard on my iPod, I hope to read RSS feeds more often.

Opinion: Mac vs. Windows

A war at my high school is raging about Windows being better than a Mac

Hello, I’m here to report something that has been going around my lunch table.

Apparently, a few Winblows lovers are arguing that WinBLOWS is better than the Mac OS. I strongly disagree with them however. But, this one kid who’s my friend has a bunch of reasons why a Windows is better. All these reasons seem very controversial to what I’ve heard:

  • “Windows Vista has better security…I once hacked my parents’ Mac. It was so easy to hack their Mac.”
  • There are no admin privileges on Macs
  • There’s better software for Windows

Only my other friend, who has a MacBook, and I know the REAL truth: Macs are better than winblows.

11-13-08 UPDATE: From my user talk page on Wikipedia-

At a recent forum, Ubuntu, Mac, and Vista were all put to the test of some of the worlds more skilled hackers to find a way into a up-to-date system. The mac box lasted a little over 10 minutes. The windows box hadn’t been cracked by the time the exercise was over.

Macs are pretty, like flowers. Windows is functional, like a set of cutters. Treat the cutters poorly, and they’ll rust and go blunt. Treat them well, and they’ll cut the head off your flowers any day. Doesn’t matter how you treat the flowers though, they’re gonna die eventually

That was quite surprising. Please see my user talk…

Is Quartz Pixar’s Renderman’s lost cousin?

I was watching a video introduction to NeXTSTEP 3 by Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs said that NeXTSTEP had Renderman included in it, and an “interactive” Renderman.

So what do you think? Is Quartz Renderman’s lost cousin? Seeing as that Pixar has always used Steve’s platform, it very well may be.

Working on the WicketPixie WordPress theme

As you very well may know, I have put the WicketPixie WordPress theme into Assembla (with Chris’ approval). That’s why OKS Blog has had problems. But i have restored to a working version and I put it in the Assembla SVN. I am planning on making a “test bed” that runs the latest version of WicketPixie, which should be easy to maintain because Assembla has a feature where it will do a GET request of any URL when a commit to the Subversion repository is performed. But I will have to secure the page to prevent other people from updating it unnecessarily.

Reading the Apple Public Source License

I was going through the Apple Public Source License as I was cleaning it and spacing it to fit more appropriately. Here are some snippets:

You acknowledge that the Covered Code is not intended for use in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation, communication systems, or air traffic control machines in which case the failure of the Covered Code could lead to death, personal injury, or severe physical or environmental damage.

Kind of strange.

Any litigation or other dispute resolution between You and Apple relating to this License shall take place in the Northern District of California.

Home field advantage!

A command-line MP3 player

I’ve been looking for a command line MP3 player. Now i’ve found one that compiles on OS X Leopard.

mp3blaster works great. My build only does mp3 / wav, but when compiled on a different machine it can also play ogg and sid.

I am satisfied with mp3blaster’s performance. It runs nicely and can also use SDL for audio (a very good thing in my case).