Monthly Archive: December 2012

As the end of the year comes rushing at us, if any of you are looking for a new DayRunner / DayTimer / Franklin Covey style planner, but none of the one out there really match the way you work, drop me a note. I can probably work with you to design a planner that fits your usage patterns better than something off the shelf. (Really. I do this. 🙂 )

This should be of interest to many of you.

Everyone who uses a Google account (Gmail, YouTube, Google Reader, Picasa, Blogspot, etc.) should probably enable this. Better safe than sorry,etc.

Via Google Operating System.

If you’re fleeing Instagram, but trying to figure out how the heck to get your photos out, and what to do with them once you’ve got them, you might want to check out freethephotos.

(Please note that I am in no way connected to this service. I’ve never used it. I have no idea about any security issues involved. I don’t even know if it works. I read about it on the one thing well blog (which is a great blog that software junkies should check out), and thought I’d pass it on.)

While having breakfast with sitz this morning, we ended up talking about the sailing stones of the Racetrack Playa. I mentioned that I’ve always felt a strong urge to go out there and paint the stones to look like snails.

This is a good idea, no? Once I’m able to travel again, I may need to find funding for this venture.

So, I have shiny new toy to play with, but it’s lacking some of the UNIX bits that make me feel really at home in the terminal. Previously, I’ve always defaulted to Fink when I’ve wanted package management on OS X. However, this time around, I thought I’d ask what the rest of you are doing. Do you, too, use Fink? Or are you more of a MacPorts sort of person? Do any of you out there use Homebrew? What made you choose the system you’re using? Why didn’t you go with one of the others?

Help me, Interweb! The fate of… well, nothing really important, except maybe my curiosity… is at stake. But I have lots of curiosity!

Ok, I know for a fact that my friends list here has a very high percentage of UNIX geeks. It’s you to whom I speak now.

What is your favorite monospace / fixed-width font? If you say Courier New, you will be disqualified from the discussion. (Kidding, kidding. If you say Courier, you will be disqualified.)

The criteria for me are:

• character differentiation: I should be able to type iI1!lL and be able to tell what I typed (lower case i, upper case I, numeral 1, exclamation point, lower case L, upper case L). Same with oO0 (lower case o, upper case O, zero).
• reasonably full character set: I’d like to have a few extended characters beyond ASCII, for typesetting purposes. Things like bullets (•) and degrees symbols (°) are nice.
• font variants, mostly for typesetting, but also for some terminals: bold, italic options.
• availability: available online, in OTF (by preference) or TTF.
• price: free is good, cheap is acceptable, expensive is nice to know so I can dream.

What say you?

(Ok, I know for most of you, this isn’t going to seem like madness. It will, in fact, probably seem like a fairly boring day. But I have largely turned into a hermit, and one with somewhat limited mobility, to boot. So, it’s a kind of madness.)

Today’s agenda:

• 2 loads of laundry
• trying to find all of my blocking materials
• drive to Columbia to return long-unused cable boxes (and remotes), so Vz can stop charging us some ridiculous amount of money each month
• phone call with a friend about helping with a dog rescue web site
• trip to a local yarn store to buy needles for Teresa and any blocking materials I couldn’t find
• trip to Teresa’s house to block a couple of Christmas presents (which will undoubtedly result in unhappy knees and/or back)

After that, I think I shall come home, have a glass of wine or two, and watch some silly movie. Or maybe my cats rampaging around the house. Or knit. (Though, not so much the knitting after the second glass of wine.)

Wish me luck!

Yeesh.

As diligent readers will know, I don’t exactly lead a hectic life. With the exception of my weekly foray to Ashburn to visit Jenn and Jim, I’m mostly a homebody. I leave the house for errands and medical appointments.

That said, this week is quickly ramping up to be full of all sorts of social, and it’s actually kind of filling up. If there’s anything you need me for this week, speak now, or wait until after Christmas.

While I pretty much live on wireless networks for most of my Interwebly needs, there are times when a good old fashioned ethernet cable is your best friend. Like, say, when you’re transferring an 80G music collection from one computer to another. Directly connecting two GigE ports with a piece of CAT-5 is much much faster than doing it over WiFi (duh).

Just a few gigs to go! Yay, rsync! Yay, ethernet!

(Warning, your meri may be punchy. Please plan accordingly.)

In case any of you think that I’m convinced that All Things Cupertino are good, let me assure you that’s not the case. I use gmail’s web UI over mail.app. I use Chrome over Safari. I admit to using Contacts (formerly Address Book) and Calendar (formerly iCal) simply because the iPhone / iCloud interoperability is hard to beat. But, there are some things that the brainy little developers at 1 Infinite Loop come up with that drive me buggy. And iPhoto is about 3 of those things. So, it’s time for me to ditch iPhoto.

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