If you use your Mac on the road, I invite you to my sister site the Traveling Mac. There we’ll talk about taking your Mac in the world, and technology-related travel stuff. BigSean and I plan to travel in Europe in 2009, so this site will chronicle our planning, decisions, and on-the-road blogging effort. See you there!

I’ve read about the Western Digital 320GB Serial ATA drive and its compatibility with the Mac. Most posts were along the lines of “no problem, but disable the Sudden Motion Sensor.” So I took the plunge yesterday and replaced my internal drive. (more…)

Went to see “Mr. Brooks” tonight, and what a good film. Smart, some predictability balanced with some nice twists.

Biggest problem with films like this, and I’m thinking of “Fractured” with Anthony Hopkins, is why are the protagonists always rich? Huge houses on expansive property, lots of little secret places, the ability to do anything?

Smartest part of the film: Mr. Brooks drives late-model cars. His primary vehicle of choice: a mid-1990s Volvo sedan. Not a Lexus or Audi here. Not quite invisible but certainly not flashy for what Mr. Brooks likes to do with his spare time.

Maybe will post again after the weekend. Go see this movie.

I’m sick of it. Do I need Crestor, Lipitor, Prilosec? Heck, I don’t know. Why do I have to ask my doctor if I need drugs? Why doesn’t he (or she) tell me what I need? Is the research too hard to keep? Are the drug companies propping their advertising campaigns? Why are drugs so hideously expensive to research and buy? Why would I do the research for a drug, and pay a doctor to get it? And what’s with all the wierd side effects? Vomiting, stomach ache, headaches, a loss of blood pressure, sudden sleepiness while performing normal activity — have these drugs really been tested, or are we playing with our bodies?

I’m not against medicine, doctors, or drugs. But I don’t understand how and why the drug market became so complicated. Oh yeah, don’t drug me up for any little thing. I’m pretty sure most cuts will heal themselves just find without a round of anitbiotics.

You just know that Windows is the majority of dumb-click fool-you cookie-sucking spam when you see this:

This screenshot was taken on a Macbook Pro, running Safari. Hmmm, what’s that Windows Vista security icon doing on my Mac?

Remember when you were five, you’re a big kid and wanted to pour your own drinks? Mom would say, “Be careful how much you pour.” You’d hold the bottle with both hands, and slowly tip the bottle toward the glass. Tongue poking out one side of your mouth as you watched the drink fill the glass. Sometimes you knew when to stop pouring. Other times, you poured too much and it spilt on the counter.

The dude who made my milkshake this afternoon fell squarely in that second, oh-god-i-poured-too-much category. It was such an overflow, barely tipping the cup ran a chocolate goo down the side of the cup. After putting on the lid, pushing in the straw caused another spurt to erupt from the cup.

It was by far the messiest shake I’ve ever had. A hint: because you make more than the cup holds, doesn’t mean you try to put it all in the cup.

It finally happened! I can get DSL where I live - hopefully it will live up to the reliability my coworkers claim.

Changing from cable to DSL was supposed to be straightforward: go into my firewall (I use ClarkConnect), and change the WAN interface from Ethernet to PPPoE. Except… my box doesn’t have the PPP module. And it software is 2 versions behind.

So last night I did a backup and transferred it to another computer. Earlier this evening I made the switch to DSL, and installed the latest ClarkConnect. I have to admit the web interface matured quite a bit in the two or so years I was using 2.2.

The web site is basically up, but I have some tweaking to do before everything is fully operational. I hope to have everything fixed this weekend.

I’m a huge Battlestar Galactica fan. It’s arguably one of the best dramas running today, that just happens to be sci-fi.

The one thing that bothers about space-oriented shows is the lack of “three dimensional thinking.” Star Trek viewers may recognise that phrase from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Spock noted while Khan is a genius, his tactical decisions are two-dimensional.

What I mean here is whenever you see spaceships meeting each other, they are on the same elliptic plane, oriented toward each other in a “right side up” manner. Only rarely do you see ships approach each other in a true 3D manner.

For the most part, Battlestar Galactica does a decent job of 3D thinking and ship orientation. However, I expected the Cylon to heavily use non-traditional strategy and tactics.

Example: why is it whenever one or more Cylon base ships appear, they automatically target and engage the Galactica? Were I the Cylon, I would use three or four base ships and surround the Colonial fleet. Why engage the military presence when I can destroy the civilian fleet. After all, the Cylon nuked the Colonial homeworlds. Use the sleeper agents in the fleet to find the key Colonial ships (for example, the ore/fuel transport), jump in, fire some missiles at the selected target, and jump away before the military presence can react.

Perhaps the Cylon have an ulterior motive not yet revealed to the viewers. What if the Cylon are pushing the Colonials to find Earth? The entire first two seasons could be an elaborate scheme to propel the Colonials.

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The last tactical strike at the end of Season two, where the Cylon claim to have “given up” the chase and let the Colonials settle on New Caprica is a masterstroke. Everyone was absolutely taken by surprise (except for perhaps Adama and Roslin).

There was a comment that the Cylon are “less aggressive” after the destruction of their resurrection ship, that the Cylon consciousness was too far from the Cylon home world for help. It appears in the few months the Cylon now occupy New Caprica, they either built and jumped in another resurrection ship, or they built a resurrection facility on New Caprica itself. This is the only explanation why Conoy, Kera’s current keeper, was killed and reborn five times in four months.

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That’s all for now. An excellent resource on exploring the world of Battlestar Galactica is the Battlestar wiki: http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page

I found this comment on Slashdot regarding the fundamental difference between Windows and OS X. Love it.

Well that is the typical Windows vs. Mac Debate. Apple OS method is do what you need to do, and let the OS Do What it needs to do, and try not to step on each others foot. Windows is a working Microsoft Commercial for every feature that help you save time or protect you from trouble it is like Windows says “See Microsoft cares about you because we just protected you”, While Mac OS X is more like go do what you need to do we will keep out of it and protect you when you need it, and we will only talk to you when we really have to. Even the Eye Candy. OS X eye candy is subtile while Windows is flashy. It is like a a man in a nice suit vs. a Pimp.

Finally, I’ve found good document management software similar to PaperPort for Windows. Called Yep, it’s billed as an “iPhoto for documents.” And boy does it deliver!

Yep shows thumbnail views of any PDFs you define to it. Essentially, Yep is a database for your PDF documents, for which you can define any number of tags. For my testing, I imported almost 500 documents from my “historical” scan folder. Because of the tagging feature, I am able to organize documents by subject and date. In addition, I can add additional tagging, such as location or other arbitrary tags.

If you are a Mac switcher and miss PaperPort, give Yep a try. You won’t be disappointed!