“Ars Technica takes on three years of Mac OS X.” The article is a nice overview of the changes OS X has undergone since its debut. I’ve been there pretty much from the beginning: Snookums buys me OS X; I track down the 10.1 update; the 10.1.5 update kills my machine; we make a special trip to buy 10.2 at the Apple Road Show; I cheat and have a student friend buy my copy of Panther so I can save a hundred bucks. Good grief, that’s a lot of money and effort to expend on an operating system. But on the plus side, my mom finally got it installed on the Powerbook her office gave her. “I can’t tell anybody,” she said, “but I really like it!”
Category: Computers
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Not happy
“I.T. Workers – Unhappy Campers?” Yes, yes, yes! Well, for this one, anyway. That article sums up a lot of the thoughts I’ve been having about this industry for the last couple years. I’m not happy. I don’t make anything real or useful or lasting. Most of the websites I’ve built are now dead. (At least one was sold to a porn company that wanted to mine its database.) I don’t help anybody. I don’t make the world a better place. I sit at a desk and move meaningless electrons from one place to another. It’s just not doing it for me anymore.
I need a Change. I’ve got a couple different options I’m considering. The big issue is, of course, money. I get paid more to do this unsatisfying job than I would to do anything else. Is job fulfillment worth taking a pay cut? I think I’m reaching the point where I say “yes”. I’ll keep you posted.
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Blog survey results
Blog Survey: Expectations of Privacy and Accountability. I wondered why I hadn’t heard about this until I saw the dates and realized I was up at Camp Creative around then. Anyway, nothing too startling in those results. I was surprised to see the male-female ratio though. Somehow I thought there were more girls doing this blogging thing. I wonder if the percentages would have changed if “journalers” had been included as well…
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Video game article
“When Two Tribes Go to War: A History of Video Game Controversy”. Very interesting article about the games that have been giving Tipper Gore and Joseph Lieberman nightmares for decades. Be sure and check out the bit about “Custer’s Revenge”, a famous Atari game that involved a naked cowboy assaulting Native American women for points. Hmmm, we never had that one at our house…
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BBC link posted!
I just noticed that my Dahl site has finally appeared on the Website of the Day page for BBC Radio Suffolk. I’m guessing that means the interview aired yesterday. I hope they remember to send me a tape of it!
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Bastard spammers
Who the hell are Aphrodite Marketing? My Yahoo account has been relatively quiet spam-wise lately (with most offenders being sent straight to the Bulk Mail folder) but these jerks have suddenly exploded into my Inbox in a big way. They seem to specialize in HTML emails where the actual spam pitch is contained in a big image, while the text of the email looks like a message from a friend. I keep reporting it as spam but the torrent isn’t slowing. Bastards.
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Barcode Generator
Check out this Online Barcode Generator. I’m totally using this to generate stripe patterns for my knitting! How cool would it be to wear a scarf with a secret code in it?
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OS X
Panther is coming! Panther is coming! Hooray, we finally have a release date – October 24. That’s two weeks from tomorrow! I’ve been waiting for this for ages. I desperately need to repartition my hard drive and clear out some old crap but I’ve been waiting til my next major OS install to do it. Hmm, I wonder if any of the Apple stores in Sydney will be celebrating the release. I’m way too excited about this.
Eek… $230 AU though. Ouch.