soapbox

I had to go to the Apple store yesterday to get another power supply for my laptop. I have three places where I use the computer (office, home, and apartment) and I kept forgetting my existing one one place or another. Anyway, if you have lots of them you don’t have to carry them around.

While I was there though, I picked up one of Apple’s new Magic Mice. I have to say that it’s definitely the best bluetooth mouse I’ve ever used. The laser tracking is really nice, it has decent heft, and fits in your hand well. The cool thing though is that the surface of the mouse works as a multi-touch trackpad so you can scroll around by sliding your finger on the surface of the mouse. It works really nicely. Right and left click work too with the mouse sensing which finger you’re using to click.

Now for the negatives.
1) I didn’t actually need a new mouse, but couldn’t help myself.
2) There isn’t a middle mouse button, which would be handy for pasting in UNIX programs. I assume this could be fixed in software though.
3) I actually prefer a corded mouse. (The batteries in the Magic Mouse are supposed to last around 4 months, so this might just not be an issue.)

So, in conclusion, both of Apple’s mice right now are pretty good and I really like the “Mighty Mouse” (now just the “Apple Mouse”), but the ball on my old mice seem to get jammed up every 6 months or so sending the mice to mouse heaven. The fact that the new mouse doesn’t have any moving parts should hopefully solve that problem.

A couple older relatives and friends of mine recently got burned by a spam/malware/phishing issue that traces back to desktopdate d0t net. Does anybody have any experience/knowledge of this?

I’ve found this but at least one of the people involved claims to have not clicked on the email, but still had many invites issued on their behalf to the contents of their address book.

In honor of 20 years of Simpsons (holy crap, really?), the November issue of Playboy is going to have Marge on the cover, posing with a bunny chair and little else:

No word on how much of Marge will be shown inside the issue, but “it’s very, very racy,” said editorial director James Jellinek, adding “she is a stunning example of the cartoon form.”

Evidently Hefner’s enterprise is worried that young people don’t like porn?

“We knew that this would really appeal to the 20-something crowd,” said Playboy spokeswoman Theresa Hennessey.

Apparently the Simpsons issue goes on sale in newstands next week, but subscribers to the magazine will find their copies “have a more traditional live model on the cover.”

Some may not be familiar with Carl Sagan and the Cosmos (both the book and TV series – I think viewable for free on Netflix and Hulu), but you should check him out. This little musical ditty turns good quotes from his TV series and a couple Stephen Hawking bits into a pretty damn decent track. Check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc

BTW – how does one embed YouTube into the blog? It seems to just post a link if I use the upload / insert function in the editor…

I got this message in an email today:

Somehow in one of the recent re-builds I’ve lostmy copyof “Graphic Converter”. Can anyone remind mehow to get another copy for my Mac? Thanks, XXX

I’m having a really hard time not sending an email back saying “try googling GraphicCoverter”.

Sadly though, the answer (which I knew instantly) is www.lemkesoft.com

Nowhere else will you hear a DJ say something like “we’ve heard too much from Sweden today, so here’s Mews, the most famous prog-rock band from Denmark”.

And not only do you get to hear comments like that, they’re said in a very carefully enunciated voice that sounds like he’s being very very careful to keep the levels at exactly the right spot.

Good times.

Bet none of you knew that I used to be a DJ.