jjSpace - Mac

061224 13:28 - Christmas Dinner at the Apple store

jj admin — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 13:16:53 -0600

There's an Apple store near me. This I knew long ago, but I saw an add in the paper that they were open on Xmas day, and were serving a complete turkey dinner with all the trimmings, prepared with the new iCook device they were planning on launching in 2007. How could I resist.

I went into the store and they had moved all the computers to the side and put in a completely white banquet table with about 50 white chairs surrounding it. I took my place and paid the $249 dinner fee, which I thought was excessive, but they promised to take ALL the hassle out of dining for me, so I figured, what the hey.

On the plate in front of my there was the iCook device. It had three things that looked like electrocardiogram electrodes, shiny chrome bullets on the end of a very thin white wire connected to the cigarette sized iCook itself. One wire was about five feet in length.

The "chef" came in, and told us all to insert the outer two electrodes on our tongues, and to swallow the one with the longest cord. I thought that might make me gag, but it's coated with an anesthetic so you can get it down really easy. I swallowed mine with absolutely no problem.

Then this freakish bird like thing was taken out of its cage and fastened to the table with bungee cords. The bird was an albino. The "Chef" then attached some probes to the bird, connecting it with a small mini box which, we were told, was the server for our iCooks.

The bird then extended a proboscis with several attachments on it like a dentist's drill. The first one was a feather remover. It buzzed all over the bird and cleaned off all the feathers, which were sucked up into a ceiling vacuum. Another attachment neatly severed the bird's neck. No blood came out!

One more attachment gutted the iTurkey, and the all white entrails were swiftly removed with another vacuum wand skillfully wielded by the "Chef". The "Chef" then proceeded to stuff the iTurkey with white stuffing.

A thirty-six laser light then shone on the iTurkey from above. In about thirty seconds, the skin was crispy and the smell of turkey filled the room. No need to wait hours for cooking!

The probes on my tongue then started emitting the most heavenly "turkey and stuffing" taste. Nothing was in my mouth, yet it seemed as if I could chew and swallow every virtual morsel. As I and the other diners slurped at the electrodes, the iTurkey in the center shrank in size until it eventually disappeared completely.

The probe down in my stomach had expanded in size dramatically. I had to loosen my belt. The taste generated by the iCook device sated me completely, and my gut felt as if it was a-busting. I then became very drowsy because the tongue probes had begun to simulate alpha waves inside my skull. I felt just as if I had eaten the biggest holiday dinner, and the best, in my whole life!

I must have dozed off about two hours. The other diners and I seemed to arouse at about the same time, all as directed by our iCooks. Indeed, for the money, this was probably the best dining experience I had ever had.

Noting that we all had arisen from our postprandial naps, the Chef told us, that was the end of the meal.

Unless some of us wanted to stay to experience the other new product being launched, the iToilet.

061222 15:01 - On the OSX front ...

jj admin — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 13:10:35 -0600

061222 15:01 by iDRMRSR

On the OSX front, I've been doing some studying, and here's the torture trail for Windoze folks, the things that will cause US to rip out our hair more than the Linux command prompt:

1. Copy a folder to a folder with the same name elsewhere. OSX destroys the old folder (instead of merging the files). INSTANT coronary for a Windows user.

2. Closing windows does not stop the application. Slow death for a Windoze user.

3. Dragging a file to a blank CDR to back it up just puts a LINK to the file on the CD. Like Polonium 210 for us Windoze folks.

4. Cannot MAXIMIZE a window. WTF?

5. Many applications open SEVERAL small windows at once. WTF?

6. Only one FINDER open at a time. Kill me now, before I buy a Mac Mini.

7. CTRL DRAG to actually copy a file's contents. AIEEEEE.

8. Hidden .DS_store files splattered all over your disk.

No thanks.

BTW, I took Leonard's advice and tried this distro:

http://www.slax.org

The LiveCD actually ALMOST WORKED on my laptop. I could get the wireless card to connect. Sort of. Still can't reach the internet, but there's still time THIS YEAR to solve that problem.

It's a cute and FAST distro with KDE. Looks rilly nice, like the girls in those Russian mailorder bride pix, but once you get it home...arrrrggghhhh...

Atonal Acolyte -- Scareware for your Mac!

jj admin — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 10:22:30 -0500

This is a weird little thing I started writing in HyperCard over a decade ago. It began as "Toon Master," since it was to support running a session of the Toon rpg. Its central engine was a scheduler (with a one-second resolution) that could make table rolls, play sounds and talk.

I removed the Toon-specific stuff and imported it into Runtime Revolution, which claims to be a cross-platform development package. But currently, I can only build for Mac operating systems due to the "student" license I have for RR.

The "project" link, below, is for anybody brave enough to try building it for Windows. (Since it uses speech, linux might not work at all.) The .sit files are standalone builds of it. Update: A few years later, and I've finally tried this under Mac OS X, on an Intel Mac, and it WORKS as well as the OS9 version!

This software was used to create material that has been used in the Hour of Slack radio show!

The Runtime Revolution project -- 633 kb

The "FAT" runtime version, for Mac OS 8/9 -- 1557 kb

The Mac OSX runtime version -- 1860 kb

No warranties or such are made regarding this thing; proceed at your own risk.