Sharp Tools

Stepped out

My father wrote me a quick email today to give me the sad news that my cat Smudge, who has been with our family 19 years since adopting me while I was in college, has apparently passed away. However, in truly classy Smudge/cat style, she nuzzled him awake Monday, smooched him, and then left the house after him and hasn't been seen since. As she didn't make a habit of wandering in her later years, we conclude (given that she hasn't been seen in several days) that she went away to pass on in private.

Smudge, I love you. Requescat i pacem, and I'll bring kippers when I come to see you.

As an aside: if anyone asks me, I shall tell them that Smudge "has stepped out for a bit." God, what a cat.

So very classy, San Diego

Ah yes, exhorting us to 'stay classy, San Diego!' while referencing Stepin Fetchit as a description of the White House...way to go, KFMB San Diego, yes sir.

Files disappearing on Desktop on OS X 10.5.8

Ran into an interesting problem. Using OS X 10.5.8, whenever I dropped a file or folder onto the desktop (from a subfolder, or from Entourage, whatever) it would just ...vanish. Not to be found. Checking in a windowed list view, I found that the files were there, they were just apparently being placed on the Desktop at coordinates that were outside my viewable area. I don't know why - I'm not running VNC or desktop sharing, and I don't have another monitor attached (and never do, to this machine) - but there you go. Essentially, the default file location on the desktop was outside the frame, or viewable area.

I eventually 'fixed' the problem by selecting the Finder, clicking the desktop, and then selecting 'View->Show View Options' from the menus. Then I moved the Icon grid spacing slider, released it (and watched the icons move) and then moved it back.

That appears to have 'reset' whatever preference was borked. Now, when I drop stuff on the desktop, it shows up in the next unused slot on the right side, just like it always used to.

Hope that helps some poor soul who is Googling as frantically as I was.

WANTED: Readers and writers

Hey, you! Yes, you. Do you enjoy reading things online? Do you, perhaps, write things online? Are you looking for a low-demand, no-pressure community full of interesting whackos to hang out with online, even if fully anonymously? If the answer to any of these questions is "yes" then we need you.

Who is we?

Everything2 needs you.

We're an online community ancient in internet years (our first decade is coming up in a month or so). We have current members dating back that far. We have newer members. We have content - oh, my lord have we got content. Tons and tons and tons of content.

But we have a problem. Our site was and is devoted to the written word, and as such, it is lacking in some of them there newfangled 'Web 2.0" niceties like images, sound, 'social networking' and the like. We know, we know, but keeping a community up and running on the web with no budget for 10 years has to count for something, right?

Anyway. We still attract new people, who wander by and check us out. But the fact is that most of them kids wants them new features - and few stay long enough to realize the breadth and the depth of the content we offer and the personalities who hang out there, because the wide swathes of text put them off.

If you, however, like to read and/or write online, I'm entreating you to come give us a try at Everything2.com. We won't ask for money. We won't ask for the email addressed of your friends so we can pursue them. Heck, we won't even ask your real name. All we want is a handle, an email address we can use solely for administrative purposes (password verification and recovery) and for you to come talk to us, read stuff, and hopefully write some stuff on E2.

I realize this sounds a bit desperate. And I'm not doing this as an officially sanctioned effort, or as an official designated representative of E2. I'm doing it as a member of a community that I dearly love, and that I want more people to find as fun and engaging as I do.

So, for the final time (promise) I ask: come browse and give us twenty minutes of your time. If you want some suggestions on what to come read to get a sense of the community, read the articles in the section entitled 'Cream of the Cool' and 'Recently Cooled' on the homepage. If you want some of our historical greats, ask me and I'll send you some links.

There is an FAQ for the site, if you want one.

Anyway, that's it. I hope to see some of you there.

Me? Oh. I'm to be found here. I don't advertise my 'real' identity, but I don't go out of my way to hide it either (there's a link to it on this blog's sidebar, f'rinstance).

Thanks for reading.

I am a compulsive dork.

I have completed Fallout 3 on my Xbox 360. That's not the dorky part. I completed it having collected all 20 bobbleheads, and completing all quests except those my choices had locked out.

Sigh.

Well, there's always Broken Steel!

I am seriously jealous of my nephews

...because they got to go Pumpkin Chunkin' this weekend. Better than that, Joe actually got to fire a pumpkin cannon, the lucky kid!

I want my Warp Drive, damn it

Apple's already got a standard technology named Time Machine. I just want to register my hope that their new Light Peak tech gets called Teleporter. I don't think they'd call it Transporter due to the baggage.

iPhone 3.1 and PwnageTool 3.1.3 tip

If, like me, you have been holding out on getting iPhone OS 3.1 until it was jailbroken, you might (also like me) have decided to give PwnageTool 3.1.3 a try. Why not? Well, I did it, and there's some stuff that you might want to know about.

Two things. First, as other blogs will tell you, you will lose your carrier logo if you use PwnageTool 3.1.3 to build a custom 3.1 .ipsw and install it. That, I can live with, since (according to t3h intarnutz) this only affects the GUI, not your actual signal.

Unfortunately, when I restored my phone using the custom ipsw, I didn't get the logo - but I didn't get any service either. I tried about three or four different things, which is a lot when it means rebuilding an ipsw, rebreaking and resyncing each time - until finally I went into Expert mode on PwnageTool and told it *not* to Activate the phone in the cracked ipsw it was producing.

That worked. I still don't have the logo, but at least it promptly says '3G' now and shows me bars, and makes calls and all that.