My new gadget fix

Last week I finally got fed up with the numerous quirks exhibited by the cheap flash only MP3 player which will remain nameless (suffice it to say I should have never strayed away from the Apple fold for price alone) and ordered a refurbished iPod Touch. I figured I could use it as a light MP3 player when I was exercising or walking the dog. Plus it gives me the ability to play with some of the more compelling iPhone features without having to pay the monthly fee for the data service.

It arrived a few days ago and I've been having a great time playing with it ever since. I think it's as very nearly as revolutionary as the original iPod was. The first thing which struck me was how thin it was. I'm amazed at how such a tiny device can perform such an amazing number of tasks.

The mobile version of the Safari browser works well for light web browsing. I get a big kick out of using the gestures to zoom in and out on portions of web pages. Being able to rotate the device and having the display orientation automatically adjust itself is also very cool. Having a built-in IMAP email client is pretty darned handy too. I've also discovered a few free applications which complement the standard set nicely.

I like the mobile version of the NetNewsWire RSS reader. I've been using the Mac version for quite a while now. I discovered that I had to sign up for a second NewsGator account since my old account contains a lot more RSS feeds than the mobile version of NetNewsWire can comfortably handle.

I also downloaded Labyrinth LE, a game which takes advantage of the orientation sensors in the iPod Touch to allow you to control a ball's movement through a maze by tilting the Touch. It's more fun than I would have thought.

I'm sure I'll be discovering more cool applications for the Touch in the coming weeks. In the meantime, I'm having a blast playing with this clever little gadget.

NASA's steadily shrinking budget

According to this article at least some politicians are aware of the problems posed by NASA's steadily dwindling budget. With the economy as strained as it is now, there's very little chance they'll get the increase they so desperately need. The problem isn't widely understood either. According to this article, most Americans grossly overestimate how large a part of the nation's budget NASA gets. It's hard to believe they only account for 0.6% of the budget. Where else can you get that type of return for such a small investment?

We need to revisit our priorities because correcting NASA's funding deficits isn't merely something to do to make ourselves feel good, it's an absolute imperative. Have a look at this chart of the number of near Earth asteroids (NEAs) observed within the last 60 days. Do we really want to take the chance that none of these will come close enough to do massive damage, especially when funding NASA is so affordable compared to a lot of the other budget items?

Most scientists credit an asteroid strike with causing the extinction of dinosaurs. That may be the way we're headed unless we find a way to fund more space research.

Gripping television

We watched the finale of The Shield last night, a fact which fills me bittersweet happiness. It was a thoroughly enjoyable series. It's hard to believe that it's been seven years since it started. I'm going to miss marveling at the havoc Vic Mackey and the rest of the Strike Team managed to wreak each week.

The writing on the series was amazing, especially when contrasted with the drivel that passes for entertainment on broadcast TV channels. It was surprising that they didn't have a slow season unlike so many other series. I wish I could say as much for The Sopranos which came close to boring me to tears for much of its last three seasons. Unlike The Sopranos, The Shield's finale was every bit as good as the series had ever been.

I feel the same bittersweet happiness remembering The Wire. It's refreshing to see what a great team of writers including George Pelecanos, who also has an impressive career as a novelist, can create when given the kind of freedom that an innovative network such as HBO can offer.

So where do we turn for TV entertainment now that those two great series have run their course? I'm hopeful that True Blood, Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, and Brotherhood will all continue providing us with thoughtful entertainment for years to come. I'm fairly certain that the broadcast networks won't abandon their current fascination with crappy reality TV programs long enough to produce something capable of entertaining people who who have an attention span of longer than 30 seconds any time soon.

You can get a virus just by visiting a web site

Just in case anyone doubted that the web is a dangerous place, this article discusses the very real possibility of getting a virus just by visiting a web site with scripting enabled. See, it happens to the ubergeeks among us too. ;-)

The safest way by far to browse the web is using Firefox with the NoScript plug-in installed. I keep scripting disabled by default and only enable it on sites I trust such as my bank, Amazon, etc. For those web sites which don't display properly without scripting enabled, I resort to browsing to them in a Virtual Machine under VMware Fusion. It's far easier to restore the single file containing my virtual machine than it is to have to either restore my entire machine or reinstall software.

Using OpenDNS is also highly recommended. It helps cut down on phishing by warning you when a link has directed you to a dangerous web site.

Those of us using Macs shouldn't feel too smug. With the Mac's popularity increasing so quickly, it's only a matter of time before the people who write malicious software start targeting Macs in earnest.

Firefox smart keywords

A lot of people I've talked to don't seem to explore features added by new releases of their software. A case in point is the smart keyword feature of Firefox. It allows you to enter a quick search on the web site of your choosing just by entering a few works in the Firefox's address bar.

An example will probably make this a bit clearer. I frequently visit the Internet Movie Database to look up movies I'm interested in seeing. So I've created a smart keyword called "imdb" which saves me a lot of time. When I want to look up the movie Time Bandits, I click in the Firefox address bar and enter the command "imdb time bandits". That takes me directly to IMDB's information page on Time Bandits.

To enter a new smart keyword, perform the following procedure.

1) Visit www.imdb.com.
2) Right click in the search box and choose the "Add a Keyword for this search..." selection.
3) Enter a name and the actual keyword for your saved search. For this example, I've used "imdb" for both the name and keyword.
4) I like to group all my keywords in a special keyword bookmarks folder. Then again, I'm an organization freak.

More about strokes

After a few visits with a friend who has recently suffered from a major stroke, I think it's a good idea to pass along some information because strokes are not well understood by the public at large.

It's important for people to learn to recognize the symptoms of a stroke. If you or your family members don't recognize the fact that you're having a stroke, you may not get treatment quickly enough to prevent unnecessary long term brain damage. It's especially important to remember when symptoms first appeared. The most promising treatment, TPA, must be given within 3 hours of the first appearance of symptoms. It can actually cause harm if given after 3 hours have passed.

The aftereffects of strokes are also somewhat misunderstood. Most people recognize the temporary or permanent paralysis of of one side of the body as classic stroke symptoms. The brain swelling which takes place frequently causes problems with speech or control of the limbs on one side of the body which can require months of therapy to correct.

You may also want to ask your doctor about taking a daily low dose aspirin as a preventative for strokes and heart attacks. For some reason the body seems more prone to developing blood clots as we get older.

A podcast I listen to regularly, Skepticality, features a host who had a major stroke a few years ago. He returned to podcasting after about 4 months. At first his delivery wasn't as fluid as it had been before the stroke but with continued speech therapy, it's now hard to tell that he ever had a stroke. I'm hoping therapy proves just as effective for my friend.

Leopard's Stacks feature

One of the first Leopard features I started using was Stacks. I used it to replace the program launcher I'd been using. The Dock is a great way to organize your most frequently used apps but since it also gets populated with an icon for every program currently running on your Mac, it can get a bit cluttered. Fortunately Stacks offers a great way to tame that unruly list of icons.

Leopard comes with two Stacks items by default, Documents and Downloads. I've gotten rid of Documents since I tend to keep my documents stored in a hierarchical directory structure rather than shoving them all in one big documents folder. I've also made a minor change to the Downloads item. Stacks has the annoying habit of changing the icon for the Downloads or any other Stacks item in the dock to icon of the first item in that folder. I find that disconcerting to have my Downloads folder sometimes look like a folder and sometimes look like the icon of whatever program I've happened to download. So I've added an alias for a folder called _0_dummy_folder to the Downloads folder (in your home directory). The name causes the folder to appear first in normal sort order so a folder icon is used for the Downloads Stacks item.

I've also added a few new Stacks items of my own to the Dock. I did this by following the procedure below:

1) Create a folder to contain the entries you'd like to appear in your new Stacks items. For example, I created a folder called ~/Dock/Utilities to hold aliases for all my frequently used utility programs. Note that the tilde is Unix shorthand for your home directory.
2) Create and drag aliases for each utility program you want appearing in this new Stacks item to the folder you created in the previous step.
3) Create and drag an aliases for a dummy folder to the ~/Dock/Utilities folder. I use an alias to a folder called _0_dummy_folder for reasons outlined above.
4) Drag the folder ~/Docks/Utilities to your actual Dock. I dragged mine to the left of the Downloads Stacks item.

You can repeat the above procedure to create more categories of frequently used programs or frequently accessed documents. The best part is I don't have to keep paying to update my program launcher. This also takes up less space than my old program launcher.