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Rob Griffiths

A (messy) parenting lesson learned…

Our daughter Kylie has, on three occasions now, gone to bed perfectly happy and fine, only to wake up vomiting in the middle of the night. By the morning, though, she'd be fine again, and acting like nothing much had happened.

I figured it was something in her food that was triggering the events, but the first two times it happened, there was too much overlap in the meals to figure anything out--she basically ate the identical dinner. When the third incident happened this week, however, I was able to note only two overlaps with the prior meals: on all three occasions, she'd eaten some small cherry tomatoes and some banana with her dinner.

After I related this story to my friend Kirk, he wrote back "yea, tomatoes and bananas don't go together. Acid and starch = boom!" Perhaps this is common knowledge, but I hadn't ever heard this before. I've certainly seen it in action often enough now, however, to believe it. So as much as she likes both, Kylie's days of combining the two are now over!

As an aside, sorry it's been so quiet around here lately. We moved a couple weeks back, and between packing, moving, and unpacking (not even close to done yet), I just haven't had much time to write.



An unexpected accolade

Macworld logoA few months back, I received an email from Macworld's head honcho, Jason Snell, telling me that my multi-part look at the Intel Mac mini had been nominated for a Neal award in the Best Online Article or Series category. The Neal awards are designed to recognize excellence in business media publications, and I guess they're fairly well known in the industry (although I'd never heard of them). I read the email then didn't give it a second thought, other than "hey, that's kind of cool."

Well, last week, Jason sent a quick text message from the awards ceremony: "Holy cow, we won!" I was both shocked (wow, someone actually read the whole thing?!) and thrilled--because the mini piece represents exactly what I wanted to do when I made the decision to join Macworld full time: to have the time to look at things in a more in-depth manner than I was able to when running my site as a hobby.

I was given the chance to delve deeply into a then-new Intel-powered Mac, see exactly how well it did a number of different tasks, compare it to my G4 PowerBook and Dual G5, and then write about my experiences. That the end result was recognized with a Neal award is really thrilling, and speaks highly to the editorial team at Macworld that converted my 15,000 word opus into a well-paced and easy-to-read multi-part series--it's not easy taking a piece that long and making it into a coherent multi-day story, but that's just what they did.

So thanks to ABM for recognizing the article, thanks to the great team at Macworld for making it work so well online, and thanks to the person who submitted it for consideration for the Neal awards. It was a lot of fun to write, and hopefully was useful to those who were interested in learning abou the new Intel-powered Macs.



When updates overlap

On Thursday of this week, we had two interesting software update announcements:

  1. Microsoft released an update to Vista that fixes a problem with Apple's iPod corrupting when ejected.
  2. Apple released the Boot Camp 1.2 beta, which adds support for Microsoft Vista (among other new improvements).

So on the same day, Microsoft patched their OS to prevent Apple's iPods from corrupting on disconnect, and Apple released an update to enable its customers to use Microsoft's Vista on Intel-powered Macs.

I just found it somewhat humorous that both Microsoft and Apple released patches to fix issues with the other's products on the same day...and I'm thrilled that it happened, as it shows that companies realize how important it is for our hardware and software to play well with others. (My own Vista upgrade is in the mail, so I'll see how well the updated Boot Camp works in the near future.)



What’s in a name? Nothing major…

Quick--name the four "major" titles on the men's and women's professional tennis circuit. Easy, right? Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open. OK, do it again for the golfers on the PGA tour. Also easy: The Masters, US Open, The Open Championship (that'd be the British Open to most US fans), and the PGA Championship. Now, quick, name the LPGA's four major championships.

Not so easy, is it? I can name three with relative ease: The LPGA Championship, the US Open, and the British Open (though the British only became a major for the women in 2001). But what about the fourth? It's this week's event, the Kraft Nabisco Championship. I didn't know that until I read about it earlier this week. (I knew there were four, but I had no idea what the fourth was called.)

The history of the LPGA's majors is somewhat convoluted--this article explains it all fairly well. But the bigger question here is, if you take the 12 event names above, can you quickly tell which one doesn't belong? Another easy answer, of course: the Kraft Nabisco Championship. And why doesn't it belong? Because it's the only "major" event that has a sponsor's name (Nabisco is owned by Kraft, so I'll just count that as one sponsor) embedded right there in the event's title.

So what happens in three (or five or whatever) years when the Kraft sponsorship is up, and they decide not to renew? Will the fourth major then become the Ford Explorer Championship or the Wal-Mart Championship or perhaps the 7-11 Championship? Whatever happens, it won't make it easy for the LPGA's fans to remember all four of the majors. To me, and perhaps it's my old-fashioned traditionalist side, major event names shouldn't have a sponsor's name directly attached to the event. Once the TV time starts, sure, all bets are off--I have no issues with "The US Open presented by IBM," for instance, as the tag line used on the air. But not as part of the event's official name--getting noted in the record books every year, and subject to change at the whim of some corporate bean counter (I used to be one of those!) somewhere who nixes the $10 million sponsorship contract.

Come on, LPGA, do the right thing: name your major something non-vendor-dependent, and then sell the TV sponsorship rights for the broadcast. The Tradition, The National, whatever--I really don't care what you name it, just name it such that the fans won't have to remember a new name every time there's sponsorship turnover. That's hardly the way to build mind share with the fans for one of your four major championships.



Ten things to do in the next twenty years

Over the weekend, I was thinking a bit about the next 20 years, and things I'd like to accomplish within that timeframe. Nothing practical like "preparing for retirement" or "funding the girls' college accounts" or even "remembering to mow the lawn weekly." No, it's always more interesting to think of the fun things one might be able to do in the future.

So here's my list, focused on those things I think would be the most fun or most interesting. As with lists of this type, there's a good chance that well over half my list will remain unaccomplished--family, work responsibilities, and economic realities always seem to get in the way of our dreams. However, I will do my best to check off at least some of these items while working within the confines of reality.
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Random header images for WordPress

I've finally migrated my family's site over to the latest version of WordPress, and installed pretty much the same batch of plug-ins and widgets as I use here. However, I wanted something else, too--a randomly-selected image for the header of the site that changes each time the page is loaded, as seen in these four sample pictures:

montage

(The header images are just sections I've snipped out of photos we've taken, with an artsy Photoshop filter of some sort applied.)

I searched the web, and there are a few plug-ins that offer this ability, but they came either too feature-rich, or required some additional JavaScript to work properly. I wanted the most simple, basic, and functional header image rotation solution I could find...so I wrote my own, which required all of two lines of code. I'm posting it here so that (a) I remember how I did it, and (b) in case anyone else wants a simple solution, they'll be able to find it with some help from Google (our family's site is access restricted, so posting it there wouldn't do much good...and it would confuse my relatives, who are used to only seeing pictures of our kids there!)
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The limits of Apple’s warranty

Macworld logoLast week, I had an issue with my MacBook Pro--the backlight went out. The machine is about 110 days old, so it's just over Apple's 90-day limit for phone tech support. I think it's pretty outrageous that a $2,500+ machine comes with only 90-days of phone support for hardware issues, and I shared my thoughts on the subject in an opinion piece for Macworld on Friday.

I really think that Apple is lagging with their policies, but some of the feedback to the opinion piece has prompted me to look into it further. I'm not sure if anything will become of it, but it's my plan to look into the bigger names in the PC world and compare their policies with Apple's for similar gear. Just for fun, I'm also planning to look at the major home electronics manufacturers, at least those who sell gear in a similar price range as something like the MacBook Pro.

If anything like an article comes of my great plans, I'll post a follow-up...



An Office 2008 VBA to AppleScript helper

Macworld logoA while back, I wrote about what I thought of Microsoft's decision to drop Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) from the next version of Office. In short, I think it's a short-sighted and stupid decision. Apparently my thoughts had no influence on the folks in Redmond (shocking, I know!), as Office 2008 is set to ship without any form of VBA support.

But it will have AppleScript support, and the fine folks at MacTECH were kind enough to send me a preview copy of their upcoming 150+ page guide to switching from VBA to AppleScript. I wrote a brief preview of this guide for Macworld last week. If you're a serious VBA scripter looking to make the move to AppleScripts, this looks to be a must-have guide. And thanks to some Microsoft support, you can buy it and six-month subscription to MacTECH for all of $10 or so. More info can be found in the link in the Macworld article.



My first WordPress plug-in: custom registration

Over the last couple of evenings, I created my first-ever WordPress plug-in, which I wrote to make it easier to customize the WordPress registration (and login) screen. As distributed, the stock version of WordPress uses a really not-very-nice registration screen--it features the WordPress logo (embedded in a background image), and links back to the WordPress site. If you wish to modify the login screen, you have to change some files in the WordPress core--and that means that every time you update, you have to remember to redo those customizations. Far from ideal...

So I took some time to read about creating WordPress plug-ins, then studied up on the available hooks to see if what I wanted to do was possible. The good news is that, as of WordPress 2.1, it was possible--and quite simple (even for my very-limited PHP skills).

After a few error-filled attempts, I wound up with a working plug-in that creates a nicely-customized registration screen, all without changing any core WordPress code--you can see the results on the registration page. (This is roughly what it looked like under WordPress 2.0, but I created that page by modifying the core WordPress files.)

If anyone wants this plug-in, feel free to grab it (36KB download)--there are some basic instructions in the customreg.php file, but I wouldn't describe it as heavily documented. Also, I'm not sure how well it works with the default login screen, as I use the King Login sidebar widget for login in the sidebar. What I'd really like to do is figure out how to display the registration form with the header, sidebar, and footer--but after some basic investigation, I think that project is beyond my skills. So for now, this is officially good enough.



Technology purchasing: A 10 year retrospective

I've been playing around with technology for longer than I care to remember--I blame my father for bringing home that first Commodore PET way back in 1979. Ever since then, it seems, I've had this unhealthy fascination for pretty much everything on the bleeding edge of technology. I clearly wouldn't have my current job without this interest in technology, so I guess I'm quite thankful that things worked out the way they did.

However, such a hobby does have its costs--literally. I was cleaning out our cabinets the other day, and came across my binder of technology receipts. This is where I keep the receipts for any "substantial" hardware or software purchases, and it tends to be something of a roach motel for receipts: they check in, but they never check out.

So I thought I'd take some time and cull the receipts for things I no longer own. Going through the binder is quite the revelation--both on how much I spent on technology (hey, I was young, single, and careless...now I'm just careless!), but on how much the technology itself actually cost. I scanned a few bits from some of the more interesting receipts (click any receipt for a larger version).

Read on for a walk down memory lane...followed by a look at what those items would cost in today's dollars, as well as what you could get for that some money today!

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