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First Look: Numbers

Macworld logoIn January 2003, Apple introduced Keynote, a fairly groundbreaking presentation application. Two years later, along came Pages, a mixed page layout/word processing tool.

Together, Keynote and Pages were sold as the $79 iWork'05 "suite." Compared to the venerable AppleWorks, though, iWork was missing both spreadsheet and database applications. With the release of the still-$79 iWork '08 (Best Current Price: $67.41), Apple has plugged the spreadsheet hole with Numbers.

Read my Macworld article, First Look: Numbers, for the rest of the story...



Three things I don’t understand about Apple’s moves

Macworld logoAfter Tuesday's announcements from Apple, I walked away both impressed and confused. The new iMac, with the possible exception of the glossy screen—more on that below—seems to be a solid design, and, at up to 2.8GHz, it should be screaming fast as well. iLife and iWork both look like solid upgrades, and I’m anxious to spend some time with Numbers, Keynote, iPhoto, the remade iMovie, and the rest of the collection. So much for the “impressed” side.

The "confused" side is curious about three decisions Apple has made regarding the following items...

Read my Macworld blog entry, Three things I don't understand about Apple's moves, for the rest of the story...



It’s so intuitive, it’s almost like it’s not intuitive

I was reading this overview of smart phone web browsers, and came across this interesting sentence about the iPhone's Safari browser:

The iPhone browser interface is a success not because it's intuitive, but because the interface is discoverable at a level almost below conscious thought.

This didn't make much sense to me, so I looked up intuitive in the OS X dictionary, and found this definition:

using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning; instinctive

So we have "...because the interface is discoverable at a level almost below conscious thought" and "...feels to be true even without conscious reasoning." Now I'm no rocket scientist, but it sure seems like intuitive is, in fact, the right word to describe the iPhone's Safari browser interface.



My favorite comedy movies [#5 to #1]

As promised, here's part three of three--the final installment of my personal favorite comedies. Note that there's a big difference between my favorite comedies and the best comedies ever made. I would never pretend that my list represents the best of the best in the art of comedic cinema. Instead, these are the movies that have made me laugh the most consistently over the years. Yes, it's true, I have a sick and twisted mind. Anyway, on with the list...
[continue reading…]



My Apple event wishlist

Macworld logoBy now, you've probably read that Apple's holding a "Mac-related" presentation on Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific. You may have also read the predictions that we'll see a new iMac introduced at that meeting.

The prediction makes sense—the iMac is currently the "gray beard" of the Apple lineup, an aging-if-dependable workhorse that's made its way into many homes as the first Mac in the household. So predicting that Apple has chosen to upgrade this machine, and swath it in aluminum to match the mini, MacBook Pro, and Mac Pro, is about as risky as predicting that Paris Hilton will make tabloid headlines or that George Steinbrenner will rant about his Yankees' poor performance at some point during the season.

Read my Macworld blog entry, My Apple event wishlist, for the rest of the story...





My favorite comedy movies [#15 to #11]

My friend Kirk and I were chatting the other day, and we got to talking about our favorite comedy movies. Both of us struggled to come up with just one, given the wide variety of comedy out there, and one's taste for the various comedic styles (dark, slapstick, etc.) may change as the years go by. Then there's the matter of era—comedies have been in production for nearly 100 years, so there's a huge body of work. How can one compare a film from the 1920s or 1930s with something made in the last five years?

After our chat, I got to thinking about my favorite comedies, and I thought I'd put together a list of my 10 favorites. To make things a bit easier on myself, I picked the somewhat arbitrary year of 1980 as the starting point, even though there are lots of comedies that I would include from prior to that date—The Blues Brothers, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Blazing Saddles, anything by Charlie Chaplin, etc. But I didn't think I could do a credible job of choosing from movies in many different eras, so I used 1980 as the cutoff mainly because it was a nice round number.

As I started working on the list, I found that I couldn't trim it to just 10 without leaving off what I felt were some of my personal favorites, so I expanded it to 15 movies. Even at that, there are quite a few that fell just below the cut line—Airplane, Meet the Parents, LA Story, Austin Powers—that I still consider great comedies and are in my DVD collection. Still, the line had to be drawn somewhere.

So at the risk of losing the last few readers I still have (by revealing my poor taste in filmmaking), here are the 'bottom five' of my 15 favorite comedies, arranged from "just barely made the cut" (#15) to "absolute favorite" (#1). (I was going to run the list all at once, but the post was simply too long; look for parts two and three in the near future.)
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How not to gain a customer

Last weekend, when I first noticed our hornet problem, I called a couple of national pest control chains on Sunday. Both chains answered (or had an answering service) and promised to get back to me "early next week." So on Monday, I waited until about noon. When I hadn't heard from either place by then, I got busy searching and found Pioneer Pest Control, who came out Tuesday and took care of the problem--and still, neither national chain had called me back.

On Thursday, the first chain called back, and I told their representative that they'd missed their opportunity. Tonight, fully nine days after I first called, the other chain called back. However, whatever small measure of credit I would have given them for at least returning the call was quickly lost, as this is what I heard when I picked up the phone:

[Obviously recorded voice] "Thank you for calling Orkin Pest Control. We're returning your call concerning a pest problem. Please stand by and an operator will be with you shortly." [Hold music commences]

Yes, that's right. They waited nine days to call me back to put me on hold! Needless to say, I didn't wait around for a human being to grace me with their presence. Now, it may be that Orkin is a great pest control service, and had I called a local office, perhaps I would have received a quicker call back. But as it was, the local offices were closed on Sunday, so I used the national number. Apparently the connection between that number and the local offices is quite poor--perhaps they're still using the Pony Express?

If you want my business, you're going to have to respond a little quicker than nine days--and have a person, not a robot, make the return call!



Possible new rules for the 2008 Tour de France

The Tour has a drug problem. First it was Patrik Sinkewitz. Then Alexandre Vinokourov. And now, Christian Moreni. Not to mention all those who "retired" or were otherwise dealt with prior to the start of this year's Tour. At the start of this year's event, hopes were high that the doping scandals were behind us. Alas, that's turned out not to be the case. Given that it seems the doping is impossible to control, I have some proposed changes for next year's Tour--changes that will handle the doping issue, as well as make the race more exciting for fans everywhere.

Update: Holy cow, Rasmussen's gone too!

  1. No more drug tests: Clearly they're not working to dissuade anyone from cheating, so let's just open things up. Anything goes--whatever drug you think will help your performance, you're free to give it a shot. The Tour will save millions in expenses, and spare themselves any further embarrassment when yet another big name rider fails a drug test. The other upside is that the tour will go much quicker, as I expect the average pace of the drug-enhanced athletes will be notably quicker than that of previous tours. Lose the rest days, too, as there won't be any need.
  2. Allow physical contact during the race: Think of the best of wrestling, roller derby, NASCAR, and demolition derby combined into one action-packed multi-week event. "And there goes Smithson, over the edge of the Col d'Aubisque, courtesy of a great body check from Peltiere!" 'Yes, Todd, that really was a great check, and the 1,500' vertical drop will really slow Smithson's return to today's route!' Think of all the new fans this will bring to the sport.
  3. Umbrella girls: Hey, if it works for Moto GP, it can work for the Tour, too. After all, it can get toasty sitting there on the saddle, waiting for the race to start. Each day, anyone in the top 10 in the general classification will be protected from the sun (or the rain) by an umbrella girl.

OK, so the above is in jest. I do enjoy watching the Tour; it's simply an amazing display of endurance, strategy, and outright speed. However, if something isn't done about the doping and drug issues, the sport is in danger of losing what little reputation it has left. It's bad when you begin to doubt any result, not knowing whether you just saw a heroic performance or merely the results of chemistry at work (i.e. Landis and Vinokourov's "great" mountain stages in 2006 and 2007).

I don't have any good suggestions on just how to further clean up cycling, though--perhaps changing the current two-year ban into a lifetime ban? Bigger financial penalties? Disqualification of an entire team if anyone fails a drug test during a race? Whatever it is, it's clear that more changes are needed if the sport is to cleanse itself.



Hasta la vista, hornets!

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As you may know, we had a not-so-small hornet's nest in a tree in our backyard. On Sunday I called a couple of the national pest control chains, thinking they'd be best equipped to respond quickly. I left messages with both to call me, but as of Monday morning, none had done so. So I did a bit of searching, and found a local company, Pioneer Pest Management (based in Vancouver, Washington). I spoke to someone for about five minutes, and they called back an hour or so later and set up the removal for Tuesday. I never did hear back from one of the national chains, and the other actually called me back about 30 minutes ago. Too bad!

On Tuesday afternoon, Don from Pioneer arrived to deal with the hornet's nest. I cowered behind our patio door, opening it just enough to take some pictures of the process. I put them together in a small album that shows each step in the nest's removal--just click the first image and then use the slideshow controls to step through the rest. The captions on the larger image explain what's happening at each step.

He was here for about 40 minutes overall, and it cost $99--a bargain in my book when I saw everything he did to remove the nest. They also include a 30 day warranty, so if we have another nest crop up in that immediate area (meaning they somehow didn't get the queen), they'll come back and remove it for free. Sure, I probably could've done this myself...but there are some jobs I'm quite happy to leave to the experts!