Monthly Archives: February 2005

I Want to Say ‘He’ Looks Like You

Posted on February 28, 2005 by Sandy

…is the quote heard upon viewing my one musical TV appearance. ‘He’ of course, being me, but about 15 years previous or so. I was blathering about a completely different set of geeky things, wearing completely different clothes, and I … Continue reading →

Posted in Personal Stuff | 4 Comments

Jef Raskin, RIP

Posted on February 27, 2005 by Sandy

Jason calls attention to the news that Jef Raskin died last night. I have little to add, but as a Mac user, I wanted to point to the collection of stories about the founding of the Macintosh that have Jef … Continue reading →

Posted in Mac Stuff | Leave a comment

Switching to Windows — The Movie

Posted on February 26, 2005 by Sandy

Since I bang on and on about the Mac here (well, I mention it occasionally at any rate), I thought I’d give equal time to those who disagree. So, forthwith, here is a switcher story about moving from Mac to … Continue reading →

Posted in Mac Stuff | 2 Comments

Uncompress DiskDoubler Files on OS X

Posted on February 22, 2005 by Sandy

If you are an old Mac hand, as, young and vital as I am, I seem to be, you may have odd old files lying around, possibly on floppies. Assuming you can get them onto your Mac OS X system … Continue reading →

Posted in Mac Stuff | 23 Comments

Simplication in Action

Posted on February 21, 2005 by Sandy

Simplicate (SIM-pli-kat), v. To make more complex by attempting to simplify. So can you read this mess? ||{B,t,w=4,s=padding:10px} !SyntaxCMS Engineering ||{B,t,w=4,s=padding:10px}Sandy Smith||{s=padding:10px}Establish SyntaxCMS RoadMap||{c,s=padding:10px}W,C||{c,s=padding:10px}O||{c,s=padding:10px}O||{c,s=padding:10px}O|| ||{s=padding:10px}Aggregate and centralize features wish list, and procedures for all staff to contribute||{c,s=padding:10px}W,C||{c,s=padding:10px}O||{c,s=padding:10px}O||{c,s=padding:10px}O|| ||{s=padding:10px}User Documentation||{c,s=padding:10px}B||{c,s=padding:10px}C v1||{c,s=padding:10px}C … Continue reading →

Posted in Web Stuff | 1 Comment

Good News: Royal Mail Edition

Posted on February 20, 2005 by Sandy

Looks like almost two centuries after the US government muscled out private competition in letter carrier services, such as Lysander Spooner’s American Letter Mail Company, the UK may offer up competition to Royal Mail a full year earlier than previously … Continue reading →

Posted in Political Stuff | Leave a comment

The Pain of Types in PHP

Posted on February 19, 2005 by Sandy

The only way to check an uncast scalar variable in PHP for being truly non-empty (i.e., not being null or an empty string (”), but allowing any valid boolean, integer, float, string, or decimal, is: ” !== $x && null … Continue reading →

Posted in Web Stuff | Leave a comment

10,000

Posted on February 16, 2005 by Sandy

10,000 work units for SETI@Home.

Posted in Personal Stuff | 1 Comment

Happy Birthday, Bird

Posted on February 15, 2005 by Sandy

And in that conversation with the aforementioned Buffi, I realized that today is my cockatiel Squeak’s arbitrarily-decided birthday. I actually got him some time in April, but it had been between 11 and 13 weeks since hatching, so I picked … Continue reading →

Posted in Personal Stuff | Leave a comment

Reconnecting

Posted on February 15, 2005 by Sandy

For various and sundry reasons, I had lost touch to varying degrees with some of my friends–some for only a year or so and others for nearly a decade. Fortunately I’ve managed to locate a couple of the better ones, … Continue reading →

Posted in Personal Stuff | 2 Comments