• Time Shifting on the Mac
  [ "And now (to finally get to the point of this post!), your Mac makes it easy to time shift all sorts of content, including radio, streaming audio and a surprise you won't believe!" ]

• Single Input -- Multiple Outputs
  [ "In particular, over the next few years, the number of `situationally blind', will blossom. People driving will want to listen to their email or listen to your blog." ]
• webjay
  [ "Webjay is a tool that helps you listen to and publish web playlists." ]
• How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary
  [ "In this essay I attempt to summarize as concisely as possible those things that I wish someone had explained to me when I was twenty-one." ]
• Panther Secrets Declassified
  [ "Sure, you know about Expose and Fast User Switching -- but look deeper, and you'll find that there's much more to this cat than meets the eye." ]
• If you're eating enough fruits and vegetables, you must not give a damn about protein
  [ "Of all the kinds of conversation that recur on the web as predictably as hemlines rise and fall, the weirdest and least productive is the establishment of an artificial opposition between areas of expertise." ]

i'm sure this will all get lost in the mix, but i find the latest evidence of 'intelligence failures' to be a compelling case study as to what happens when you go looking for what you believe to be true:

""This is the one that's damning," he said. "This is the one that has the potential for causing the largest havoc in the sense that it really looks like a lack of due diligence and care in going forward."

Kay said in an interview that the defector "was absolutely at the heart of a matter of intense interest to us." But Curveball turned out to be an "out-and-out fabricator," he added."

not really revealed in the previous post on "our first sonogram" is the fact that we were both a little concerned about the biological effects of unnecessary sonograms. kris was a litte more jittery than myself, but the the american institute of ultrasound in medicine isn't making the situation any better:

"With regard to ultrasound scanning during pregnancy, the FDA states that "ultrasonic fetal scanning is generally considered safe and is properly used when medical information on a pregnancy is needed. But ultrasound energy delivered to the fetus cannot be regarded as completely innocuous. Laboratory studies have shown that diagnostic levels of ultrasound can produce physical effects in tissue, such as mechanical vibrations and rise in temperature. Although there is no evidence that these physical effects can harm the fetus, public health experts, clinicians, and industry agree that casual exposure to ultrasound, especially during pregnancy, should be avoided. Viewed in this light, exposing the fetus to ultrasound with no anticipation of medical benefit is not justified."

as rui carmo puts it, quicksilver is in the midst of being blogged to death , but despite that i'll admit to not really "getting it" until i read rui's post on "the humane mac" , although i'm as wary as the next person of over exuberant claims as to a tool's ability to change my organizational life.

my own behavior is as hard to change as anyone's. despite the hype, i've never fully taken to expose' , and it's taken me over a year to make voodopad an indespensible part of my personal private wiki strategy . but who knows - maybe quicksilver will catapult me into new and unforeseen levels of organizational efficiency.

after meeting the midwife last week, we went to the "real doctor" today so kris could get a normal prenatal blood panel. much to our surprise, the "ob" asked if we wanted to do a quick sonogram to double check how far along things were.

it's a little hard to make out the details but you can see a the back of the head on the lower left and the little baby butt on the upper right. if you squint you supposedly can see little proto-feet above the 'x' on that's marking the butt. the "ob" measured the head-to-butt length and then the machine made a quick-and-dirty calculation of the baby's age which you can see at the bottom of the picture - 10 weeks 5 days, give or take a few days. during the procedure we could see heart beating and the baby was moving around quite a bit, which the doctor said was a sign that the baby was quite happy.

kris isn't showing any outward signs of being pregnant, so it was fun and awe-inspiring to get our first concrete glimpse at the little being growing in her body.

i, like many people i know, have become so used to waking to bob edwards' voice on npr's morning edition that the news that he's leaving the program , or rather he's being booted against his will , is nothing short of shocking.

one can only imagine what sort of replacement that the suits at npr have in the hopper. i fear it'll be a contrived attempt to appeal to a younger audience with a perceived shorter attention span, if the mostly-asbysmal program, day to day is any indication.

• Subversion 1.0 packages for OS X
• Ruby on Rails to Basecamp
• How Secure Is OS X?
  [ "If you tried to attack a system 7 Mac in its heyday, it would probably have crashed before you got into it." ]
• Dispelling the myths of Gentoo Linux, an honest review
  [ "Having created my grub.conf and fstab, I held my breath and rebooted the box" ]
• Jon Udell: Firefox fills the IE void
  [ "...I've abandoned Safari on OS X for the same reason I've abandoned IE on Windows. Firefox does more..." ]

it's official. if you're an existing homeowner who intends someday to sell your home there are a number of evil things that you can inflict on the next homeowners/renovators. firstly, you're evil if you every wallpaper anything. bonus evil points are awarded if you think that if a little wallpaper glue is good, then a lot must be better. you'll get the ultimate evil award if you dare to paint over wallpaper, especially wallpaper that was laid with obnoxious amounts of glue. secondly, you're evil if you install vinyl tile. be honest, nobody really likes vinyl tile, expecially not the next homeowner who has to remove the tile with the design you thought was pretty cool 15 years ago.

three guesses as to what i've been doing lately. some day i'm hoping that kris and i will get over this perversion we have towards buying 80-plus year-old houses. it's a sickness.

knuckle-rapping nuns the world over would be shocked - shocked - to learn that certain individuals are claiming that the old "double-spacing after periods" rule is an anachronism. i don't care what they say. it's physically impossible for me to not put an extra space after a period. i can't consistently capitalize to save my life, but i must put an extra space. go figure.

things are moving right along. according to our best estimates we're in the 8-9th week of pregnancy and kris is doing great. she's had a little nausea here and there and coming up with an appetizing dinner plan can be a little challenging at times, but all things considered everything is going smoothly.

the embryo is about the size of a large olive and this week it'll grow quickly from a half-an-inch to an inch long. all manner of complex biological processess are occuring for the first time - the kidneys will produce urine, the stomach will produce gastric juices, the heart will start visibly beating and nerve impulses will start contracting muscles to produce movements!

we had our first official baby healthcare visit and it might come as a surprise to some that it was with a midwife . we were lucky enough to witness an in-home birth and we're fairly certain that it's the right option for us. i don't have anything against modern medical technology. in fact, i was born three months premature and would have died way back then had i not lived in area that had the best and brightest working to do everything they could, so this is not a decision that we take lightly. that said, if kris progresses through the pregnancy and there isn't any indication that she's out of the norm, i think we'll go ahead and have the baby in the confort of our home. the midwife we chose is a pro and has delivered over 1,200 babies in the last 23 years so if everything looks normal, i have every confidence that everything will be fine. of course, we are educating ourselves and will meet with "backup" docs next week just to make sure that we've covered our bases.

i'm pretty sure i'm the last one to know about 20q [ and, at least according to technorati , i am more than fashionably late to the party ] but i'm still going to post it because it's so freakishly good at guessing.

• Mac OS X 10.3.3 feedback via the tau of mac
• perl/php translations via laughingmeme
• The 10 Commandments of Coffee Making via 0xDECAFBAD

over the years, i've done more than fair share of what i'd call "missionary" work for groove - that great and useful collaboration client that nobody has used. in fact groove was my first real world introduction into just how difficult it can be to get groups of people to change their behaviors. i tried all sorts of tactics to try to get dozens of people to get the religion and exactly one person ever went so far as to download the software and use it on a regular basis. over time we stopped using it for collaborating on small projects and we now mostly use it when we want secure instant messaging that can't be viewed by The Man [ you know what i mean ].

so it's with this background context that i look longingly at their v3 beta program . it's getting great reviews and it sounds like they've made it even easier to work it into your coworkers workflows. as always, ray waxes eloquently on decentralization and dancing with redmond.

too bad there's not a native os x version. i haven't tried to run groove in virtual pc , but i can't imagine that it's pretty. anyway, maybe i'll take a peak at the new beta and put on my missionary cloak.

• DIY LCD photo frame: More software options and details on the install.
• The "Pictureframe PC"
• Making your own digital picture frame from an old laptop
• homemade digital picture frame
• Digital Photo Frame
• Duo Digital Frame

after three hours in the international terminal, I decide that I've has all the fun that can be had by trying to simulaneously brush up on languages that I never really knew in the first place while playing the game where you make up stories about passerbyers. so I decide to see what sort of excitement can be had over in the terminal 4. the answer? none. apparently they don't want you doing anything in that terminal because you have to go straight through security and you're only options post-security are a friday's and a burger king. upon considering all the bad things that could happen to my psyche if I sat in either of those establishments for four hours, I decide that it would be more fun to sit outside between the two terminals and watch planes take off while wondering what the recommended daily allowance of jet fumes might be.

sigh. here's a travel tip. let's say you want to get from los angeles, california to grand rapids, michigan after 4 p.m. pst. let's say you race to the airport to catch the 5:15 flight to chicago in hopes that you can get any ol' puddle jumper to gr. before you do this and more importantly before you drop off your car, remember to do the timezone math. otherwise, the nice lady behind the counter will remind you that if you took the 5:15 p.m. pst flight out, you'd actually arrive in chicago really late - much later than the last flight to gr. she'd then ask, in the nicest way possible, if you'd like to stay at lax for the next 7 hours and catch the redeye out, or would you rather fly to chicago and try to find a place to sleep. the international terminal is close and has lots of shops she'll say.

so, I'm people-watching in the international terminal wondering if I can round out the day by falling asleep and missing my flight.

I wonder how much beer you can drink before you get flagged by security for extra special attention?

check. check. Posting from the sidekick. On my way to pasadena. Over. Under.

• The Accidental Entrepreneur
  [ "What we didn't appreciate is that it's awfully hard to push a Nobel Prize winner aside. " ]
• Kismet on the Linksys WRT54G
• AdSense(TM) Tracker
  [ "This AdSense(TM) tracker will keep detailed logs of all impressions and clicks on AdSense(TM) ads on any website without altering the ad code itself." ]
• 2003 summer hottest in 500 years
  [ "Their information included readings from tree rings and soil cores from the year 1500." ]

• LaTeX: It's Not Just for Academia, Part 1
• LaTeX: It's Not Just for Academia, Part 2
• LaTeX for the Modern Age
• LaTeX for Dummies
• LaTeX add-ons
• TeX on Mac OS X

sadly, but not surprisingly, spalding gray's body was found today .

i met spalding in olympia washington many years ago at a signing for monser in a box . despite feeling a bit wierd about it since i wasn't typically an autographhound, i wanted nothing more than to have him sign my "first edition" swimming to cambodia , because it had changed my life when i saw it over and over and over again on pbs in the late 80s.

spalding arrived late, smelling of liquor and obviously drunk. even at the time, i detected a bit of sadness as he wrote, "To Eric, Please believe of [sic] all "Perfect Moments"! - Spalding Gray".

the baby isn't a formless clump of cells anymore - a head and tail can be clearly seen as well as the first form that's recognizeable as a hand [ o.k. maybe it looks more like a paddle ]! sizewise, the baby is 5-10 millimeters or about the size of a small olive and it's heart has been beating for a couple of weeks.

over the next few weeks, the baby will move rapidly stop looking like any run-o-the-mill developing vertebrate and start looking quite human.

in a fitting stick-in-the-eye to all the back-seat pricing strategists who howled that the ipod mini was overpriced, it appears that even apple misjudged the demand :

""Consumers have a different view on pricing," says Mike McGuire, an analyst with tech research firm GartnerG2 and a mini owner himself. "When you actually see it and feel it, it's amazing. It's the size of a cool little mobile phone and really compelling.""

proof positive that the ways of homo economicus are not easily divined.

• Statement on Marriage and the Family from the American Anthropological Association - via dangerousmeta
  [ "...anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies." ]
• Remove hidden OS X core dump - via hublog
  [ "There's a hidden folder in OS X called /cores."]
• Eolas patent rejected
  [ "The patent office decided to reconsider the patent after members of the technology industry complained..." ]
• More iChat AV 2 Tips

i forgot to mention that after my initial somewhat positive experience with my danger hiptop/sidekick , things have gone decidely downhill. on a routine trip to chicago, the device stopped registering with the network. i went to my local t-mobile store and said stated that i had had the thing for about a month and that now it wasn't working and that i wasn't very happy with the situation. and you know what the store rep said?

"yeah, not that many people are."

dumbfounded, i asked her to explain and she said that she really didn't have to do any diagnostic testing on it. she's seen enough of them come back with the same behavior to know that the only solution would be to return it and get a new one. then, within full earshot of her coworkers and other customers she said matter-of-factly,

"but really, if you want to make your life easier and reduce the number of headaches you'll have in the coming months, i'd recommend that you just get a different phone."

as the shock began to set in, it was also explained that since i had already exceeded my 14 day trial period that all she could do was offer me a discount on the new phone. realizing that there was a small chance that she could have just been engaging in an elaborate ruse to try to get me to purchase a new phone, i decided to take a raincheck on her offer and go home to call corporate to try to find out what was going on.

after what was a surprisingly short trip through several echelons of t-mobile support, i found myself talking with a very nice tech with a very thick indian accent. we had a little trouble communicating but eventually she determined that i did indeed need a new device which was somehow conclusively indicated by an ominous "sim card busy" message. i decided to take a chance and relay the comment that the local t-mobile rep had said about the problem only being temporarily fixed by getting a new device. after a very pregnant pause she calmly said,

"yes, it is true. there is a known problem and danger is working on a firmware update that should be released soon."

adding insult to injury, she went further and explained that they are backorderd due to the high number of returns and exchanges and that i probably wouldn't see a new device for at least 16 days even though i was being put into some sort of expediated exchange queue. and as if to pile it on all at once she explained that they did have a special full-refund policy for cases such as mine, but that it expired 30 days after purchase. of course, it had been exactly 33 days since i made my ill-fated purchase so all she could do was offer me an exchange.

flabbergasted by the ridiculousness of it all, i found myself agreeing to have a new device shipped, knowing full well that i'd probably regret it. it's 16 days later and the new device still hasn't arrived. sigh

clearly there has been some sort of mistake.

for some reason jim coudal has decided that it would be a good idea to let me guest edit the coudal partners "fresh signals" blog, despite his own admission that he frequently doesn't understand a word that comes out of my mouth. so, feel free to meander over to the otherwise excellent fresh signals during the month of march and watch as i find new and innovative ways to confuse his entire readership.

• ross mayfield on budding entrepreneurship
  [ "If you were about to graduate from college and had an interest in becoming an entrepreneur, what would you do?" ]
• jim moore on the pew blogging study
• Dean's MeetUps - Were They Kid's Stuff?
  [ "...the largest group of Dean MeetUp attendees is in the 30-39 year old bracket." ]
• IBM's WebFountain of Knowledge
  [ "In total, the system will add 1,152 processors, allowing it to process as many as 8 billion Web pages within 24 hours." ]
• Shtoom
  [ "Shtoom is a pure python implementation of a Voice over IP toolkit, including a software phone." ]