Weird things

So in the time between my last post and this my attitude towards where I go to college has changed a bit. That is to say, I'm now constantly worrying about where I'm getting in. Every college I applied to I did so because I want to go there, but what if I just don't get accepted? I know at least one place is a sure thing, but still.

A couple weeks ago I had to update GmailThis! to reflect some changes that Google made. While I was at it, I had some time to waste and added a PayPal donation button. To my immense surprise, somebody actually gave me $5. Man, if I had added that three years ago, maybe I'd actually have some cash. So I just wanted to thank that awesome dude who did that.

The weekend wasn't amazing. Friday didn't turn out really like I would have liked. Rachel and I went over to Gabo's to model for her. We went out afterwards to see some live music that wasn't terrible but wasn't stunning either. It could have been a decent enough time but the timing of the whole thing was terrible. Personal stuff that it's not my business to go into. I definitely feel responsible since I sort of planned it.

The painting came out pretty nicely though.

Saturday was okay. I spent some of the day in a Starbucks that I'm starting to have weird feelings about. I always run into people there. I didn't mind this time because it was a pretty cool person to bump into. Still, given that I never seem to bump into people I know, I feel like that place is some sort of odd nexus in my life.

Sunday was also not so great. Rachel got sick and felt pretty terrible all day. I was happy that I got to be there for her and fetch water and so on, but I hope she gets better soon. Her mom's having a party Wednesday that we're going to be waiter-ing at, and I certainly don't want to be carrying around those plates of shrimp-on-a-stick by myself.

I got my voter registration mailed recently. I wanted to register Independent, since that would be honest, but I ended up registering Democrat so I can vote in the primary. I had been previously supporting Edwards because I thought he was just adorable, but with him dropped out I guess I'm an Obama man. Truthfully I get more nauseated by Hillary every time I see her. She unsettles me on an Uncanny Valley sort of level.

Valentine's Day is coming up and I'm feeling a bit hesitant about it. I think right now my official policy is going to be "I don't need a greeting card holiday to mandate when I express affection to my significant other" but I've got a few tentative things planned that would make that seem marginally hypocritical. Shh, don't tell.

Some Macworld '08 Thoughts

Everyone's doing it, so I figured I'd jump on the bandwagon.

First some background. My primary computer for the past six and a half years has been my 500MHz G3 iBook with a 12" screen and something like 768 MB of RAM. Decent enough specs when it came out, but I guess it became officially obsolete when Leopard came out and dropped support for G3 processors.

I have done pretty much everything one can do with that computer - it's run every version of Mac OS X up to 10.4.11. I've done video/photo/audio recording, editing, producing, playing. It's been to several different countries. Its display died, its battery went to 3% efficiency, its motherboard died, and for a few months one summer the spacebar didn't work.

It has a lot of sentimental value, in other words. However, a bit after Christmas I gained possession of a black MacBook. 2GHz Intel Core Duo, 1GB of RAM (not maxed out). And a 13.3" screen. It's too big.

I've had a fair amount of time to try to get used to it, and I've adjusted to the keyboard, I quickly learned to enjoy the two-fingered scrolling, and I'm a big fan of the built-in iSight. But I can't get used to the overall size of the computer. It just seems unwieldy.

There was one thing, and one thing only, that I wanted out of this year's Macworld. I figured, like most everyone else, that they'd release an ultraportable. Awesome, I thought to myself. They'll finally restore the 12" notebook that's been missing from their line-up.

So what do they do? They release the MacBook Air (or AirBook as I'll inevitably refer to it). Thinnest notebook ever. No optical drive. 1 USB port, line-out, and micro-DVI. Okay, I can deal with that. And then the slap in the face.

A damned 13.3" wide-screen display. Exact same as in the MacBooks.

I get that Apple is really pushing ubiquitous media distribution. I understand that they're trying to print money off of movie sales and rentals. But, damn it, what is this?

There are other reasons I'm not a fan of the AirBook (see?). I rip, and burn, a lot of CDs for one thing. Okay, fine, with the $99 USB SuperDrive I could cope with that. I could also deal with the reduced speed and relatively small hard drive capacity. But if it takes up the same amount of space, in most terms, as a MacBook - Why? What would the point even be?

I get it. It's thin. It fits in an envelope. It's also very light. And has some other fancy things in the multi-touch trackpad. No, that's great, I guess. Maybe I just need to see it in person. But I'm not going to notice a difference when I have to use the same size laptop case.

If you find yourself in a situation where, for some reason, thinness is absolutely vital, then okay. Get an AirBook. I just don't see why you would when for less money you can get a MacBook and actually get a faster computer with more capabilities. In my head, thin just doesn't necessarily equate with smaller or more portable.

I'm not addressing things like the optional solid-state hard drive, because I'm not really informed enough to comment. I guess it's supposed to be faster? I haven't really felt hindered by regular hard drives, but maybe some people do.

That was a totally unnecessarily long rant on the AirBook, what with everyone on the internet doing it. Now I'll briefly comment on everything else.

iPhone firmware 1.1.3: I guess it's a good thing. I loaded it onto my mom's iPhone and it's pretty cool. I don't plan on getting an iPhone until it has 3G and can do all of the things that my Sony Ericsson W810i can do.

New iPod Touch software: Irrelevant to me, but I definitely don't approve of the $20 upgrade price. If I had one, I'd immediately shell it out, but I wouldn't like it. The stuff that got added are good additions.

iTunes Movie Rentals: This is also a good thing. I wish you had more than 24 hours to finish a movie after starting it, and maybe that'll change eventually. If I manage to pick up a mini-DVI to video adapter for my MacBook, this could be huge for me. I'm not much into buying movies. When I do buy one, it's a pretty big compliment to the movie. My Netflix account also got cancelled today, so this comes at a pretty convenient time.

AppleTV v.2: I didn't care when the first AppleTV came out, I don't particularly care now. I think the changes they made are good ones, but I still can't see any scenario in which I could be persuaded to get one. If the price were much lower and it was subsidized by commercials or something, that might help, but I probably still wouldn't since there's not really anything I could do with it that I can't with my laptop. High-def means nothing to you when your TV is a 13" TV/VCR combo that you bought because you could plug it into the cigarette lighter in a car.

Time Capsule and the new Airport Extreme: Pretty cool. I'd never buy one unless my current Airport Express mysteriously and spontaneously combusted, but I like the idea. What would be nice is if they released new firmware for the Express so I could just plug a hard drive into that USB port and use Time Capsule that way.

Annnd I guess that's it. I felt pretty let down by the announcements this year, just because I didn't feel like any of them really meant anything to me. A new iLife or something would be exciting because that's something I'd actually end up using. Oh well, there's still the WWDC to look forward to.

A pox upon me

The past week has not been very eventful. Last Tuesday (not yesterday) I woke up itchy, with what appeared to be bug-bites littered around my body. I looked at myself and thought, wow, I know the weather turned warmer recently but I didn't think bugs would have hatched that quickly. I didn't think much of it and just tried to avoid scratching. The next day at school, I overheard a kid mention how he'd been absent for chickenpox. And I thought, oh, damn.

Sure enough, I had contracted the 'pox. I had supposedly been immunized against it when I was younger, but it's evidently not a 100% thing. I was fortunate in that I got it very mildly. Benedryl helped a whole lot with the itchiness, Tylenol helped with the feverishness and headaches, so I really just had to deal with feeling really tired and generally kind of gross. Today will be the first time I've left the property in a week. Luckily it's spring break so I haven't missed much school.

I passed the majority of the time watching movies, playing video games (really just Soul Calibur III), and reading. So here's a few movie micro-reviews.

• Lethal Weapons 1 & 2 - Mediocre. Maybe I would have liked them better if I had watched less Law & Order as a lad and wasn't taking a law class in school. So little respect for protocol or due process, to such an unbelievable extent.
• Total Recall - The best, and only, movie I've watched with a main character named Doug. That made it kind of weird for me when I was watching it. I enjoyed it though, really decent sfx given when it came out.
• Office Space - A classic. The third time I've seen it, and it's just as good.
• Andy Barker, P.I. - Not actually a movie, but a new TV show. It's good though. I like Andy Richter and Tony Hale, the actors are good, and the writing is too.

I have also listened enough to the new Modest Mouse album, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, to pass judgment upon it. I don't like it as much as their last two albums, but it's still pretty good, and I think it's worth picking up if you like them. I don't find the melodies in it as compelling, and the vocal style is more often of the kind that I disliked in their older stuff, but that's really a taste thing. Of any song on it, I'd recommend "Missed the Boat" to listen to.

On Monday Rachel came by and dropped off some headphones I had left by accident at her house last time I was over. We walked around a bit before she had to go. Then yesterday she came over again for a little bit. We would have gone out, but there were circumstances preventing me (I wasn't feeling very good and it was part of my punishment from last week). It was a nice day so we sat outside on my balcony and talked. It was last week or the week before but she asked me to escort her to her prom this year and I agreed. So I've got that to look forward to.

Monday night my mom, sister, and I attempted to have a Passover Seder. It wasn't flawless, but we tried. We got the food more or less right, we did what of the readings we could, and although the whole thing was pretty jerry-rigged, it was a nice night. If any of us had taken it more seriously, there would have been some serious disappointment and/or offense taken. But we didn't, so it was good.

I've also spent a lot of time working on my iBook, which I finally had fixed and got back after it broke in whatever, December. I backed up the hard drive, properly this time, wiped it, and tried to reinstall Mac OS 10.4. Unfortunately, at some point my install DVD got scratched up and so I kept getting errors during install. I bought a disk repair kit, and used it repeatedly, but it didn't help. I eventually managed to get it to work by only choosing to install the absolute basics. I'm still working on getting all of my applications and settings and such on it. It's running really nicely, especially given it's going on six years old.

I've also been working on going through and adding labels to some posts. Given the 200+ posts on this blog, I can't imagine I'll finish that task for quite some time. I'm just waiting until I find myself with a hunk of time, nothing better to do, and I'm in a nice, OCD mood.

GmailThis!

What is GmailThis! ?

GmailThis! is an easy way to make a Gmail email without visiting mail.google.com. Once you add the GmailThis! link to your browser's toolbar, emailing will be a snap. Or rather, a click. Clicking GmailThis! creates a mini-interface to Gmail prepopulated with a link to the web page you are visiting, as well as any text you have highlighted on that page. Add additional text if you wish and then email or save as draft from within GmailThis!

Big, Important News! Recent changes in Gmail have broken GmailThis! in Safari and Firefox (and possibly more, those are all I've tested in). I updated the script, delete the old one and use this new link the same old way!

GmailThis! <-- drag this link to your browser's Links bar, or right-click (ctrl-click on a Mac) and add it as a bookmark that way

The old, somewhat broken version: GmailThis! (Just keep using this if you haven't had any problems with it)

And if you find GmailThis! useful, please donate (uses PayPal)

How to use GmailThis! from dougward on Vimeo.

I created the GmailThis! bookmarklet with heavy, heavy inspiration from the BlogThis! bookmarklet.

Known issues:

• If you aren't already logged into Gmail, the log-in screen is displayed. You must log in and then re-launch GmailThis!.
• May not work properly in Microsoft Internet Explorer. (Thanks, a bunch of people.)
• In Opera, you must right-click and save as bookmark; drag 'n' drop won't work. (Thanks, Wendy.)
• Only Western encoding is supported. (Thanks, Wendy.)
• GmailThis! has a 1000 character limit for selected text. (Thanks, Roy.)

Edit: Thank you for your comments. However, if you're reporting a bug, I do need some more info so that I can be more helpful. Please post relevent info, such as:

1. The browser you're using;
2. The operating systen you're using;
3. Whether or not you have a pop-up blocker in use.

Thank you for using (or trying to use) GmailThis!

Edit Two: If you'd like to link to GmailThis! on your website, copy and paste this code:

<a href="http://contrapants.org/blog/2005/07/gmailthis.html" title="GmailThis!: a JavaScript bookmarklet tool for Gmail"><img src="http://photos23.flickr.com/29699537_df65f68a13_o.png" alt="GmailThis!" /></a>

Derivative works:

• Gianni Amato created YahooThis! for users of Yahoo! Mail.
• Tantrum created a version that supports IE and Chinese.
• Ken made a a version to open a blank compose window.
• Fake made a version designed for bookmarking.
• zZ made a a version meant to fix an encoding problem.
• benvalleck made Swiftlet, a bookmarklet generator

GmailThis! is not endorsed by or in any way affiliated with Google, Inc.