Midnight Cheese

I used the NCSA Beginner’s Guide to HTML to make my first webpage ten years ago. It’s very easy to read and follow along with. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning HTML. It’s nice to know this wonderful guide is still around after all this time.

Wow.. just stumbled across this entry on Wikipedia for the Imagination Network. That really brings back the memories. INN was a friendly little online community which started in 1991, before AOL was huge and before the world even had any idea what the internet was. INN ran in DOS, dialing in at a smokin’ 2400 baud rate. What made INN so unique was the wonderful people that made up this community. Imagine a place where you could connect without spam, without risk of being bombarded by crazy internet people… Just nice friendly people you could chat and play games with, without consequence.

What happened to INN you ask? In 1996 as AOL began its surge toward the ungodly behemoth of the online cesspool it is today, AOL bought INN and SHUT IT DOWN. Bastards.

At 5:00am on Friday I left for Kingston to appear in court for a speeding ticket I got back in March. My name was called, went up to the judge and he asked, “Were you speeding?” I said I was. He asked, “Do you live in Nashville?” (Implying, “Did you drive all the way out here from Nashville just for this?”) I said I did. The Judge said, “DISMISSED.” So it often pays to show up to court for your speeding tickets. I had to pay the fine, but it means no driving all the way back out to Kingston for traffic school, and most importantly, no points on my license or insurance rates going up.

Ernie and I went to Rus San’s Saturday evening to get some sushi and check the place out. It was a nice lively place, but the service was horrid. Total, it took at least two hours to order, eat and pay. We were there a good 15 minutes before we even got our drinks, which was a good sign that things were only going to get worse. It took about an hour to finally get our food. Now, sushi isn’t the most filling of foods, so once our initial order was consumed Ernie decided to order some fried rice. The waitress said it would take about 15 minutes. An hour later the fried rice finally shows up. And this whole time the waitress never asks if we’d like anything else to drink. We finished our second round of beer and had gotten through most of our water before the fried rice even showed up.

While the food was good, if you want sushi without the 120 minute ordeal, head over to your nearest Publix and pick up a California Roll or two. Not only do they make em fresh, but the price is right as well.

Many months in the making, prototypemedia.com has gone live. Lots of Flash goodness in this one. Eventually I hope to post a how-to on getting the video controls to work the way I did using FlashMX 2004 Pro.

Quickly: After watching the keynote it looks like this transition will go insanely smooth. Universal Binary says it all. And in grand Apple style they make it as simple as clicking a checkbox for developers to make the switch to new hardware. This will be nothing like going from OS 9 to OS X. Rosetta is perhaps the biggest head-raiser of all. Where did this technology come from? Born from Apple alone? Transitive Corporation? It looks pretty fast from the keynote footage. This will create much speculation until Apple spills a little more info.

It was interesting to hear the Intel CEO talk about Intel chips getting cooler. Just this weekend I put together a P4 system for my brother, and that thing is HOT. The monster fan that accompanies the chip is terribly loud. It will be interesting to see how Apple and Intel address the heat issue.

The biggest downside to the switch to Intel will be the forthcoming pirated copies of OS X that will be running on every script kiddie’s Dell machine in the coming year. Apple will continue to only allow OS X to run on Apple machines(via OpenFirmware, some special ROM chip, etc.) but this will be cracked, and I predict very quickly. (Perhaps this was one reseaon behind the much-hyped Tiger Leak Lawsuits?)

There was a lot of speculation that Intel would be making a custom x86 chip for Apple alone, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.

The switch to Intel opens the door VERY WIDE for a WINE type app to be integrated into OS X that lets Windows users run most of their favorite Windows programs on their brand-new Macintosh.

Quick notes:
The guys from Wolfram Research were superb in their presentation.
What the hell was M$ thinking with their MacBU spokesperson? She looked like Gates in drag, and sounded even worse.
While many expected a switch to Intel, I don’t think anyone expected a potential transition to be so smooth and so soon.
Jobs eluded to upcoming PPC products multiple times. What will they be?

Stopped by the new Apple Store in Green Hills Mall on Saturday with Ernie. There were lots and lots of people in there. Completely packed. The store is smaller than the one in Atlanta, but it’s still packed full of good stuff. They have a Sony HDV camera on display that you can try out with one of the G5s and the gigantic 30″ display.

On the way out of the store I walked by this girl and thought, “Oh she’s pretty.” Immediately Ernie turned to me and said, “Hey, that was LeAnn Rimes.” To which I said, “Who?” I’ve heard her name before, but I thought she was some old-time country singer person. (I know nothing about country music, and generally hate it. Yes, hate. Most of it anyway. Definitely anything recent and pop.) Ernie explained to me all that she’s done… winning a Grammy at an insanely young age, some TV show, etc.

So, LeAnn Rimes is an apparent Apple fan, if that was indeed her.