Axodys

[The MacBook Pros are shipping](http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1529) according to [AppleInsider]. More importantly Apple did a free processor bump as well and the base model will come with a 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo instead of the original 1.67 GHz announced. 2GHz and 2.16GHz models are also available. I don’t know if this is good marketing strategy on Apple’s part or just Intel manufacturing power at work, but I like the end result and I’m really looking forward to my new laptop. I wonder how long manufacturing and delivery will take for those of us who ordered a month or so after they were announced?

[AppleInsider]:http://appleinsider.com

I needed to fax some documents recently, so I began looking into various [web based fax alternatives](http://www.savetz.com/fax/). There are actually quite a few web based fax sites out there and most of them are fairly inexpensive. They’re especially valuable if you want to be able to receive faxes and don’t have a dedicated line or fax machine. That was definitely overkill for my situation though so I kept looking around until I had a sudden lightbulb moment.

The built in modem in Apple laptops (which I had never used because I use WiFI or Ethernet 100% or the time) supports printing documents as faxes. In MacOS X Tiger (and possibly earlier versions) it’s also fully integrated with the Address Book application and the Printer Setup Utility in a very elegant fashion. I plugged our Canon usb scanner into the iBook I’m using right now and suddenly faxing signed documents became a very simple task.

At this point faxing still has the advantage of being (somewhat) more secure than email since it goes through the phone system rather than the internet, but it seems fairly archaic by today’s standards and really isn’t the most efficient way to send documents back and forth. It’s really too bad that we haven’t figured out how to make public/private key email encryption and communication simple and ubiquitous yet. The technology has been around for a long time, but it’s still not mainstream and I kind of doubt it ever will be.

I’m a big fan of [Booq][] laptop sleeves. I’ve used a 12″ laptop sleeve for my PowerBook the last couple years and it has served me very well. I definitely prefer using a larger more flexible messenger style bag in conjunction with a sleeve for my computer, but [Booq][] offers a wide variety of very nice laptop bags as well. Most importantly for me, they just realized a really nice [sleeve for the MacBook Pro](http://www.booqbags.com/Detail.bok?no=542) that I’ve got my eye on now. It sounds like the new sleeve won’t be out until April or late March, but I’m going to see if I can get one ordered before then.

[Booq]:http://www.booqbags.com/

Last week I had the misfortune of losing my trusty PowerBook’s hard drive to s.m.a.r.t. error oblivion. I’ve tried a couple different recovery applications, but haven’t succeeded in salvaging anything yet. I have some backups, but I definitely lost more information than I would prefer.

The good news is that the failure of my PowerBook has provided the impetus for me to get one of Apple’s new [MacBook Pros](http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/). I ran the request by my supervisor and she agreed to let me go ahead with the purchase. In the meantime I’m getting by with a 14″ iBook and it should be more than sufficient to carry me through the next several weeks until the new machine arrives. I’m already really appreciating its larger screen and faster G4 processor.

I stumbled across an open source book cataloging application for MacOS X called [Books][] and it seems really cool for being in beta stage. Lots of built in importing and exporting options, data gathering using [Amazon][] and and ISBN and a nice clean interface. My only real complaint is that it let me quit the application without saving my database first. Luckily I had only entered two books so it wasn’t a big deal.

I definitely want to go through my book library when I get home and start entering some more titles.

[Books]:http://books.aetherial.net/
[Amazon]:http://amazon.com

Hats off to the Steelers. They made the plays they needed to and the Seahawks couldn’t quite ever get over the hump. Lots of little things drove me crazy throughout the second half. Stevens scored the only touchdown, but pretty much dropped every other pass thrown his way. The defense uncharacteristically gave up that 75 yard touchdown right out of the gate. Hasselbeck throws the interception on the drive that would have put the Hawks ahead. The defense getting tricked by Pittsburgh’s trademark gadget plays. A great season, but a disappointing finish.

The Seahawks came out looking sharp on both sides of the ball, but overall it ended up being a pretty disappointing half. The officiating was definitely not Superbowl caliber from the Seahawk’s perspective. The offensive pass interference call that negated a touchdown was pretty weak and the Roethlisberger touchdown was so close on the replay that I doubt the line judge clearly saw the ball cross the plane himself. The Seahawks certainly created their own share of problems as well though, the play calling/clock management in the last 45 seconds was atrocious. It’s still right there for them if they can get the kinks worked out. Here’s hoping they do.

Ms. Smith’s class in Pittsburgh had a “Steeler’s Day” last week where the whole class came wearing Steelers gear. All the kids came in their favorite black and gold jerseys and sweatshirts. All except Jimmy, who sported a Seahawks jersey.

Mrs. Smith asked Jimmy, “Why are you wearing a Seahawks jersey on Steeler’s Day?”

Jimmy replied “Well, I’m a Seattle Seahawks fan. My mother is a Seahawks fan and my father is a Seahawks fan. And so am I.”

Mrs. Smith said, “Jimmy, if your mother was an idiot, and your father was an idiot, what would that make you?”

Jimmy replied, “A Steelers fan.”

Since I wasn’t working on my PowerBook for most of the day today and was up for a little browser experimentation I decided to download [Camino][]. It’s been a few years since I last used it regularly, but I had heard good things recently. After a few hours browsing my initial impression is that it is indeed fast and stable. I may just have to download it for my PowerBook as well.

In other web news I just noticed that [WordPress 2.0.1][] is out. It looks like there are quite a few bugfixes in this release and upgrading still involves wholesale file replacement. I think I’ll save that upgrade project until I get back to my PowerBook.

I came across a really interesting series of articles on about typography on the web called [Five simple steps to better typography](http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/five_simple_steps_to_better_typography/). The parts about leading bullets and font sizes really jumped out at me. I hadn’t realized the significance of the various larger point sizes.

I’m toying with the idea of fully converting all my entries into Markdown format. In a perfect world I’d like to be able to write Markdown formatted posts in TextMate and then xml-rpc them up to the WordPress mothership, but that’s not really possible without Markdown the defacto formatting method. That said there are something like 1700 preexisting Textile formatted entries so it’s definitely not worthwhile if I can’t fully automate the process.

[Camino]:http://www.caminobrowser.org/
[WordPress 2.0.1]:http://wordpress.org/development/2006/01/201-release/