Led Zeppelin

Bring It On Home

Over the Hills and Far Away

Cream

Crossroads

Jimi Hendrix

Red House

Hey Joe

Neil Young

Cinnamon Girl

Down By the River

Cowgirl in the Sand

Traditional

Whiskey in the Jar

DEAR PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA:

First of all, congratulations on your historic victory. Okay, enough sweet talk.

Before I really get into what I want to ask of you, let me tell you a little about myself. Just a little. I am a 38 year old, white male of Jewish decent living in a major(ish, depending on who you ask) US East Coast city. I have a college degree and work as a professional. My wife and I also own a (struggling) small business. I have two small children, a house in the suburbs, two cars, a wife (not necessarily in that order). Okay, that's enough. Pretty normal USAian, right?

I have been thinking a lot about your election to this office. It turns out that I am VERY excited to see you there. I know I am not alone. But I have one, important, VERY IMPORTANT, request:

PLEASE DON'T FUCK THIS UP!

I voted for you mostly because you are not a semi retard (not that I am hinting at all that any current president might be semi-retarded). Not only, though, are you not retarded, you are actually one of the smartest speakers I have heard on the TV in a while. Your presence, charisma, leadership qualities, ideas, and ability to bring people together are a VERY WELCOME CHANGE. I voted for you for all those reasons, and, as icing, I voted for you BECAUSE you are "black". I put that in quotes because you are just as white as you are black, something a lot of people seem to miss.

Anyway, about my request. I know you know this and understand this request. I voted for you because, as the first "black" president, you will have to work harder, better, more convincingly, more flawlessly, more unifyingly than any previous president. More, even, than a white woman president would (well, that's debatable) have to. Because you are black. You MUST prove "them" wrong.

That is the gist, I gotta flesh this thing out. Draft 1 started Nov 19, 2008. Hopefully I'll scratch out another 15 minutes to work on this thing because I am desperate to mail it before inauguration. But if you read it online, that's good, too.

Thank you. Sincerely,
Jeff Silverman
American

If there is one thing I hate doing, it is bashing software projects. I mean, just because I hate a piece of Software doesn't mean it sucks for everyone, right? Or that the developers are assholes, right? Most of the developers I know are pretty okay sort of guys. It's System Administrators that you have to watch out for.

Anyway, that said, I just want to list reasons why I think F-Spot sucks monkey nuts.

• Poor performance. Lots of images? Well, expect to wait for lots of time while F-Spot figures out what the hell its doing. (Is this F-Spot or Mono's problem? I dunno)
• Shitty interface. While touted as being "easy to use" I find the opposite to be true.
• Wants to, while importing photos from somewhere, wants to copy them to the Photos directory. I just plain don't want bajillions of copies of photos around. Why can't it at least remember that I have un-checked this option every time? I just want to import them into F-Spot's management database, not into where F-spot thinks I should save everything.
• Zero flexibility. If F-Spot does what you want it to do for you, and you like the way F-Spot does it, then fine! But if you want anything different, F-Spot ain't the way to go.

Actually, this last one shows up in Gnome apps all the time. Easy-to-use is not synonomous with inflexible or with no features. But the Gnome project seems to think so. At least, that is the view that is projected in the pantheon of Gnome apps; maybe the philosophy is different, but I can't tell. KDE is much better in this regard -- most KDE apps are bubbling with advanced features that you don't have to use. But it is true that many advance configuration options for Gnome apps can be found in their gconf configuration, and using the gconf-editor. And once I found that out, I found Gnome in general to be a lot more appealing.

Okay, short post, but there you have it.

The simple answer: Use BitPIM. Yay! Except....

Except it doesn't fucking work with my setup. See below....

I thought I was gonna have to enable Bluetooth OBEX by flashing to an older or a newer, OBEX-enabled BIOS, but, no, all I have to do is use BitPim and a USB cable.

Thanks and kudos to this excellent website for helping me figure that out.
http://mark.cdmaforums.com

Doesn't Fucking Work

Mostly, I am pissed not because BitPim doesn't work, but rather that the V3C is such a shitty fucking phone. What were we thinking? In any case, BitPim almost worked using LinuxMint (equivlent to Ubuntu Gutsy) + BitPim (either from apt-get repos or from latest BitPim.org download -- I tried both). Incidentally, I tried on my Macbook, too. No dice. Finally, I did get it working, though, using Windows XP on VMWare on Linux. Whew!

However, it did not work for my wife's phone! Suck! Well, I'll try her phone on a straight up Windows computer next. It's gotta work somewhere, right?

So I borrowed this "lifehacker" style mod. A mod to a Moleskine? Does that sound to frickin' geeky? Too much time on my hands? Well, I definitely do NOT have any extra time these days, but this mod was very very easy.

Borrowed from here:

• http://wotnau.blogspot.com/2008/02/moleskine-pen-holder.html
• http://www.moleskinerie.com/

So, the basic idea is pretty done and done. Sheesh, Google 'Results 1 - 10 of about 13,800 for moleskine "pen holder"'. Or about 2,200 results for"moleskine pen holder". But the ones for the "Reporter Notebook" don't work for me, as I don't use that one. And I didn't want to DUCT TAPE anything to the notebook! And ones that strap a band around the notebook are no good as it adds an extra step in opening the notebook. So I modded a mod a little. Probably someone else has done it, too, but this is my version. So fuck you if you've seen it before, pretentious Moleskine user you.

Ingredients

• 1 Moleskine notebook. The small one, with an expandable pouch. I prefer the squared notebook, but that part's up to you.
• A pen
• A piece of card stock. Well, I found that "Bristol Board" weight worked well.

Steps

1. Cut card stock. One long, straight cut.
   
   Now, I used an 11X17 inch piece of card stock. But really, you just need one that you can get a 5" wide strip off of. Standard US Letter (i.e. 8.5X11) size will do, but you just won't have as much left at the end to tuck into the expandable pouch. Won't matter, though.
2. Fold card stock.
   
   Measure a 1.5" column in the middle. Right in the middle of the strip, i.e. 3/4" on each side of the middle. That's the only measurement you really need, as you can then fold the rest by eye, lining it up with the notebook. The spot in the middle becomes the pen holder area.
3. Stick it into expandable pouch.
   
   Get the folds to line up so that the pen holder part, in the middle of the card stock, sticks out off the side of the notebook. Make a flap at the other end; tuck that flap into the expandable pouch.
4. Done!
   
5. Yay!
   
   Even Oliver likes it!

See, now wasn't that the easiest mod ever? Plus it doesn't (1) harm, damage, or irreparably change the notebook, or (2) greatly increase the overall size of the notebook (i.e. still fits in pocket!). Plus you can mode the thing to another notebook when you've filled this notebook up. Because you do actually write in the Moleskine, yes? You don't just have it to look cool to the emo kids, right?

New Ubunut-branded keyboard from Zareason. Yay! Or, as my wife would say, "you are so queer."

Okay, so I just got the Ubuntu branded keyboard from Zareason. No "Windows" key! Okay, so it is really just a cheap Logitech "Internet 350" keyboard (Logitech makes good stuff, IMO, though), but the key, here, (no pun intended -- well, adctually, pun intended), is that the Windows keys have been replaced with Ubuntu keys.

Of course, I use LinuxMint, but that's close enough. I wouldda got the Tux keyboard, but, alas, there isn't one. Yet. According to an email from Cathy Malmrose at Zareason, (in response to my email to Zareason), they are going to have a Tux keyboard in their product list sometime soon. Even better!

Some minor criticisms:

• The "powered by Ubuntu" sticker in the middle of the keyboard looks out of place. It is because it is a "portrait" layout sticker stuck in a space better suited to a "landscape" layout sticker.
• The Zareason badge looks less out of place, but is a bit on the ugly side.