Koozie Notes

Day 0 at Gnomedex: Reception

I'm finally on the wi-fi network at Gnomedex. I tried my old dial up account from my hotel room earlier today and the connection was painfully slow. Now I'm on the 2nd floor of Harrah's, enjoying free wi-fi.

Earlier today, I had a nice trip with jr from Reno to the Harrah's. Other than some minor road construction, I had a great time.

-Chris

Typepad

Trying Typepad.

-Chris

FeedDemon and Bloglines Link Up

(via Scoble) According to Scoble, Nick Bradbury will be providing a new version of FeedDemon that syncs with Bloglines.

The best part is items you read in FeedDemon don't show up as unread in Bloglines, and items you read through Bloglines don't show up in FeedDemon. In other words, feed state is synchronized so that you don't read the same item twice. This provides the best of both worlds, IMO - you get the easy synchronization between multiple systems found in a web-based app, with the rich UI of a Windows desktop app.

Very cool.

-Chris

eSlate 3000 on EFF Report

While browsing on EFF's site, I noticed a section covering e-voting which had a detailed report on the eSlate 3000[PDF]. The report lists problems in California, Virginia, and Texas.

November 2003: Texas. Poll workers in Harris County, confused by the eSlate system's complexity, could not get the machines to work properly. Subsequent investigation revealed they had been assigning the wrong ballots to voters using the JBC.5 [5 “ESlate voting proves smooth, not flawless.” HOUSTON CHRONICLE, Nov. 5, 2003.]

I find the eSlate easier to use than a paper ballot. Hopefully election day will proceed smoothly without any problems or scandals.

-Chris

Old post on eSlate 3000.

WSJ: iMac G5 Review

Walter Mossberg writes a strong recommendation for Apple's new G5 iMac in today's edition of the WSJ.

I am writing these words on the most elegant desktop computer I've ever used, a computer that is not only uncommonly beautiful but fast and powerful, virus-free and surprisingly affordable.

I felt the same way when I started using my 12" powerbook.

About the only important feature the new iMac G5 lacks is a built-in reader for memory cards used in digital cameras, PDAs and smart phones, which is becoming common in better Windows desktops.

Agreed, but not a show stopper.

And it frees users from the worry and expense of battling viruses and spyware, because there has never been a successful virus targeting the Mac operating system, and there is little or no spyware for the Mac. The many thousands of viruses and spyware programs that afflict Windows can't run on, or harm, Macs.

This reason alone is why I recommend Apple to friends and family. Apple does not get pounded with daily viruses and spyware.

-Chris

Empire of Dreams

If you are a fan of the Star Wars films, you should enjoy watching "Star Wars: Empire of Dreams"  I just watched this 2 hour show on Tivo and I couldn't help remembering how much I enjoyed watching "Star Wars" when it first came out in the late 70's.  I think I ended up watching "Star Wars" seven times.  I also had a nice collection of Kenner action figures.

The DVD will be released in two days. [21 SEP 2004]
-Chris

pdftk: PDF Toolkit

Need to pull pages 2-4 out of PDF, but don't want to spend money on Adobe's Acrobat? Take a look at pdftk, a command line tool for manipulating PDFs.

If PDF is electronic paper, then pdftk is an electronic staple-remover, hole-punch, binder, secret-decoder-ring, and X-Ray-glasses. Pdftk is a simple tool for doing everyday things with PDF documents.

Other cool tricks can be found in PDF Hacks.

-Chris

HP 12C

I picked up a HP 12C calculator yesterday. Even though the calculator hasn't changed much, I still like it better than wipping out my old HP 28S from college.

Reviews on HP 12C:
 Joi Ito
 Business 2.0
 Gizmodo

-Chris

Little Green Footballs

Little Green Footballs got plugged on the Fox News show, the O'Reilly Factor. Bill sounded pretty funny when he repeated, "Little Green Footballs dot Com"

For our new visitors following John Podhoretz’s citation of Little Green Footballs on the Bill O’Reilly show, here is the animated graphic to which Mr. Podhoretz referred, showing my document created with default settings in Microsoft Word for Mac OS X, overlaid on the CBS News Killian memo from August 19, 1973:

-Chris

Aggies Win

I feel better. Gig'em

-Chris