xv

QOTD: Where is this quote from?

xv — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:40:07 GMT

"The earth is degenerating these days. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer mind parents…and it is evident that the end of the world is approaching fast."—Assyrian Tablet engraved in 2800 B.C.

I found this in Neil Degrasse Tyson's essay "Paths to Discovery" which appears in the 1998 book "The Columbia History of the 20th Century"

While Googling on this a few weeks ago, I found an exceedingly exhaustive analysis of the quote somewhere on the Internet (props if you can find the link, I lost it) offered by a gaggle of Assyriologists. Some of them seemed to be very down on the authenticity, as the citation trail goes dead in the 1920s. The only reason it was traced back that far, though, is because Google Books happened to have scanned that book in. Clearly this is an issue where "people on the Internet can only tell you about things that are on the Internet." Another member of the group was optimistic about doomsday predictions on old, possibly as-yet untranslated tablets.

So my question really should be: what is the oldest verifiable doomsday prediction that we know about? Preferably one that puts a time limit on doomsday, like "next tuesday."

QOTD: Is Colgate Wisp a government spin-off?

xv — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:27:24 GMT

Pardon me, I don't watch TV, so I'm just now learning about Colgate "Wisp," which has apparently been around for a few years. These are plastic toothpicks on steroids. At one end is the pick, and at the other end resides a tiny plastic brush with a "freshness bead" implanted in it. (more details)

Anyway, awhile back I heard about a guy who was trying to find better ways to take care of soldiers' teeth while they're deployed overseas. He kept saying that the mechanical action of a brush is what's critical to breaking up plaque. I don't remember him describing Wisp, per se, but rather some form of advanced chewing gum.

So, what's the deal, are soldiers really using these things? I've tried them. They're definitely better than not doing anything at all, but there is no comparison to actually brushing my teeth.

ASOD: Resize and Reposition Hulu Pop-out Window

xv — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:53:47 GMT

Pretty straightforward. This should port pretty well to various setups. Adjust the x variable to change the absolute size. Now that I think about it, I could have made it proportional to the screen size. Part of the reason for this, though, is that flash doesn't scale particularly well, it depends on how much performance you want out of your machine, in which case I should make it continuously proportional to processor load. It never ends.

-- Mac OS 10.5.8 -- Safari 5.0.6
tell application "Finder" to set {a, b, c, d} to bounds of window of desktop
set {c, d} to {round c / 2, round d / 2}
tell application "System Events" to tell process "Safari"
	set y to window "Hulu - Watch"
	set x to 60
	set z to {(16 * x) - (round (x * 0.71)), 9 * x}
	set size of y to z
	set {a, b} to {round ((item 1 of z) / 2), round ((item 2 of z) / 2)}
	set position of y to {c - a, d - b}
end tell

46-F: OK Then.

xv — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 00:52:26 GMT

This shows what the power of sleep is. The 29 lost games in a row were from the night before, and the 12 won games were from the morning after a good night's rest. 12 wins is double my previous record of 6 wins in a row. Also, 70 seconds is by far my fastest win time, and that game happened in this sequence of twelve.

ASOD: The 23,401 Names for Gaddafi

xv — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 05:33:34 GMT

The inspiration for this comes from Muammar Gaddafi's Wikipedia page, which has a nifty diagram of all the possible transliterations of his Arabic name, along with common versions used by mass media outlets. The first part of the script interprets the diagram to generate 20 random combinations and sends them to the Mac's text-to-speech engine one by one. The second part computes all possible combinations implied by the diagram.

Wikipedia notes, however, that a significant percentage of these combinations don't make sense. I could conceivably bake in a few rules to exclude such constructions, but that would add considerably to the script's complexity.* As it is, it's at least amusing. It also serves as a decent benchmark of your Mac's script processing speed. You can cut your time by more than half by excluding the "tell me to log result" line. You could also get a speed boost by compiling it as binary, you'd just have to roll a simple UI to see your time.

The sample time is from a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo with 1 GB Ram and script logging off.

* I updated it to exclude the most common problem (a dangling hyphen) I didn't update the sample result.**

** OK, I *think* I've programmatically eliminated the hyphen duplicates with the "SECOND edit" line. I'm not entirely sure that I'm not excluding valid possibilities with this line, however. Somebody do the math.

set {x, y, z} to {{{"M"}, {"u", "o", "ou"}, {"", "'"}, {"", "a"}, {"mm", "m"}, {"ar"}, {" "}, {"Al", "al", "El", ""}, {"-", " ", ""}, {"Q", "G", "K", "Kh"}, {"a"}, {"d", "dh", "dd", "dhdh", "th", "zz"}, {"a"}, {"f", "ff"}, {"i", "y"}}, "", {}}

(*
repeat 20 times
repeat with i in x
set y to y & item (random number from 1 to length of i) of i
end repeat
set {z, y} to {z & y, ""}
end repeat

repeat with i in z
say i -- switch to the "Event Log" tab to see the spellings as they are spoken.
delay 0.75
end repeat
*)

set start_time to (current date)
tell x to repeat with a in item 1
repeat with b in item 2
repeat with c in item 3
repeat with d in item 4
repeat with e in item 5
repeat with f in item 6
repeat with g in item 7
repeat with h in item 8
repeat with i in item 9
repeat with j in item 10
repeat with k in item 11
repeat with l in item 12
repeat with m in item 13
repeat with n in item 14
repeat with o in item 15
if h's contents is "" then
set p to "" & a & b & c & d & e & f & g & h & j & k & l & m & n & o -- FIRST edit
else
set p to "" & a & b & c & d & e & f & g & h & i & j & k & l & m & n & o
end if
tell me to log result -- un-comment to watch progress in Event Log.
set y to y & p & return
end repeat -- o in item 15
end repeat -- n in item 14
end repeat -- m in item 13
end repeat -- l in item 12
end repeat -- k in item 11
end repeat -- j in item 10
if h's contents is "" then exit repeat -- SECOND edit
end repeat -- i in item 9
end repeat -- h in item 8
end repeat -- g in item 7
end repeat -- f in item 6
end repeat -- e in item 5
end repeat -- d in item 4
end repeat -- c in item 3
end repeat -- b in item 2
end repeat -- a in item 1
set end_time to (current date) - start_time

set {t, v} to {end_time div minutes, end_time mod minutes}

set y to "" & (count paragraphs of y) & " combinations found in " & t & " minutes and " & v & " seconds. " & return & return & y

-- Sample result: 27649 combinations found in 12 minutes and 33 seconds. ... [list]

beep t -- gets your attention in proportion to the amount of time you were ignoring the window.

get y

QOTD: Why am I losing so much water?

xv — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 22:12:01 GMT

This makes me think maybe I should take a physics course.

I have one of these ceramic "crock pot" water dispensers. It has no electricity, but it does cool water a couple degrees south of room temperature. I have no complaints about its water dispensing abilities. What irritates me is how much water it's losing to the surrounding air as the humidity drops. Is there any way to stop the bleeding? I'm not entirely sure how the gas is escaping so efficiently, although I'm sure the heat transfer properties of the ceramic has something to do with it. Is there any way to seal the system better? Something to do with the tap, perhaps? Put rocks on top of the tank? Wrap the pot in a blanket? Is this even advisable for health concerns? Maybe I should just take a chill pill, as I'm only paying a buck fifty per 5 gallons of water. Still, it's irritating to have to swap the tank more than necessary. I suppose I could get excited about having automatically maintained (and filtered!) ambient humidity. Might be good for my skin.

ASOD: Word Count

xv — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 02:15:07 GMT

Counts all the words in all open TextEdit documents and prints them neatly to result. The handler is there so I can count words in the main section of some document, apart from its front and back matter. Sorry if it doesn't render the diamond correctly, on macs the key is Option+Shift+V for a diamond: ◊. You would need two diamonds to use this feature, one at the start of the body, and another at the end of the body. I picked it because I'm otherwise unlikely to use that symbol in the body, but the delimiter could be anything. "tk" is a popular plaintext delimiter, as there aren't many common English words with those two letters adjacent.

set x to return
tell application "TextEdit" to repeat with y in documents
tell y to set x to x & my count_words(y) & tab & name & return
end repeat

to count_words(y)
set x to y's text
if x contains "◊" then
set z to count words of x
tell (a reference to AppleScript's text item delimiters)
set {tid, contents} to {contents, "◊"}
set {x, contents} to {x's 2nd text item, tid}
end tell
"(Body: " & (count words of x) & ") (Document: " & z & ")"
else
count words of x
end if
end count_words

ASOD: Date Calculation

xv — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 06:36:44 GMT

This is pathetically simple, but I might develop it into something more useful.

{(current date) - (1 * weeks), (current date) - (4 * weeks)}

ASOD: Deadpan Delivery

xv — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 21:21:59 GMT

This is an hilarious idea for an AppleScript that I came up with while slightly drunk over the weekend. It uses UI Events to grab subtitles in real-time from a playing DVD. It then sends the titles, line-by-line, to the Mac's text-to-speech engine. The idea is that you mute the audio from the movie, and just watch while letting TTS handle all the actors' lines. It's a really hilarious, bat-shit insane way to watch a movie. There are no sound effects. Probably the funniest part is the sound cues, like "engine cranking," and "loud bang." It seems to only work on older DVDs that support rendering captions to a second window. I tested it out on the Truman Show special edition DVD.

set x to ""
tell application "System Events" to repeat
set y to value of first text field of window "Closed Caption" of process "DVD Player"
if y is not x then
say y
set x to y
end if
delay 1
end repeat

IOTD: Public Relations for Fruits and Vegetables

xv — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 01:07:02 GMT

Every time I see a headline splashing deaths due to vegetables, the underlying message seems to be "don't trust farmers to feed you, trust giant corporations. Here, have a box of saltines, they won't kill you!" Well, they might not kill you overnight, but I guarantee they will kill you eventually. That's the problem. We see a story about some dramatic pathogen, and then think manufactured food is somehow safer. In fact, just by the numbers, you're always safer going with the fresh stuff. If you're super-vulnerable (very old or very young, like most of the people who actually die) then ok, maybe you should be more careful when eating raw foods. Otherwise, if you're healthy, there's virtually no risk even from the worst pathogens you'd find in fresh food. Meanwhile, you absolutely are 100% at risk if you regularly eat junk food.

Besides, does it ever really occur to people WHY pathogens love fresh food so much? It just so happens that they have better taste in food than you do. Most organisms wouldn't touch the overly-preserved manufactured junk food that corporations shove down our throats with the aid of billions of dollars in advertising. Microorganism don't want it because they know better than we do that it's toxic sludge. If you want to be healthy, in my opinion, you should be eating precisely the same foods that every other organism on the planet wants to eat. That's the good stuff, and because we are on the top of the food chain, we should be the ones eating it before anything else does.

The problem is that there just doesn't seem to be money in sexing up the vegetables, PETA be damned. This astonishes me. How could the beverage industry get away with sexing up water to sell at absurd prices, and farmers can't follow suit? Where is the massive vegetable lobby? Where are the turnip's lawyers and talking heads going on a media blitz to extol their virtues?

Why is the culture here to constantly throw people down the wrong path? Is that the only way to preserve space for the rarified few? It's sickening. And it's another brain problem. All this crap just exists in our brains. I had a conversation with Ophelia about this several weeks ago. People think advertising isn't a big deal, but it's a huge deal. People think my campus president smoking in front of the whole college is charming, but it's actually insidious mind-poison.

I bring it up not because I think I have the right answer, but I certainly don't think the corporations have the right answer either. It's our job as citizens to recognize objectively what is going on, and make better-informed decisions about how to act.

IOTD: Deal-breakers

xv — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 16:39:37 GMT

The "scientific" veneer of sites like OKCupid and eHarmony put me off. In part because it appeals to the basest of human behaviors. Here you are given a dartboard of people who mean nothing to you, and you are free to pick them apart and insult them endlessly, most of all yourself. If you are a saint, you know that you should be bridging differences, not differentiating bridges (thanks for that one, Harry Shearer) but it's tough to do that and expect people to respond in kind.

When you're out in the world, you don't need a long list of frozen parameters to interact with people. Their presence is your interaction with them. Manners exist in the real world because physical consequences exist there. Walkable cities are set up to foster diplomacy, where on the Internet everyone behaves like the king of their own fiefdom. I believe this is a natural extension of the alienation and rage associated with the television and automobile cultures.

As usual, a simplified approach sometimes is best. I've found the world of Craigslist can be more forgiving, often to a fault. There, you don't have an assigned identity, only the little island of an ad that you've composed on a whime. It's every bit as ridiculous as the classified section of yore, and perhaps its skeumorphism is what can bring the inhumanity of the Internet closer to reality. I think this may be what people like Jaron Lanier are talking about when they say "you are not a gadget" (I have yet to read his book by the same name)

My idea is that we need to stop trying to assiduously avoid people we are afraid of, and stop constantly judging ourselves to the point of existential anguish. We need to stop inventing fictional lives and fictional battles on the Internet. The Internet should bring us together instead of dividing us into a million countries. At a time when everyone is retreating into their dens and barricading the door, more than ever, we need to get out of our houses and respect each other as flesh-and-blood human beings.

ASOD: Calculate New Image Size

xv — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 22:57:15 GMT

This is something I needed to do to change the dimensions of a slideshow. I'm used to apps doing it automatically, so I didn't know the formula. Put a zero in the target field you want to solve for.

set {Source_Height, Source_Width} to {540, 720}

set {Target_Height, Target_Width} to {1600, 0}

if Target_Height > 0 then
{Target_Height, round Target_Height / (Source_Height / Source_Width) rounding down}
else
{round Target_Width / (Source_Width / Source_Height) rounding down, Target_Width}
end if

QOTD: What's going on with my Mac Pro RAM?

xv — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:39:53 GMT

I've been blowing more and more dust out of my Mac Pro over the last few days. The worst problem I've had is getting it to recognize all its installed RAM. From a quick Google, it seems like this is may be a common problem for this class of machine. Unfortunately, I don't remember how much RAM this computer last had, or when or where I bought the chips that are installed in it.

I know for a fact that the unit originally came with two Apple-provided 512MB chips. I know this because it seemed ridiculous even at the time of purchase, and the Apple stores employees refused to sell me more or install RAM on-site. (I forget, maybe it was a possibility, but some aspect of the deal disagreed with me, like perhaps having to wait a day, or that they also wouldn't upgrade the provided keyboard)

Long story short, the Apple RAM "just works." -- But jeez, it's only a gig. At the time this Mac debuted, the main reason for the paltry ram was to bring the cost down. Everyone knew that you would max out the RAM once you got the sucker. I mean, come on, why would they provide two risers with eight slots and only give you a farking gig in the base model?

Moving on from the gig of RAM. I vaguely recall having difficulty getting this computer to recognize the third-party ram I eventually installed. And I vividly remember the kernel panic I had the other night, which I suspect may have had to do with the RAM.

In System Profiler, only the Apple stuff shows up, all other slots are "empty," even though there are only 2 slots out of 8 that are physically unfilled. Swapping the lower riser's place with the upper riser had the effect of moving the functioning RAM accordingly in Profiler, but still no showing from the remaining four DIMMS.

Finally, I just pulled all the memory out and looked at them like fruit in the vegetable aisle. The two Apple sticks looked great. Also, two sticks with "OWC" stickers looked fine. The most suspect of the bunch were a pair with a swirly "M" logo that I presume to be Micron Technology. I decided to let these sit out one boot to see what happens, and...

Voila! Now I have 3GB of RAM showing in profiler, two 512mb sticks and two 1gb sticks. I'm pretty happy.

But now I must scratch my head and wonder how much memory I'm leaving on the table with these Micron sticks. Back in the day, Mac Pro memory was not at all that cheap, and these aren't your standard chips, either. Each one comes with a gigantic heat sink wrapped around it. Wisdom from the Internet suggests that it might not be a problem with the chips at all, but the riser cards.

My instinct is to just be happy with the 3GB for now. I don't have a lot of negotiating room with Apple Support, considering that this thing is so far out of warranty, and the fact that it ingested an entire can of Starbucks Doubleshot Espresso back in the day. I don't even know who I would contact about the RAM, although god knows I probably have a receipt somewhere.

Thoughts?

QOTD: How do you keep it together on the weekend?

xv — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 22:21:29 GMT

To start with, we might ask what a weekend is for:

Rest: catching up on the sleep you missed during the week.
Religious observance: Saturdays for jews, Sundays for christians.
Hobbies: attending sporting events, garage sales, building birdhouses.
Errands: cleaning, repairing, resupplying.
Spending time with friends and family: going on dates, attending fairs, parties.
Quiet study: for students.
Bingeing: for addicts.

#7 is my main problem, and it's related to #1. Namely, on the weekend I have a hard time getting out of bed. By the time I get out of bed, I don't want to shower right away, which means that I won't put on sunscreen, which means I won't want to go outside and burn my skin. The result is that I stay in, and I cook too much food and eat all of it, and then I get online and press buttons for the rest of the day.

Either #2 or #5 is what should ordinarily extract me from the perils of #7. The problem with #2 is that I'm not particularly religious, I even dislike the religious aspects of anti-religions. The problem with #5 is that my family *is* religious, and therefore is not around much on the weekend to start with. As for friends, I don't have any.* I suppose ordinary people create families to keep themselves company, but that's not in the cards for me. Some people go to bars "where everyone knows their name," but that's not my ideal setup either. Without people to hold me responsible, it's difficult to stay committed to anything on the weekend.

That leaves 3, 4, and 6. I do a little bit of each of these, but not enough, and again, it's difficult to stay on task. #6 would be easier if libraries kept their weekend hours consistent. Trouble is, even at a library on the weekend, the mood is decidedly un-academic, as nobody is ever around. Bookstores / coffeeshops are another possibility. Trouble is, there aren't many nearby that I truly enjoy. And to top it off, indulging #6 would be at the expense of #4, which, in a perfect world, is what I would spend 100% of my weekend time dedicated to. Trouble is, I *never* do. There's always a long list of things I want to do, and I only ever manage to get to, at most, a third of them.

Perhaps the biggest problem, though, is a general lack of planning. This weekend is the perfect example. At one point this weekend I had four different people attempting to make plans with me, and all four plans fell through. Clearly I am not very good at making decisions after the weekend has begun. The key, then, should be to plan my weekends as far in advance as possible, to schedule every minute of them so that there is no question about what I should be doing. I need to get specific, draft lists and memorize them, and provide some sort of negative consequence for not following through.

* not even a dog.

QOTD: Where were you on 9/11/2001?

xv — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 16:05:47 GMT

I was an hour north of the president, on I-75, in the same state that elected him, and the same state that housed and trained the hijackers. I had woken up in the late morning, and the first indication of trouble was my mom, who I encountered by the swimming pool, not making much sense. She told me to go look at the TV, and all I could see was what appeared to be all of Manhattan on fire. At that point I had no idea what had happened, that the towers fell, and neither did it seem the announcers. The more pressing topic at hand, however, was what our Bosnian refugees wanted to eat for breakfast. They were being sponsored by my dad's church, and had arrived in the country by way of New York the night before. I wound up frying some eggs in butter for them, and then returned to the TV.

I went to USF to meet Nichole for lunch. There were students handing out hastily-printed flyers announcing that school was closed for the rest of the day. Every ceiling-mounted TV set in the old Marshall center was tuned to CNN. Nichole laughed and blamed the whole thing on George Bush. After lunch, we went to the butterfly garden at the science museum. Back at her place, we amused ourselves by flipping through all the cable channels, which were tuned to the same three news feeds, as if it were inappropriate to watch anything but the news, or as if they were emergency broadcast services.

Her roommate was a reservist, and was already busy gathering up her belongings to move out and go to war. We tried to go to a bank, but it was closed, and the ATMs were eating bank cards. A knock on the door yielded an emotional CS rep waving us off, and a hired security guard in the parking lot shooing us away.

I remember after 9/11 that the news became a really big deal. I think I watched nothing but CNN for at least three months afterward. I remember NPR had epic, round-the-clock news coverage for a long time. Even now, our NPR station does news updates around the clock, which I don't recall it having done before 9/11. It became fatiguing after awhile, but at the end of it, my capacity to pay attention to a much larger set of random news items from around the world seemed to be greater than before 9/11. These days I'm trying to un-do some of that "instantaneous" conditioning. I'd rather not be the first person to hear about a breaking news story that has nothing to do with me. I'm happy for someone else to tell me, or to hear about it a day later, when its significance has been better-assessed.

9/11 is a defining moment. Everyone remembers where they were on that day, how life was before, and after. This isn't a competition for who has the most interesting or dramatic story, just a documentation of a place and time in our collective memory. Where were you that day?

QOTD: When do you start the timer on dry pasta?

xv — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 02:42:05 GMT

Directions typically say something like "boil water, add pasta, return to boil, boil for 7 minutes." But it's always ambiguous as to when the 7 minutes actually begin. Is it when you add the pasta? Or is it after the water has returned to a boil? What constitutes the level of "boilingness" that starts the cooking process? Will a burble suffice? Or violent, full-foaming action?

Mark Bittman cautions against taking any printed cooking times seriously, and prefers to just sample the pasta for doneness. I personally dislike this method, as I'm a terrible judge, I tend to only take it out when it's mushy, and then it continues cooking and becomes waterlogged and overdone.

My feeling is that pasta isn't a product that can be "cooked to taste" like other dishes. Rather, it is a product that has been desiccated for transport, and you're not so much "preparing it" as you are "reviving it." Therefore, the manufacturer should understand better than me how much water and time it takes to restore the product to the way it was when they originally manufactured it, and how they intend it to be consumed.

Since I tend to overcook anyway, I generally start the timer as soon as the pasta goes in, or even before. Sometimes I turn off the heat when the timer expires, and let the pasta sit in the boiling water for a little bit longer before I drain it.

QOTD: What's the future of Apple without Steve Jobs?

xv — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 22:19:14 GMT

First, you have to separate what's actually good about Apple from what's not-so-good. On the good side, they're brilliant at user-side hardware/software integration. On the not-so-good side, iCloud hype notwithstanding, they're miserable at rolling Internet services. Tim Cook is the supply chain wizard, but I question his ability to (A) have exacting taste, (B) inspire fear and awe, and (C) sell. Granted, there are other people on the executive leadership team that are better at those things than Mr. Cook, but what glues them together? It's King Lear all over again.

My feeling is the whole thing will go flat eventually, like it did last time. I'm pretty happy with where the state of the art has been left for the moment, however. Still, though, we need people like Steve to come around who are not happy with the state of the art, and are willing to envision and push for devices we don't even know we need yet. Not merely because they think it would sell, but because they know the time is right. Also, it'd be really nice if these people were from the Internet.

QOTD: Do you weigh more or less after you fart?

xv — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 21:58:32 GMT

...as weighed on a scale. Some people say you weigh more, because the lighter-than-air gas inside you provides a slight lift, that disappears when you discharge it. Call this "the pricked balloon" theory. Others disagree, because the gas inside you is under pressure, therefore not lighter than air, and so releasing it makes you weigh less. Call this the "pressure vessel" theory, as it's been observed that a helium tank weighs more when it's filled with helium. My gut feeling is that the latter theory is correct, but absent solid experimental data, we may never know.

QOTD: Are there simpler ways to print on both sides of the page?

xv — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 21:02:24 GMT

My instructors are increasingly e-mailing me educational material, ostensibly to "save paper" -- but I find it's more akin to "externalizing costs," because now I have to print it, and I don't have a fancy duplexer like they have in the campus printing office. I won't use an e-reader, in part because it's neither durable nor convenient, but also because they're not allowed in class.

The main problem I'm having is that my printer is nowhere near my computer, and I have to keep going back-and-forth up and down stairs through different rooms to manage the double-sided printing. So far, this is my process:

System Preferences > Print & Fax > Open Print Queue...
Pause Printer > Administrator Password
Preview > File > Print > Show More Options
Paper Handling > Pages To Print > Odd Only
Print > Add to Queue
Print > Paper Handling > Pages To Print > Even Only
Print > Add to Queue
Print Queue > Select [second print job] > Hold
Resume Printer
[walk upstairs, remove odd pages, re-insert them into paper tray, walk downstairs]
Print Queue > Select [remaining print job] > Resume
[walk upstairs, collect document, check paper tray for left-overs]

So essentially what I'm doing here is setting up two print jobs (one for odds, one for evens) and I want them to run one after the other, except I need there to be a short break in between so I can run upstairs and manhandle the printer. It would be nice, however, while I'm up there, to either simply tell (A) the printer itself, or (B) the computer in the other room, to go ahead and resume the second print job once I'm done shuffling papers around. That way I can just stand there and wait for it to finish, and then walk away with all my print jobs at once.

I might try RTFM on the printer side of things (if I can find it, it's ancient) as I've so far been using Mac OS features that the printer knows nothing about. Suggestions welcome.

QOTD: Is it possible to use MacOS CLI apps on iOS devices?

xv — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 13:31:56 GMT

When I refer to CLI (Command-Line Interface) apps, I mean anything that doesn't have a GUI (Graphical User Interface). I imagine some of these would be dependent on resources that don't exist in iOS. It would be interesting, however, to learn which ones "just work." Google doesn't seem to shed much light on the issue. I guess there's no harm in just trying...

AppleScript of the Day: Calculate BMI and weight-loss goal.

xv — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 23:49:31 GMT

This is a simple script that uses the Body Mass Index equation I found on this Wikipedia page. I got a chance to use my nifty College Algebra skills to re-write the equation so it would calculate how much weight one has to lose or gain to achieve normal weight. Normal weight in this case is not defined by a range as it should be, but rather a BMI of precisely 24.9, or the fattest you can be and still be considered normal.

I didn't want to bother with dialog boxes, so you have to enter your height manually, and look in the results window for the result. This should be fairly obvious, but if you need help, the first line reads:

set {f, i, w} to {5, 9.5, 195}

...which means that I am 5 feet, 9-and-a-half inches tall, and weigh 195 pounds. When you run this, the result is "Your BMI is 28. You are overweight, just like over half the American population. You need to lose 24 pounds to become normal weight."

QOTD: Which celebrities would I be surprised to learn are still alive?

xv — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 22:10:12 GMT

While I was researching this question, news came in about Amy Winehouse. I don't know why anybody should be surprised that she's dead. When you do a lot of drugs, you shorten your lifespan. It's a strange feeling, however, to see someone who is younger than me become a "success" and then flame out and die, all while I'm just sitting around doing nothing in particular.

No, actually the inspiration for this question was from researching the burning temperature of paper. As any fan of Ray Bradbury knows, "Fahrenheit 451" is the temperature at which books burn. Turns out this isn't actually true, and the Internet claims a variety of burning temperatures, the lowest of which is 426 degrees F, which seems to gel with the 420 degrees mentioned on the box of parchment paper I used to cook a Totino's party pizza a short while ago. I baked it at 450 degrees directly on the top-middle rack for 11 minutes without a pan or cookie sheet. The paper browned slightly at the edges, but not under the pizza itself. The pizza cooked up nice and crispy, too, without getting singed, which is typical of other cooking methods. The paper also caught whatever drippings would otherwise have adhered to the rack or pan, and it's disposable to boot.

Ideal ways to cook down-market frozen pizzas is a question for another day, but alas, I was surprised to learn that Ray Bradbury is still alive and kicking it at age 90. I thought surely he'd died years ago. The question is, what other celebrities did I think were long-dead who are in fact still alive? Oscar Niemeyer is one who continues to amaze me, as he's still alive and working at age 103. Ariel Sharon is another, as he is both very advanced in age and also in a coma. Aretha Franklin is a spry 69, but I still think of her in terms of music she recorded when she was 25. Anyway, the Internet is a terrible resource on this point, as most lists of notable people you find are out-of-date. It requires checking each one's Wikipedia page to find out if they're really still alive.

QOTD: What unusual payment and delivery systems am I unaware of?

xv — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 20:53:02 GMT

Although it's been around forever, I never got around to actually using one of Staple's Internet kiosks that they have in their furniture department, mainly because I don't like their furniture. Turns out I was missing out on something pretty cool. You can use the kiosk to buy anything in their catalog (yes, even staples) and have it overnighted for free to any store. This might seem like "so what," but the cool bit is that the kiosk, unlike your home computer, lets you pay in hard currency at the cash register. It prints a bar code that you take up to the clerk, who scans it when you pay, and then authorizes the transaction. The next day you go to the store and pick it up, just like a hold at the library. Who knew the Internet took cash?

Buying things online without a credit card is certainly a thrill. The only drawback is that it's not perfectly anonymous, even though it could be. Their order form requires that you divulge your personal information, but I think that's just for their convenience, as they use the same form for all delivery options. Also, oddly, while they offer the cashier option in-store, that feature is not available to the Internet at-large. It makes sense: who wants to visit the store once to pay, and go again to pick up? But that's essentially what I'm doing already, because I do my research online, and then go to their kiosk to start the order process over again. It makes more sense that they should allow me to accumulate a stack of unpaid receipts over time, and then take them in together to pay. In fact, the design of the system implies this feature, as the kiosk gives you no less than one year to make the epic journey from the furniture department to the cashier's desk before it expires.

So, my question is, what other online merchants accept cold hard cash? I'm aware that certain brick & mortar stores will place special orders for you. I've never tried it before, but it seems relatively labor-intensive. I like the Staples set up because it doesn't require me to actually deal with humans, it's automated end-to-end. Walmart lets you buy its gift cards with cash at the store, that you can then use to purchase things on their website and have them shipped for free to your nearest FedEx Office (FKA Kinko's), which might be useful if I ever wanted to buy something from Walmart. This is just occurring to me, but this "no credit card" business must be part of why there's a whole galaxy of gift cards for sale at my drug store. It's unfortunate that it's seemingly limited to only the major corporate players. You can of course buy gift credit cards, but those are ridiculously expensive.

Also, the Internet points out that Coinstar machines generate fee-free gift cards. The one I checked out at Walmart (I know, right) told me I could only get an iTunes gift certificate, though the Internet tells me I should have gone to Winn Dixie or Save Rite to get an Amazon GC.

Paypal is another option. But it continues to surprise me how few Internet merchants utilize this service, more than a decade after it was launched.

QOTD: Does NCAL exist in 10.5.8?

xv — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 23:36:37 GMT

I can't find it. man cal says "command appeared in FreeBSD 2.2.6" which is since like 1998. Pretty sure it was working on whatever flavor of 10.6 I was last using. Also, related, is there a simple way to dope which build of Darwin I'm rocking? Also, would like to see a detailed list of feature upgrades to see what else I've missed.

QOTD: What's up with breakfast?

xv — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 18:53:02 GMT

This is a scam, right? I wake up, I'm not at all hungry, and now I'm expected to wolf down a pile of eggs and pancakes? Seriously? The research most frequently cited in support of this idea is a survey of a couple thousand people which found that self-reported breakfast-skippers were often fat. This doesn't seem like the kind of research one should rely on to urge people to eat more food. We eat way too much food in this country, and the prescription from nutritionists has always been "now eat more!" I think that anything that reduces your overall input of calories in a day is good, and anything that increases your overall output of calories in a day is also good. For me, skipping breakfast reduces my total caloric input. Same goes for skipping dinner. If all I need is a light lunch, and that satisfies me completely, then why do I need to be eating all day?