Clinton may challenge Texas vote rules – Yahoo! News: “Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign has raised the possibility of a challenge to Texas’ primary and caucus rules just days before the contest, drawing a warning against legal action from the state’s Democratic Party.”
Well, I suppose if you can’t win legitimately…
Like many people who are technophiles, I tend to spend a great deal of time and energy investigating options before any major purchase. As the HDTV juggernaut grew increasingly prominent, I realized I had to upgrade or…gasp..be left behind. After months of forum browsing, review deconstruction, literature perusal, and aisle roaming, I made my decision. After weeks of waiting, the TV arrived the same day my wife went into labor. Though I enjoyed the first few months with both my son and my new plasma, the former soon edged out the latter in my confined schedule. Netflix was cancelled, then cable, and my lovely plasma become nothing more than an energy-efficient piece of furniture.
That has all changed. Not due to any reduced demands from my rapidly developing toddler, but due to the addition of one small piece of equipment: the Apple TV. The original concept of the Apple TV, introduced in early 2007, was to allow iTunes media (TV shows, movies, music, etc.) to be enjoyed on a TV or home theater system. Photos could also be transferred over, much like on the iPod.
This sounded nice, but was not compelling enough to lead me to buy the Apple TV until a recent price drop and software upgrade, which added the ability for the box to connect directly to the internet for media downloads and movie rentals. My TV has gone from useless to nearly constantly in use while I am home, but not for the reasons you might think.
I have not actually taken advantage of any of the new features of the Apple TV, such as movie rentals, which most reviewers agree make it a much more interesting purchase. Rather, the Apple TV has become the conduit to get my home movies (now exclusively digital) to the big screen. Though I could certainly watch the same movies in HD on my computer screen, it’s really not the same experience (and just looks better on the plasma). Furthermore, the ability to play photo albums with Apple’s “Ken Burns” zoom effects turns my plasma into a giant photo frame which is a real pleasure to have running (assuming that there are good photos to see). When the Apple TV is unused for a few minutes, a mesmerizing cascade of photos flies by on the screen.
It’s hard to convey this experience in words, but it has really redefined how I think of a TV’s purpose in the living room. I’m sure with time I’ll take advantage of the other features as well, but for now, I’m more than happy with replaying memories on this giant tableau. My son seems to enjoy it as well (I’m still working on getting him to use the iPhone).
The Audacity of Hopelessness – New York Times: “The insults continued on Tuesday night when a surrogate preceding Mrs. Clinton onstage at an Ohio rally, Tom Buffenbarger of the machinists’ union, derided Obama supporters as “latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust-fund babies.” Even as he ranted, exit polls in Wisconsin were showing that Mr. Obama had in fact won that day among voters with the least education and the lowest incomes. Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Obama received the endorsement of the latte-drinking Teamsters.”
It should be noted that, while I do drive a Prius and drink lattes, I do not wear Birkenstock’s or have a trust-fund. Just for the record.
This is why it was a bad idea of Clinton to play the plagiarism card…
The Democratic primaries have been the most interesting that I can recall having followed, certainly more than the current Republican nomination battle which the media keeps trying to insist is still a contest.
On the Democratic side, Clinton and Obama have waged a competitive battle for the nomination, though with his recent string of 10 victories, it looks as if it’s all but certain to land in Obama’s lap. It’s no great surprise. All you have to do is listen to the post-Wisconsin speeches from the two candidates last night to realize that Hillary has a problem. Though Obama can be rightfully criticized for an excessively lengthy speech than ran over 40 minutes, it was telling that I was able to contain my hunger for Nature’s Path FlaxPlus Granola to hear it in its entirety. Unlike previous Obama speeches I have heard from Obama, this combined both his usually inspiring oratory with specific policy pledges. I was so moved by his call for change, that I decided to have some of the Kix that my son had rejected earlier that day in favor of my usual nightly cereal.
Hillary is in desperate need of a new speechwriter. Her speech came across as meandering and flat. All the talk of “working hard” harkened back to Bush’s ’04 debates about how he was going to solve America’s problems by working harder. Then again, Bush got elected. Her campaign seems to be a mess recently, relying on attempts to create bogus charges of plagiarism instead of promoting her own strengths (note to Wolfson: it’s hard to make a charge of plagiarism stick when the person credited with the original speech is campaigning for the person using the words). Each day seems like a new attempt to find a message and a strategy, each less successful than the previous. She’s not out of the race yet, but I just cannot see her turning this around.
But the real reason for my endorsement is the following from a recent Newsweek article:
“Michelle recently bought two MacBook laptops, one for Barack and one for the kids, so they could have video chats over the Internet.”
Done.
(Note: the author of this post is not a super-delegate, but often pretended to be one as a child).
I’ve been a big fan of the Apple’s Aperture software for digital photo management and editing since version 1.5. Though other programs have arguably had an edge in fine-tuning images, nothing I’ve seen has matched Aperture’s ability to organize photos and share them with other applications. Version 1.5 was getting a bit long in the tooth, and many have been thinking about jumping ship to something like Adobe’s Lightroom due to the lack of recent updates. Hot on the heels of yesterday’s substantial update to Leopard is Aperture 2, now available from the Apple Store. Details are scant. As of this writing, Apple has not yet updated the Aperture page, but I’m looking forward to seeing what they have done with this program.
It is with great frustration that I find myself using Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac. After years of putting up with the sluggish Office 2004, loyal users are rewarded with this piece of garbage. Though there are admittedly some improvements in the apps themselves, there is some inexcusable bugginess in the interface that is driving me nuts.
Microsoft Word is the biggest culprit so far. It generally misbehaves with Spaces. Windows will relocate to a new space for no good reason. Sometimes windows will not come to the foreground when clicked. This is not a general problem with Spaces, but is unique to Word as best I can tell.
Excel is giving me a rather unique problem at the moment. I have an external monitor hooked up to my MacBook. When I put an Excel window on the external monitor, it won’t let me drag it to the top of the screen. It only lets me drag it as far as the top of my internal screen, which is only about 2/3 of the way up the (larger) external display.
Microsoft tried to add new functionality by pop-up ribbons in both applications, but I have yet to find anything useful hidden in these interface monstrosities.
The educational version of Office also fails to connect to Microsoft’s own Exchange servers. Given the prevalence of Exchange use at academic institutions, this is mind-boggling.
The last complaint is admittedly not a bug, but rather a foolish feature restriction. The former issues are completely inexcusable and are likely completely due to Microsoft’s non-standard development practices. Add to this the fact that the apps are slow to launch, and I think there will rapidly be an emerging market for non-MS office apps.
Why? I’m not sure. But if you use Twitter, feel free to add my stream (infobhan).
If you don’t use Twitter, give it a try.
On the Mac, Twitterrific makes this easy.
I’ve never been a big follower of sports. The reason I usually give is that I don’t want to make the initial investment needed to get to know the teams and players. The real reason is probably that I love competition and can get easily worked up. The few times that I have gotten sucked in (e.g. the 2004 Red Sox World Series victory), it has not been pretty.
I have found a (?) more productive outlet for my competitive tendencies: politics, and it seems I am not alone. Interest in the election, and voting more specifically, is on the rise. I found myself continuously reloading CNN’s Super Tuesday primary results web last night and realized that it’s going to be a long year.
That said, there are still people who manage to maintain immunity to the whole process. Yesterday at work:
Me: Hey, [name withheld], happy “Super Tuesday”!
[name withheld]: What’s “Super Tuesday”?
Me: Are you serious? It’s the big election day.
[name withheld]: Oh, um, I don’t really know much about the local elections.
Me: (Wondering if by “local” he means “national”) You do realize that it’s the presidential primaries I’m talking about.
[name withheld]: I’m an independent…
Gives a new meaning to independent!
Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC? – New York Times
Interesting take on the Democratic campaigns, though it really seems to focus mostly on the candidates’ websites.