Monthly Archives: August 2008

802.11n

There are apparently no 802.11n USB doohickeys that operate on the 5GHz spectrum AND work on OS X. There are a couple that support 802.11n on the 2.4GHz frequency range, but using 2.4GHz is what I am trying to avoid because there are about 75 million 802.11g networks reachable from our living room.

I guess we can return this stupid USB dongle. I could have sworn I found someone on a forum talking about how it worked with one of the original, pre-.11n MacBooks somehow, but apparently that was full of shit.

But hey, this brand new Airport Extreme looks pretty! And I can hook up a hard drive to it later for phatty network storage.

Dear Any Company Who Makes USB Wifi Adapters,

Please start making dual-band 802.11n USB adapters that work on a Mac. No one buys PCs anymore anyway.

Love,
Tape

Lovecraft

Selections From H.P. Lovecraft’s Brief Tenure as a Whitman’s Sampler Copywriter

Haaaaahaha.

Caramel Chew

There is a dimension ruled by a blind caramel God-King who sits on a vast, cyclopean milk-chocolate throne while his mindless, gooey followers dance to the piping of crazed flutes. It is said that there are gateways in our world that lead to this caramel hell-planet. The delectable Caramel Chew may be one such portal.

Rebates via Amazon.com

Thinking about buying something on amazon.com that has a rebate associated with it?

Don’t buy it and think you’re going to get the rebate.

I’ve been in customer support runaround for about 2 weeks because they’ve grossly botched even the process of providing the correct mail-in rebate form for the MacBook Pro I bought from them.

They now have 48 hours before I start making complaints to the Federal Trade Commission (interstate commerce, woo!) and the Attorney General’s office.

UPDATE: Someone at Amazon finally got their head out of their butt and helped me out. My rebate is now submitted and “scheduled for final processing”. So that’s promising.

Happy 10th, iMac

Hard to believe it’s been 10 years since my friend Matt got a friend to drive him to New Hampshire to buy a brand new fancypants iMac, but lo and behold, the iMac indeed turns 10 today.

Check out the awesome specs the original iMac had:

  • 233 MHz PowerPC 750 (a.k.a. G3)
  • 32 MB of PC-100 RAM (expandable to 256 MB)
  • 4 GB EIDE hard drive
  • 15″ CRT monitor w/ 1024×768 resolution, 2 MB video RAM
  • 24x CD-ROM
  • 56k modem
  • 10/100baseT ethernet
  • built in speakers
  • 2 USB ports
  • Mac OS 8.1
  • 40 pounds
  • no floppy drive
  • translucent! you could see inside it! whoa!

The iMac also created, indirectly, a several-year period of time where absolutely everyone else had to make products that featured a translucent colored-and-clear plastic design. I don’t just mean computer/peripheral companies (the iMac-flavored printers were especially gross), but seriously everyone. I recall seeing a fake-Bondi Blue boom box once. I have a vague recollection of a iMac-styled coffee maker. The iMac look was everywhere.

And really, if the iMac never came out, we wouldn’t have iPods, iPhones and Apple TVs, and Apple probably would have been completely out of business about 7 years ago. So thanks for sticking around, Apple; I really love the MacBook Pro I got last week.

Favre to the Jets

So Brett Favre just got traded to the Jets.

Ted Thompson just made the exclusive list of people I will immediately punch in the stomach if I ever meet them.

But hey, I guess it’s cool that I’ve never really felt too ingrained as a Patriots fan since moving here (the first Super Bowl winning team was cool, but after that… meh), so if I feel like being a Jets fan this year, I don’t have to feel weird about it.

Random Album Cover

Discovered via Dan and Kim, a process to make a random album cover, complete with random band name, random title, and random artwork. It goes like this:

  1. Your band needs a name. Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random and the title of the first article is your band’s name.
  2. Your album needs a title. Go to http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3, scroll down to the last quote in the list, and the last four words of that quote shall be the album’s title.
  3. Finally, your album needs artwork. Go to http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/ and use the third picture. Personally, I checked to see if the third picture had a Creative Commons license that allowed for derivative works, and if it did not, I reloaded the page until the third picture had such a license. You know, because I’m a nice guy like that.

My first foray into said experiment went as such:

Chinook Pass - Chaos With Better Lighting

Not bad. The image and the quote go together semi-well, and honestly, “Chinook Pass” is not that bad of a band name. The quote was attributed to Alan Dean Foster: “Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting.”

I could have made something slightly more exciting, but I’m at work and only have MS Paint. I think the simplicity of it goes well though.