Monday, September 04, 2006

Cool Program the Really Gets At the Core of Distraction

I was browsing through the love-fest about Apple I saw over on Digg [http://theocacao.com/document.page/298] (which, as an aside, I'm so stunned at how much I love the company I'm with. I mean, 7 years ago, you couldn't pry a Mac from my cold dead hands, and now I'm completely in the opposite camp. It's not to say that I don't recognize their very impressive focus, but I'm not a fan of OS X's UI, ESPECIALLY the dock (I still love OS 9), and it still annoys the crap out of me that so many of the best games and programs seem to be way delayed in coming to the Mac. On the other hand, the shareware and simple programs that DO appear on the Mac are orders of magnitude better than their PC counterparts (BBEdit v. UltraEdit as an example)), and I came upon a program that is REALLY cool.

It's call WriteRoom and not only does it take over the entire screen, but it drops ALL the extra stuff you have around to reduce distractions. Check it out...




I absolutely love it! I wonder with the new Parallels for the PC if I'll be able to run Mac programs...

D

posted by Iron Yuppie 9/04/2006 09:18:00 AM   0 Comments

Sunday, September 03, 2006

"Lorem ipsum" history

Man, I've wanted to know where that Lorem Ipsum text that is the default for so many programs text came from. I actually thought it was real language, but apparently it's just jibberish, or more like Latin words that are mixed up (Imagine "quick lazy the jumped fox dog over") but seem like and are formatted as correct text. Thanks Digg!

read more digg story

Updated: The comments pointed out this site: Lipsum ... that's probably the most useful thing I've ever seen in a Digg comment.

posted by Iron Yuppie 9/03/2006 07:11:00 PM   0 Comments

Friday, September 01, 2006

Superman's Humble Beginnings

Thanks digg for finding this! Let me tell you, I thought it was so cool to read this first appearance of Superman. The interesting thing is how different it was from the standard legend:

  • Krypton was dying from "old age"
  • Superman grew up in an orphanage
  • Superman is only described as "leaping", never as flying - and the comics all
  • He is not described as impermeable, but that "nothing less than a bursting shell" can penetrate his skin
  • There are scientific reasons (!!) given for how he's so strong
  • His second crime stop ever described is domestic violence
  • There is a science lesson embedded about closed circuits and electricity
  • And, finally, it's only 15 pages long and there are 64 total pages in the book... wild!

Check it out! Plus, I LOVE those old-timey ads.


read more digg story

posted by Iron Yuppie 9/01/2006 02:26:00 PM   0 Comments

The Throw Backs of All Throw Backs

This just in, Madonna is still hot. I thought she had lost a little too much weight, I liked her a bit better in the "Open Your Heart" / "Express Yourself" era, but still.

I love this song too: Hung Up

But the reason for this post is how funny I think it is that she's sampled an ABBA song that was released just a year before her first release ("Everybody") and just three years before her first album ("Madonna"). Her longevity is, in fact, so great that she has made it back to the point where society and popular culture has circled back and now finds the stuff she did at the start of her career in vogue again. She's going to be sampling her own songs soon. I love it!

posted by Iron Yuppie 9/01/2006 09:28:00 AM   0 Comments