It looks like it didn't take long for spammers/scammers to start cashing in on swine flu. Doing my weekly sweep of my spam folder do find false positives I saw this:
NY victims of swine flu
Super supplement for natural immunity improving
[URI REMOVED]
Georgine Kildow
While I find all spam designed to scam people out of money or to infect their machines irritating and sinister, scams involving diseases that are killing people just seem worse.
| Debra | Rainer | Elke | Ruben |
|---|---|---|---|
| ~ | ~ | ~ | Podcast |
| ~ | Flickr | Flickr | Flickr |
| del.icio.us | del.icio.us | ~ | del.icio.us |
| ~ | last.fm | last.fm | last.fm |
| ~ |
The MacBook Pros from the Apple Store website
Lots of rumours going around regarding an update to the MacBooks. While MacRumors does say the average time between updates has elapsed, I can't see them doing anything drastic before the back-to-school specials in the States. An updated 15 inch MacBook Pro might be more likely though.
I've been saving and holding out for an upgrade to my first generation MacBook Pro for a while now, but with each new offering I feel the difference in performance wouldn't justify the cost of a new machine.
My problem is I spend half my time in Adelaide and half my time in Singapore which limits me to using a portable computer as my primary production machine unless I want to only have it for six months a year. I'd also prefer not to have to buy external LCDs to hook it up to because I just don't want to deal with cable mess!
A current 17" MacBook Pro with the gorgeous 1920×1200 screen would be the ultimate desktop replacement powerhouse I could take with me from Singapore to Adelaide and vica versa, but alas even for a nerd like me I can't justify spending AU$4000 on a new machine!
Comparing screen resolutions
There are many things Apple could announce in a new 15" MacBook Pro including the ultra high capacity non-removable battery from the 17" model, a quad core CPU to make me slightly less envious of those who can use desktops, an internal 3G data antenna, a Jim Kloss waffle iron with built in pickle dispenser…
What would be the killer feature for me, and I've been saying this for years, is a higher resolution display. The biggest archilies heel of my current MacBook Pro isn't it's 32bit CPU but it's 1440×900 display: it's plenty wide enough to use as a primary display but it's just not tall enough for scrolling large documents. My Philips 19 inch LCD from 2003 had 1280×1024 which had more vertical real estate.
Given Apple bumped up the 17" from 1680×1050 to 1920×1200 as standard, surely they could help a guy like me out by bumping 1440×900 to 1680×1050 in the 15" model. Dell and HP even offer 15" notebooks with 1920×1200 so it is possible!
A 15" MacBook Pro with a 1680×1050 display dual booting AMD64 FreeBSD and Mac OS X Snow Leopard would be the ultimate machine!
In my quest to find the most useful virtualisation software for Mac I've so far used Parallels Desktop, VMware Fusion and Q.app in various capacities. Today I decided to take a closer look at VirtualBox, the free and open source virtualisation software by Sun Microsystems.
Firstly the good news: VirtualBox is fast. Because it can take advantage of VT-x in the Intel processors of modern Macs the performance is in an entirely different league to QEMU based applications and much closer in performance to expensive (at least in the eyes of a university student!) commercial products from VMware and Parallels.
Because of it's higher performance, VirtualBox can run all current flavours of BSD, Linux and Windows that I've thrown at it just beautifully. Creating machines is a snap, and the shortcut keys for commands such as hard reset (command-R) are the best of any Mac virtualisation product I've used.
Unfortunately for me there have been some problems. For starters, considering it's a Sun product I found it disheartening to find OpenSolaris 08.11 can't pass the initial boot stage to install without giving an error which is a shame. FreeBSD has difficulty using the emulated optical drive which in practical usage is fine but it means you need to initally install over a network, no easy install of an ISO is possible. And for my electronic nostalgia, VirtualBox crashes whenever I attempt to load either the EMM386 or UMBCPI upper memory managers in MS-DOS 6.22 or PC DOS 2000 despite exhaustive attempts to map the correct memory addresses.
As I said on my Q.app review, my first generation Core Duo MacBook Pro seems to be a very quirky machine for virtualisation: it seems to have troubles than most Apple people don't seem to have! Keeping this in mind I'm ready to chalk these problems up to my eccentric machine, but it's still a bit disheartening.
VirtualBox has the potential to be an amazing product, and certainly for Windows and Linux it does the job beautifully — especially for the price! Unfortunately for my own current needs though I'm going to have to give it a pass; while it does run Windows 2000 amazingly well I'd prefer not to have to use several higher end virtualisation products for different things.
I'm not quite sure why I really love this photo. Maybe it's the clear sky, beautiful trees, the fact there isn't a car anywhere in the shot (I'm sure Todd would approve of the latter too!). Adelaide is a beautiful place, but so few people outside Australia know about it compared to Sydney and whatnot. I guess that's to be expected. Is the Premier of New South Wales on Twitter though? ;-)
The photo is part of a series of shots taken around Glenelg and Adelaide Airport by Soak01 over at the Singapore Airlines Talk forums.
I wish I could remember where I found this other shot too. The black building in the centre left is the Oracle tower where I got one of my first part time jobs here. The lighter yellow colour building in front of it is the Myer Centre on Rundle Mall, the first open air pedestrian shopping street without cars that opened in Australia.
This Sunday evening's Google Reader induced discussion (I really like the wording of that) is regarding a website idea I wish I had thought of myself given I've been quite vocal on the issue recently! AdFreeBlog.org is a simple site containing a series of graphics you can put on your blog if you adhere to the following principals:
By using this icon on my website I am stating…
1. That I am opposed to the use of corporate advertising on blogs.
2. That I feel the use of corporate advertising on blogs devalues the medium.
3. That I do not accept money in return for advertising space on my blog.
signed,
the author
At one point back in 2007 I had Google Adwords on my blog, but when I realised the costs associated with more visual clutter, less relevant information, slower page loading speeds and irritating distractions far outweighed the money it made I got rid of it. Besides, I use AdBlock Plus so I figured I shouldn't be a hypocrite and force others to see advertisements!
I'm absolutely ready to take that quoted paragraph and sign it with my name, but I do have two nagging questions:
I suspect it all comes down to comparing loud commercial advertising that detracts from the web page viewing experience, and tastefully designed links to other sites you include yourself as an act of goodwill and that have something relevant to do with your material.
Or at least that's how I interpret it. I'm still getting my head around software licences, don't get me started on this!
This post brought to you by the great folks at Grilled Cheese Sandwich File System Research Laboratories Pty Ltd, a research organisation funded by the Department of Redundant Information Department as commissioned and ordered by the Bureau of Oversight.
It may come as a complete surprise to many of you that in posts here I have a somewhat obsessive obsession (obsessive obsession of this kind doesn't lend itself to generating original and interesting adjectives) with grilled cheese sandwiches. At one point I even tagged posts where I had referenced them somewhere with their own tag. I should resurrect that.
The photo you can see above was by Sparx in response to my said obsessive obsession:
I took this photo some time ago for Ruben just because he seems to have a thing about grilled cheese sandwiches. (I think he’s rigged his Mac to make his grilled cheese sandwiches!) And now it’s grilled cheese sandwich week. So, in honor of the occasion and Ruben…
Perhaps she also highlighted one reason why I seem to be able to talk the talk but not walk the walk with my own grilled cheese sandwich creations themselves:
BTW, that’s an authentic 35+ year old cast iron skillet. It makes the best grilled sandwiches.
In Australia grilled cheese sandwiches are referred to as jaffles, and you can buy jaffle irons that look like and function similar to waffle irons. Australian recipes also call for onions, avocado and sometimes salami or another cold lunch meat to be put into it as well. They're wickedly good.
I got used to calling them grilled cheese sandwiches when we moved to Singapore, if you go to a western breakfast cafe and ask for a jaffle all you get is blank stares!
Winter is definitely on it's way to Adelaide, seems like now is as good a time as ever to give these a try again!
Stan: I can’t believe it! This “future self” thing is all a scam!
Butters: Yeah, I can’t believe it!
Stan: They’ve been lying to us this whole time!
Butters: Yeah, this whole time! I wonder if my future self knows anything about this?
I just can't begin to explain what's wrong with this.
I guess I should disclose that I intensely dislike AFL and the religious following it seems to generate, but even if I liked it comparing a victory or loss to the fallen Australian and New Zealand diggers of war is just… it's like comparing a ritualistic bonfire to war. Sheesh.
Clipmarked from ABC News:
Furious Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse says the Magpies let the Anzacs down after Essendon booted three late goals to snatch a thrilling five-point victory in the annual AFL blockbuster at the MCG.
Slashdot has an article asking you to remember when you first installed Linux. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I can remember my first Linux installation vividly.
I was 14 or 15 I think and it was a Saturday which meant I was window shopping at the Challenger superstore at the top floor of Funan Centre! I had just walked into the software section which was separated by a huge space station looking thing suspended from the roof that I always thought looked cool in a very retro way, when I saw this box with a graphic of a weird, silhouetted figure of a guy wearing a red hat. At the time Red Hat Linux was THE Linux distribution and was available in cartons like commercial software.
I had heard of Linux but had never used it before and didn't even really understand the free software movement, but I was shocked at how cheap it was compared to Windows so I used my allowance and bought it! I sat at the Delifrance downstairs and had a snack and read the back of the box trying to understand what I'd need to do to get it running. I was really excited!
When I got home I pulled out an old machine from retirement, booted it up and started installing it. I was absolutely enthralled by the process, it was so unlike anything I had used before coming from a DOS and Windows background! I've since moved onto FreeBSD for most of my non-Mac machines, but I still have fond memories of that day, until that point.
Barely had the installer started, my dad told me to go with him to the hospital. It turns out my mum had suffered a major complication in her chemotherapy treatment which even back then had been going on for years. I'll spare the details, but suffice to say what I found out scared the heck out me.
My cynical teenage years started around that time, it seemed whenever something good happened to my family or to me something bad just had to happen to neutralise it, because we weren't allowed to be normal. I guess that's the way Murphey's Law works, right?
Anyway at least one good thing happened; buying that box started my current love for tinkering with OSs, Unix-like systems and with free and open source software and platforms.
I still wonder even now whether I would have stayed a Windows guy had that not happened. If so, what would this blog read like now? I guess I'd be defending Windows Vista/7, telling everyone the Microsoft Office ribbon is wonderful and that the only reason Windows is so insecure is because of it's large desktop market share. Perhaps I could have even been hired to write an astroturfing blog! Come to think of it, it'd probably have made more money than this blog does ;-).
