UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

One really cool thing about participating in the RPM Challenge, beside forcing myself to record a new album and get it out there in just a month’s time, was getting to discover so much great talent out there amongst my fellow home-recorders. One of the most interesting people I’ve been introduced to through this process is a Chicago-based artist and musician named Joshua Wentz. And Josh was kind enough to invite me to be featured on his B-Sides podcast. Check it out!

While you’re there, be sure to check out all of Josh’s great graphic design work, not to mention his own music. I especially recommend the latest in his series of improvised tracks known as the Winchester Sessions.

Once again, Digg proves to be a source not only of random information of the moment, but some of the most unexpected, bizarre creations I’ve ever encountered.

In this case, it’s work from pixeloo, wherein cartoon/video game characters are rendered in quasi-realistic detail. Brace yourself…

I hadn’t been keeping up with the saga of Psystar this week, so I assumed they’d crawled back under their rock. No, apparently they’re still promoting this asinine open Mac concept of theirs.

This photo of their headquarters says it all. Yes: their “Open Computing Headquarters” is “Not Open to the Public.”

Brilliant. But that barely scratches the surface of this twisted story.

I have to admit, after the last I’d read about them, I’m incredibly surprised to see that they exist in a physical location at all. I get the distinct feeling that their presence is more temporary than those fireworks stands that pop up along the roadside in rural Wisconsin in mid-June.

I knew it was probably coming, so it wasn’t a total shock. But still… I woke up this morning to this:

Ugh. It will most likely have melted by noon, I suppose. Not that that will do much to repair my severely damaged psychological state.

Even worse, I’m annoyed that the default CSS for the new WordPress gallery functionality uses float: left so when there are only two images, it doesn’t center them, but leaves a nice, perfectly-sized void where a third photo would have gone. I’ll have to fix that. Speaking of voids, my annoyance (and distraction) at snow and CSS is somewhat compensated for by the smooth “electronic breakbeat jazz” grooves of Revolution Void.

Update, 8:13 AM: Great, now it’s actually snowing more. Take that, global warming! (Yes, please check out that site, if for no other reason than to prove that just because your URL is “globalwarming.org” doesn’t mean you’re a benevolent non-profit trying to save the world.)

I know there were already dozens of blog entries the day after Leopard “dropped” with instructions on how to remove the shiny Dock, but I’ve actually been living with it peacefully and almost liking it.

But now at my new job, I’m not sure if it’s the saturated color on my iMac display, the particular desktop image I’m using, or some strange combination of those and other factors, but the Dock’s reflection was painfully (yes, painfully) shiny and distracting, so I just had to look up how to get rid of it.

Apparently there’s a whole cottage industry now around customizing the Leopard Dock’s appearance, but all I really wanted was the simple look you get when you have the Dock on the left or right side, but when the Dock is resting nicely on the bottom where it belongs. It was surprisingly difficult (in that I had to do three whole searches and then hunt through a few links on the first page of results of each) before I found (again) the simple command line instructions to accomplish this task. And in the interest of saving myself the trouble next time (if there is a next time), I’m posting them here:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
killall Dock