Google Wave kills MS Exchange dead

That wouldn't that be cool? And the sauce is open!

http://wave.google.com/about.html

Apple compact USB keyboard FAIL

I needed to run a few simple tests booted to Knoppix on my Mac Mini but the Mini refused to boot to the cd drive, despite me holding down the "c" key during boot. I resorted to using the Startup Disc applet in the System Preferences and finally I was able to boot to Knoppix.
I ran my tests in Knoppix and rebooted, ejecting the Knoppix cdrom. I expected the Mini to boot into OS X since that was the only boot volume available.

Guess what? The screen turns black and there's a message saying there is "no bootable device." Yay!

I scurried off to google and the Apple formus to find a solution. I tried every key combination they suggested and none worked. After wasting an hour trying everything short of defenestrating the Mini, I stumbled over a post suggesting my compact Apple keyboard was blame. Turns out these compact, USB aluminum keyboards Apple makes are incapable of producing the signals required to do important stuff like access the boot manager, reset the nvram etc.

In short, they are not real Apple keyboards.

I had to attach a full-sized,  Apple keyboard to invoke the boot manager. What bullshit!

My thanks to Apple for charging me $50 for a crippled keyboard.

Bacon on the grill

If you have a bbq fire that's burning low and slow, try cooking some bacon on it. You need to keep the bacon away from the coals so it doesn't catch fire. You want to cook it "indirectly," i.e. you want the heat and smoke from the coals and or wood but you want the fire on one side of the grill and the bacon on the other. Man, it's good!

check-as-you-type spell checkers are bad

Urgh. I just realized why so many people misuse the apostrophe these days. If you type "CDROMs" into a post on slashdot or the like, the automatic spelling checker flags the string as a misspelling. The user needs only to add an apostrophe before the "s" and the spell checker is satisfied.

Just another example of computers making people dumber.

Ingredient List

www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/19/penguin-cook-book

Oh poo. Blogger.com does not support animated gifs.

porfreeder needid

Dyndns.com is a great service but they seem to be in need of a proofreader.

"A nameserver is a computer that answers questions about domain names, such as IP addresses."

http://www.dyndns.com/support/kb/what_is_dns.html#how

This is what happens when you try to dumb stuff down too much. The goofy graphics don't help either.

Volcanic Fallout Curtails Air Travel in Europe

I'm in awe of this Icelandic volcano's effect on European airline travel. Just think of how fscked Europe would be if they did not have a great rail system. Not that the trains can accommodate all the stranded air passengers but the situation would be vastly worse without them.

If you were a jingoistic, teabagger type you might say, "we have nothing to learn from the Europeans." Since I'm not one of the aforementioned knownothings I'll say, "we need a high speed rail system connecting the twenty largest cities in the U.S. and screw the mission to Mars." The rail system would employ vastly more people (of all skill levels) than a Mars mission and it's actually needed.

Let this rail system be a mix of public and private operators for all I care as long as it works. We'll be especially glad we built it when one of our own volcanoes erupts.