YOUR CHOICE
Regularly
scheduled font
or large serif

I've pulled together all the info from my Palm notes, the post-its decorating my monitor, and the bits o' paper cluttered around the keyboard; and voila, today's supah-long post.

Lack of entries lately have been due to the on-going process of updating, and downloading, and backing up, and trying this out and that out. Time consuming, but a lot of OS X's ooo's and ahhh's. I've always liked shiney things.

And I've had my hands full with Stuff, mostly good Stuff like painting class and actually spending time with Honey; and some bad Stuff like playing catch up on a year's worth of business-related bookkeeping before doing our taxes.

Enough whining; well, okay, maybe just a little more.

QUIET PANIC
When Bettie first began unraveling a couple of weeks ago, one of the first clues was that Photoshop wouldn't open. I almost panicked. No, I did panic. But quietly and while sitting very still, staring at my monitor as my chest tightened and my breathing became too loud in my ears.

I tried Reason. I could still edit webpages. I could still say whatever I wanted. What were a few images?

It's crazy, but my stomach bottomed out when the realization hit: no images, no words. Oh no! When did I crossover? I felt oddly vulnerable for a few seconds, but the 'go with the flow' kicked in. This tiny epiphany took place in less than a minute. I've put this bit of disconcerting self-knowledge on the Back Burner. Will revisit later.

AN APPLE A DAY AND OS X RELATED UPDATES
Speaking of Photoshop, Screenshots of Photoshop 7 that will work nicely with OS X. Thanks, Mike.

Updated my Palm with the OS X version, and hot-synched that puppy for the first time since January 19th.

Updated to Fetch 4.0.1 ($25). Because of a bug in 4.0.1, be sure when opening your old Fetch shortcuts, to go to Preferences - uncheck Use Internet Config in the General section, and in the Firewall section check Use Passive Mode Transfers (PASV). Other than that, muy bueno. Will have to look into it's newer features once my plate clears.

BTW here's Apple's drivers page.

Downloaded iPhoto. Great tag line: Shoot like Ansel. Organize like Martha.) and played for several hours. What a great way to organize, arrange and rotate pictures. I love the slide show features where you can add music from your iTunes. Very nice experience when you organize pictures into albums (Michelle's Hair), set in the preferences the music (Michelle-Beatles), and watch the hairdo pictures as they dissolve into each other. Very niiice.

Honey is in the process of downloading Netscape 6.2.1 for OS X. IE 5.1 came with OS X, but is insidious. Be sure to double check those preferences. He also downloaded Opera 5.0b4.498. Love the OS X look and feel, but does a couple of odd things I hadn't counted on, like the button style on my page is now OS X-like which is not what I had in mind. My 'Your Choice' in fonts doesn't work. Will have to look into.

On to the CD burner. You can check the mechanism type and firmware via the System Profiler (OS X's Application - Utilities - Apple System Profiler - Devices and Volumes). You can go to FireWire & USB CD-R Compatibility chart to check out your cd burner. I had been using Roxio Toast to burn cd's, but with OS X you can burn right from the system.

From the MacSurfer trail, Applelust's How to Buy a Digital Camera, and Digital Camera Buying Guide.

Those links lead to Cameras that are compatible with iPhoto and Apple's list of printers that work with OS X.

Apple halting it's plan to include MPEG-4 in the next version of Quicktime due to per-minute fee. RealNetworks rethinking also. Thank god we don't have to pay for HTML. Thanks, Tomalak.

CODE
The Designers Network. Inspiration.

The False Prophets of Usability. Jumping on the bandwagon.

Don't let your websites fall out of windows. I've always used a new window for outside links on my pages; don't know if this article convinces me to do otherwise. Back Burner.

Also from Lois's site she covers alt texts for images which gives a good suggestion on using a 'D' like justvanilla.com does since LONGDESC isn't supported by all browsers.

Eric's Liberty! Equality! Validity!. Thanks, Jeffrey.

Scott's argument for XHTML and CSS besides the fact that it's the standard with W3C.

WEBNESS
Follow the Enron trail: UBSWenergy.com by any other name is still EnronOnline; well, okay, it's just Enron's trading platform.

Steven has his own site. Dude, I knew you'd want to know.

Need an email account that will make an impression?

Hollywood's arrogance is just amazing. Hoping for a consumer backlash.

Virus hoax resurfaces.

Chip aka Playboy Advisor answers the hard questions, like what three traits are most valuable in a Playmate interviewer. Go to Chip's site for articles like The Moron's Guide to a Larger Penis, and other fascinating topics.

SAD NOTE
I heard Jack Johnson singing, 'I don't care if it rains or freezes, long as I got my plastic Jesus' on the radio. Made me miss songs that I heard while living in Arkansas, songs that don't quite make it to the jukeboxes out here in California, songs with lyrics like 'Up against the wall redneck mother', and 'It was raining the day my mom got out of prison'. Which made me sad to hear about Waylon Jennings death. That man's voice blew out more than one set of speakers in my old Pontiac Catalina. Will miss him.

TIP OF THE WEEK
Photocopy the front and back of all of the cards in your wallet and file in a safe place. If your wallet is stolen or lost, you'll have all of your card numbers and the phone numbers of who to call to report. Thanks, Jody!

SMILE
View source code on this page for Bullshit Bingo. You too can survive meetings. But my all time favorite joke is in the source code of my top page.

AND DID I MENTION…
…that in the middle of all of this that I also changed ISPs and Webhosts? Yes, this site is now hosted by Da Hunk at BBS-LA. Leave it to my sassy Motown Soul Sistah to come to my rescue in my on-going search for the Webhost with the most. So refreshing to have a Webhost that will not only give you their phone number, but their cell phone number too and tell you to call any time. WooHoo! That's service.

 

*ABOUT THE PICTURES: TWO WEEKENDS (L to R)

• They've put some of the sharks back out in downtown San Jose. This one is the Leopard Shark. My favorites are Carmen Sharkana and The Ballerina.
• After viewing the Nathan Oliveira exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Art, I wanted to see Benny Bufano's 'California Bear'. This was quite different than his Universal Child (really tall-come close-closer) that's at Santa Clara City Hall. For more about Santa Clara's underbelly, go here.
• Honey and I have always liked going to Joe's Taco Lounge in Mill Valley. But when we heard of the Village Music store (wall-to-wall vinyl) from the Bay Area Backroads show, we knew we had to make a stop next time we were up that way.
• For the first time in our 22 years of living here, Honey and I decided to go on the west side of the Golden Gate bridge and take pictures. Bicyclists were swarming like gnats, but the view was worth it. Of course, my penchant for taking pictures of people taking pictures flared up: here's a group of German-speaking tourists posing in front of a camera that the woman in the tan pants has set to go off in ten seconds. I thought I might really have a shot when she ran back to join the group and almost fell down the hill, but the others caught her in time for the picture.