Dan Wood: The Eponymous Weblog

I'm starting to think that the Apple woman running with the hammer to smash the screen in Apple's Famous 1984 Superbowl Commerical needs to throw her hammer at CBS, for its Big-Brother-style censorship of commercial this year at the Superbowl.

If you haven't heard about this already, CBS is refusing to air an paid advertisement — see it online here — that gently criticizes our nation's 1 trillion dollar deficit.

Say what? Is an advocacy organization's 1.7 million dollars any less green than money that comes from tobacco companies and beer companies? And why would CBS accept an ad from Bush's White House — sure to evoke controversy — but refuse this one, claiming that it is too controversial? If one side can run an advertisement, shouldn't the other be allowed to as well?

I think that in a democracy, voices need to be heard, even if it's voices we don't agree with. CBS has received over 340,000 messages asking them to stop their censorship.

Please, watch the ad and send CBS your comments.

I recently upgraded to iPhoto 4, part of the new iLife 04 package, and I'm not impressed. It looks like others have been having problems too. If you are going to be trying out iPhoto 4, be sure to back up your old photo library folder before making the move, so you can downgrade if you have problems.

First, it seems to be confused about your old "albums", trying to recover the alias files that were in your albums folders, resulting in tons of "recovered" photos that are completely bogus. It looks like a workaround is to remove your "Albums" folder from your library before launching iPhoto 4 for the first time. This prevents iPhoto 4 from trying to process these files.

Second, it looks like a bunch of files never get their previews generated, so I see dozens or hundreds of the photo previews as blank squares. Something is not triggering iPhoto to generate the preview icons for these.

I'll be happy to report this as a bug to Apple, but if anybody has any insight on these problems, let me know first...

I started reading Jim Hightower's book Thieves in High Places: They've Stolen Our Country and It's Time to Take It Back expecting this one of those typical humorous-but-informative "Ain't the Bush Administration Awful" books. But it turned out to be a lot more than I expected.

The book is not just about dissing the Republicans, but the Democrats as well, who have been locked up in their glass cages in Washington, D.C. and are so completely out of touch with what it's like to be living in any of these fifty United States. It's amazingly refreshing. He digs into the "wobblycrats" -- spineless Democrat congress-people who rolled over for Bush's agenda against our country, either by voting with the Republicans or just not showing up for the votes (Aside: not unlike like John Kerry). No wonder so many people don't bother voting with choices like this! (And no wonder Dean's message is resonating with so many people — Republican or Democrat — across the country.)

But then the book surprised me even more by turning out to be amazingly uplifting, telling small stories about local victories at the city, state, or regional level, where ordinary citizens have stood up against being steamrolled by them — like stopping a Wal-Mart from coming into town and destroying the local businesses, or the imminent shut-down of local libraries. It's truly inspiring.

I highly recommend this book! Get it from the traditional Amazon link here, or, better yet, at your local bookstore if you are lucky enough to have one (I don't!), or from your local library, if you are lucky enough to have one.

Today, a few more tools got updates. As usual, here is the run-down for those who want details, details, details.

• eBay, to 1.7.5.2. Fixed a problem with search-by-seller-ID when there were small result sets. Unfortunately had to retire searching completed auctions; this now requires registration and signing in on the eBay web site.
• Phone Listings, to 1.7.5.4: Fixed a problem with Canadian phone listings; fixed a problem where the choice of residential/business/toll-free numbers was not being saved to preferences.
• TV Listings, to 1.7.5.2: Fixed a problem where bogus information was showing up in the lower corner of the window. Also turned the email address entry field to a combo box to make it easier to switch accounts if needed.

Robb Beal, who served as product manager and user interface guru on Watson for a while (before the Sherlock 3 hit the fan), and more recently known as the creator of Spring, is looking for a new gig. I highly recommend him for any developers who may need his services.

I played around with GarageBand, apple's new application (which you must actually pay for), and it's a lot of fun. I've been waiting for a music sequencer "for the rest of us" for a long time. I had thought that somebody needed to take up this project, but it wasn't going to be me; it's just not my field of expertise. Anyhow, I don't have (anymore) a MIDI keyboard to plug into the application, and I know how to play a guitar about as much as I know how to fly a plane, perform brain surgery, or program for MS-Windows. So I played around with just the built-in riffs. The result is here: A Total Waste of Time (AAC/m4a format — you may need to option-click on the link to download it!), from the never-to-be-released album, A Total Waste of Disk Space. Don't expect it to be listenable. But it was kind of fun to put together this mix of hip-hop rhythms, Nordic strings, and gospel-sounding organ.

Attention! In our global system of monitoring there was a technical failure. In avoidance of frauds with your credit card enter the full data for authorization, otherwise your credit card will be frozen during 10 day. [sic]

... The ones that didn't quite make it to the winners' circle?

There were some other really cool ones! Are you wondering what happened to them, like I am? Sign the new petition to convince MoveOn.org to put the other ads back online so we can all enjoy them... And of course, pass along word about the petition to sympathetic friends, to help collect a bunch more names....

Last night, we had a New Year's party at our house. Not a typical New Year's party, but one of 1400+ house parties around the country dedicated to take back our country from "King George" and learn more about the person whom I personally believe is capable of improving our lives, Howard Dean. We had about 30 friends and neighbors show up, plus their kids. Besides the usual food, drinks, conversation, and music, we showed a DVD with a brief bio of Dean, and Al Gore's recent endorsement of Dean. Plus, we showed a compilation of some of my favorite entries — listed below — to the Bush in 30 Seconds contest.

(Americans who want to take our country back are encouraged to contribute even small amounts to the campaign to go up against Bush's big-business war-chest. You can contribute via our party's home page -- beneath the image of the baseball bat, click the "Contribute" link.

My very favorite ones: Update, 1/16/04: Only the winners and finalists are available online anymore. Sign this petition to MoveOn.org to ask them to bring back all the others.

• True War Amazing production values -- this was not made by a guy with iMovie, I bet.
• Fantastic Iraq Beautiful, amazing graphics on this one. One inaccuracy now that they got Saddam, though.
• Instant Messaging 9/11 This ad took my breath away when I realized what I was seeing in the background.
• In My Country A man dark skin and an accent explains what is going on in his country. Why should Americans care?
• Republican Legacies My submission; I wanted to target Republicans and swing/independent voters to show them that even though they may have supported Republicans in the past, George W. Bush doesn't belong in the White House.

Other great ones:

See more ...

Vice President Gore would have made a good professor! I've just watched a sobering and very educational lecture -- not even that political -- by the former VP talking about Global Warming. Wow, what an eye-opener. I have been vaguely aware that it's a problem at some level, but now I'm realizing that this is a problem that, if unchecked, is going to have a significant effect in my lifetime and certainly my childrens'. (Living on Earth now is like the frog in the pot of water that is slowly getting warmer and warmer, never getting out in time to avoid being boiled to death!)

I highly recommend everybody check this out. Even if you're a Republican, you should learn about this. Gore gave due credit to Republican Teddy Roosevelt for being a great conservationist and forming the national park system! It's quite an eye-opener, and it gives me hope that we can solve this problem if we put our collective minds to the problem.

See the video linked from this page. (Skip to 09:30 to bypass the lengthy introductions.)

Today, the Weather tool in Watson was updated to 1.7.5.2 to catch up with a few changes on a few weather sites around the country.

Additionally, a new third-party tool, 'Astronomy', was released today by Wesley Ray Hall. It displays a library of the 'Astronomy Picture of the Day' along with facts about each picture. Download it from 'Install More Tools...' under the Watson menu.

Today, Watson's 'Phone' tool got updated to catch up with changes in yellowpages.ca's business telephone listings. There may be more updates to come -- it appears that the ability to get more than one "page" of information (accessed via the green arrow at the bottom of a Watson window) is broken on their web site.

I've grown accustomed over the years to see the date of 1/1/04 as meaning that something on the Macintosh missing a date, or that a clock has been reset. Now I'm noticing emails in my in-box dated 1/1/04 that are current! Time to change the mindset..

Happy new year! Hat tip to Dori