The DVD Drive in the iMac

Mac17:~ cashel$ drutil info

Vendor Product Rev

PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-106D A612

Interconnect: ATAPI

SupportLevel: Apple Shipping

Cache: 2000k

CD-Write: -R, -RW, BUFE, CDText, Test, IndexPts, ISRC

DVD-Write: -R, -RW, +R, +RW, BUFE, Test

Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, CD-Raw, DVD-DAO

Up With Lowdown!

Lowdown is a MovableType plugin that simplifies text, converting “high characters” like curly quotes to low characters and also strips out html. I’ve been trying to get the html to not show in the recent comments section on the main page. The MTGlobalComments plugin I use does not properly process the remove_html=”0″ setting. But now I can use a lowdown=”0″ setting and all html is stripped out.

Not only does it strip out the html, but now the right side of mac5 will not get broken in IE when a truncated link tag is displayed… because now it doesn’t display.

Descenders Below the Date Line

A digital sketch I worked up to send to our ANSI standards expert asking about the potential problem we could have when people write below the date line on a check. Has to do with check imaging. He says we’re ok. Nice handwriting, huh?

descenders.gif

Report from Dauphin Island

Kathy, Kelly, Claire, and I visited Danny at Spring Hill for Family Weekend 2005. It was held this Spring instead of last Fall because of Katrina. We arrived late Thursday evening. Danny had a paper to write, and then had classes all the next morning, so we left him alone. The four of us decided to go find a beach Friday morning, and we followed signs to Dauphin Island.

This barrier island guards the west side of Mobile Bay. There is a fort and sea lab on the east end, a village and golf course in the middle, and then a long stretch of stilt houses on the west end. We drove as far as we could on the west, but the roads were partially washed away from Katrina, so we decided to just stop there and visit the beach and ocean.

Several of the stilt houses were damaged, and many were being repaired. It became apparent that houses nearest the beach were simply gone, with nothing more than a pylon or two and a recently capped sewer line indicating the sand was someone’s property. There were no lawns, bushes, or landscaping to be seen. Katrina’s storm surge had washed away everything and left six inches to a foot of sand covering driveways, patios, carports, and side roads. Upon closer inspection you could find entire carports and side roads broken like peanut brittle under the sand.

The center of the island seemed to have been spared because the village and woods are shielded by a giant sand dune. Several people were playing golf.

We decided that with the village, bike paths, golf, fort, sea lab, and beaches, this might be a good place for a vacation. It is 35 minutes from Mobile, allowing for a quick trip into town, much like going into Savannah from Tybee.

Flickr Badge

Flickr is a site that allows you to store and share photos. It was acquired by Yahoo. You can create multiple albums. There is a neat way to create a “Flickr Badge” to put on another website that leads to one of your photo albums:

.zg_div {margin:0px 5px 5px 0px; width:117px;}

.zg_div_inner { color:#666666; text-align:center; font-family:arial, helvetica; font-size:11px;}

.zg_div a, .zg_div a:hover, .zg_div a:visited {color:#3993ff; background:inherit !important; text-decoration:none !important;}

zg_insert_badge = function() {

var zg_bg_color = ‘ffffff’;

var zgi_url = ‘http://www.flickr.com/apps/badge/badge_iframe.gne?zg_bg_color=’+zg_bg_color+’&zg_person_id=41043338%40N00’;

document.write(”);

if (document.getElementById) document.write(‘

Quantum Google

Borrowed without permission from Scot Hacker:

Been a long time since your last quantum physics class? Lost touch with the essential weirdness of the double-slit experiment? Amazingly clear and enjoyable explanatory video, now visible inline thanks to the new “Put on site” feature at Google Video.

Thanks Oliver