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Linked List: November 9, 2007

Friday, 9 November 2007

Why the Translucent Leopard Menu Bar Sucks: Exhibit A 

Perfect example of what’s wrong with Leopard’s menu bar translucency. (Thanks to reader Alex Ross.)

The Sweet Agony That Is Nokia N81 

Om Malik trashes Nokia’s new music-focused phone:

The device behaved like a three-year-old throwing a tantrum. Unless this is an especially buggy device, N81 has to be one of the worst Nokia phones I have ever used and would be loathe to recommend it to anyone.

Joyent Accelerators 

My thanks to my friends at Joyent for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. I host Daring Fireball on a Joyent Accelerator, and it’s simply amazing — even under the highest traffic, the server doesn’t break a sweat. Accelerators are virtual containers optimized for Rails, Python, and PHP web apps, and give you root access for full control of the software. If you’re looking for serious web hosting, especially if you’re concerned about scaling, you should look at Joyent.

The Mysteries of iCal, Revealed 

Jens Ayton examines the mystery of how iCal’s Dock icon shows the current date on Leopard even when iCal isn’t running. (Via Michael Tsai.)

InDesign and Leopard 

So there’s been an undercurrent of complaints that InDesign CS3 doesn’t work on Leopard; ends up that problem only occurs with pre-release versions of InDesign, and the complaints are from users with bootleg copies. If you’re surprised that people using illicitly-obtained bootleg software would complain vociferously when it stops working, you’ve never done tech support for commercial software. Software bootleggers have no shame about demanding tech support.

(Thanks to Tom Davis.)

Graflex Flash Guns 

These 1950s-era film lighting tools were used by propmasters to create Luke’s and Vader’s lightsabers in the original Star Wars. Not Obi-Wan’s though. (Via these do-it-yourself homebrew lightsaber instructions at Finkbuilt.)

The Subjectivity of Wine 

Jonah Lehrer:

In 2001, Frederic Brochet, of the University of Bordeaux, conducted two separate and very mischievous experiments. In the first test, Brochet invited 57 wine experts and asked them to give their impressions of what looked like two glasses of red and white wine. The wines were actually the same white wine, one of which had been tinted red with food coloring. But that didn’t stop the experts from describing the “red” wine in language typically used to describe red wines. One expert praised its “jamminess,” while another enjoyed its “crushed red fruit.” Not a single one noticed it was actually a white wine.

I’m biased, perhaps, but I don’t think you could fool beer connoisseurs similarly; there’s far less pretension in beer criticism. (Via Coudal.)

Krugman on the Falling Dollar 

Speaking of Krugman, he makes the case in this weblog entry that Bush is not to blame for the falling dollar. So, for all of you who objected to my “Heck of a job, Bushie” quip regarding the dollar in September: You were right, I was wrong.

History and Calumny 

New York Times op-ed columnist in-fighting. This column by David Brooks, defending a 1980 campaign speech by Ronald Reagan in Philadelphia, Mississippi, is largely a response to fellow Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has repeatedly referred to this speech as indication of Reagan’s appeal to Southern racists. But Brooks never mentions Krugman specifically, because Times policy forbids columnists from arguing with each other in print. Brooks makes a decent case, but I suspect it reads awkwardly if you don’t know (a) that Krugman has referred to this speech several times; and (b) that Times policy prevents Brooks from saying so.

Acorn 1.0.3 

Bug-fix, performance, and minor feature update to Flying Meat’s $40 image editor.

Baseball’s DRM Strikes Out 

The Washington Post’s Rob Pegoraro on the MLB DRM video fiasco. Looks like MLB is trying to make things right, now that a sufficient stink has been raised.

Reaching for Apple, Falling Short 

David Pogue on the T-Mobile Shadow:

There you have it: the Shadow, one of the least expensive smartphones on the market, loaded with features, feeling luxurious and looking stunning in your hand. For once, you don’t have to be jealous of the much cooler phones available in Europe.

But then you turn the thing on. […]

Frankly, Windows Mobile 6 is a mess. Common features require an infinitude of taps and clicks, and the ones you need most are buried in menus. Apparently the Windows Mobile 6 team learned absolutely nothing from Windows Mobile 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.