October 17, 2007  

If you squint hard enough you’ll see a pattern

Lots of little things going on in my life, none seemingly important enough to warrant a full post. But this does not stop the party, no.

A few weeks ago my wife performed the role of arm-candy (yeah, that’s right, she’s that good) for my brother at the ground-breaking event for the Calatrava Spire (called, alas, the Chicago Spire). My brother is the salesguy for all the in-unit automation at the Spire. When built this corkscrew will be the tallest building in North America and will redefine the skyline. Impressive site too.

If you are interested in knowing exactly the kind of video I can watch hundreds of times and still laugh, this is it.

I recently moved from my beloved Thunderbird to the Mac Mail app. Why? Better handling of IMAP. See, since I got an iPhone I have wanted it to be completely in synch with my desktop mail app (inbox, archive, sent, all of it). POP don’t cut it, so I had to move some 30,000 messages to the server. This took forever as Thunderbird (where it all lived locally) ain’t the stablest with IMAP servers. But it is done. I also wanted webmail so here’s how it works:

  1. All my addresses forward to GMail. Every single one.
  2. GMail, which does not support IMAP (sigh), archives a copy and punts to an IMAP server at my hosting provider.
  3. The iPhone and my desktop clients on PC and Mac all synch with the IMAP server.
  4. Outgoing mail on all is routed through the IMAP server and thence to GMail, so there is always a web-accessible copy.

A massive pain in the ass, but not nearly as bad as escaping Outlook.

We’ve undertaken an experiment with compact fluorescent bulbs. Nearly every light, including in utility rooms and closets, is strangely wired to a dimmer in this house, which makes things challenging. We replaced a bunch of dead incandescent cans in the kitchen (because, you know, it happens). Truly, they are cheaper for the life and wattage, but it does remind me a bit of a laboratory. Anyone have thoughts on CFL’s that don’t make think I should be titrating?

28 Weeks Later is an amazing movie. It is not a slasher flick or really a horror flick, exactly. It follows on the acclaimed 28 Days Later about a guy in a coma who wakes up in London to find Jolly Olde England overrun by zombies. This movie is, um, some time after that and shows what happens when the US Army (Mission Accomplished, baby!) quarantines a section of London for survivors. It is a fine flick and might contain the best scene in all of 2007 film. Let’s just say that it involves a field full of zombies and a helicopter. Oh, also, how can a film in which zombies sprint not be good?

I’m absolutely smitten with the audio/sequencer/DJ app called Ableton Live. It takes a while to wrap your head around, but once you do, it is pure heroin. I can’t not mess with it. More on this in an upcoming post on how I’ve left my job to be a terrible DJ at hipster bars.

In the category of links that did not make the del.icio.us feed but which I strangely feel important enough for a full post we have Wakerupper. It offers free telephone reminders with an iPhone-optimzed version to boot. And GrandCentral, one of Google’s acquisitions to centralize phone stuff in a web interface (hey, not unlike what I just did with IMAP). Anyone using this have some tips on how to make me not so scared of it?

Keep squinting.

3 Responses to “If you squint hard enough you’ll see a pattern”

  1. cbjg says :

    CFL – try experimenting with different colors of white. our entire house now uses warm white (vs. cool white) CFLS and I love it. Cool white bulbs are the fluorescents of old and have the laboratory feel. damn shame about all the dimmers – dimmable CFLS are quite pricey. Don’t use a non-dimmable CFL in a socket with a dimmer switch either – they can start fires

  2. Brian says :

    Dittoing cbjg’s suggestion — buy a couple of different brands and try them side by side to evaluate the light color. We have found that sometimes the off-name brands have a warmer color than the major brands.

  3. David Syzdek says :

    GMail just announced IMAP support today and is rolling it out to clients. Now I just have to transfer 15 years of email out of Entourage to Mail.app….