Freecasts

Dear President-Elect Obama,
I know this letter will probably never go above this mere blog and thus the chances that this will ever be read by anyone are slim to none, but due to recent events, I feel pressured to pick up my virtual quill and write.
On November 4 2008, Americans went to the polls in record numbers to elect you by an overwhelming majority. While I (being 17 years old) couldn’t vote, had I been able to I would have voted for you both in the New York primary, and in the election. I say this not only because 8 years with Bush have made me a liberal for life, but also because I was very impressed by your “Change” platform. I believe I was not alone in choosing these as the reason you were elected. In other words, just like Bush had his base, you had yours, a base composed of true blue liberals.
However, in recent weeks, you have seemed hell bent on eliminating that base, both with your “Team of Rivals” and your choice of conservative hatemonger Rick Warren to lead the prayer at your inauguration. I have only this to day to you: don’t alienate your base! While I am not saying that you should ponder only to liberals, you dont need to bend over double backwards to ponder to the ultra right. While we all know that you were elected to lead the whole country, please don’t leave those who elected you alone.
In your book “Audacity of Hope,” you claim to be both a Christian and a Skeptic, a strong believer in evolution and science, a proponent of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) rights, and sexual freedom, and I (along with many Americans) find it very sad that the first voice that will be heard in your administration be a voice against everything you said you stand for.
I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt though, after all, you seem like a smart guy who will not be a true lapdog to the right. I just hope you can think for yourself no matter what the voices around you say.

Signed,

Currently on ebay, There is one auction for an iphone 3g screen, which i thought was odd. I guess parts dont come for another month. This is the only one I found so far which has both parts. Anyways, Its avaliable for the next 5 days on ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=330264337419

Psystar has released a PC which can run the retail version of leopard out of the box. with no OS it goes for 399, and it can run xp, linux, ect. and NATIVE OS X. If you order OS X with it, they ship you a retail version of leopard. Apparently they put some circuitry on that system to run OS X natively. Anyways, if you want a computer for grandma and you have a leopard disk, look no farther than the psystar Open computer. psystar.com

By now, you have probably heard of the web joke “If Operating Systems Ran the Airlines.” If not, read it, then come back to this post. I was reading it, and something seemed a bit wrong with the Linux Air description. Here is how I would make it go.
Linux Air was founded by people who were annoyed with the other options. When you fly Linux Air, you get a free ticket, and if you want, you can see how the ticket was made. When you get on the plane, you find that it is a little bit older than you expected, but it has a higher top speed than most newer airplanes. When you board, you get the parts to make your seat, and all the required tools. The instructions for making it are a bit unclear, but the plane is full of people who can and will help you for free. They are, for the most part, quite nice. Once you build your seat, you find that it is comfortable, the plane is stable, and the pilot is good at his job. The food is great and free, and you get to your destination early with all your baggage. You try to tell everybody about this free and excellent airline, but when you start, all they can say is, “You had to do what with your seat?!”

I have had it with everybody and their brother ragging on Sony. It is like whenever I mention that I both use and like Sony products, people think I am the antichrist! I try to see why they are so hated and I just can’t. However, the reasons usually fall into one of these categories: They are overdogs, They put a rootkit on my computer 3 years ago and I just can’t let that go, or They are just bad.
First of all, they are hardly overdogs in all industries, and if they were, don’t you think that there is a good reason why they are overdogs? Because they make good products, thats why! When I look around my house (at my consumer electronics) here is what I see. An HD projector by Sony, a PS2, a PSP, a small Sony TV, a Sony DVD player, the list goes on. Basically, they are overdogs in some parts because THEY MAKE GOOD PRODUCTS!
When I hear about the rootkit, I feel that that is a slightly valid argument. They did screw the proverbial pooch there. They messed up, but at least they apologized.
When people say that they make bad products, I just cringe. I have both a DS Lite and a PSP and I use the PSP a lot more. I have Sony components in my home theaters because they are good! I dearly miss my Sony MDR-V600 headphones! Have they made some bad products? Yes. But they are not a horrible company.

Bell Peppers

Originally uploaded by Charles Sporn

A few months ago, I took this picture of some Bell Peppers with my Nikon D50. Recently I rediscovered this photo in my Aperture library and thought “With a hint of retouching, this could be awesome.” So I did a bit of retouching and it came out like this. It isn’t an HDR, but it looks like it!

I recently bought the MacHeist bundle. If you wanted it, you are now too late, because the bundle sale is over. However, today, on this blog, I am giving away one piece of software from this bundle. This piece of software is Appzapper which is an excelent software uninstaller for the Mac. It normally sells for $12.95, but if you are the first one to comment on this blog post or the first person to direct message me on twitter (My twitter name is Spornographer) with the code, “I want Appzapper” you win.

It slows your computer to a crawl. It makes your computer’s components work harder. It is platform androgynous, affecting Windows computers, Macs, Linux boxes, Unix Boxes, and BSD boxes (Yes I know that some hardcore geeks will say that some of the last 3 are the same, I know, but that history confuses me so separate they will remain.) In fact, you are probably infected right now. There will never be a software patch for it, and yet it costs little to fix. What am I talking about? The latest piece of spyware or the latest virus? No, I am talking about dust. I was hit hard recently by a dust “attack” on a semi new PC I got. But like all my blog posts, there is some backstory here.
At school, I am the defacto computer geek. If you are having problems with your computer or just want it to go faster, you come to Charles. It was because of this reason that I was approached to do a data transfer from a PC to a new MacBook. I got there and was thanked because they were going to throw out the PC. I offered to take it because while it is old, the specs were ok. (2.8 GHZ Pentium 4 with hyper-threading, 80 gig drive, and easily upgradeable ram.) I turned it on and much to my surprise, it was emitting a loud noise. If you want to know what it sounded like, imagine this: 100 iMac G5s all running at full speed with their fans running on high speed. It was that loud. Also it was full of crap. It had: AOL IM, AIM, AOL toolbar for IE, the AOL browser, Norton Anti Virus, Real Player, and more. I decided that the weird noise was from some piece of spyware that had gotten installed. I got rid of all the junk, ran a spyware and virus check, and was greeted by lots and lots of noise. Then I had an idea. The sound sounded like there was something trapped in the fan. So I opened the case and unscrewed the CPU cooler, and the internal fan was covered in dust. In the end I pulled out about four tablespoons just from that one fan. After cleaning out the fan and heat sink , I popped the fan back on to the heatsink, turned the PC on, and heard only the slight humming of the hard drive with the whisper of the fan to accompany it. Not to mention it was faster as well. This dust experience was rather sobering because I like to keep my computers running fast (my PowerBook g3 has it’s maintenance programs run so often, it is faster than some of my classmates’ MacBooks) and I never paid that much attention to dust. Next weekend, I am pulling the fans out of all my computers and giving them a good cleaning.