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I haven’t had much to post lately, so I thought I’d post something to complain on behalf of my neighbors down the street. Oh, they don’t know I’m complaining on their behalf, to be sure, this is just my civic mindedness kicking in.

Personally, I subscribe to the eco-friendly concept of zeroscaping.

Lawns are an abomination against nature in the desert – and don’t get me started about golf courses. Nonetheless, I can appreciate the time, effort and expense involved in maintaining a nice yard. Why, just last week, my neighbor’s entire family was out in the yard, cutting the grass, pulling the weeds, trimming the trees (and putting up xmas lights weeks too early.)

They timed it, I suspect, to coincide with “big trash collection”, that quarterly event where the City of Phoenix deigns to pick up garbage bigger than one container. Over a one-week period, everyone is supposed to pill their large trash (often tree branches and other construction debris) at the front of their property (not blocking the sidewalk) and they’ll come and get it.

The City also thoughtfully uses a small front loader to scrape up the trash and put it in the truck. The results can be seen here, where they’ve completely removed the turf from the ground.

Way to go Phoenix! We love you, too.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Phoenix

My daughter is in a sports club after school. Each month, they play a different game.

Last month it was basketball. At the end of the month, they had a big game on Saturday. Actually, it was more of a very informal tournament. To my knowledge there were no winners, but several schools came together and played each other in a series of 5 minute games.

I’ll spare myself a bit of agony and not go over the basketball game in any detail, save to say that Michelle wasn’t the most accomplished player on the court, although she did have a remarkable talent for looking every direction except where the ball was and she managed to practice her handstands without seemingly being bothered by the other kids running all around her trying to play basketball.

This month it was kickball and, while I was prepared for more of last month, I was pleasantly surprised. Michelle was running hard, trying to catch and kick the ball, she scored several runs (including one home run) and got a couple players out.

She’s a little too small to have a powerful kick and, for some reason, she was kicking with her right foot, which, since she is left-handed, I assume is probably as awkward as if I tried kicking with my left.

This month, as with last, I was still amazed at how many kids didn’t seem to have a clue what they were doing. Despite having (supposedly) played kickball for a month, several of the kids didn’t seem to realize you had to run from one base to the next when someone kicks the ball. There were several instances where kids were tagged out because there were two people standing on the same base.

Not Michelle, though, she never made a tactical or rule error that I noticed. I’m really quite proud of her. She even stood up to bigger kids who were trying to hog the ball. In the first game, there was some kid on her team who was trying to hold the ball all the time, even if it meant taking it from other kids on his team. (Seen in this picture heading for Michelle to get the ball, but she ran around him with it instead.) You’re not usually supposed to have to work against your own teammates, too.

They didn’t have kickball, that I can recall, back when I was in elementary school. My first recollection of it is from Junior High. I can see how it would make a good substitute for baseball, suitable for younger kids. We enjoyed the game because you could bean the runners with the ball, if your aim was good enough, which made it a game of suitable violence for us – rather like a combination of baseball, soccer and dodgeball. There wasn’t much of that in evidence at this game, although Michelle did take one to the face while trying to field the ball.

Seeing as how baseball has been adapted, I wonder if Cricket could be similarly adapted. Kicket anyone?

Technorati Tags: Blog, Kids, Sport

Check out the gallery of pictures of the new Sontarans.

Looks like another faithful updating of a classic old foe.

BBC Sontaran Gallery

Oh, and you read about them, too.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Doctor Who, Dr Who

Plowing through the support forums, I can tell I’m not the only one having problems with this.

I have about 8 e-mail addresses in Mail. 5 of them are IMAP (4 from hosted domains, 1 from .MAC) and 3 are POP accounts. Since the upgrade, there’s been a slow and steady wasting and now, finally, completely death of my IMAP accounts. On the first day or so, everything worked fine, then I began experiencing painful delays sending and receiving, finally complete time-outs and now, nothing at all. (The .MAC IMAP account still works fine.)

What’s weirder, Mail seems to be reconfiguring my IMAP settings on the fly. The port numbers are different almost every time I go in the settings.

Using the one remaining computer that I haven’t upgraded to Leopard, everything still works fine.

I hope they fix this soon. I don’t like having to use Thunderbird for my e-mail. (Which also works just fine.)

Technorati Tags: Apple, Blog, Mac, OSX

Following up on my previous article about good stuff, here’s a negative.

Periodically, when using Coverflow mode in the new Finder, this is what happens. First I notice my fans starting the rev up, then the system begins to bog down.

It appears Finder might have a problem… Activity monitor shows Finder running between 100% and 180% CPU utilization.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Blog, Computer, Mac, MacBook, OSX, Technology

I’ve been slowly working through our “family pack” updates to Leopard this week and realized a couple things that I hadn’t heard anybody mention yet

1. Front Row is now part of Leopard, so even my antiques have it. No remote, of course, but Apple-ESC brings up Front Row
2. My wife’s old iBook now has the ability to do a “secondary” click using the two fingers on the trackpad. It’s not turned on by default, maybe no one else has noticed it.
3. Photo booth works on older Macs now, too. (At least it works on my Dual 1.33 PowerMac G4) (iSight required, of course.) Processing is really slow if you are using video effects, though.
4. Video effects don’t show up in iChat, at least not on our G4s

Technorati Tags: Apple, Mac, OSX, Technology

If you had any doubts as to how far out nowhere the new Apple store is, take a look at the corner it sits on.

This picture is Williams Field Rd and SanTan Village Parkway, looking at the northwest corner. SanTan Village is the northeast corner.

Yes, that’s a big pile of hay.

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What’s on my iTunes right now?
Main Theme From The Saint from the album “Music From The TV Series The Saint” by Edwin Astley

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Technorati Tags: Apple, Arizona, Blog

With all the excitement of Leopard this weekend, it’s easy to gloss over the other important event – the opening of a new Apple store just a scant 36 miles from my home.

36 miles from your home, you say? Surely that’s out in the middle of nowhere!? You’re right, it is. The trouble is, these days, lots of people live in the middle of nowhere. They’ve ruined nowhere for the rest of us. Since nowhere has been ruined, we might as well look for the silver lining, and that lining would be the Apple store.

This store follows the new trend, the elimination of cash registers. All transactions are processed on small hand-held devices and the receipt is e-mailed to you. I think they piloted this either last year or the year before at Christmas time and the iPod express table. I’ve also noticed lately that they use this technique when the line to check out is getting long.

Apparently the in-store testing has been successful enough that not only is this new store devoid of any visible registers, but they told me they’d be redoing the other two stores in Phoenix soon as well.

Darn clever of them. You talk to an associate, you’ve decided you’re going to take it and he whips out his portable register and you’re paid for and gone. Conversely, if you want to buy something, you have to get the attention of an associate.

I think maybe the associate I spoke with wasn’t the most knowledgeable, but he was friendly and efficient. I asked him about Leopard’s lack of Classic mode.

“Yes, that’s right,” he said.

“So, that means any of the programs over there that have minimum requirements of System 7, 8 or 9 probably use Classic, and therefore won’t work under Leopard.”

“No, not really,” he says, “most programs are dual binary.”

BZZZZT. Wrong answer, I do believe. Dual binary deals with PowerPC/Intel programming, but anything that runs under System 9 or less must be a classic-style program.

I’m surprised Apple didn’t yank them off the shelves, or at least put them in a “Does not run under Leopard” shelf.

I spoke to a couple of the people standing at the front door, greeting people. They said last night at the grand opening and Leopard release they did have over a thousand people. I assume they knew that because they ran out of shirts. Today, the store seemed to be having a steady load of visitors.

This weekend was also the grand opening of SanTan Village which is very large, yet quite strange indeed. I don’t think I like the idea of a shopping plaza with parking right up to the stores. Perhaps they’re trying to reinvent the High Street concept.

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What’s on my iTunes right now?
Boat Chase from the album “Live And Let Die” by George Martin

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Technorati Tags: Apple, Blog, Computer, Mac, OSX, Technology

ABC 15 => Local ‘green’ homes come with impressive amenitiesOne again, I’m always pleased to report this kind of stuff. Especially so when it’s right close to home.

A local developer hopes his new project may not only make people homeowners, but heroes to the environment.

Aura at Camelback will be the first environmentally friendly subdivision in the Valley.

Solar panels, underground garages, water-conserving toilets and dryscaping (ie, dirt lawns) are all a start, but I wish the article provided info on the subdivision. That really isn’t all that radical.

So, I went looking and found this article in the Phoenix Business Journal, which gives a bit more detail. The project meets LEED standards.

I’m not going to buy one, but I can’t wait to go see what they’ve done. Although I always have wanted my own elevator and an underground lair. It would be like living at SHADO headquarters!

Technorati Tags: Arizona, Blog, Environment, Technology

After being delayed from a morning to afternoon delivery, my Leopard family pack is finally here and I’m installing it on my first test machine.

The first machine installed will be my very first Mac, a PowerMac G4, Dual 1.33 GHz. I use this machine for my iTunes server for my Apple TV. It also runs various long running server type functions for me.

3:35 PM Started OSX 10.5 Leopard install.
4:24 PM Holy Temporal Stasis, Batman! It took this long just to verify the integrity of the install DVD!!!!
4:32 PM Finally figured out how long it thought it was going to take. 2 Hours 58 Minutes!!!!
4:33 PM Now it thinks it is 1 hour and 43 minutes. The time estimate routine must have been written in Redmond.
4:44 PM I could be in line at the Apple store waiting to buy Leopard, instead I’m going to go to Costco. A minute ago, it said 1 hour 53 minutes, now it says 28 minutes. What am I to believe?
6:13 PM Back from Costco. Yum, free samples fried chicken and shortbread. Leopard install is asking my Apple ID. Which one should I use?
6:15 PM Software updates, already?! Oh, it’s only Backup and Remote Desktop Client.
6:30 PM Yeah, OK, it’s nice and all. Seems like it might be a bit faster.

I missed seeing the intro movie. I had heard it was a masterpiece of post-modernist angst. Perhaps I’ll catch it on DVD.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Blog, Computer, Mac, OSX, Software