And guess what.  It was only $11.69.  It’s actually a banana hanger!  The headphones can rest on the banana hook on the front or on the top.  There’s also a hook on the back for the cord which was really for the included banana slicer.  That’s right, I got a headphone stand *and* a banana slicer.

But first things first.  We tried tuning his FM clock radio to static.  But wow it’s hard to find clean static these days!  If you’re in a place that doesn’t have a lot of radio stations then this will probably work.  But for us it didn’t.  If it’s not clean it doesn’t help.  It becomes distracting.

So, I decided to make my own.  It was quite simple, actually.  I bought a cheap Sony alarm clock ($10 at Wal*Mart).  When I got it home, I took the screws out and opened it up.  I found the AM antenna (it looks like a small dowel wrapped over and over in fine copper wire), freed it from its screwed-down confines, and proceeded to cut the wires that lead to the antenna.  I wrapped the cut wires up with some electrical tape so they wouldn’t be dangling around inside waiting to short something.

After all that I put the radio back together, plugged it in, and turned it on.  After switching the radio to AM, all I got was static!  And the great thing is I can change the “feel” of the static from brownish to pinkish to whitish by tuning the dial.  (I use -ish because it’s not truly brown/pink/white noise, but close enough.)  Anyway, so far it seems to be helping.  /me keeping his fingers crossed!

(Disclaimer:  Don’t try this at home.  And if you do and it doesn’t work or causes some sort of damage, don’t hold me liable.  I’m just relating what I tried.)

First set up AFP:  http://www.kremalicious.com/2008/06/ubuntu-as-mac-file-server-and-time-machine-volume/

Then make sure you enable using unsupported volumes:  http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/10/how-to-enable-time-machine-on-unsupported-volumes/

Now add the new-in-10.6 plist:  http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=184462 .  (This page actually has a script that sets things up for you; I haven’t tried it but it is a great idea.)

As my friend Ben said, “multitasking and iAd are KILLER features.”  He’s right.  Unfortunately iPhone 3g and iPod Touch 2nd gen won’t get multitasking (and some other things).  I’m glad I spend the extra on the 3gs now!

1. Press the BKT button and set the bracketing to 3F by rotating the main command dial. Using the sub-command dial set the exposure increment to whatever you like. I prefer 1 stop intervals.

2. Go to CSM c3 Self-timer. Set the delay time, 5 seconds should be enough to allow the camera and tripod to stabilize. Next, set the number of shots to 3.

3. This step is optional. Go to CSM d6 and set the Continuous Low shooting speed to 4 fps.

4. Press the Release mode button and rotate the main command dial until the self-timer icon appears with the Continuous Low shooting icon above it.

5. Press the shutter release button. After the self-timer delay the camera will perform auto-bracketing with one push of the shutter release button.

I can’t stand having shadows under windows and icons when the wallpaper behind those windows and icons isn’t flat!  Apple has gone to great lengths to make it possible for a desktop (or padtop?) to look three dimensional.  This picture of the new iPad from Gizmodo shows that.

The dock looks all 3d, the image behind it obviously has depth, and then BAM!  Icons with shadows directly under them take that depth away.  If I want a 3d-looking desktop, I wouldn’t expect those icons to cast a shadow directly beneath as if what was underneath was a flat surface.  Yet I see this all the time.
It surprises me that a company such as Apple, who spends so much time on pixel-perfect user experience, hasn’t done something about this already.  If there was a simple flag to specify whether your desktop wallpaper was “3d” or not, then shadows could be enabled/disabled when over the desktop image.  Sure, they should still cast a shadow on other icons and windows, but not on the “3d” desktop.  Surely it’s easier said than done, but with modern hardware it shouldn’t be that hard, should it?

Enter keychain.  Someone finally decided to create a script that does ssh-agent management and does it well.  It looks like it came from gentoo, but is available through the ubuntu apt repositories.  (The new homepage also has mac packages:  http://www.funtoo.org/en/security/keychain/intro/ .)  After

sudo aptitude install keychain

(Yeah, I recently started using aptitude in the hope that when I uninstall dependencies get uninstalled, too.)  I added this to my .bashrc (maybe it should have been .profile, I never keep those things straight):

eval `keychain --eval ~/.ssh/id_rsa`

You could add more keys to the command right before the last ` to get it to add more.

Now ssh-agent just works!

" feedSomeKeys_2.js
autocmd LocationChange .* fmapc
" Gmail
autocmd LocationChange mail\.google\.com/(mail|a)/ :fmap -d 4 c / j k n p o u e x s r a # [ ] z ? gi gs gt gd ga gc

"Google Reader
autocmd LocationChange www\.google\.(co\.jp|com)/reader :fmap! -v i j k n p m s v A r S N P X O gh ga gs gt gu u / ? t

"Google Calendar
autocmd LocationChange ^https?://www\.google\.com/calendar fmap! -vkey -event keydown j k T,t a D,d w m x c e z / + q s ?

Today I stumbled upon Prime Time Communications and thought I’d contact them about availability in my area.  I filled out their availability form and clicked “submit.”  404 – Object not found.

So I filled out their support form and included my availability request as well as a note about how the availability form didn’t work.  When I clicked “submit” it went to a completely blank (i.e., no source to the page at all) page.  I tried again just in case, and it did the same thing.

“Wow, this is not good.”  Next I tried to call their phone number.  It started ringing after about 15 seconds (strange for a phone), rang about 4 times, and then a recording came on and announced something like, “All lines are unavailable.”

Prime Time Communications really doesn’t want to be bothered apparently.