Author: Steven Garrity

A Plugin Idea for Gaim: Buddy’s Time Zone

by Steven Garrity

Here’s a quick idea I had while chatting with someone in Australia via instant-messaging this morning.

I would like to see a plugin/extension for Gaim (or any other instant messaging application, but especially Gaim, since it’s the one I use) that showed the local time zone of the person you’re chatting with in the chat window. Here’s a quick mock-up:

I’m not looking for anything too fancy. I don’t mind setting the time zones for my contacts manually (though tying this in with a system-wide address book makes sense in the long run). Also, it shouldn’t show anything if I haven’t set a time-zone for a contact, or if we share the same time-zone.

This would keep me from interrupting Nick during his dinner time in Paris.

 

Memo to Mac users: Please stop sending .SIT archives

by Steven Garrity

Anti-SIT iconOccasionally I will get an email attachment from someone compressed in a .SIT archive. This StuffIt format is (I think) primarily a Mac format. Utilities to handle .SIT archives are available for Windows and Linux, but are not include by default on either platform.

Since the ZIP format is supported out-of-the-box on the Mac OS X, Windows, and almost all Linux distributions it is a far more friendly format for archives.

Thank you.

 

Behind the (Quick) Times

by Steven Garrity

The free version of Apple’s QuickTime Player software has, as far as I can remember, always presented a window when started up asking if you’d like to buy the full QuickTime Pro software. Putting aside, for now, the worth of this window, I have always been bothered by the implementation of this window.

Rather than using actual Mac OS X buttons, the buttons are faked bitmap images of buttons. As a result, when the underlying operating system changes the visual style of the buttons, which it has twice since the original Mac OS X release, the buttons to not reflect the change.

So, here in OS X version 10.3 (with 10.4 soon on the horizon), this old QuickTime window still has buttons that look like OS X 10.0.

For shame.

 

Lazy Journalism on Buy Nothing Day

by Steven Garrity

When “news” becomes a product delivered on a regular schedule, press releases and made-for-news events must become pretty attractive to journalists.

Today, most major American news websites are running something along the lines of “Lots of People Go Shopping” as their leading story.

Screenshots from MSNBC.com and CNN.com on November 26, 2004
CNN Screenshot
CNN screenshot #1		 CNN Screenshot
CNN screenshot #2		 MSNBC Screenshot
MSNBC screenshot

The CNN front-page story blurb reads:

Early bargain hunters packed stores across the nation this morning, but industry watchers say it remains to be seen if the buying momentum will hold going into the weekend. The day after Thanksgiving is one of the most important shopping days for U.S. retailers.

Is this news? Who decides to run a story like this? I understand that holiday shopping is a powerful economic driver in the U.S., but this is so hollow a “story” it feels like a vacation for journalists.

Note, as always, the “More News” stories on right side of the CNN.com screenshot are so absurd as to be hilarious. All of this on Buy Nothing Day.

 

Garment Interlocking Standards

by Steven Garrity

I wrote last year about a simple marvel of real-world standards when a paint-roller handle broke and we were able to screw in a broom handle into the same socket (fantastic!).

I was amused and amazed at lunch the other day by my colleague Peter Rukavina with another simple display of standards. He was layered up in two coats. The first coat (green) was purchased at the REI corporate store in Denver, CO in April of 2004. It was assembled in Mexico of US material. The second coat (grey) is a Ralph Lauren Chaps-brand coat purchased at the Eatons store in Toronto in 2000. It was made in China.

Both coats sport the ubiquitous YKK zipper brand and as Peter demonstrated with flair, despite their distinct origins, the coats can zip together because they share a common zipper type/size.

Also dining with us during this marvel of overcoat synergy, Dan James informed us that sleeping bags can be easily zipped together. This seems like the thing of nightmares for the parents of teenagers on co-ed camping trips.