The Null Device
2001/10/21
I upgraded my PowerBook to MacOS 10.1 last week and have found it underwhelming. Audio-intensive MacOS 9 applications (i.e., SuperCollider) still don't work under Classic; not to mention some MacOS applications which crash under Classic (i.e., Fontographer), for no good reason. Not all that much else seems to have changed either. Though you can now mount SMB shares from MacOS 10.1 (just as well, as it doesn't work with netatalk for some reason), and play DVDs on it.
For those of you about to take part in National Novel Writing Month, you may care to first read this interview with the organiser, Chris Baty:
That's the sorry hidden truth of NaNoWriMo. People get really excited and turn out these works of fiction that are really amazing given the time constraints but are not publishable. I'll put a page on the website this year saying, "So you're a novelist now what?" I'd like to have counsellors on board afterwards because people inevitably suffer a form of post-partum depression.
Mind you, it's not all bad:
Babes love novelists. Sex appeal like you wouldn't believe. To be able to walk into a room and say "I am a novelist" parts the social Red Sea. It's a very sexy thing to be. December 1 you wake up and it's a whole different dating landscape.
A piece on public radio station PBS, which has been forced out of St Kilda by rising rents and yuppie pinks who don't like that noisy weird shit taking over, and is moving to Collingwood. (Collingwood? They'll probably have to move on from there within 10 years once yuppification takes hold. And anyone want to bet on how long 3RRR will stay in Fitzroy (just off Brunswick Street latté-land, where the Punters Club won't be for much longer), before being moved on to an industrial park in Lalor or someplace?)
The Cuba of the West Coast: After the City Council of the People's Republic of Berkeley passed a resolution condemning the war in Afghanistan, businesses in Berkeley have been hit with a massive boycott campaign, with tens of thousanda of dollars worth of orders. The boycott campaign urges a ban against any business with firms based or doing business in Berkeley, and has been taken up by flag-waving jingoist types all over the USA.
Bad timing of the day: With fears of anthrax in the mail running high, postal inspectors in St. Paul, Minnesota, have given their colleagues a heads-up that local mail-order firm Publishers Clearinghouse is sending out packages of powdered detergent. (via Follow Me Here)