I’ve adopted the excellent Markdown to format my blog entries. It’s makes it much easier to write and maintain entries. However, because WordPress has to filter each post every time, it slows down my homepage considerably.
That is something I’ve come to live with and accept.
What is not acceptable is that WordPress still doesn’t support mt.supportedTextFilters. This is what tells external editing apps like MarsEdit know what formatting is being used so it can properly preview entries for you. As a result, Brent had to put in a custom preference (that one must manually add in) to force preview of Markdown formatting for all posts. This is rather unacceptable, but not Brent’s fault.
I don’t care what you are doing tomorrow. You’re going to make the time to get Firefox 1.0. Places that will most likely have download links:
Mozilla Mozillazine Spread Firefox Get Firefox Slashdot It’s likely to be a bandwidth bonanza, so be sure to find a mirror or BitTorrent feed.
As reported on MacCentral, MacGameSeed is starting to distribute Mac game files via BitTorrent. Blizzard has been doing this a little while now (primarily with the upcoming World of Warcraft beta).
It’s good to see more companies embracing this content distribution model (with 35% of the traffic on the Internet coming from BitTorrent). What I am surprised by is the lack of attention companies like Akamai have paid to it. Instead of paying these companies for mirrors for new files, they can simply set up a BitTorrent feed with a few seeds and let it rip. It may be that because BitTorrent is still a little rough around the edges for novice users (who don’t know about opening up ports to facilitate greater speeds, etc.) gives them reassurance. However, this will change (and already is, as Azureus has made some incredible strides into diagnosing performance problems for newbie users).
Here we go again.
NY Jets vs. Buffalo Oakland vs. Carolina Dallas vs. Cincinnati Washington vs. Detroit Arizona vs. Miami Philadelphia vs. Pittsburgh Kansas City vs. Tampa Bay Chicago vs. NY Giants New Orleans vs. San Diego Seattle vs. San Fransisco Houston vs. Denver New England vs. St. Louis Cleveland vs. Baltimore Minnesota vs. Indianapolis
Apple released Mac OS X 10.3.6 just a little while ago. Fire up Software Update or visit the technote page for the update, which includes links to Combo and Delta updaters. Below are the enhancements listed by Apple.
Internet and .Mac # Resovles an issue in which Safari might not load webpages correctly when the hard drive name included a non-ASCII character such as a symbol, diacritical, or two-byte character. Safari no longer times out after 60 seconds when attempting to connect to a webpage or to submit form data. With this update, Safari will keep trying indefinitely (or until you cancel the attempt). With this update, a synchronized iDisk correctly resizes .Mac storage after its allocation changes. Addresses a kernel panic issue that could occur when using an external, wireless USB broadband modem with Mac OS X 10.3.5. Networking # Improves AFP service performance. Addresses a situation in which a file name change that occured on a server while a client was running Terminal resulted in the client Terminal’s failure to recognize the change. Addresses an issue that could prevent login via a network user account. Resolves an issue for Mac OS X 10.3.5 in which, sometimes, network-based applications could not open an application from an automounted AFP volume, such as /Network/Applications/. SMB/CIFS servers in /Network no longer suddenly disappear and reappear after the network changes. Applications # Addresses an issue that could occur when using some scholastic information management applications with Mac OS X 10.3.5; this alert could appear: “Another module has ‘locked’ the MS Tx file. You will gain access when their task is completed.” Addresses an issue in which “zooming” in Halo 1.0.5 could lead to blurry video when using certain Nvidia video cards. Many calculating and conversion features within Calculator are improved by this update. Addresses an issue in which TextEdit could unexpectedly quit when changing text from Euphermia regular to italic. Addresses an issue for Mac OS X 10.3.5 in which Final Cut Pro HD 4.5 could unexpectedly quit. Other # Improves ColorSync calibrating for Apple Cinema HD Display (23-inch DVI) displays. Resolves an issue in which the display could sometimes remain dark when waking from display sleep (the mouse pointer might appear, but normal function could not be restored) if using Screen Saver password on a portable computer. Adds WMC connectivity capability for Nokia 7610 phones. Addresses an issue for Mac OS X 10.3.5 in which some glyph fonts, certain “Expert” or “dingbat” fonts, would no longer appear in some applications. Resolves a situation in which incorrect characters could show up for some fonts. Addresses some issues that could cause Classic to unexpectedly quit when starting up. This update makes it easier to scroll through a long list of user names in the login window. Includes recent Security Updates.
The most significant Mac news lately was the discovery of the Opener malware. Antivirus makers scrambled to protect against this “virus” which as I said, isn’t really a virus. It’s malware showing what one can do once they’ve compromised a machine.
I was reading the Cult of Mac Blog and they had an entry about a novel idea. Use NetNewsWire‘s new ability to read scripts as feeds to make a feed that will notify you upon new items being added to the /System/Library/Startup Items folder.
Just like everyone else, I’m going to encourage everyone to go vote. It’s too late for all of you in MA (not that it matters anyway).
I hope you all made your presence felt in the polls. I personally made mine felt by writing in Scott Daugherty for all unopposed candidates. Good times.
I figure a lot more people will visit if they can do more than just comment on my babbling.
So go do it up in the forums. I even made a politics forum for people to fight. If you have anymore ideas, drop me a line.
I tried calling on Thursday about my order of GTA: San Andreas. The customer service representative had just talked to another person that ordered it from them.
From the way he talked about it, a lot of people had. They had almost 700 outstanding orders and only 290 copies coming in that they knew of. He was so frustrated with people calling and checking that he almost had a speech for me and it was extremely impatiently said. It’s not that I was getting belligerent (as I have been known to do).