I Make Things

I know alot of people want to know how to do this. The solution is usually creating a shell script and naming it with the '.command' extension so it'll launch the Terminal.

The cleaner way is through a simple launchd plist placed in your ~/Library/LaunchAgents folder.

Here's my example:

I just picked up some new Oakley M-Frames for use as shooting glasses.

I guess this means I need to start shooting again.

Ammo prices are skyrocketing though since we're in a bad economy and folks on the conservative right are afraid Obama's gonna take their guns away. Libertarians know that people only take your guns away if you let them.

A new horror fiction magazine is out. It's published biannually and contains fiction, poetry, art, and photos of the horror genre.

It's currently available for sale and has gotten some nice comments from readers. Looks pretty good.

The main web site is at necrography.com and there's a blog at blog.necrography.com.

Check it out and buy a couple copies, I think I will - always good to support independent markets...

Just a little pet peeve I need to get off my chest.

I know all you PC folks are coming over to the Mac in droves and that's a great thing. It's great for you and for me. You'll have a much better computing experience (and life in general) on Mac and I'll still have a job making software for you. So win-win all around!

One little behavior we need to correct though, is how you write about your new computer. In the Windows world it's normal to write PC, or DELL, or IBM in all capital letters. Heck, in DOS (all caps there too) it's even proper to write FOLDER NAMES in capital letters as well, isn't it?

In the Mac world however, it's wrong to write Mac in all caps (and generally wrong to write folder names in all caps - it just looks like you're yelling). Yeah, I know it's a hard habit to break; writing Mac vs. MAC. I mean, you're gonna have to hold down the shift key a little less, and that's tough, but you should be getting used to doing things with less effort now that you have a Mac, right? Besides, you don't need to yell about your Mac. We all know how much better they are (we've been using them for years) and Mac users generally appreciate a little more subtly (you'll understand that as you get used to using your new Mac).

Anyway, Mac is the first three letters in the word Macintosh, which is a kind of an apple. Apple makes computers (and other hardware) and a Mac is a kind of Apple computer. See the correlation here, kind of witty huh? Anyway, you never see the word Macintosh with all caps for the first three letters: MACintosh. That just looks weird right? Well, using MAC to talk about Mac computers looks weird too. So, if you could just please not do that, it would be great.

Oh, before you go there is one instance where you'll want to use the all capitals version of the word MAC. That's when you need to talk about the "quasi-unique" identifier that's assigned to your network adapter. It's known as a Media Access Control address. All computers that can connect to a network have these and they're certainly not limited to Mac. Hey, I guess you also might want to use the all capitals version MAC when you're talking about MAC cosmetics as well, but that has nothing to do with computers.

Ok, so just to make sure we're on the same page... Use Mac and not MAC and we'll all get along great. Thanks!

So yeah, it's been a loooong time since I posted in this blog but I found something that gets my goat enough to write about it... It's this damned bailout business. I'll post more on my feelings about this when it's not so close to my bedtime but for now, I'll just leave with a link to a high-level analysis of the cost thanks to CNBC.

Yes, you as a tax payer are indentured to your share of this. Yes, you are now solidly a slave of the state. Yes, your unborn children already owe. Get working friends, it's gonna take alot of your sweat to pay this off. If you consider there's 300 million people in the US (from age 1 day to very old) and the cost of the bailout is roughly $4.3 trillion (that will go up), then you owe (right this minute - not counting inflation) just over $14,000! Remember, this amount is on top of your share of the national debt (and I won't even get into that).

Get cracking people, freedom is not free!