Memorex’s Useless FlashDisc USB Drives

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

I was reading through EverythingUSB when I came across a news item on the introduction of the FlashDisc from Memorex. Flash drives can be handy little devices, but these FlashDiscs come in capacities of 16 MB or up to 32 MB. The non-usefulness of of a flash drive that small was well summarized by the blurb on EverythingUSB:

If you are not excited by the prospect of a flash based USB drive sporting 32 MB of data storage, then you are like me and actually expect a flash drive to hold some data. 32 MB?! That's like spending $3 to buy the winning lotto ticket and then finding out the jackpot was only $5. […]

I've been pondering buying a flash drive — I’d probably buy a Lexar JumpDrive Mercury if they were selling them yet — but I’m not sure what good a 32 MB drive would be. (At that size, the files would be small enough to transfer quickly of ftp, eh?)

Thermal Grease May Help Toasty MacBook Pros

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

Lucky enough to have a MacBook Pro, but it’s running hot for you? ZDNet reports on a thread from the Awful forums conjecturing that a poor application of thermal grease may be the culprit.

A post by Interrupting Moss on the Something Awful forums mentions that “it just takes a slight misapplication of thermal grease on a MacBook Pro to make the temperatures skyrocket.”

The amazing part is that if true, Apple techs are assembling MacBook Pros with too much thermal paste because the MBP service manual tells them to! According to MacBook Pro service manual “0.2-0.3cc” of thermal grease should be applied to all three chip mating surfaces. Interrupting Moss however, states that reapplying thermal grease "properly" dropped the running temperature of his MBP by 14 degrees Celsius. […]

At times I’m sad that I only have a PowerBook/G4, but nuggets like this make me feel a little better about waiting for the MacBook Pro “rev 2”.

Fallwell.com is Parody After All

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

This may end up being a fairly brief entry as I’ve been crazy-busy at work lately :-/. In any case, I was pleased to learn that the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal regarding Fallwell.com. In case you haven't heard of the case, it was brought by Rev. Dr. Jerry Falwell (one “L” in the middle) about the domain Fallwell.com which parodies him (with two “Ls” in the middle).

In its ruling against Falwell, the lower court wrote, "After even a quick glance at the content of the website … no one seeking Reverend Falwell's guidance would be misled by the domain name http://www.fallwell.com into believing that Reverend Falwell authorized the content of that website."

Falwell has long been a vocal opponent of human rights for gays and is well-known for taking his arguments and reasoning to laughably absurd lengths. Shortly after the terrorist attacks of 2001, for example, Falwell blamed the attacks on gays and lesbians, among others, on Pat Robertson's 700 Club program. He later denied saying what everyone heard him say and finally issued an apology several days later. […]

Well, yay 1st Amendment :).

KMFDM is on MySpace?!

Ashley Bischoff6 Comments

To me, MySpace is the online equivalent of a mall’s Hot Topic store. In case you're not familiar with them, Hot Topic is a self-described “punk” styled clothing store. However, when that includes Aerosmith and Lynyrd Skynyrd merchandise (no joke), I dare say that their punk-cred would appear somewhat compromised, to say the least. (I’m not casting judgement on Aerosmith or Lynyrd Skynyrd’s musical abilities — they’re just pretty much the opposite of punk.)

All the same, plenty of Generation Y poseurs like to shop at Hot Topic, thinking they’re edgy and counterculture when in reality they’re lining the pockets of The Man. And that’s where MySpace fits in. Sure, many users think of it as their private treehouse for them and their closest friends, but when your treehouse is home to 72 million other people, your exclusive club isn’t so exclusive, now is it?

To be sure, I have nothing against capitalism. Yes, I’m the kind of guy that buys beverages at Starbucks, and happily — hey, if a given company happens to be profitable due to an effective business model, I’m ok with that. (Well, as long as said company isn’t evil; see also Clear Channel.) Having said that, if you like MySpace because it’s a a website offering “photos, blogs, user profiles, groups, and an internal e-mail system”, that’s fine. It just doesn’t mean you’re more 3l337 for the sake of doing so.

Getting back to KMFDM, I enjoy their music and I’m on their online mailing list (so far, so good). However, in the mailing sent out today, they proudly announce the 1-year anniversary of their MySpace page. Well, what’s the use in having a MySpace page if you have a perfectly good actual domain name? All right, the maneuver be excused if they’re merely trying to make their music available to more listeners. All the same, a part of me is worried a bit that KMFDM could be somewhat HotTopicifying itself — making ventures based on marketing perception rather than substance.

Food as Landscapes

Ashley Bischoff5 Comments
Little construction men sitting on an eclair which, to them, is life-sized

I ran across these food photographs featuring miniature people placed to resemble a scene. (I'm still not sure if the people were computer generated — while the ice-cream guy looks pretty real, the lighting on the bikers doesn’t seem quite realistic.)

Anyhow, I really enjoyed the photography there; the narrow depth of field (common to most of the photos along the left side of the page) really made me ask myself whether I’d have any chance at duplicating that type of focus effect. After some further thought, though, I realized that my camera probably can’t reproduce a low enough aperture for that kind of thing.

I have little doubt that some computer manipulations were involved in the images — after all, even the most strict in-camera digital photographer generally does some color balance adjustments here and there. Still, I can’t help but wonder if some of the depth of field effects were applied digitally after the fact. Even if that was the case, though, I wouldn’t hold it against the photographer; all the shots came out really well.