iMurphy

Has anyone else who runs/uses a mediawiki site had common.js issues lately?  I’ve never been able to see, looking at the source code, where Common.js is loaded, but it’s always worked…until now.  All of a sudden, my navboxes quit working, as well as all the other functionality done in Common.js.  The file itself is unchanged and I can’t imagine what else I did do my site.  In case you’re curious, my mediawiki site is reformedword.org .

I have found lots of extensions for Firefox (here), but my most recent is It’s All Text! It allows you to edit textarea’s in your favorite external text-editing program. I couldn’t get it to work, however! I read in the creator’s blog about how he seemed to solve the problem, but I still had to type the solution by hand into the preferences, as mentioned here. So, I’m reposting this solution in an effort to help the Mac community out. Blog on!

I just listened to a very good sermon by C.J. Mahaney, former pastor of Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland. He was very Baptist in his use of passion as a persuasive sermon technique, but nonetheless quite convincing and convicting. I recommend the sermon to everyone. (Oh, and thanks to Castle Church Popular Files podcast for the hook-up.)
Totally unrelated to anything serious, I kept thinking how my Mahaney’s voice sounded like a young Alec Baldwin’s! No one else seems to have made the connection, so I thought I’d mention it. Does anyone else hear it? (I think I must’ve heard some audio book Alec did since I clearly am able to divorce appearences from sounds.)

After hearing a great presentation on Ubuntu Linux, I thought, “Why haven’t I switched to Linux?” I have been very tempted, but there are a few major applications that keep me on my Mac. Finale is a big, one. (Though I hear you can run Finale on UNIX with WINE pretty well.) Aquisition is not the only Limewire/Gnutella client, but it is far and away the best. Blurb’s Booksmart self-publishing software isn’t available for Linux yet. Journler is still Mac OS X only; so is Delicious Library. But the biggest reason has to be iLife. There are other iPod managers like iTunes (but, of course, no store) and there may well be programs for Linux like the iOthers, but together and overall, the suite is smokin’!

Full of youthful hubris, I once tried subscribing to the entire IT Conversations feed. This ended up being one or two podcasts a day, and I never caught up. The effort, however, yielded a few gigs of audio on my iPod. I hack away at them, slowly whittling down the unfiltered mess. For the most part, I listen to what Gigavox recommends for me, taking into account my previous ratings. For example, everything I’ve heard from Emerging Telephony Conference has been boring as dirt.
As I drove along home, I heard Phil Windley and Doug Kaye announce three lightning speeches from eTel and I was prepared to be underwhelmed. But before I could wind my way past the crap, I heard three amazing, five minute speeches.

Brian McConnel gave a long introduction to RadioHandi, a kind of party-line plus voice mail for the internet. With a growing list of local numbers around the world, users can call in and listen to or leave notes around anything. The first use that comes to my mind is for podcasts who want to broadcast listener comments as audio. ‘Sounds like a great way to create communities and broadcasts with phones, VOIP and/or RSS.
Second, Ajay Madhok beautiful describes AmSoft’s offering to communications: context-awareness. Depending on where we are and what we’re doing, we want different people to be able to reach us in different ways. Why can’t our phones, our email and our IM clients act like a personal assistant, screening calls to make them appropriate to our circumstances? What if we could just have one identity and not tell everyone our changing emails and numbers? Equals is the total package to do this, and I have no idea how it could possibly work!! How can they intercept your calls, email and IM, regardless of what network they’re on?!?! ‘Sounds too good to be true!!
The last presentation was on how to make your home phone better. No one who thinks about it wants their home phone to surf the web, but it would be nice if it was an alarm clock, could tie in to online chat and access your contacts. Enter Casabi, tying the web and voice together at home intelligently. I’m sure it must entail buying new hardware, but it would be nice to have home phones that are at least as useful as cellphones.

For the first post of the year, I’ll return to my inane gadget musing of the past. Now I don’t own a Zune. In fact, I’ve never touched one. But I can tell I don’t want one … yet. If they ever get Linux on it, then the chances are it’d be awesome. If the wi-fi was actually wi-fi (as in, check your email and surf the web) and the “squirting” was just straight file-sharing, it’d be cooler than an iPod: the screens bigger and the battery lasts longer. As it stands, every body thinks it sucks, from GeekBrief to Leo Laporte to CNN. I would never get one now because it doesn’t work on Mac. Even the Zune-a-philes have lists of needed improvements, like Zune Luv. To boot, Microsuck has made some freaky ads.

Surely you recall the Optimus Keyboard, a 103-key gadget of awesomeness where each key is a tiny LCD that ’s individually reprogrammable. Well some news is finally coming out again: the keyboard will be available for pre-order starting December 12th. Price and quantity available have not been announced but there are some rumors that it might cost something in the $200 range. While digging through the Optimus LiveJournal, we uncovered this picture of the Mac OS X interface used to reprogram the keys. Looks incredibly robust and easy to use. In fact, everything about this keyboard looks to be awesome and incredibly useful: now let ’s just hope it doesn ‘t turn into vaporware like some other keyboard-related items.

Optimus-103 keyboard pre-orders start December 12 [Engadget]

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