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So last week I got a new TV.  It’s about time, as the set we had was almost beyond shame.

What the thing is is irrelevant to wha I want to say, but safe to say it’s a flat panel LCD with several HDMI inputs on the back.

We had the cable people come out and give us a new HD cable box.  It’s got all manner of outputs on the back of it - cable, composite, s-video, component and HDMI.  I elected to go HDMI because I know it’s the only digital signal of the bunch and I thought it surely must allow the best picture quality. (more…)

Yesterday a reprehensible piece of legislation was introduced in the Canadian House of Commons that stands to make millions of otherwise law-abiding Canadians criminals. It also stands to expose those same millions to lawsuits that could ruin lives, careers and families for the simple crime of shifting songs from a lawfully purchased CD to a lawfully purchased iPod or other device or storage format.  Welcome to the 21st Century, bitches.

The Federal Minister of Industry, Jim Prentice, says “This bill reflects a win-win approach.”

Just who will be doing all the winning with this is pretty clear. And it’s not me and you.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/06/12/tech-copyright.html

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Well, you have to give it up for some marketing efforts. Volkswagen are running an advertisement right now that shows you how to start their Passat model with any one of your five digits.

Unfortunately, choosing the middle finger (and taking a quick screenshot) probably doesn’t convey the message they wanted.

So, just about everyone is coming around to the idea that we’re not going to have limitless crude Oil forever. To this revelation I say, Duh! There can only be so much of the stuff on the Globe, so, yes, it must eventually run out.

The fact is that we - as in Human Civilisation - may never actually run out of Oil, so much as what remains will be a luxury item that only those with wealth can afford.

Not to mention that, even today, most of the countries supplying Oil to the World are - at best - politically unstable, and - at worst - not friendly to the West.

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I’ve just started a new blog called JetForm Daddy. It’s going to be my professional blog site (with a crazy name, nonetheless) about work-related matters and techo-type stuff.

This site is full of crazy rants and wild speculation, so I didn’t think it would be a good spot for techie stuff. I thought the name would be a good one as I date back to the JetForm era, and I stole the Daddy bit from Andrew Spaulding, aka Flex Daddy.

If you’ve got questions about JetForm, head on over and Ask JetForm Daddy.

My romance with the Apple Macintosh began many years ago. Around 1985, I think, when I first got my mitts onto a 512K Macintosh. We had one in our High School computer lab, and I was the only student in my class that was even allowed to use it. I was allowed to use it as I had mastered the Apple II’s we used otherwise, but the irony was that it was much easier to use than an Apple II…and that seemed - to my advantage - to be unknown to our Apple II toting teachers.

Though that Mac 512 had a small Black&White screen, it was far superior to anything else then available…at least outside NASA. The dot-matrix ImageWriter printer with it could produce the best text I’d yet seen, and in all manner of faces, sizes and styles. What you saw on the screen was exactly what would print, and though WYSIWYG as a term has now fallen from use as it’s everywhere, at the time it was absolutely revolutionary.

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