CSpotRun and PorDible

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CSpotRun is a nice, fast, freeware PalmOS DOC reader. PorDiBle is a simple, straightforward, freeware drag-and-drop TXT-to-DOC converter for OS X. Perfect combination for when you need those Gutenberg texts on the go.

Animal Eater Frank Buckland

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Frank “Bring ‘Em Back Alive and Ready to Eat” Buckland made a hobby out of tasting animals: Horses, ostriches, kangaroos, mice, earwigs, even boiled and fried slices of flesh from the head of an old porpoise.

This article on the origin of the phrase “eating crow” includes roast giraffe, elephant trunk soup, and a disinterred leopard from the London Zoo in his menu. (It is unknown, however, if he ever did eat actual crow.)

PETA would love this guy.

(Myself, the wildest food I’ve eaten is itlog ng bayawak — monitor lizard eggs. They’re squishy and salty.)

Got a Zire!

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Looking back at my handheld concerns, I started wondering what I really needed, especially on my limited budget. Combo cellphone? Not really; my N3390 is more than enough for now, and my prepaid scheme is far more cost-effective for my current lifestyle. Getting the postpaid subscription which would come with a new PDA-phone would mean the added hassle of a monthly bill and a new phone number. I can do without something like that for another year or so.

SD expansion slot with color screen? Why bother, when I already have my iBook with its SD Card reader on hand? It’s not that crucial that I be able to see my Pencam photos ASAP. They can wait a couple of hours.

All things considered, all I truly need is basic PDA functions (calendar, addresses, to do list, memo pad) with easy OS X compatibility. Minor games and a PalmOS Bible aside, I don’t even need more than a couple of megabytes of storage.

So I bought a Zire. Small, simple, easy transitional handheld device. And the white casing matches with the iBook perfectly. This should last me a year or two, till better and cheaper PDA’s come out to suit my needs. (Oh, with a penlight stylus to compensate for the lack of a backlight.)

Windchill

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I smiled into the wind, and my teeth froze.

Here Beginneth the Spring Semester

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It was a loo-oong first day of school yesterday, with “Intro to Systems and Programming” from 9am to 3pm, then “Video and Audio for the Web” from 4pm to 10pm.

That first class was something of a disappointment to me, with the instructor pointing the entire semester towards working in an extremely specialized application whose main underpinnings were in MIDI authoring, and which lacks the capability to compile executables, export data, or post/get data to/from the web — objectives central to my aims for this semester. When the advisor said “Forget the web for this semester,” that was when I decided this class wasn’t for me. The web is where I work, study, play, live, and blog; simply setting it aside for the sake of a nascent and practically-proprietary authoring app is simply not an option.

I’m about to go and fill out a registrar’s form, so I can switch to Sound Design class, which is the other alternative requirement course. Given that, and my Video/Audio for the Web class, this is going to be a very production-oriented semester. (Sad news: the Advanced Network Art elective was cancelled for lack of enrollment. Video/Audio for the Web, however, is a worthy alternative, covering topics like production, post-production, streaming, compression, and web broadcasting. Fun fun.)

At 3:30pm, I present my thesis proposal. Top secret. Very hush-hush. I’d tell you, but then I’d have to Wet-Willy you.

Hit the Ground Running

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First day of the second semester tomorrow, and I will be hitting the ground running. I’m in the lab again, doing three things at once: writing up a brief one-page thesis proposal, preparing a first-semester portfolio for the midyear review on Tuesday, and finishing up the authoring of last semester’s interactive design class multimedia presentation.

That last one has been a major trial. The workstations in the MA Digital Lab at MICA all use Director 8, but the class’ files were copied to my workstation in 8.5.1 format, and the Director 8.5.1 installer is no longer available from Macromedia’s trial download section because they’ve removed it in favor of Director MX. Unfortunately, the MX version only works in OS X, but the workstations all use OS 9.

Next possibility: copy the class’ documents to my iBook so I can work on it there, where I’ve already installed the Director MX Trial app. Sure. It should be a snap to copy 2.7 GB of Director files and extra media onto 4 discs, if only the single CD-burner in the lab had not whacked out and coaster-ized* the two CD-RW’s I had left.

And I forgot my Firewire cable at home, so remote Target Disk Mode is not an option.

I’m now feeling rather cross.

* coaster-ized: An error in burning the CD partway through the writing process leaves you with an invalid CD-R/W which cannot be burned or erased anymore, and can now only be used as a coaster. And not even a good coaster, with that hole in the middle.