One of my favorite new Tiger features is small, and tucked away somewhat, so it's not widely known:

1. Open up Mail, Safari, TextEdit, or just about anything Cocoa (sadly, no Camino though)
2. Hold down Command-Control-D (well actually you don't have to keep holding the D, oddly enough)
3. Mouse over some words
4. Make “ooh” and “aah” noises

You can get the same effect on just one word with the selection context menu item “Look Up in Dictionary”—by default that will open the new Dictionary application, but there's a preference in Dictionary that makes it use the panel instead. I'd have used the much cooler panel as the default myself, but having the preference is enough for me.

Update: Buzz has posted a picture of the dictionary panel, which should be handy for those of my readers too misguided to be able to try this out for themselves.

Category: Geek

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Quick, how many GB of data can you burn onto a 4.7 GB DVD?

Just as with hard-drives, it continues to boggle my mind that this isn't illegal.

Category: Random

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Je viens de lire avec Laura plusiers livres pour enfants, et un de ces livres s'agit d'un renard qui (entre plusiers autres aventures) parlait avec un corbeau. Tout d'un coup, les première lignes d'une des fables d'Aesop, en forme de poème, sont arrivés dans ma tête. Je l'avais apris par cœur il y a plusieurs annés, probablement en collège. Je m'en souvenais de seulement sept ou huit lignes, et j'avais l'intention de demander si quelqu'un pourrait me fournir le poème entière—parce que j'ai cherché “mettre corbeau sur un arbre perché” au lieu de “maître corbeu sur un arbre perché”, et j'ai rien trouvé; c'est ça la difficulté avec ce qu'on apprend par cœur oralement.

Et la voilà, pour les curieux:

Maître corbeau, sur un arbre perché,
Tenait en son bec un fromage.
Maître renard par l'odeur alléché,
Lui tint à peu près ce langage:
«Hé! Bonjour Monsieur du Corbeau.
Que vous êtes joli! Que vous me semblez beau!
Sans mentir, si votre ramage
Se rapporte à votre plumage,
Vous êtes le phénix des hôtes de ces bois.»
A ces mots le corbeau ne se sent pas de joie;
Et pour montrer sa belle voix,
Il ouvrir un large bec, laisse tomber sa proie.
Le renard s'en saisit, et dit: «Mon bon monsieur,
Apprenez que tout flatteur
Vit aut dépens de celui qui l'écoute.
Cette leçon vaut bien un formage, sans doute.»
Le corbeau, honteux et confus,
Jura, mais un peu tard, qu'on ne l'y prendrait plus.

(Ça fait plusieurs annés que j'ai presque point écrit en français, alors ça ne m'étonnerait pas si il y a pas mal de fautes.)

Category: Random

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Laura had decreed that yesterday would be spring cleaning day, so the whole apartment got a much-needed picking-up/dusting/vacuuming/scrubbing. As it turned out though, we did a much more thorough job than we expected, since it's easier to clean everywhere when you move most of your furniture—which we did.

You see, the only high-speed internet access available here is, unfortunately, expensive cable-modem service. Since there are only two cable jacks in the apartment, and the one in the bedroom was no good since I often compute far past Laura's bedtime, we really only had one usable jack, annoyingly located on the island-wall separating the kitchen from the living room. The point being (there is, in fact, a point!) that we had to put my desk in the living room when we moved in, unless we wanted to drape coaxial cable across the floor. In order to fit the couch, TV, and stereo stuff in as well we ended up with a really awkward arrangement where my desk stuck out sideways, which segmented the space, made the living room feel much smaller, and partitioned off the kitchen and dining room area more than we would have liked. Plus, the back of my desk wasn't that attractive a view for the living room.

A week or so ago, though, I gave the old Lombard a new life as a wireless base-station and mini-server so that my computer wouldn't have to stay on all the time serving that purpose (and being noisy and drawing more power). And so (merciful Zeus, the tangent finally ends!) we finally had the freedom to create a furniture arrangement that sucks less, and we seized that freedom yesterday. Now the living room and dining room are combined into one space, with the light from the full-wall glass patio doors making it a lot further into the living room. Giving up ugly and awkward for more light seems like a good deal to me, as does trading the glare on my monitor from a window behind me for a nice view outside while setting at my desk.

My desk, some of my random junk, and Laura's sewing machine do make what was the dining room feel more crowded—and consequently the kitchen as well—but since the dining room used to be overfilled by our table anyway that isn't much of a loss. And who knows, maybe I'll even get wild and crazy enough to clean up my desk, so that it doesn't feel like it's going to spill over and bury the room. But even if I don't, now we can at least sit in the large, airy living room/dining room, and pretend this apartment isn't too small for us and all our stuff.

Category: Life

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Tiger will be available soon! I think it can be best said in the words of one of everyone's favorite internet memes:

It's the best! Beats the rest!

• Cellular
• Modular
• Interactive-odular

And as if that weren't enough: it's 100% PABA free!

Category: Geek

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It turns out that being called for jury duty consists primarily of sitting around for two half-days listening to strangers talk about their lives, then being sent home because you aren't needed. I think close to an hour of my life was squandered just because most of the people selected had received a speeding ticket at some point in their life.

So to anyone who ever has to sit and wait while I am screened for a jury: I'm sorry in advance for the speeding ticket I got last summer.

Category: Life

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