The National Bank is offering the Visa Mini card. I wonder if they’ll come in your choice of 5 colours with an optional arm strap?

I noticed this page a couple of weeks ago. It reproduces a feature found only on the new PowerBook range from Apple, where you can scroll a window by using two fingers on the trackpad instead of one.

It turns out that many of the previous generation of PowerBooks also had hardware capable of doing this, but not all. I don’t know if Apple will modify their drivers to support the older models, but it’s kind of ridiculous to expect me to buy another laptop for official support when this hacked driver proves my existing machine works fine.

Check the driver out - it’s working nicely on my 15″ AlBook. If the installer reports your machine isn’t capable of this feature, there’s always SideTrack.

Mal and Justin showed up tonight to go out to dinner with me (the Vegie O in Fitzroy, I had a nacho pizza), and on the way there we were stopped at some lights. The cars turning right from the oncoming lane ignored the amber turning arrow and started entering the intersection far too late. The last one crossing in front of us was definitely running a red - our light had been green for a couple of seconds. We started moving very slowly ahead to give him time to clear the intersection.

The old lady in the car to our left didn’t. She plowed straight into him, and he cannoned off her car into another car that was stationary, minding their own business and waiting for a green light. All three cars were white - proving that they are NOT safer than other colours.

I feel bad about it now, but I cheered.

One of the guys at work was amusing himself pressing the Shift key over and over on his W2k box and making it beep as it enabled/disabled sticky key mode. “Bet you can’t do that on a Mac!” he said.

Twenty seconds later my Mac was making typewriter sounds as I pressed the Shift key and displaying the Shift/Command/Option/Ctrl symbols on the screen as I pressed them. Then I turned Zoom mode on.

My rsync backup article just got posted over at AppleTalk. Ironically, I had to send it twice as the admin hadn’t been backing up his email.

Good lord, I want one.

It took 11 minutes after logging my phone on this morning before I got my first support call from somebody infected with a Windows worm. Good stuff.

My log for the call:

w2k, no firewall, no antivirus, infected, see tech

Crumpet, in her efforts to best my strapping efforts on my blog, has resorted to the dirty, dirty trick of double-posting! Well, it won’t work! Even if you do post two pictures of your luscious booby!

I spent most of last night trying to record an audio comment for Adam Christianson’s Maccast podcast. Hrmm. I guess I still haven’t talked about podcasting yet. Oh well.

Anyhow, I spent hours recording what turned out to be a 9-minute audio comment, not because I was having problems with the equipment (Rode NT2 mic through a cheap Behringer MIC100 tube preamp and then into the PowerBook, using Garageband to record), but because I was sucking. Rambling off topic, losing my train of thought, slurring words, talking off-mic, the lot. Eventually I got something I was reasonably happy with - I didn’t sound like a total prat and the recording quality was pretty good, except for a couple of utterly revolting sounds caused by swallowing too close to the mic (large diaphragm condensor mics pick up everything, including the stuff you really wish they hadn’t).

I edited out the worst fumbles with a trial version of Amadeus II, did some noise reduction to cover the hum coming from the dimmer circuit for the lights, and converted to a 96kbit AAC file which I emailed off. Maybe you’ll hear my prattling on Adam’s next podcast!

Something’s definitely going on. I’ve had more Mac support calls at work in the last week than I have in the previous three months - we’re talking 2-3 customers with enquiries a day. Naturally, none of the problems were related to their system not working due to viruses/spyware/Windows being a fucking piece of shit, they were simply configuration issues… but regardless, I’d normally only expect one Mac caller a week. I’ve gotta assume that people are starting to see the light…