Light Up The Sky
Milton Glazer, the designer who created the incredibly durable “I Love NY”
campaign in the 60's has come up with a brilliant way to greet the Republicans
and send
a message when
they
bring their circus to New York on August 30: Instead of angry confrontation,
or
organizing
a massive
protest
– that requires permits and draws a concentrated police presence – simply walk
in small groups with candles, flashlights, or anything that gives off light,
from dusk to dawn. Light transforms darkness.
lightupthesky.org: Pass
it on.
Spam speculation
I've added my own spin to the subject lines of a few of
the spams that have slid into my inbox over the last couple of weeks. The subject
lines are un-altered; the context is up for grabs.
Subject: “caloric ego”
- Tired of those fattening egos? Try our new all-fiber ego-booster...
Subject: “gypsy 8 necromancers”
- Isn't that Eight Gypsy Necromancers, or did the gypsy subsist on a diet of
necromancers (and regularly visit chat rooms)?
Subject: “I love you alot”
- Thanks; I hate when people say “alot,” when what they mean is “a lot.”
Subject: “Painless Treatment for Molluscum”
- Are we treating shellfish here, or are the shellfish infesting humans these
days? (If they are, perhaps tapeworms should be worried.)
Subject: “Re: chomsky goer”
- I think Noam would be proud to know that his name has become a valid cover
for spammers, as if he didn't already know that he's on the map.
Subject: “Enlaaargeeeee You Peeeenis Toooooday”
- Transcribed from a recording – the announcer was sitting on a coin-operated
vibrating bed in a very cheap motel... English is not the announcer's mother
tongue.
:::
The Tour
de France Prologue is tomorrow. I'm psyched.
:::
Paraphrasing something I heard on TV the other day: We all have things inside
us, that will set us free if we let them out. If we keep them inside, they
will kill us.
:::
I have more to share with you, dear reader. I just can't post right now...
Soon. I promise!
2 Days Early –
That's a little like cutting the deficit (that didn't exist before dubya took
office) in half. The spin machine was churning so fast today, you could almost
hear screeching metal. Did you notice how many stories coupled the handover with
“Fahrenheit 9/11?”
:::
Scratched
I was offline for several days because my startup drive choked on a really
big file. I couldn't restart the machine, and had to take it in for service.
They reinstalled my system.
How'd that happen? Well, I was working on a BIG Photoshop file (nearly 500
MB), and tried to save it. In the midst of preparing to save, I started getting
messages saying that the drive was getting full, and asking if I wanted to
quit applications to free up space. Eventually, I suffered what is known as
a kernel panic, and could get no further than the panic dialog each time I
restarted the mahine. Fortunately, I'd saved the file on an external drive,
so I could continue my work on a rented machine.
You might be wondering how I crashed my startup disk if I was writing to an
external drive. That's where the “scratch disks” come in. Whenever you're working
in 'shop, temporary files are being written from time to time. These files
contain copies of various resources from the file you're working on, to support
freatures like undo and print spooling. That means the scratch disks' file
size can easily exceed the size
of the file you're editing, and the implication is that when you're working
on a half-gig file, you probably need more than a gig of free space on your
drive. That wouldn't necessarily be a problem, except Photoshop apparently
doesn't take “no” for an answer when it's trying to write scratch disks. Even
though
the
system
was
saying
the
disk is full, Photoshop continued to try and save the file.The final result
was something getting corrupted.
Now that you know about scratch disks, you do have some options. Photoshop
has a preference you can set, allowing you to tell 'shop to write those scratch
files on a different disk. Even though my new startup disk has triple the capacity
of the original internal hard drive, I think I'll write my scrach disks to
the external, just in case. I'll also think carefully the next time somebody
wants to make a 20 square foot collage at full-scale.
:::
Sorry to be so quiet for so long... I'd write more, but it's time to go...
