I AM in my happy place, dammit!!!

Saturday, April 08, 2006 • 05:33:44 PM EDT

This will probably be the last post I make to this blog before I set fire to the house and try to make it all the way to Ecuador before local investigators realize that the bones they pulled out of the rubble aren't mine.

It's the perfect storm of work-overload. It's a hurricane in which there is no calm and tranquil eye, just an enormous cliff face of sheer, smooth ice that I must climb. And I lost my gloves about fifty yards back, and a chunk of ice slid down the back of the neck of my snowsuit and it's refrozen right on top of my underpants, and there are a bunch of mean kids at the top of the cliff who are dropping soda cans and rocks on me and generally having a good laugh at my expense.

I have had better weeks. Yes.

The next big chunk of my next book is due soon. (No problem.) I've got my usual magazine and newspaper columns due. (No sweat, it's what I do.) I've got to do my state and federal taxes. (I hate doing my taxes every year, hate it hate it hate it, but regardless: 'the only way around it is through it'.)

But!

Problem: all of this has to be done more or less at the same time. Problem: I'm leaving for a weeklong conference in Boulder on Sunday. Problem: in order to get all of my papers together and make sure I don't make any dippy mistakes, the taxes can't be done until I finish cleaning my office, which has been hit by the usual "immersed in a book project" hurricane. Problem: my newspaper editor needs the next column in a few days early. Problem: ...on and on. It's an endless sequence of (n+1) states, and the available minutes of every day are being nibbled at by a thousand ill-tempered ducks.

Ecuador. Or possibly Granada. I hear that it's got beaches.

Do people still run off to Canada? Is that such a cliché that it's the first place they'll go looking for me? Or maybe it's so obvious that they wouldn't even seriously consider it? I imagine the great thing about hiding out in Canada is that all those parka hoods make it a whole lot harder for a bounty hunter to get a good look at anybody's face.

Busy, yes. I am so busy, dear reader, that on Wednesday morning I was offered a free, all-expenses-paid trip to the NABB convention in Las Vegas -- possibly with a speaking fee attached as well -- and I had to bite the inside of my cheek really hard. I allowed the burst of pain and the taste of blood to pull me down to reality; I fully processed the fact that as bad as that had felt, the pain I'd suffer if I spent three days in Vegas at NABB while the (articles, book chapters, taxes, etc.) are due would feel logarithmically worse.

Oh, and laundry and packing. I've got to run a wash and pack for the trip. Forgot to put those on the list.

I would like to end this blog post with something wry, but I'm too exhausted and I need to get back to work.

Would Norway be an over-reaction? It feels like it's an over-reaction. But maybe I'll feel differently on Saturday night. Plus, hell...in Norway you get to wear a parka and a balaclava.

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Boy, when eBay says "Get It Here," they ain't kidding...

Saturday, April 08, 2006 • 07:29:46 PM EDT

Incidentally, I've just clicked the "related websearch" of my last post. Check out the first ad that Google attaches to the search results:

I want to amuse myself by Googling for "Illegal, Anesthesia-grade narcotics" just to see if eBay has a sponsored link for that as well, but I'm almost completely certain that that it'd get me immediately put under electronic surveillance under the terms of the Patriot Act.

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Nothing to see here, folks...

Saturday, April 08, 2006 • 09:25:38 PM EDT

This is a test of either how much I freaking LOVE AppleScript or how much it just likes to toy with me.

Viz:

Okay. That much of it worked OK. Now let's see if the rest of it works!

Push the button, Frank...

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PIC-ture Book! Pic-tures of your Mama, Taken by your Poppa...

Saturday, April 08, 2006 • 11:11:18 PM EDT

Okay, I rule: CWOBber (my homemade blog app, the output of which you are currently reading) now handles images automatically. Here, I'll show you:

See how easy that was? I can do it again, no problem:

Image support was probably the last bloggy-writing thing that I still had to do manually each and every time. Scale the image, save it, use BBEdit's HTML Image command to insert the right HTML code into the article, modify the HTML to work with my own stylesheets, publish the new entry the blog, and then manually FTP the JPEG where it needed to go. Now that's gone the way of buttonhooks, the Whig party, and being able to watch "American Idol" without feeling as though you're contributing to the downfall of something or other.

Now, I just click on my new "Insert Image" command. Like this, watch:

...Couldn't be easier.

I suppose I might be overdoing it. Perhaps if I just take another sip of this nice cup of tea I've got next to the desk, I'll settle down a bit. Let me just reach over and...d'ohh!

Sorry...I accidentally brushed against the mouse button. But that was a happy accident because it demonstrates that CWOBber can convery any file into the right web format...even a PostScript file like that one. Yes, it's all thanks to Glorious AppleScript, specifically the Image Events suite. It opens, it scales, it crops, it spins, it flips, it converts, it saves...four easy payments, call right now and we'll throw in a free kitchen gadget that can turn an ordinary beet into a stunningly-lifelike bust of Sebastian Cabot.

Of course, that's just the image-manipulating bit. Most of the work went into simply figuring out the best way to implement this sort of feature. Among the many fun and frustrating parts of writing software is the fact that while 100,000 of the million monkeys pounding at keyboards in XCode will come up with code that works, only four will have solutions that actually work well. And three of those solutions are ones that you just personally won't like.

How to handle images in my blogger? It's been on my mind for a couple of years. It took me a while just to realize that I was perfectly OK with a solution that squirted the right sort of HTML into the editing window, as opposed to something that hid everything from the user. That decision simplified things greatly. Then I started thinking of ways to manage the unpredictable collection of media that CWOBber would then have to keep track of between the moment I inserted a picture and the moment I actually posted the thing to the web.

And the solution wasn't particularly clever. It's elegant. Or, elegant for what it has to do, at any rate. And the elegant solution rarely climbs over seatbacks and throws little children to the floor in order to be at the very head of the line when the doors open. Elegance is patient, and it brings a book to read to pass the time before its number is called.

So the new image feature works, and the even better news is that this particular solution is incredibly flexible. When it comes time to build this as a slick application, the same system of managing files will cut-and-paste right into the new project without any modifications. Better still, if I decide that some day I want to be able to embed MP3 files, binaries, anything in a file format...it'll handle the job with very few modifications.

The big big win is that I can now use pictures whenever and wherever I want. Throwing in photos Just Because You Can...like this:

...Well, that's just pointless and self-indulgent and tedious, and obviously, I'm just doing it here because it's fun. But at the other end of the Bad Result Spectrum is when you think a picture is really rather important, but you don't bother using it because it's just plain too complicated. You settle for something less than exactly what you want, because your tools aren't up to the challenge.

And here we have the reason why a company like Apple needed to exist. Documents, pictures, movies, music, and God-knows what else in the next thirty years: building all of these is well within the reach of anybody with access to a Macintosh. And software, too. Yes, I'm a geek, and I've been writing software since I was a tyke, but I'll be honest with you: without AppleScript, I probably would have went straight from hand-coding my HTML to using a commercial solution like Blogger or TypePad. Instead: I have the tools I need to build the exact tool that I want.

Apple's established a consistent track record of providing us all with powerful stuff that allows ordinary people to take Good Ideas and convert them into something that a non-telepath can appreciate and enjoy.

Yes, one more frivolous image, I think, before I knock it off:

Keep Watching The Skies!

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Nature's Most Perfect Food

Sunday, April 09, 2006 • 02:14:00 AM EDT

Speaking of "I want to put a picture in a blog entry, but not if it's a lot of trouble":

Yes, here you see documentary evidence that we're nearing the end of Lent: I have purchased and consumed my third and final Cadbury Caramel Egg. They've got plenty of them there at the drugstore. Boxes and boxes and boxes of them. In fact, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they put the things on a two-for-one offer very soon. "Shrewd long-term planning," my accountant would nod, after I hand him $2103 in receipts representing the purchase of the store's entire remaining inventory, plus a freezer chest and the nominal expense of setting up an eBay store.

But no: my strength is as the strength of ten men, for my will is strong. And I don't seem to have caught the diabetes, either. The pluses of Not Eating More Than Three Cadbury Caramel Eggs (tangible proof of my purity of soul, no need to shoot up several times a day) are therefore outweighing the pluses of eating them (which are self-evident) by two-to-one.

However, as I contemplate the coming ten months and three weeks in which I shall be going without Cadbury Caramel Eggs, I realize that the candy has one huge defect: the foil wrapper makes it fairly painful to chew off any molecules of chocolate and caramel that might be sticking to it.

But I'm going to do it anyway. Once again, I refer you to my indominable will.

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Picture Book (redux)

Sunday, April 09, 2006 • 02:42:23 PM EDT

Hello, sensation-seekers...I've got my nieces and nephews over at the house, I've just taken a whole cardful of photos on assorted juvenile hooliganism, and now I'm showing my niece how easy it is to post a photo from my picture library:

The niece is far too impressed to comment, or even make any outward sign that she's as blown away by this as she is.

I respect her for that.

Two other nieces/nephews have come along, and they couldn't contain themselves.

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Parked.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006 • 06:22:17 PM EDT

You've probably guessed from the most recent few posts that at this moment -- and I've just double-checked to make sure -- I am at home in Boston instead of in Boulder. This the first time I've missed the Conference on World Affairs since I was first invited eight or nine years ago.

Overall, the situation in the days leading up to my scheduled departure was a lot like oversleeping for a flight. It's panic, panic, panic. 18,000 kilowatts of frenzied action as you rush around and throw bags into the car and peel out on to the highway, frantically calculating every possible vector to the airport and desperately maintaining your faith that there might be one improbable sequence of events which could possibly result in your boarding the plane seconds before they pull the jetway. You clutch this thought with the same tenacity and foolishness with which a child believes that Auntie Kitten really was just teaching Daddy how to do the Happy Monkey Dance, and that Mommy's packing a suitcase because she's going off on a slumber party somewhere and maybe she'll bring you a present tomorrow morning.

But then there's the undefinable moment when your death-grip on the steering wheel loosens, the muscles in your face slacken for the first time since you woke up, and your eyes, once twitching but now filled with an unfamiliar clarity and peace, now calmly search for an offramp that will allow you to reverse course from I-93 North to I-93 South. There was an invisible line drawn on the clock and you've just felt a little mental b-dmp as you crossed over it.

It's official: you're screwed. Any efforts towards Rescue are hopeless and you're better off putting your shoulders behind the Recovery operation. And at 5 PM on Saturday, the risks and the absurdity of boarding my 9 AM plane on Sunday had become crystal-clear.

I took an hour off, just to make sure this was truly the right thing do (and to put a final nail in the coffin), and then I sent a couple of apologetic emails to the University of Colorado. For the first time, I was thankful that this was a conference that doesn't cover any of the speakers' expenses.

But I can't say that I was relieved to cancel. I love the Conference on World Affairs. I look forward to it every year; it's a huge intellectual recharge, both as a speaker and as someone sitting in the audience. You don't know what you'll be speaking about until a couple of weeks beforehand, and even then all you get are some ambitiously-vague titles to work from. You're given no descriptions or guidance of any kind. You sit back, figure out what sort of thoughts and opinions that those five to twelve words inspire in you, and then you go from there.

Speaking on nine panels at the CoWA is like playing nine innnings of baseball. Each and every year there'll be times when I step off the stage feeling like I've knocked the ball straight over the Green Monster and the crowd is refusing to allow the game to proceed until I step back out and tip my cap. And believe me, there are plenty of panels where I storm back to the dugout after three straight pitches and kick the hell out of the water cooler, which as the wandering spirits of Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle will tell you, is the only effective way to reset yourself for your next at-bat.

And if I may stretch the baseball analogy further, when the individual ten-minute talks are over with and the floor is opened up for Q&A, I feel as though I'm out there in center field, supporting my teammates and preventing runs from scoring. IE, preventing someone in the audience from making a better point than the panelists did, or successfully making the case that we're full of crap.

Alas, the forces of chaos were well-organized against me and had a brilliant, flawlessly-executed plan that would have done Palpatine proud. I have to respect them for that: in 2006, my responsibilities clamped me in leg-irons and kept me in Boston this week, reminding me once again that sometimes it really sucks to be an adult.

On the plus side, I now have plenty of time to take amusing pictures of the life-sized stuffed animal in my office:

Next year. There's always next year.

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Find!

Wednesday, April 12, 2006 • 08:31:27 AM EDT

Writing and office cleaning proceed apace. And when an office gets as cluttered as mine does, spring cleaning is like Christmas morning: you keep finding things that have been misplaced for so long that you forgot you even had them.

I didn't exactly lose the last piece of artwork that I bought on eBay, but when it arrived in January I sort of put it on a shelf out of the way so it wouldn't get damaged. Came across it again on Tuesday, slipped it out of the thick sandwich of flattened FedEx boxes that is the international standard for shipping illustration art, and finally got my first close look at it. Nice, nice stuff. I saw this in printed form fifteen years ago or so...I distinctly remember being in Newbury Comics on Newbury Street with a friend and thinking it was a terrific page. Cool.

It's easy to get distracted by all these finds, though. Last night, my bedside reading was a volume entitled Betcha Can't Do It! It's a 1940 book of party games. A sample:

And the book has about 200 of these things. It makes me imagine that the United States got into World War II just to finally have something interesting to do on Friday nights.

When I wander into a secondhand bookstore, one of the seven or eight things on my Watched Items list are old books of magic tricks and party games. I must have bought this book a couple of years ago but if I ever read it, the content was long dislodged from my brain. The "mystifying and baffling" secret of how to light a safety match off the sole of one's shoe (page 88) came as a delightful surprise.

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I can SO take off my waistcoat without removing my jacket!

Wednesday, April 12, 2006 • 05:08:04 PM EDT

I return from lunch (and a trip to Staples to pick up some more of those spiffy cheap folding storage boxes), to find not one but two emails emphatically asking the same question. Answer:

So: just rub the side of a matchbook on the bottom of your shoe every morning before you head off to work, just in case that sort of thing should come up.

I do find these parlor tricks fascinating. If placed under examination by a grand jury, I would have to confirm that yes, more than once in my lifetime I have levitated a fork off a dining table, and then turned that same fork into a table knife. But your honor, I would like the following two facts to be read into the record: First, that each time it was only to cheer up a small child who was clearly wondering if being forced to sit still at a table full of adults and be quiet was his punishment for any number of minor past transgressions; and Second, the aforementioned levitation and transformation requires only that there be utensils and a napkin somewhere on the table. You can usually count on finding those props at a dinner, unless the people you're dining with believe that utensils and napkins are for people who like to put on airs. IE, once you know how the trick works and rehearsed the moves, there's no need to make any lifestyle changes whatsoever.

Part of the appeal of a book like Fun With Stunts is picturing someone carrying around a matchbox with exactly eleven specially-notched matches in it everywhere they go, or a handkerchief with a toothpick sewn into the corner. You know, just on the off-chance that they're going to overhear somebody at Starbucks boasting that it's physically impossible to arrange ten matches so that none is touching the other and yet together they can be used to lift a silver dollar.

I'm a fan of magic, but I don't actually perform it...for exactly that reason. A true pro can force his will upon anybody. But a mere Enthusiastic Amateur will never be able to convince someone that as it just so happens, they left the house that morning with three identical ballpoint pens in their shirt pocket. You'll observe that one is filled with blue ink, one with red ink, and one with green ink...

There's a fantastic pocket magic trick called "Scotch and Soda." It's absolutely baffling, very flexible (you're not locked into a single sort of presentation) and there's only one real move to learn. There was a time when I never left the house without a Scotch and Soda gaffe in my pocket somewhere.

But I had to knock it off because the standard S&S rig requires people to believe that your random pocket change happens to include pennies, nickles, dimes, quarters...and a Mexican 50-centavo coin. Who walks around with a Mexican coin? This question truly gets to the heart of all "real" magic. A true pro is a master at sending off an utterly convincing vibe of "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain." In the field of magic, that's a hundred times more important than any special gimmick or even mastering a certain sort of move.

Magic is much on my mind at the moment. My lunchtime reading was yet another Distraction that I came across during office cleaning: the August 2004 issue of "Genii, the Conjuror's Magazine." The cover story was written by Teller (of "Penn and...") and is a terrific tale about how a legendary lost manuscript on the art conjuring was saved, reassembled, and finally published through the accidental efforts of three incorrigible packrats, spanning more than seventy years.

It's great reading. But it's not helping inspire me to throw away all of these old books and magazines.

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We serve hard liquor to people who want to get drunk fast

Friday, April 14, 2006 • 05:33:08 AM EDT

"Another red-letter day for the Baileys!!!" I snapped. This is one of three different "It's A Wonderful Life" quotes that I keep using but which nobody ever identifies. The second is my usual response to "Merry Christmas" ("Happy New Year to you...IN JAIL! Go on home, George, they're waiting for you!") and the third is just plain good life advice. How many ideas for truly awful commercials would have been mercifully taken into the alley behind the ad agency and beaten to death, if only copywriters had embraced George Bailey's simple koan: "Oh, why don't you stop annoying people?"

But the quote that opened this post comes at the end of the day, when you've gathered the staff together and noted that on the whole, this day was not without setbacks. Yes, I'm still busy, busy, busy. The capper to Thursday was that I agreed to appear on Shawn King's radio show, but neglected to note that he'd meant 8:35 PM Central time. This meant that the last five minutes of the radio interview would overlap with the first five minutes of my iChat appearance at this month's meeting of the Colorado Macintosh User Group.

And I was eager to keep that date. I've appeared at their meeting every year since I started attending the Conference On World Affairs, and I didn't want to break my streak. They're a terrific group of folks and it's always a delight to come and talk to people that you feel that you know very well.

Fortunately, COMUG holds their meetings at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, aka "That wicked cool vintage-futuristic building that was used as a key location in Woody Allen's 'Sleeper'." It's a government building, which means that (a) their 'net connection is so fast that you can download Hollywood blockbusters faster than the studios can finish editing them, and (b) the site's firewall blocked iChat's port access for the video feed.

So my intended twenty minutes of wry commentary, shameless self-promotion, and the trotting out of the same tired old joke I tell every year was replaced by the breathless display of me and the moderator typing things like:

hammersm: hang on...changng net connections

notandysrealid: k

hammersm: ga

On the plus side, my mug is on the front page of The New York Times right now. Well, the Web edition. Okay, it's actually an unidentified frame-grab from one of David Pogue's online videos:

I helped him out with a bit of fun re: Boot Camp, via iChat. Came out nice, I think.

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Eternal Life By Chocolate

Saturday, April 15, 2006 • 11:47:17 PM EDT

Today, the conspiracy to convert our fine American Republic into a full-blown, bead-jiggling, Bible-thumping Theocracy chalked up yet another major win: overnight, police forces in communities scattered all over Norfolk county -- resources that are budgeted from your tax dollars -- have been conscripted into an exclusive, private militia for Christian-friendly businesses.

The Honey-Baked Ham Store. The Italian bakery that makes those incredible breads and rolls, and the Italian bakery that makes those incredible cookies and cakes: an armed police officer with full martial powers was stationed at the parking lot of each. Their normal duty uniforms were obscured by an orange religious vestment cut short at the shoulders and the waist, clearly to afford the Right Reverend Officer instantaneous access to his weapons and restraints, should one of the Unfaithful make an appearance and try to buy a black-and-white cookie that had been earmarked for the Righteous in this new world order.

And shamefully, these vestments had been cunningly tailored so that at first glance, they appeared to be common reflective safety vests. But those of us who know what signs to watch out for know better, don't we? Oh, yes, indeed we do. As I passed by the entrance to that store in Newton where they hand-make some truly luscious chocolates, a militiaman waved a pointy orange -- that color again; coincidence? Ha! -- flashlight at my car.

I mean, come on. "Traffic control," my ass. What better way to camouflage the dispersal of baptismal holy water upon the so-called "wicked" but to conceal the aspergillum inside a traffic wand, and use it when it "just happens" to also be raining? It was so obvious. That thing looked as consecrated as hell to me.

And I should know. I'm usually the first and often the only person in my community who can sense these things. Ask the "Letters To The Editor" guy at all four of my local papers. They'll all tell you the same thing: if it weren't for Andy Ihnatko, they'd have no idea of just how scary things have become out there on the front lines of religion.

(Ha! Ha! Oh, it's fun to laugh, is it not?)

Nonetheless, it's easy to imagine how standard-issue paranoia can often turn into, you know, an arrest record. Cops were indeed everywhere today, and they were all stationed in places where Christians were likely to do business. More specifically, places where Christians were likely to try to park a car. Easter Sunday represents the central mystery and the central miracle upon which all Christian faiths are based. Still, that doesn't mean that Christ's simple teachings of peace and love should play any factor whatsoever in an equation that involves two SUVs, one handicapped parking space, and eight minutes before the bakery closes.

Only in a hectic month like this one can two hours' worth of errands be considered a delightful break in the workday. The highlight of this errand was another one of those "My Job Is Not Like Yours" moments: I willfully jettisoned thousands and thousands of dollars' worth of hardware and software, representing much of the flotsam of the big Office Cleanup Project.

Mind you, we're talking old, old stuff. One of the things I tossed was a full copy of Photoshop. How old was it? So old that it actually included seven inches of printed documentation and a big brick of 3.5" floppies. Photoshop 3 represented a true golden age in software complexity: a Camelot-like five-year period in which an app could kill you if it fell on you.

Also consigned to the scrapheap: most of my ADB devices, most of my SCSI devices, composite monitors. All of which were useful, viable, and productive items whose only fault was their unwillingness to acknowledge and interface with the modern world.

Surely there's a lesson here for all of us.

Happy Easter. May you quickly locate that one painted egg that the Easter Bunny recklessly chose to hide inside a heating duct.

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Bunny Heads, Bunny Heads, Roly-Poly...

Tuesday, April 18, 2006 • 07:52:59 AM EDT

On Easter Sunday, I desperately wanted to tell you all that if you've never heard of the Cakewhore Blog, then you absolutely needed to spackle that gap in your cultural awareness immediately. Because she posted photos of her Easter cookies over the weekend. I should stress that this photo represents only her customary level of excellence in the field of Food Porn.

Alas, I couldn't blog about that on Sunday because of a shortcoming in my blog software. It seemed to merit a one-paragraph blurb, you see. The first paragraph of the text becomes that blog item's Description in Yellowtext's RSS feed, and as soon as a feedreader comes across an "<" or a ">" or a "&" it pouts and claims that my feed doesn't validate. Meaning: the first paragraph of any blog item can't contain links, style tags, or ampersands.

The version of my blog software that I lost in the Great Hard Drive Hissy-Fit of 2005 solved that problem by simply stripping out all of that stuff when creating an RSS description. I hadn't actually gotten around to adding that feature to my new, totally-rewritten edition of CWOBber yet. But about a half an hour ago I'd finally had it with walking on eggshells every time I write the first paragraph of anything, so I added a couple of dozen lines of code to handle it.

Anyway. Witness the first live-fire exercise of this RSS-scrubber code. And seriously, dude: bookmark Cakewhore. I mean, I have no idea what "Dulce de Leche Cake" is supposed to taste like, but after one look at her version of it, I've made my decision. No arguments: my firstborn will be named Dulce de Leche Cake Ihnatko and that's that.

Push the button, Frank...

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Another test...

Tuesday, April 18, 2006 • 02:51:38 PM EDT

Another test, folks...nothing to see here. Nothing! Tidings of comfort & Joy.

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Stay on the buckling keyboard

Wednesday, April 19, 2006 • 07:22:24 AM EDT

I didn't have a terrific day today, sensation-seekers. When I tell you that it's now 12:36 AM and I'm only just now taking a dinner break in advance of the three or four more hours of work to come, I think you get the overall picture of where the needle fell on the Suck-O-Meter.

On the bright side, I took lots of pictures. This way, if at any point in my life someone accuses me of never having had my spirit and character truly tested, I can just fire up iPhoto and let the slideshow handle my defense. My accuser will walk away a broken man, muttering an apology and recusing his lifelong faith in a just and kind God.

A newspaper column was due this evening, but I really had to shrinkwrap and ship it by noon. So by 8 AM I had re-opened the draft that I'd begun the day before, and just an hour later I'd made wonderful progress on it: I realized that I'd have to toss the whole thing and start all over again.

Writing under the limited word count of a newspaper column is like playing charades. You can say what you need to say under the limitations you've been forced to work with, and you can do so brilliantly. But it's a case of inspiration, not perspiration...a problem of finding that one simple gesture that will click instantly with the audience and make any additional details seem clumsy and unnecessary.

But all morning long, I was checking the trapline without any success. Deadfalls, legholds, snares, box-snaps, puji pits...no matter how carefully I baited my traps, they remained empty of Inspiration or Insight or Brilliance, which meant that with the deadline looming I had no alternative but to simply bulldog my way through the topic. That's never good news when you're wrestling with a word count.

Still, by 1 PM I'd managed to meet my bare minimum goals for a column: educate and inform, and leave the reader convinced that their time reading the column was well-spent. And that my heart was at least in the right place. It was one of those outings where when I click the "Send" button, I'm thinking more about the great stuff I had to cut than the great stuff that's actually going to see print. But until the Sun-Times and its advertisers see the wisdom of giving me my own weekly magazine insert, it's just something that I have to continue to accept, y'know?

Plus, hey, I can always use that stuff here, Viz:

And now it's no longer even tonight. It's actually tomorrow morning and I have to get back to work. This observation is not entirely unrelated to the opening sentence of this posting.

So I'll just post what I've got and move on. With luck, I'll be able to continue where I left off when I knock off work tonight. I'm sure that my tales of April 18 will inspire and illuminate, just like any episode of "Hope and Faith" inspires you to read more books and illuminates the need for a new, expanded V-Chip that can be set to block all programming in which Kelly Ripa is allowed to act.

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I feel that the Pulitzer is now within reach.

Thursday, April 20, 2006 • 12:15:20 PM EDT

Upon the Scroll Of Moments Of Immense Personal Pride, I have writ a new line: "I have spotted one of my books at Building #19."

Now I know I'm a real writer.

Building #19, as all New Englanders recognize, is a justly-legendary chain of shabby-but-fabby salvage warehouse stores. I'm sort of in the market for a dirt-cheap little writing table, and I hadn't been in my local store for a while. Plus, it was the 19th, which means that the free coffee would be supplemented by free donuts in celebration of the store managing to make its rent for another month.

The majesty of Building #19 is that Chaos is pages 3 through 21 of their business model. Maybe you'll find that thing you came for and maybe you won't...but you'll definitely find something. The book department is always worth close scrutiny, and that's where I spotted an enormous mound of computer books. Clearly, a local reseller had just gone out of business.

Sure enough, there, shining out in its silver cover atop a jumble of books, not unlike like Excalibur glinting majestically in its stone, was my Panther book.

I have arrived.

You might be thinking that seeing one of my books in a huge mound of castoffs would send me into a tailspin of professional self-doubt, followed by an evening spent Googling for information about trade schools. Not at all. First, because an author always feels a certain twinge of pride the first time he spots one of his books for sale at one of his favorite stores. I still remember the time I was in the Brookline Booksmith after my very first book came out, and spotted it on their shelves.

Second, I mean, come on...it was the Panther book. Building #19 also had Pogue's Jaguar book, and I'm sure if you dug deep you'd find many resources on getting the most out of your Commodore 64.

Most importantly, the fact that it was at Building #19 meant that these two books had not been returned to the publisher for credit, meaning that I had been paid full royalties on both copies. Later, I purchased some cool green wooly socks at 50% off retail. I would need to go back and check on my royalty rate on the Panther book to make sure, but I think this means that I broke even on this trip.

But I'm not one of those artists who just takes, takes, takes from Society. Those Panther books are now personally autographed by the author.

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Where The Magic Happens, indeed!

Thursday, April 20, 2006 • 03:35:35 PM EDT

Well, how cool is this: I posted the previous item, trotted down to the kitchen to fix myself some lunch, and by the time I returned to the office I had received an email from a woodworker who said that he'd be more than happy to build me The Place Where All The Magic Happens.

I hate to put somebody else to that sort of trouble but the idea was just too appealing: a table that I use only for writing, built for me by someone who enjoys my writing. In direct response to something I wrote, completing the Coolness Trifecta.

In the past year of this blog, I have complained about TV shows that I didn't like and I have lamented about certain injustices that were making life difficult for the men, women and children of our great nation. If I had to select one of those complaints to be immediately solved as soon as I blogged about it, it wouldn't have been "I can't find a 30"x20" writing desk." Without question, it would have been "Why can't the peoples of the world all live together in peace, prosperity and joy?"

And if I had known in advance that Karma would be clicking http://www.cwob.com/yellowtext/ to hunt for a problem to solve, I would have edited the blog's archives so that the text in question read "Why can't I get three months of naked snuggling with Uma Thurman, Kate Winslet, Jennifer Connelly, and Emma Thompson — not all at once, that would be weird; I mean that they could work in weekly shifts, so that they'd all be free to continue their fine careers — and then as a direct result of this, the peoples of the world would thereafter all live together in peace, prosperity, and joy?"

Still, Karma is far wiser than I am in most respects. If I can help her out by gratefully accepting this man's kind offer of a writing desk, then who am I to lobby her for an end to hunger and strife?

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The Basil Imperative

Friday, April 21, 2006 • 10:27:07 PM EDT

I bought Toni Basil's "Oh, Mickey" off the iTunes Store a minute ago, and I'm not the least bit ashamed to admit it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to spend the next thirty minutes dancing around my office like a monkey. It's in my iCal and everything.

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repeat until (sickness is "cured")

Sunday, April 23, 2006 • 01:38:36 AM EDT

I don't know why, but I've been on a huge AppleScript kick recently. This will come as a major surprise to anyone who started reading this blog roughly forty minutes after I posted the item you're now reading.

And what are the beneficiaries of this recent streak? My AppleScript-based blogging app, of course...and indirectly, you, dear reader. Along the way, CWOBber has picked up a long list of improvements, randing from important fixes (like preventing illegal characters from finding their way into my RSS feed, and breaking your feedreader) to features that I've been meaning to develop for a long, long time (handing pictures directly, without any help from me or BBEdit's HTML tools), and little creature comforts…like this new thing that takes any bit of highlighted text and turns it into a link to any of the pages I've got open in Safari, or any URL that I type in manually.

The linking feature started off purely as an ego thing, to be truthful. In an earlier post, I mentioned that inserting a picture was the last thing that my blogger couldn't do on its own. But I belatedly realized that this wasn't true and that CWOBber still hadn't completely weaned itself off of BBEdit's teat. Pride demanded that I give CWOBber the ability to handle links itself.

Plus, BBEdit's tool was designed to be useful for everybody. The whole point of having my own weblog app is to create a solution that's entirely, arrogantly and unapologetically Ihnatko-centric. When I toss in a link to something, it's usually to page that I've got open in Safari. So it saves me a bit of bother if CWOBber's linkmaker can automatically grab the URL of whatever webpage I'm looking at. Then I thought that it'd be keen to have the option of calling up a list of all open browser windows, and make a selection. Result:

It's pretty nifty. It automatically selects the URL of the frontmost window, but I can replace it just by typing. And with one additional click, I can call up a list of every webpage.

Done and dusted; yes, you have ample cause to stand up and applaud, wherever you are. You're not alone; God Himself has sent me one of those congratulatory cheesecakes-by-FedEx that you can order through the Internet.

But tonight, I got an email from a reader who wanted to know if it was possible to change Safari's default search engine from Google to something else. "There's a hack for that, but it's a bit hairy to perform," I counseled. "Fortunately, there are a few free utilities that'll do it all for you with just a click or two. "Here's one app that I happen to like:"

And as I've done many times before, I did a Google search for the page I needed, copied the URL from the address bar, and prepared to paste it into my Mail message. But then the sickness tapped me on the shoulder again. "Now that I have this handler for Safari URLs, why not adapt it into a little Mail tool that generates that sort of stuff with just one click?"

So now there's a new addition to Mail's "Scripts" menu:

It can copy a URL to the Clipboard as either an HTML-style link:

Making Light: Annals of short-lived phenomena: Star Wars fanfic on Amazon

Or as a plain-jane "title followed by a link," for any apps that don't understand HTML:

Making Light: Annals of short-lived phenomena: Star Wars fanfic on Amazon:
<http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007459.html#007459>

And I made it generic, so I can attach it to any app I want, not just Mail. Okay.

Troubling Sign #1: Now I'm looking at it and I'm thinking "Why don't I add that bit of code that lets the user select any page?" Answer: because three buttons are really the max for a canned AppleScript dialog, and I'm not ready to move all of this into AppleScript Studio and bake a "real" UI yet.

Troubling Sign #2: I am now thinking about that original script and I'm wondering if I didn't wimp out. It presents the user with a list of URLs:

But it really should be a list of titles. That'd be much prettier, and easier for the user to understand. The approach I chose was a time-saver, you see. AppleScript reports the actual text that the user selected. A list of URLs means that I can just stick the response into a bit of HTML and I'm done. If instead, I were to present the user with a list of webpage titles, I would have to add on a little something to the code that matches up the title up with the right URL.

I had intended to just mention this and move on, but already, my fingers are twitching a little. I'm thinking that it would really be a pretty simple tweak. Just have the script go back to Safari with the selected title and ask "Hey, here's the name of one of your windows: could you please tell me the URL of the document that's inside it?"

And so, ten or fifteen minutes later — and after a customary "Aw, Crimeny…I'm making this way harder than it needs to be" revelation — here's the output of the newly-revised script:

Once again: I didn't intend to fix it immediately. I just thought this was a good example of how I keep thinking of new things that I want to do with AppleScript. Instead, it's turned out to be far better as an example of how I can't control my little problem.

But honestly, that's nothing compared to

Troubling Sign #3: having created a post that includes four window-grabs, I'm now thinking "Wouldn't it save me a lot of time if I wrote a script that could take any window and embed it into a blog posting as a JPEG?"

It's a sickness. It also does a fine job illustrating David St. Hubbins' profound maxim "There's such a fine line between clever and stupid." And it means that I need to quit Script Editor and back away from the keyboard slowly.

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Untied.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006 • 12:59:03 AM EDT

I'm this close to turning off my TV and leaving it off for the next three weeks. I don't know how long. However long it takes before they stop running those commercials for the "United 93" movie.

At first, they just made my jaw tighten. Later, I added an angry sigh to the repertoire. And just now, as soon as it came on, I angrily stabbed the MUTE button on the remote.

The mere existence of this movie makes me angry. I don't know if the events of 9/11 will ever become acceptable fodder for entertainment, but it sure isn't now and it sure isn't happening inside this house. The mere thought of producers, directors, writers, and actors taking these real people and situations, thinking "No, that really doesn't work, does it?" and then punching everything up for the movie increases my blood pressure by at least ten points. Not everything in this world has to be turned into reality TV.

I don't care if every penny "United 93" grosses is being donated to victims' families. They're digging up a casket and spray-painting a Nike logo on it.

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Her actual title is "Apicultural Engineer."

Saturday, April 29, 2006 • 09:56:20 AM EDT

On the spur of the moment, I have decided that I'm going to start trying to make people believe that I have a beekeeper on staff. I think it's a fantastic way to impress people. Not only does it suggest that you've got that kind of money to throw around, but it also implies that your home is a complex operation and your tastes and requirements are far beyond those of mortal men.

In a nutshell, if you have a personal beekeper and you're at a dinner party and someone keeps going on and on and on about this giraffe that they just bought, you have ample cause to sneer.

Of course, it's nothing compared to bankrolling SpaceShipOne. I may have my own staff beekeeper, but I also have my humility.

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