News last night that another school shooting has occurred. (Pictures here). This one is really close to home in that Chris was a prof at NIU from 99 to 2005, and Cole Hall where the shootings occurred was where she often lectured.
Quite sobering.
One of the recurring gotchas with an unlocked iPhone is that the newer features re-lock the phone every time. Because of that, I’ve kept mine at version 1.0.2, which works pretty well but lacks some newer niceties. The poor-mans-GPS is the one I really want.
Anyway, I keep an eye on the hacking progress, and there are ways of updating to at least 1.1.2, but they’re hairy and kinda iffy. Getting old, I guess, and less time available to hack.
Yesterday I was reading an article in BusinessWeek about the iPhone grey market, and there was a URL that caught my eye. I knew that there was a hardware hack called TurboSim that would also work. The idea is different than a software hack: the SIM chips sits on a module that lies to the phone about what SIM it has. Clever, eh?
The TurboSim was $110, so I dismissed it. Now, however, the BizWeek article links to PDACable, which has the same chip, now made in China, for $19.99. Now that’s more like it. If it works as promised, you just have to jailbreak and not unlock, a much easier prospect without the issue of baseband firmware.
Mine’s on the way. I’ll let you know.
Update 2/19/08: Save your money and use iJailbreak instead.
Over at the mall, saw this in the window of a random store. Video kept playing in the background as the error persisted. I was amused.
Despite the Bush administration and SoCal driving. This, from the excellent ‘Scalpel or Sword’ blog, really made my day. (It also made for some introspection… heroism can do that to you.)
It seemed like a typical overdose. Another teenage girl who took too many pills, more in a cry for help than any real desire to harm herself. So I ordered the mega laboratory panel and gave her some charcoal. Nothing too exciting or dramatic, she drank it without putting up a fight. She had a friend who had driven her to the ER and remained at the bedside the whole time. Three hours, maybe more, I can’t remember. Her friend seemed very compassionate and was obviously concerned about her. It seemed like they were close friends, maybe even sisters.
Eventually, I learned that her friend wasn’t even an acquaintance. She was a stranger who had noticed the patient crying in a parking lot and asked her what was wrong. The patient then admitted that she took a bunch of pills, so this remarkable young woman drove her to the ER and stayed with her until she was safe.
The patient really didn’t have any friends, and her family lived hours away. After she declined admission and promised not to harm herself, the saint even drove her home.
This was on the sidewalk last summer outside my building. (Sort of my version of mercy, to wait a bit.)
Things that amused me:
Ouch.
Click the link, but be prepared for an experience equivalent to reading “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” Coal tar is in everything. Damn.
Another one added to the list. Mysterious sequences on this one.
Cantina Panaderia, in PB. Good food, good time.
Old pic, Jan 13th, but I like the all-around cheer in this one.
Every now and then I run across someone declaiming how Mozart is the best composer ever, blah blah blah. I was thinking unrelated thoughts the other day, and I had a mini-revelation:
Mozart and light-roast coffee have the same weakness: A total lack of intensity.
Consider: With notable exceptions like the Requiem, most of Mozart is background (chamber) music. It’s light, cheerful, complex, cerebral and lacking in dynamic range. As devoid of emotion as possible, since chamber music is supposed to provide the audio backdrop for upper-class socialization. It doesn’t engage, it doesn’t compel.
Light roasted coffees are the same way. You’ll see descriptions like ‘floral’, ‘hints of X and Y,’ ’subtle notes of Z’ and so on. Blah blah blah. Real coffee looks like this:
That’s a sublime French roast from Norm Whiting. (More on him in a bit.) It’s complex, intense, multi-layered and very tasty. Unlike a lot of places, Norm has an excellent mix of first-rate beans in his roast; many roasters just take cheap beans and cook ‘em dark. Beware such crap!
Unless we’ve already met, you have likely never heard of Whiting Coffee. They don’t advertise, don’t have a website, and do post-paid mail order! (You pay after you get the coffee — unheard of, eh?)
The other amazing thing about Norm is the value compared to other roasters. If I go elsewhere, I usually have to pay about $30/lb to match or exceed his roast. Shipped to my door, his is $8.
Yep, $8. So any excuses about cost are gone. Call the man at (505) 344-9144, tell him I sent you if you like. And for the love of god buy beans and grind them yourself!
Getting back to musical comparisons, I’ll cut this short due to Anna bedtime - if complexity is why you like Mozart, try any or all of the following by my man JSB:
Ol’ JSB did it all. Best enjoyed with a cuppa from Norm.
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