File Renaming – Renamer4Mac – A Good Tool – Mac OS

I’ve found Renamer4Mac to be a very useful tool. I particularly like the “Regular Expression” (grep) search & replace capability.

I do a lot of file processing every week which often requires renaming files. I’ve written Perl scripts for most of my batch jobs, but there is always something new that pops up.

Canadian XC Nationals Finish Line => Ralph Steadman’s The Winners ;-)

I attended the Canadian XC Ski Nationals at Whistler Olympic Park last Sunday to watch my niece race the 15k. She did great.

It was cool to see the future Olympic site in action. The stadium concept allowed us to see a lot of skiing from a single vantage point.

The Finish Line — These XC types are “hardcore”. The hill climbs were wicked and most racers really powered up them. The result of that hard work was not pretty at the finish line. The racers came thru extremely spent It reminded me of Ralph Steadman’s “The Winners” in Hunter S. Thompson’s “The Curse of Lono“.

Wow! — Neil Gaiman Reads “Neverwhere”

This is great entertainment. It’s very engrossing. It is imaginative It is scary It is weird. It has evil characters It is good. It is personal. It feels very very real. It is immensely sticky. I can’t get it off me

I completely agree with the final paragraph of this review: SF Site: A review by Alice Dechene .

You may have gathered that I really liked this novel. I’ll admit I don’t know how to classify it: sci-fi, fantasy or psychological thriller. In fact I don’t know how to label this at all except to call it very, very good.

Narrator: The Audible version is expertly narrated by the author himself. I usually avoid author narrations based on past experience, but this was very well done.

Plot: If you want plot hints go to Neverwhere (novel) – Wikipedia.

Book Club Questions – Here are discussion questions

This is my second Neil Gaiman book. I’m glad that there are many more to read.

NSFIHA PeeWee’s Win BC Championship

Congratulations Girls Here is a compilation of articles posted on the web. Will add more to this post as more becomes available.

• Tournament Summary 2008, Prince George Scores for all the games.
• Championship Game Radio Broadcast – West Kootenay vs North Shore, March 20, 2008 – Thanks to Telus for funding this & Ron Gallo for doing it Can be downloaded as iTunes podcast
• Several strides of improvement Prince George Citizen, Thursday, March 20, 2008 – mainly on PG team.
• PeeWee Hockey Highlights, Prince George Citizen, Monday March 17, 2008 – mainly surrey, kelowna, and pg.

Tibet: nearly 1,000 jailed in Lhasa, Dalai Lama offers to resign – Boing Boing

Boing Boing Blog has a large collection of reading on the Tibetan Protests. Here’s the lead of the latest one.

Tibet: nearly 1,000 jailed in Lhasa, Dalai Lama offers to resign
POSTED BY XENI JARDIN, MARCH 18, 2008 8:42 AM | PERMALINK

* Above: cellphone video of thousands of monks and laypeople protesting at Labrang monastery Xiahe, Gansu province in China. March 15, 2008.
* Left: The dead bodies of eight protesters were brought into Ngaba Kirti Monastery yesterday, in the Ngaba area of Tibet. The caption on this image from phayul.com indicates that observers are throwing money on the corpses as a customary expression of grief. Students for a Free Tibet posted reports that more than 20 protesters were killed at Ngaba. Here are photos of the dead (warning: graphic). Copies of the same photos are here.

* Here is the first-person account of Spence Palermo, a sound technician and filmmaker from Oregon, who was on location at that monastery working on a TV program for Nation”
* lots more

Golf Practice – how to throw your club :-)

Remember to add this important skill to your spring practice routines.

Charlie King on The Proper Way to Throw Your Club (Golf.com)

too late — yahoo mail to shaw works today

First time since mid-Feb Wonder if it will work tomorrow?

Of course Yahoo mail support has not contacted me yet. I’ve given up on them. It’s now been 9 days since the last contact. The only thing they have been able to tell me in the past month is — go to this online problem report report page, or it’s not our problem

fyi .. I’m a long time premium Yahoo mail user who has switched to gmail. I hate switching. I hated having to switch from @netscape.net in ’98, but it was necessary. I hated switching from @yahoo.com this past month, but it was necessary. I hope I that I don’t have to change from @gmail.com for ten years as well.

ASR-1000 & Reader Complaints and Comments :-)

My buddy Scott just kicked my ass for not covering the ASR 1000

Guess I’d better get on it. My first thoughts on the ASR 1000 were “sounds like a souped up ESR 10,000″. The 10k uses a cisco developed multi-core NPU and the ASR 1k is the next step using a bigger cisco developed multi-core NPU.

For, now, here are few articles to read.

• Cisco Takes Hold of the Edge – ASR1000 &QFP ASIC – Light Reading
• Cisco ASR 1000 Series Router Launch -> News@Cisco
• Cisco ASR 1000 w/ Quantum Flow NPU – eWeek

LOL w/ Christopher Moore’s “Fluke”

My introduction to Christopher Moore was via the howling LOL of my lovelier half. I had to take notice — there just aren’t many books that make one Laugh-out-Loud. I’ve read three from Moore — “fluke“, “lamb“, and “dirty job“. All are just — Too much fun. I’m glad there are many more for me to read.

If you’re new to Christopher Moore, Wikipedia says, “Christopher Moore (born 1957 in Toledo, Ohio[1]) is an American writer of absurdist fiction.”

The NYTimes book review for Fluke provides colour on the extent of that “absurdity“.

BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Jonah and a Whale Awash in Pastrami on Rye – New York Times: “Readers new to the work of Christopher Moore will want to know two things about him immediately. First: Where has this guy been hiding? (Answer: In plain sight, since he has a devoted cult following.) Second, and more germane: What is he smoking?”

Here is the finale to the NYTimes review. I like the phrase “comic recklessness“.

Most of this is calmly presented, but Mr. Moore inevitably raises the ante, sounding the note of comic recklessness that is the best thing about his book. ”Barring that,” he writes, after a list of propositions for saving marine life, ”just yell at people randomly to stop killing whales. It could catch on. Really.”

Note to Audio Listeners — The narrator for Fluke is Bill Irwin and the narrator for Lamb and Dirty Job is Fisher Stevens. There is a big difference and there are plenty of comments on Audible about how bad Bill Irwin is. I’m glad I read those reviews and prepared myself for the difference. At first I was disappointed because I really like Fisher Stevens. In the end I began to like Bill Irwin and felt that he did a good job with Fluke. The lead character in Fluke, Nate, is not as manic as the lead characters in Lamb and Dirty Job.

So much for Yahoo Mail Support :-( 6 days and counting :-(

It’s been six days since I sent the mass of undeliverable shaw e-mails to Yahoo Mail support group that their Live Chat guy recommended. So much for replying in 48 hours

From: abuse-admin@cc.yahoo-inc.com
Subject: Auto Confirmation – Your Yahoo! Mail support request was received (KMM66772997V5872L0KM)
Date: March 7, 2008 8:04:45 AM PST (CA)
To: xxxxxx
Reply-To: abuse-admin@cc.yahoo-inc.com

Hello,

This is an automated message regarding your recent request for Yahoo!
Mail Customer Care support. We have received your message and will
respond within the next 48 hours with an answer.

Thank you for reaching out to us. We look forward to helping you!

Sincerely,

Yahoo! Customer Care

**Please do not respond to this message as no one will receive it.