Extra88

Iraqometer

The Iraqometer provides all the basic statistics of the war in one place. Numbers of casualties, surrenders, burning wells, bombs dropped, they're all here in a single, eye-pleasing (but ironic) display.

American Military Operation Name Generating Device

Not all are funny. You get new names every time you click the link.

Here's a sample:

5 Randomly Generated American Military Operation Names

1. Operation Strong Monster
2. Operation Ready-for-CNN Beaver
3. Operation Destructive Privet Bush
4. Operation Don't Piss off the Imperialism
5. Operation Bloodthirsty Republican Administration

Lookup NetBIOS names from OS X

This falls under so many categories. MacOSXHints has this storyAn AppleScript to look up NetBIOS names. but Real Men use the Terminal. Here's the command line bit that does the real work:

nmblookup -T -U <WINS server IP> -R <NetBIOS name>

Here's an example for work and its output:

cwcx% nmblookup -T -U 128.151.209.155 -R esmdc
querying esmdc on 128.151.209.155
esmdc.esm.rochester.edu, 128.151.209.155 esmdc<00>

In this case I used the WINS server to look up the WINS server's NetBIOS name.

Cutting MS Word v.X CPU load

The "Adam" below is Adam Engst. Someone should tell him that most people don't get paid by the word to write so "Live Word Count" isn't too important :-) Anyhow, these are pretty good tips since Word for OS X tends to gobble up quite a few CPU cycles even when it's in the background.

From: Errol Lewthwaite Sent: Friday, March 28, 2003 1:39 PM To: TidBITS Talk Subject: Re: Closing applications quickly in Mac OS X

Something I have just discovered to speed up MS Word on OS X significantly.

When looking at top (in Terminal) when Word has a document open Word is often using 30-50% of CPU.

In Word Preferences turn off "Preferences/View/Window/Live Word Count". CPU usage drops down to about 0-10%.

[Along the same lines, turning off inline spell checking would probably help, but in both these cases, the features are useful for many of us all the time. -Adam]

i/PowerBook battery calibration

PowerBook G4 and iBook: How to Calibrate a New Battery for Best Performance

The battery of an iBook or PowerBook G4 computer has an internal microprocessor that provides an estimate of the amount of energy in the battery during charging and discharging. The battery needs to be recalibrated from time to time to keep the onscreen battery time and percent display accurate. You should perform this procedure when you first use your computer and then every couple of months thereafter.

Disable Outlook's "Reply to All"

I thought this was sort of an interesting Microsoft KB article.
OL2000: Preventing Reply All to Large Aliases

In a nutshell the offer 3 methods. The first is simply to use the Bcc: line (duh). The second is the most interesting and clever to me, create a custom Mail Message Form which has no Reply to All button. Recipients could still use other Reply to All methods but it would foil the unconscious hitting of that button because IT WOULDN'T BE THERE! The third is to use a system policy which disables all Reply to All methods in Outlook. If you're the kind of sysadmin who roots for the "bulls" in prison movies, that's the option for you.

Ditherati: Hide the Salam

This list delivers some pretty funny stuff but I thought this headline was particularly choice.

D I T H E R A T I see the digerati dither, daily

HIDE THE SALAM

"Salam, if you're reading this, you've developed an awfully high profile lately. You might want to drop out of sight for a while."

Blogger Glenn Reynolds, clearly threatened by the idea that someone like Salam Pax, an Iraqi blogger apparently posting from Baghdad, might be attracting more traffic than him, Instapundit.com, 25 March 2003

http://www.instapundit.com/archives/008465.php

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Ditherati appears daily on weekdays. An archive is online at http://www.ditherati.net/archive/

Quotes of note? Send 'em to <quote@ditherati.net>.
Want to advertise in Ditherati? Write to <sponsor@ditherati.net>.

UN: The Real-Time Stategy Game

This is a pretty funny Slashdot comment but if you've never played a Real-Time Strategy game (like Warcraft), maybe not.

Excerpt:

Computer: UN Resolution... building....

Gamer (chatting): We are saddened that the motion to maintain our steel tarrifs has been blocked in its current form. You must understand that while we love free trade, we must protect the rights and conditions of our workers and yours from a race to the bottom. Would you consider reconvening in about a weeks time at my private retreat for further multilateral talks?

Uploading files

So here's something Kung-Log can't do. You can upload files with Kung-Log but it can't use the optional image manipulation features of the blog server. By uploading a picture through the web interface, I can choose to have a thumbnail image like this one automatically created which can then be linked to the original uploaded picture (which is big, btw).

Kung-Log

Kung-Log is an Mac OS X application for writing & publishing blog entries. I'm trying it right now. The purpose of programs like this is to let you write blog entries without having to use the web interface. The web interface can be slow and this allows you to do things a real application can do, such as spell-checking and having a button which inserts the song iTunes is currently playing (as demonstrated below). I'm sure there are many programs like this, especially for Windows but this seems pretty nifty and it works with the particular blog software I'm using.
Currently listening to Hell from the album "Hot" by Squirrel Nut Zippers, The

blah blah blah

This is just to take up space.

blah

blah

blah

blah

blah

blah

blah

blah

OMG, I have a blog

We'll see how this goes. I decided I should "push" a little less through email and "pull" a little more to stuff online. It's also a hassle to figure out what to send to whom. Now people can just come here and read what they want. You never know, this might actually be useful.