Had an iBook G4 with a failed hard drive come my way recently. If you’ve ever looked into DIY hard drive replacement for a Mac laptop, you probably know there are few easier ways to brick a machine than by tearing it apart. iFixit has some very good disassembly guides on their site, and they saved my bacon in a couple of spots. I’d also recommend having a good set of very small screwdrivers, the critical #8 Torx driver, a large, thin guitar pick (for separating the outer shell of the iBook) and a pair of “chip puller” tweezers (like those pictured at the right) to unplug various cables from the motherboard. The ones I have are the 4 inch “EX-1″ model from OK Industries of Taiwan, and in hindsight they were the secret weapon of this project.
Would I attempt this again? Well, it depends. If the laptop’s already broken and out of warranty, absolutely. But for a working machine with a warranty you’re going to void, it isn’t something to be undertaken lightly. Either way, these teardown guides are an interesting read if you’re into hardware pr0n.
Canon’s latest consumer DSLR, the EOS 400D, is about to hit the market. It’s the successor to the Digital Rebel XT. has 10 Megapixels, uses your old CF cards, and can be had for $799 (body only) to $899 (with 18-55mm lens). Read the full preview at Digital Photography Review, and try to contain your drool. And if you want to know more, Cameralabs.com has a hands-on review, including some small sample pictures they shot with it.
“TrackMeNot is a browser extension that protects web-searchers
against surveillance and
data-profiling. It does so not by means of concealment or encryption (i.e.
covering one’s trail), but instead, paradoxically, by the opposite strategy: noise and obfuscation. With
TrackMeNot, actual web searches, lost in a cloud of false leads, are
essentially hidden in
plain view. User-installed TrackMeNot works with the Firefox Browser and popular search engines, e.g. AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and MSN. “
If you play guitar and know who Richard Thompson is, you’ll probably find his Gear and Tunings Q&A an interesting read. If you don’t play guitar, there’s an assortment of mp3’s available from his site, both serious and otherwise. His 1000 Years of Popular Music album is a brilliant idea, well worth checking out.
In writing songs, you ought to pull things into a sharper focus, so you draw characters who are larger than life, and you write about experiences that perhaps most people don’t have from day to day. People are not really interested in the story of a soccer dad, necessarily. Unless it’s the story of a soccer dad who can’t take any more and shoots his family. There’s a ballad. There’s your contemporary “Tom Dooley.”
It’s World Cup Soccer time again. Like most Americans, my favorite thing about World Cup Soccer is saying the word soccer to people in countries that really care about soccer. Well, that and the incidents of hooliganism. But with the threat of terrorism added into the mix, this year’s Cup has an almost unlimited potential for mayhem! And WFMU is celebrating with a World Cup Death Watch Contest. Even if you’re not into contests, they have an excellent collection of World Cup related links, including riot footage!!!!
Stephen Colbert spoke at Knox College’s 2006 Commencement on Saturday, and they’ve been kind enough to post a transcript of his speech.
But the best reason for me to come to speak at Knox College is that I attended Knox College. This is part of my personal history that you will rarely see reported. Partly because the press doesn’t do the proper research. But mostly because…it is not true! I just made it up, so this moment would be more poignant for all of us. How great would it be if I could actually come back here—if I was coming back to my alma mater to be honored like this. I could share with you all my happy memories that I spent here in…Galesburg, Illinois. Hanging out at the Seymour Hall, right? Seymour Hall? You know, all of us alumni, we remember being at Seymour Hall, playing those drinking games. We played a drinking game called Lincoln-Douglas. Great game. What you do is, you act out the Lincoln-Douglas debate and any time one of the guys mentions the Dred Scott decision you have to chug a beer. Well, technically 3/5 of a beer.
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Had an iBook G4 with a failed hard drive come my way recently. If you’ve ever looked into DIY hard drive replacement for a Mac laptop, you probably know there are few easier ways to brick a machine than by tearing it apart. iFixit has some very good disassembly guides on their site, and they saved my bacon in a couple of spots. I’d also recommend having a good set of very small screwdrivers, the critical #8 Torx driver, a large, thin guitar pick (for separating the outer shell of the iBook) and a pair of “chip puller” tweezers (like those pictured at the right) to unplug various cables from the motherboard. The ones I have are the 4 inch “EX-1″ model from OK Industries of Taiwan, and in hindsight they were the secret weapon of this project.
Canon’s latest consumer DSLR, the EOS 400D, is about to hit the market. It’s the successor to the Digital Rebel XT. has 10 Megapixels, uses your old CF cards, and can be had for $799 (body only) to $899 (with 18-55mm lens). Read the 
If you play guitar and know who Richard Thompson is, you’ll probably find his 
It’s 
But the best reason for me to come to speak at Knox College is that I attended Knox College. This is part of my personal history that you will rarely see reported. Partly because the press doesn’t do the proper research. But mostly because…it is not true! I just made it up, so this moment would be more poignant for all of us. How great would it be if I could actually come back here—if I was coming back to my alma mater to be honored like this. I could share with you all my happy memories that I spent here in…Galesburg, Illinois. Hanging out at the Seymour Hall, right? Seymour Hall? You know, all of us alumni, we remember being at Seymour Hall, playing those drinking games. We played a drinking game called Lincoln-Douglas. Great game. What you do is, you act out the Lincoln-Douglas debate and any time one of the guys mentions the Dred Scott decision you have to chug a beer. Well, technically 3/5 of a beer.