eclecticism – Just when things were starting to settle down: Wudi (or should I say Michael?) notes I called his attention to his now-infamous predicament (and now resolved, I think, via a new gig) being immortalized in yet another Blogger funny tech-info knowledge-base note.

[unsanity] ShapeShifter. Finally: theming for OS X. Wonder if they’re in for a late night visit from His Steveness; weren’t there some smackdowns laid upon folks doing this back in the beta days?

He Said, “Why Not?”: Tom goes to RISD. He makes amusing things for the web. He is from hereabouts, like.

Manny noted it at the revivified bufoonery where he quite rightly highlighted the hi-larious Tarping and Boxes, among other selections. Is there a geezer way to do this stuff? Tarping looks fun but even if Flanagan and I ever meet I’m doubtful we’d be able to engage with sufficient abandon.

I also specifically commend the site to the attention of one Bart Everson, of the great republic of New Orleans, should he be a semi-regular site-visitor. Ah, well, an egoogle will prolly bring it up in time.

Shit, I have to start shooting! Damn!

My Ink and Pixels, over at Tablet this week, is running my piece on Roberta Gregory. I should have the transcript (mostly) up tomorrow.

I also have a review of the Mexican indie flick Japon up here.

Next week in Ink and Pixels are some comics reviews and a review of the Slide Rule performance night in late October that was held at the Hugo House. After that… well, it’s a secret for now.

Building a Web Media Empire on a Daily Dose of Fresh Links: The Old Grey Lady takes note of the new pink one.

So I noticed that faithful chucklehead Andy Ihnatko wasn’t in my most recent ish of Macworld, something that was visible coming when he was removed from his last-page perch a couple issues ago.

What should I find but that the Boston-based pedant has signed on to the good ship Mac Observer, and that furthermore, he’s covering, as any good Mac scribe would, Panther (he’s a skeptic).

Apparently he’s been over there since September. And you know who else I saw in the house? Bob LeVitus.

What, did the site get funding, or are times hard? I read iBrotha before Rodney decided to move on, but GAWD I hate the damn look of the site – flashing blinking gewgaws make it pretty hard to actually read the content, and for the love of Mike (that’s me) the two-inch top banner is pretty horrific as well.

But hmmm… At any rate, nice to know where Andy is these days.

I’ve been looking for a way to control audio playback to a background application for a while, so that I can transcribe without a bunch of wrist-burning mouseclicks, and found the following method, which unfortunately depends on iTunes.

Why is that unfortunate? Well, iTunes insists on copying the 650mb-plus audio-capture files to the music library before it will play them back. A small hassle, I guess, but an advantage for QT player.

So, forthwith:

1. Download and install iKey, formerly YoupiKey. Do not set it to be activated by default at boot.

2. Make three Applescripts. They are the simplest scripts ever, and here they are:

playpause.scr:

rewind.scr:

fforward.scr:

I saved these files in a folder I created: ~/Library/Applescripts/iTunes

3. in iKey, select the ‘Universal’ set, and from the menubar select Shortcuts > Script > Run script from file. Name the shortcut as the scripts are named (i.e., ‘playpause’). Now click the tab labeled ‘Script,’ and ckick the pull-down menu with the bold question mark. ‘Select…’ will appear.

4. Navigate to the location of the appropriate script and select it from within the dialog that opens when you click ‘Select…’. The script name will then appear in the pulldown.

5. Click the tab labeled ‘General.’ Click the checkbox labeled ‘Keyboard’. The ‘Key combo’ text box will highlight. Press the key combination you wish to control the script. I used ‘Command-space’ for playpause.scr and command-arrows as appropriate for FF and RW.

6. Repeat until you’re happy with the results.

Now, I can directly control the audio playback of iTunes without having to swap to iTunes and have to click out of Word while I’m typing, which is just a huge benefit. Of course I need to make sure that the audio file is opened and ready to play within iTunes, but since I don’t really want the files added to the iTunes library on a permanent basis, that’s fine with me.

I do not want iKey activated by default at boot because Command-Left Arrow and Command-Right Arrow are the default forward and back controls in many interfaces, from the Finder’s filebrowser windows to Safari and IE. You may not care, but it was driving me crazy for a bit this afternoon as I looked up a spelling in the middle of my transcription session.

I didn’t see a way to exclude a given app from the ‘universal’ set in iKey.

Metafilter brings news of Free Web hosting for three years via a promo offer good through January-ish. No credit card number is required for billing. 500mb storage, 5gb transfer. All mod cons.

soup du jour of the day:

The June entries looked scarier — more fighting and shooting. The last entry was written June 9, 1864. He had to “hide out all day,” he wrote.

This was absolutely compelling for me. (I can’t imagine how a tiny leather datebook from 1864 could survive the Civil War and still be around today in decent condition. I can’t imagine what else he wrote in there, or the things he dealt with within the context of the war, or the day-to-day realities of 1864 in general.) And suddenly…

Oldtimey finds a blog (well) from the Civil War for Veteran’s Day.

Maciej finds a post from a French blogger that visited an American cemetery from the Great War.

Mac OS X 10.3 Panther: Ars Technica goes to town on the new Mac OS release.

I’m in no hurry for Panther. My machines are rather long in the tooth. As I noted earlier, I’m battling to just get them to the level of functionality I had previously.