Man Killed by Mountain Lion Identified [LA Times]: A cougar attacked two cyclists yesterday in Orange County, California, at different times. One of the victims is dead and the other is hospitalized.

Floods, fires, killer flu, wild animal attacks: keep an eye out for plague and quake, California. Arnold is the antichrist, clearly. If you’d only elected me.

FOKG Patrick Murphy weighs in with some photgraphic updates on the Denny Way Sled Resort. I’m sure you’ll concur that they are worth sharing.

Bush to Announce Ventures to Mars and the Moon, Officials Say: NYT.

Well, here’s hopin.’ I’m not holdin’ my breath – my skepticism of the family is quite boundless.

B²‘s Dear God Damn Diary offers a helpful guide to the Democratic contenders, much needed and of unquestionable worth. It’s things like this that help to demonstrate the meaningful contribution that blogging can offer to the mediasphere.

Man, it’s just coming down!

Five-part iLife (iLife 04), $49, release Jan. 16. Not sure what the parts are. Steve refers to Garageband, the rumored music-prooduction tool.

Addons include a $99 music keyboard – Apple branded? Uncertain from listening.

Shit! I wanna go out in the snow, but I want to know what the ‘one more thing’; is gonna be! Mini-Pods? Good marketing theme add-on to Garageband.

Hm, what else – the rumor about Safari update release doesn’t appear to be confirmed in my Software Update window.

No update yet to http://www.apple.com/ilife; no URL at http://www.apple.com/garageband yet (10:50 am).

Cheryl Crow, Elijah Wood in iLife video.

Back to Steve; reviewing iPod success. First in unit sales, first in revenue in portable player category. 10 gb -> 15 gb same price ($299). In-ear headphones, $39. Last thing on the iPod (oh yeah, Steve?) is: a new ad.

Steve continuing iPod theme, looking at non-Apple share of the market: dominated by flash-based players. The rest is other HD-based players ‘that we are in the process of eliminating with the iPod’ (audience laughs).

Announcement: the iPod Mini, 4gb. 100 song storage. 1/2″ inch think. $249. OUCH. Good product comparison to category, though; $169-200 for under a gig in the category. “Size of a business card.” iPod UI. Solid state scroll wheel. FW and USB 2, both chargeable. Cables, belt-clip included. Accessories available: a dock and an armband. Looks like a backlit LCD screen.

Does iPod UI mean the contact and scheduling stuff is included?

“Just one more thing about the iPod Mini, it comes in colors.” Whoop-de-doo.

Ships February in the US and April worldwide.

Still talking!

OSX transition is officially over. Reviewing points in presentation.

The REAL One Last Thing:

Give Apple people a hand. Audience does. And that’s it.

Hmmmmm.

$49 for iLife with updated versions PLUS GarageBand? Is that it? If so, I’m sold and I will be picking that up, as I’ve been in the market for a multitrack recording solution; OTOH if GarageBand is to SoundTrack as iDVD is to DVD Studio Pro, mmm, maybe not: I need the app to support 8-in realtime feeds, just like an 8-track digital recording device.

Hate the price point on the MiniPod. Love everything else. 4gb is perfectly acceptable. Is it a bootable device?

I’m headed snow-ward!

It’s dumping!

Made it down to the courthouse to find that the courts were closed! I walked home through the low-visibility snowstorm – windless, thankfully. It’s an hour later and the snow is still coming down.

I’m going to go back out and shoot for a bit. The silence of the city is interesting, no-one honking, the sidewalks featuring a good number of trudgers.

I spoke with a hardy bicyclist who reported watching an 18-wheeler slide down Yesler sideways. Yesler is a very steep street downtown near the Courthouse.

The original Wright Flyer, at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, late November 2003.

Mysterious ice balls falling from heavens

By MICHAEL WOODS
THE (TOLEDO, OHIO) BLADE

BARCELONA, Spain — A Spanish-American scientific team is monitoring ice events in the United States this winter following research on a baffling phenomenon first detected here.

They are not watching for ordinary ice storms or slick roads, but incidents involving “megacryometeors,” great balls of ice that fall out of the clear blue sky — possibly because of global warming.

I was disappointed that the story didn’t provide accounting of the possibilty that the cores of these oversized ice accretions – big balls, if you will – had been formed in the upper atmosphere around the high-altitude scat of high-flying birds.

These bird droppings could clearly be lofted up quite high in the correct circumstances and then form the cores for the icing process.

Really it seems clear to me, something we’ve known since at least 1963: nowhere on earth can really be safe from aerial bombardment by an ICBM.

Thank you! I’ll be here all week!

[pun stolen from Spider Robinson as used in some Callahan‘s yarn!]