The New York Times give an excellent review to Harold Bloom’s “How and Why to Read.” I read the first hundred or so pages of this book, realized that I would need to read a whole bunch of additional books from the “canon” of literature to continue, and have begun, based on a list I made from those first hundred pages, reading them all. I found myself wishing that Bloom had given the reader a list of books that he thought they should read or that he mentioned in the book. Having said that, I really enjoyed the first hundred pages of this book, and I look forward to reading the rest eventually.

Slashdot | PowerPC Open Platform Motherboards Finally Here: “Finally, we can buy PowerPC motherboards without dealing with Apple.”

I read Harry Turtledove’s The Guns of the South over the weekend. It’s based on the premise that the South actually wins the Civil War due to the intervention of some time traveling folks who give them AK-47’s. I actually liked it, and I think that it was very different in it’s portrayal of folks like Robert E. Lee than I originally expected. I’m ashamed to say that I have stayed away from Mr. Turtledove’s books in the past because I thought that the covers looked hokey, but now I’m going to read some of his other works. So I guess I do judge books by their covers.

So Patriots and The Rams survived yesterday and will be squaring off in the Super Bowl next Sunday. I doubt that the Patriots have much of a chance, so I’ll be in their corner. The Rams are incredible.

Mac OS X Hints: Search Google from any services-aware app

Apple Unveils Dual 1-GHz Power Mac G4

Apple Poised for FireWire Jump. “Having secured a position on the 1394 Trade Association board for one of its product developers and buoyed by the introduction of a bevy of new compliant devices, Apple now is preparing to move the FireWire I/O standard to higher speeds and higher exposure.” [osOpinion]

Blogger Pro is now available.

Palm rolls out wireless i705 With only 8 Mb of RAM in the device? Sounds a little low to me.

There’s a new iCab Beta for Mac OS X available.

EphPod Homepage: “EphPod is a program designed to make your iPod work with Windows.”

OK, is it correct to place one or two spaces after the period at the end of a sentence. I learned to put two spaces as a kid, but now I am told that it is correct to put one space in the era of computer typography.

It was a gorgeous day here today.

Jeez, I’m exhausted from all this upstreaming:-)

Norton Utilities for Macintosh (Beta Version for Mac OS X.) I would use this with great caution, and not on machines that have data that is worth anything to you. I’ve had so few problems with 10.1.2 thus far that I wonder if I really need Norton for X.

Panorama iPod Organizer This is a desktop app that writes phones numbers etc. as files with ID3 tags that the iPod will recognize. It’s an interesting idea, but I would so much rather see this capability built into the OS. I have to say, again, that the number one thing I would like my iPod to be able to do that it does not currently have is a clock. I would like to be able to see what time it is on the device. Adding an alarm clock feature would also be nice, so you could have a travel alarm clock with the purchase of some small portable speakers. Speaking of which, does anyone have experience with any of the small portable speakers on the market? I’d love to get a recommendation for a set that sound reasonably good, but are small enough to carry with me places.

iPod Central

A .NET primer for Mac users

Stanton Final Scratch looks like the next killer app in the DJ game.

This Apple Article talks about audio software and hardware that was announced for Mac OS X. It’s a pretty solid list of players, which makes me quite happy, even as a hobbyist.