check out this guy...

This guy would hate me. I'm a Christian Carnivore "Mac-Zealot." If I just kept purebred dogs he would probably keel over and die at the sight of me.

Back from San Antonio

Just got back from San Antonio... I just want to say: The cat on Meet the Parents is not a Ragdoll, but a Himalayan. I got 2 hits for ragdoll meet the parents from google... so just wanted to clear that up.

Presents for all occasions

I don't know about you, but I have a hard time shopping for people... it's not that I don't care about them, I just don't like shopping. Last christmas I tried a new idea... I bought each family a heifer.

Actually I bought the less expensive ducks, goats, bees, rabbits, hens, and chickens. That way I could give each one an entire animal rather than just a share in one.

Basically what these people do is give a family a pair (or more) of animals specifically paired to their location. For example:
Europeans and Asians have known it for centuries. Ducks and geese are among the most versatile and useful domestic animals.

They're easy to raise; they don't require much shelter and can adapt to hot, wet or cold weather.

They find a good portion of their food by themselves, and they efficiently dispose of weed seeds and gobble up insects, slugs and snails. Best of all, they're highly efficient producers of animal protein.

Not only do you get eggs or meat plus feathers and down — you get vigilant "watchdogs," too!

So it is pretty cool...

Instead of just throwing food/money at these people, Heifer trains them and helps them to become self-sufficient...

(in a limited sense of the word... I don't really like the term self-sufficient...)

ok...

I see that people are flocking to my site... (hey... more than 4 hits a day is flocking to me.... ok) So consider this post a "guestbook" just leave a little comment so I know who is reading my little blog...

and feel free to comment on any of the other posts (i check down the whole page every once in a while hoping to see a new comment... I wish halo scan would send email alerts)

soo...

you probably wanted to discover this yourself... and if you are the type to care about spoilers, just stop reading...

now...

really...

OK... There is a little banner I made underneath the Powered by Bloger banner... I just want to say if you want to copy that and link (to my page or your own is fine by me) it is ok with me... please host the picture yourself though...

see below...(or more on too many blogs)...

...Well, I replaced my "Friends" List with "Also Worth Reading:" These are the blogs I read... Not planning on adding anymore (there are some I read that have good RSS and the entire thing loads in my reader... So I read a couple more... but I want a short list, and some of them I wouldn't feel comfortable listing under "Also Worth Reading."

Where else I spend my time:

MavTalk: A forum on the Dallas Mavericks
As the Apple Turns: Kinda like a blog... About Apple, my kind of humor...
Penny Arcade: Webcomic/blog from gamers about gaming for gamers (I'm not nearly as steeped in it as these guys... I don't own a console, and I have a Mac... so there are less games, but I do borrow other people's game systems...)
Blogshares: Blog stockmarket... pretty fun.
the photo forum: Forum on Photography
Fotolog: kinda like a blog... but with more pictures

In for some heavy reading?

Or not so heavy... but it is long...

I wrote this essay for my sophomore essay at St. John's College. It is called "St. John on Fellowship" and kinda discusses fellowship in 1 John.

Please tell me what you think... ***edit: I decided to add it here... just for fun***
***Re Edit: I decided to take it away, mostly because it was Word-->HTML with only a Dreamweaver auto cleanup to make it readable... and it messed up with all the hard returns turned into
tags...

just go to the link :-)***

Sorry but...

All you bloggers out there are going to have to stop... I want to read all these blogs, but reading blogs sucks my time away quicker than a good PS2 game (you know GTA3 or NBA2K3...)

SO... You all have to stop... either that, or send me cliffs notes versions over subliminal mindpaths (ok I made that last bit up) while I am asleep...

Psalm 138

I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart;
before the "gods" I will sing your praise.
I will bow down toward your holy temple
and will praise your name
for your love and your faithfulness,
for you have exalted above all things
your name and your word.
When I called, your answered me;
you made me bold and stouthearted.

May all the kings of the earth praise you, O Lord, when they hear the words of your mouth.
May they sing of the ways of the Lord,
for the glory of the Lord is great

Though the Lord is on high he looks upon the lowly,
but the proud he knows from afar.
Though I walk in the midst of trouble,
you preserve my life;
you stretch out your hand against the anger of my foes,
with your right hand you save me.
The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me;
your love, O Lord, endures forever ---
do not abandon the works of your hands.

(NIV)

I bit the bullet...

I went ahead and bought a month of fotolog service for 5 bucks... I hope some great photographer will like my pictures and start paying the 5 bucks a month fee... ;-)

A good reason NOT to sign the Kyoto Protocol

Check this article out....

Crime doesn't pay

Just in from MacInTouch...
A Nigerian email scam has gotten two people indicted in Houston. [MacInTouch]

Good Quote

In giving advice, seek to help, not please, your friend.
Solon

That's the ruler of Athens, not the webpage... ;-)

more political rambling

Ok... I don't wanna pick on Howard Dean... but I will...

Just read a blog entry/post/whatever on a Dean rally. The post went into universal health care. I think it is great that Dean has been the gov of VT for 11 years and has put in a health care system there... (does it work???) But that is the kind of thing that a state should do. If he tries to push that across the entire U.S. it ain't gonna work.

Just because it works (does it??) in a tiny little state (we'd call it a county in Texas). Doesn't mean it will work or is a good idea in the entire Nation. Basically I'm against nationalized health care...

what do you think?

creative commons

does anyone know if I can apply a creative commons license to my fotolog?

(this page has the attribution, non-commercial, same license limitations)

OWNED

This is a little gif i picked up from my friend frag over at MavTalk

sendmail enabler *not just a tutorial

someone finally wrote a sendmail enabler for OS X that just works...
now I can sendmail from anywhere on any of my accounts with out those infurriating error messages and constant settings changes.

Camino/Moz

Camino works with blogger hifi... so I'm going to start using that for blogger posts

**Edit: well, I didn't find that hifi was that much better... maybe later... it is easy to just run safari**

see y'all next week

I'm going to Port Aransas Texas until Thursday, so no posts until friday at least.

I gots Photolog

I got a fotolog... check it out at http://fotolog.net/dwightk/

.Mac and Laptops

I have not used .Mac to the fullest because I have a Powerbook. But right now my uncle is using my powerbook to ready a presentation for our families induction to some sort of Oil Museum tomorrow in Midland. So I am using my mom's computer... A quick click on bookmarks launches a small window with all of my bookmarks. I can click on Mail to send mail from my mac.com account. I can also check my our-town.com account if I need to. .Mac is getting more and more worth the cost....

What do you think?

Please...

Please leave comments... it is a quick and painless process... once you fill out your info once you don't have to again it remembers you (unless you are a paranoid cookie killer.)

Nice... Force Mail.app to display plaintext

From Mac OS X Hints:

Type this into the terminal:

defaults write com.apple.mail Preferplaintext -bool TRUE

Quit and restart mail... bam, no more annoying html messages :-)

I have to dissagree with my brother to the north...

From jordoncooper.com:
God's own President, George W. Bush apparently has the power to rewrite history. After lying to the American people about probably the most key part of the State of the Union address where he told the American people and the world that there was an imminent threat upon the security of the United States...

Lying implies deception... and the uranium purchase WAS NOT THE ONLY POINT in the presentation of Iraq's threat to the U.S. There was a threat... President Bush presented all of the points... one of them may have been wrong, but there was still a threat.

he is now rewriting history and trying to change the past about why he went to war in the first place

referring to this from the washington post:
The president's assertion that the war began because Iraq did not admit inspectors appeared to contradict the events leading up to war this spring: Hussein had, in fact, admitted the inspectors and Bush had opposed extending their work because he did not believe them effective.

If Saddam allows inspectors into the country, and keeps them from inspecting the country, they aren't effective. So there is no reason to send them... they might as well not be there.

I have always wondered where the evangelical voice that attacked Bill Clinton for lying are.

Where did Bush lie?

Blogmatrix's Blog Thread

Does anyone know how to make the BlogThread thing work? The instructions only tell how to install it, not how to use it...

Also does anyone know of a free RSS tool that will syndicate the whole article and include the Headline?

Cool Quote

...unity among Christians must not be based upon everyone's agreement over disputable questions. Christians won't agree on all matters pertaining to the Christian life because God didn't address every matter in Scripture. Nor do they need to agree, as long as they handle their disputes lovingly.
--Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker Every Woman's Desire

CSS? Safari?

I am having some trouble with my template for this site... see between Member of: and Friends: ? the space is a different size... I have checked the syntax 4 times, and everything is identical down the whole list... all of the headings are h6, and all of the lists of links are enclosed in ul, and all of the individual items are enclosed in li. Nothing changes on that one, but for some reason it is slightly smaller, and closer to the previous list. AGGH!
(I have added 2 blank p's and a br to get it as wide as it is... adding more doesn't do anything) DOUBLE AGGH!

Maybe it is a Safari Bug?

Is there anybody out there...

who really thinks that the only reason we went to war with Iraq was Saddam's supposed searching for a uranium dealer? Yes, Bush presented us with ONE false pretext, but to me it sounds (from the media and lots of blogs) like he and Rumsfield are trying to pull a fast one on us. They aren't.
P.S.
The Director of the CIA was appointed by Clinton...

Leonardo DiVinci

Leonardo da Vinci said: Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind. (from The Quotations Page)

Homestarrunner?

I was wondering what the update to hsr was, but i found out it is the character's page... check it out
They now have little videos of each character telling you about him/herself...

C.S. Lewis quote...

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg - or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.
--C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity

Songtao Shi

Some people whine and complain others do something about "it." When stem cell harvesting from embryos was (outlawed? or whatever) many people complained and said "Bush is a ____." Songtao Shi did something about it. He went out and found an alternate source for stem cells, baby teeth.

Good idea... next time, when you are thinking of whining, take a page from Songtao Shi. (link wasn't working, but there is a Google Cache)

Popularity of Dwight Waning...

The name Dwight is getting bumped off the top 1000 baby names list slowly but surely:

In 2002 rank:
974

But back in 1990 the rank was:
449

(Personally I'm surprised I even made the list)

My brother owes me...

I'm not about to sign up for AOL (I won't even give it the benefit of a link) but I can't tell you what I'd give to be able to post to my blog from AIM.

Well, I found out how he can... Bloggerbot

So he owes me something "he can't tell me what"

New Stuff...

Added some cool stuff from Blogmatrix.com. I now have an rss feed... (or you can click on the button on the left.) And there is a little blogthread script... if there is a conversation between my blog and another blog you can view it by clicking that button...

Also you can rank my site... look on the left...

Old Silver...

My mom started using her grandmother's silver today for our everyday eating utensils... Can she do that?

What do you think?

Howard Dean

So I hear about this guy Howard Dean... (while reading Jordan Cooper's Blog) Presidential hopeful and all. He makes some good points, but here is some stuff to remember...

He was governor of Vermont... He talks about how he did this and that in Vermont. Guaranteed health care to every child while lowering taxes (twice.) Exciting... But Vermont and The United states are very big steps apart... Being from Texas, I would say that Gov. of Texas to president of U.S. is probably a step down in responsibility (at least with my tongue in my cheek.)

But anyway... Just so you know Dean is:

Pro Abortion (Choice, Death whatever you want to call it.)

I have been a strong supporter of a woman’s right to reproductive freedom my entire life.  I believe that the right to privacy is enshrined in the Constitution, and as President I would do everything in my power to preserve that right.

Pro Affirmative Action
I am delighted that the Supreme Court has upheld the principle of affirmative action in education.

He supports Gay And Lesbian Unions...
I’m proud to say that as Governor of Vermont, I signed legislation to grant gay and lesbian couples the right to enter into civil unions.


Those are just some of his policies I disagree with. Check out this page to find out where he stands "on the issues"

Nice

I now have .pdf backups of LotR trillogy, Wheel of Time, and Harry Potter book 5... I am going to read through a couple and see if they really are 100% there.

Word 6

HA HA HA... We don't have to worry too much about Anarchists... (Besides the fact that they have a hard time organizing) they used Word 6 in the process of producing the Anarchist's Cookbook v2000. That application is so slow that they will never be able to overcome the problems of organizing :p

Forget Music sharing...

Get your friendly P2P app and search for .pdf... lots of cool books available... Wheel of Time series (all 9 books)... LotR... Navy Seals Fitness handbook... and my favorite The Anarchist's Cookbook (year 2000 version)... I am interested in seeing if all 9 books of Wheel of Time can really fit in a 15MB pdf... Tell you when I finish downloading.

What do you think?

Scarface

I can't believe I ever played and beat Grand Theft Auto 3 Vice City without watching Scarface... Pretty good movie... but I think I probably wouldn't have liked it if I wasn't noticing all the little things in the game that were just like the move...

iTunes Music Library is now 50% Smaller!

I emptied my music library of all the excess stuff just now... I think I'll wait to add the other stuff back until the Panther update.

I noticed interesting choices I made:

Keeping Dvorak's Symphonies, but dumping Mozart's Piano Sonatas.

Keeping all my Phineas Newborn Jr albums while dumping all the Art Tatum, and most of the Thelonious Monk.

Keeping Dave Matthews and dumping Sarah Mc.

Some Musio-Psychologist is going to have fun with this post...


What do you think?

iTunes Backup... iPhoto too?

Well, I figured out a way to easily keep the songs I don't listen to that much on my external HD...

1. I copy over all of my music to the hard drive (20+ GB)

2. Turn off "Copy music to iTunes Music Folder when adding music"*

3. Delete from iTunes all the music I don't want with me all the time from within iTunes

4. Add all the tracks I deleted back to iTunes

Step 4 is going to be tricky... Can I just import all of the music into iTunes from the External HD, or will that result in duplicates?

Now what I want is an easy way to do this with iPhoto...
This would be easy if I could make a "smart playlists" thing for iPhoto... I want an album that contains all the pictures that aren't in albums... I could then just export this album to my HD, then delete all the pictures in that album (then empty iPhoto's trash)

Most of the difficulty I am having is because I am trying to do this right in the middle... Maybe when I update to Panther, I'll be able to start over and do this all real easy like...

*Not the exact wording, but you get the idea

What do you think?

New FW HD

Just got my new LaCie 120 (actually 111.17) GB Firewire 400 (I know I should have gotten the 800 but I was short on cash) Hard Drive... Named her Rozinante... Now I am working on moving all the stuff I don't use when I am away from my desk from Bucephalus to Rozinante (considering the rotation speeds, I should probably switch the names, but then I guess it depends on if I'm more of a Quixote or Panza)

Blogroll

So I'm at my bro's site* and notice that his link to my site is above such greats as jordan cooper leonard sweet and the heresy... And I'm thinkin' cool... yeah, he's my brother, but he really likes these other sites... But then I notice that it is just in alphabetical order... oh well....
*I think thomas is my only reader... but I am going to act as if other people read my blog anyway

Lets see how this works...

This picture was taken just after a rain-shower up in Minnesota at a cabin on the Whitefish Chain. I like how the color came out even though I still hadn't figured out how to adjust the white balance. As easy as photoshop is, it is much easier if the picture looks good straight off the camera (I've found.)










Thanks to tk for helping me wrap my words... now I'd like to put a little space between the picture and words... just so the words aren't flush against the left side of the picture...

Graphic Converter Problems?

Check out these two pictures... I was planning on adding them to the list below, but they are messed up... Could it be because of the batch convert I ran them through in Graphic Converter? Why aren't all the pictures ruined? If I get around to it, I will try to do another post with the "good" pictures linked so you can compare...

sunset2
stainedglass*

*can stained glass be copyrighted? Is it usually?


What do you think?

Some Pictures

I finally got iDisk to work... I hope. Here are some pictures... hopefully I will get a gallery set up but for now you will just have to trust my titles :-)

angel
blue glass
boat
a knob
sunset1
trees

All images Copyright 2003 Dwight Knoll -- All Rights Reserved -- Etc.

Pith Helmet

Pith Helmet 0.6.3c[versiontracker.com] is a handy little add on to Safari that blocks many ad domains. It even works on Google's Ad Sense... but I might turn it off, since Google is one of the only advertisers I can stand...

AtAT's VEVO

As the Apple Turns' Vote Early Vote Often poll has an answer that involves cats sleeping on 17" Al Powerbooks, which is funny because I was visiting my brother in MN most of the last month, and his little ragdoll kitten (which actually looks a lot like the one on the left) really enjoyed sleeping behind my 12" Al Powerbook. Right back where the vents put out a lot of heat.

I hope that someone will write a haxie or something to let me run my fan more often... this thing is hot... and I even use a podium cool pad **(but if you look up podium, you will find that it is something you stand on... even though most people just think it is the same thing as a lecturn... oh well...)**

Wow!

John Gruber dropped by, and commented that he doesn't mind my visual ripoff... I am really excited... His column daringfireball is one of my favorite (and I'm not all that into MT or Scripting and all the other over-my-head topics he writes on.) Check it out.

Thanks Blogger

Safari seems to be working fine now... no infinite loops when I publish.

What makes me mad...

I have flown to and from college several times since September 11th. And when I am flying home or back to school, I'm not that organized. Three times I discovered that I had left a knife in my carry on... Not when I went through security, but after I got to my destination.

Now what makes me mad is that I started putting my knifes in my checked luggage. But now that they are searching every bag, my Leatherman Juice KF₄ has gone missing. I probably just lost it, but if I didn't have to worry about where it is (it is always in the Duluth Deluxe Daypack I use as a carry on) I would still know where it is ;-)

Confusing Email subjects...

According to frontbridge these are the top 10 confusing email subjects:

The Top 10 Trickiest Spammer Subject Lines:

1. RE: Information you asked for
2. hey
3. Check this out!
4. Is this your email?
5. Please resend the email
6. RE: Your order
7. Past due account
8. Please verify your information
9. Version update
10. RE: 4th of July (Or, I am assuming, a close holiday)

I know I have used "hey" as a subject many times... have to try to get a new throwaway subject.

More Thoughts on CSS

If anyone can look at this page's template and figure out why the links in the main column are underlined and have a dotted border I would be thankful. the word underline does not appear in the template (according to Dreamweaver's search function) but still the links are underlined. The side bar works fine, with just the dotted under-border.

AGGH!

Interesting Stats

Compiled by me from nationmaster.com

The U.S. at #1 has greater Millitary Expendatures than the top #2-13 countries combined

But at the same time comes in 43rd in the Military Expendatures as Percent of GDP (with 3.2%)

Kinda funny isn't it?

I am one to give "evil corporations/presidents/non-vegetarians" the benefit of the doubt. But if this article (from boingboing.net) is true., it shows that the RIAA is making some big mistakes. If they are going to go after electronic pirates, they should go after the physical pirates also

Apple's iDisk and Pictures

I have had no end of trouble with iDisk, combined with pictures... I have:

Used iPhoto to make a photopage--> result= didn't work*
Used homepage to make a photopage--> result= didn't work*
Put a big bunch of pictures in homepage.mac.com/dwightk/pictures (Pictures folder within sites folder in iDisk)-->result= no acces*

In the first two cases, the page showed up, but all the squares for pictures were blank, in 3 different browsers. In the last case, I get apple's "homepage not found" page... Any help would be appreciated.

Jackass and Just Married

In honor of My brother (Thomas Knoll) I watched Jackass the Movie (I don't think Thomas left out a single scene in describing the movie to me) and Just Married (Ashton Kutcher is his kind of people.) I haven't laughed out loud more than when I watched Jackass... and it was hard because I didn't want to attract my parents over to ask what I was watching (they wouldn't appreciate the fine art that Johnny Knoxville puts out) Just Married wans't as good at being Meet the Parents as Meet the Parents.

As a side note, if you follow the link to my bro's site, check out the picture he has in the top bar... I took that... Soon I hope to have a gallery up of some of the pics I like

CSS Thoughts

I bet if I actually knew what I was doing, and wasn't just trying to rip off most of Daringfireball's CSS, combined with using the orange template blogger provides, CSS would be pretty cool, but as it is, I am having trouble...

Does the headline "Tell me why..." appear to be a different color than the others? or is it just me... Oh well tell me if you like the lay out, unless you are John Gruber from daringfireball, then please just tell me that you don't mind my rip-off :-)

Ode to LaunchBar

LaunchBar is an application that I want everyont to try if they use OS X. This is a very un-mac like app that makes it very easy to launch applications. I just hit command-space and start typing a couple letters of any application I want, and when it is the top application in the list hit return/enter. I say application, but I really mean just about anything... MP3's (and AAC's), Documents, hyperlinks... After 5 minutes of set-up to tell the application where I keep my Documents/Applications/etc it is set. Every time I log-in it automatically indexes all the locations I set up. This keeps my desktop and dock less cluttered, because I don't need to put lots of apps either place.

I am going to try to get some little icons to put at the beginning of my posts so that you can tell what the post is going to be about... kinda like slashdot (for example this post would have a little Aqua looking X by it so you know I am going to go off about Mac OS X)

Tell me why is your timestamp screwed up.

I'm trying to do everything in GMT... just because that's what eccetric people do... and I am trying hard to be eccentric. (Right now I am in CST or CDT (whichever is GMT-5))

What? no Safari?

I've been using blogger lofi with safari on my other blogs for a while, but now I get a real fun infinate loop of page loads when I try to publish my blog. So this is from IE... aka the dead browser[cnet.com]