Aaron Adams’s Lame-ass Blog

Mac user Rush Limbaugh reached an agreement with the Palm Beach County Prosecutor’s Office, ending their three year investigation of his alleged doctor shopping. Every story I read seems to contain this quote from Rush, spoken during his 1995 TV show, with the intent of pointing out some supposed hypocrisy:

Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. … And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up.

Let’s see… He didn’t sell any drugs. He didn’t push any drugs. He used drugs, but not drugs that are illegal. He didn’t import any drugs. Nor is he accused of any of those things. So far so good.

He was suspected of violating the law, so he was accused, but since the Palm Beach County prosecutor obviously doesn’t have enough evidence to charge him and proceed to trial, likely because no crime was committed, he can’t be convicted, hence, he can’t be “sent up”.

Where’s the supposed hypocrisy here?

Had the prosecutor enough evidence to convict Rush of doctor shopping, you can bet everyone involved would be preparing for trial. What better example to parade through the media than alleged conservative hypocrite Rush Limbaugh? Because of the agreement, the prosecution gets to save some face, and Rush gets to have the prosecutor off his back.

Last evening, my friend Tim Miller and I went to our telescoping spot and set up our Meade LX200 12-incher for the first time in a few years. After initial alignment, I plugged my PowerBook into the scope and used Starry Night Pro to point it to a series of objects nether of us had seen in some time. One of those was the planet Saturn, and as we looked, I got an idea. I reached into my bag and pulled out my iSight camera, hoping that just by chance it would fit into one of our eyepiece adapters so that we could get some pictures.

Well, it didn’t. The adapters are 1-1/4″ in diameter, and the iSight is 1-3/8″ in diameter. But we still had a chance of getting some pictures by using the afocal method, where we hold the camera up to an eyepiece. The tricky thing about taking afocal pictures by hand is, the camera has to be at the right orientation so that the light coming from the eyepiece strikes the iSight’s lens at a perpendicular angle. We were able to catch several clips of Saturn using iMovie, the best of which I have posted here, at “Revenge of the Giant Head”. Saturn is off-center because, again, aligning the eyepiece and the camera by hand is very difficult. It jitters a bit also because it’s hard for a person to hold the camera perfectly still, and the movements in your hand are amplified by the narrow field of view and the small object being recorded. Had Tim and I been able to hold the camera perfectly still, the iSight would have been able to properly focus the image. You can still tell it’s Saturn, it’s just not a sharp Saturn.

Our next step is to build an adapter. Tim has the tools and some aluminum, and sometime this week he’s going to create a piece that we can slide the iSight into so it will be held still and correctly aligned with the eyepiece of our choice. When that adapter gets built, I’ll post some pictures of it here, along with the cool iSight movies we’ll make. The crescent moon is coming up soon!

This article from CNN tells the tale of a man who bought a device from Canada that could change traffic lights. Local law enforcement eventually noticed that every time his car passed certain intersections, there was a disruption in the normal traffic signal routine. Here’s the important part: According to the CNN article, the man was cited for suspicionof interfering with a traffic signal.

That’s right. If the police suspect that you’ve messed with the stoplight, you apparently can be ticketed. They don’t necessarily have to prove that you’ve done anything, they just need to be suspicious of it. How does the unfortunate victim of this abuse of power prove that they are not guilty of the officer being suspicious of their actions?

When do we start locking people away for suspicion of murder? How about the lacrosse team at Duke… Will we send them to prison for suspicion of rape?

Of course, this is all based on the wording of the drive-by media, who are suspicious in their own right. I have no direct knowledge of Colorado law. If a correction to the premise of this post is needed, we can easily change the subject to inaccuracies in the news.

A few days ago, I wrote down my first impressions after the release of Boot Camp. It’s not my best writing, and others, like John Gruber and JC at Mac Geekery have stated the same points much more elegantly than I did in my fast and furious write-up. Since that time, Parallels Workstation for Mac beta has been released. I’m much more excited about Parallels than I am Boot Camp, and after talking to some knowledgeable friends, I’m optimistic that Apple will include its own virtualization software in Leopard alongside the final version of Boot Camp. Within a single day, the Mac became the computer to run whatever OS you want, and that’s nothing but good for the future of the platform. I’ve never been happier with my choice of computer than I am right now, and I’ve never been more excited about the future of the computer company with which my name and face (for better or worse) are permanently associated.

I wanted to channel that enthusiasm and optimism into a blog entry about the pros and cons of dual booting and virtualization, and why I personally prefer one over the other, and how this ability will or will not affect the Mac’s future. But when I sat down to write, I found that I just wasn’t motivated. Why?
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Like everyone else, I was very interested in Apple’s announcement of Boot Camp this morning. I give it a thumbs-up, if only because it’s an option, and options are good. I think it’s a positive sign that Apple isn’t afraid to put Windows XP next to Mac OS X on the same box. (Imagine the converse - Microsoft putting Windows XP next to Mac OS X on their boxes - if Microsoft made computers. I seriously doubt it would ever happen.) However, while I think Boot Camp is a nifty option, I don’t really think it’ll change things much.

Certainly there is some subset of (loud) technically proficient users (who seem to excel at making their presence known all over the Internet, but are virtually non-existent in real life) who have a need to dual boot XP and X on the same machine for one niche reason or another. To those people, I say, go for it, and good luck to you. Enjoy your dual boot machines.

For everyone else, I say, what’s the big deal? I can’t see a typical computer user (that’s computer, not Mac or Windows) finding this of much value, or alternately, worth the trouble. Imagine the following exchange in your local Apple store next week:
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