helpful Mac widget — istatpro

Since the PowerMac G3 is not the strongest platform on which to run Mac OS X Tiger, it can be sluggish. But, like any OS, there’s a lot running in the background that can be turned off if only you know it is there (and know it is unnecessary).

I installed this widget on my G3, and it’s been very helpful diagnosing what apps are memory/processor hogs. Dashboard, for instance, is a big one. All those widgets are running in the background just in case you want to bring them to the front by hitting F12. It’s ironic to use istatpro, then, since it is a Dashboard widget. But, I’ve decided to get rid of all other widgets.

istatpro.jpg
http://islayer.com/index.php?op=item&id=7
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/istatpro.html

I wish I had know about this widget when I was using a Mac Mini (at work). I would have liked to know which apps were bogging that thing down. With a few tweaks, I’ve got this 350Mhz G3 running faster than that 1.8Ghz Mac Mini ever did.

Dear Legislators of the 110th Congress

January 15, 2007

Dear Legislators of the 110th Congress:

Through election, the people of the United States have given you our consent to govern our nation. We expect you to execute this grant, in all matters domestic and foreign, as follows:

1. work vigorously to solve problems of local, national, and international importance; do not merely restate them and prolong them;

2. prioritize the fundamental common good over the demands of party relationships, however strong or weak; do not mistake “what can be done” for “what should be done,” abandoning the people’s will and replacing it with the shallow goals of idle, centrist political partnerships;

3. act with motivation, determination, and public interest; do not fear political reprisal when, as political careers come and go, our broader interests are perpetually at stake and constitute the only purpose your employment serves;

4. engineer a tense relationship between democracy and capitalism; do not allow the demands for profit to saturate our civic institutions, which are dedicated to supporting quality of life for all persons;

5. create meaningful options for financial stability for all people; do not succumb to tradition and convenience by ignoring the basic fact that our nation’s strength is measured by the standard of living of most, not a few;

6. learn a lesson in effective group decision-making; no group can function without trust, commitment, and action; Congress is not an exception – it is the patent example of the losses at stake when basic leadership skills are disabled by the mix of widespread apathy and the irresistible urge to dominate others;

7. be creative; do not cloud your judgment with ambition, arrogance, and false assumptions that paralyze the mission of getting real work done;

8. do something and avoid the tendency to do nothing; do not play it safe and put our collective well-being at risk;

9. recognize that your pursuit of legitimate political gains in 2008 is tied inextricably to the protection of our general welfare and genuine security; do not yield to self-interest, stubbornness, egoism, and corruption; and

10. recall, at all times, your role as an empowered servant of the people of this, and only this, nation; do not misunderstand the scope and limits of your power or impose the nature of it on those whom you do not represent.

In November, some of you announced, prematurely, an agenda identifying the very serious concerns of our country and the role of the national government to address them. If on nothing else, let us agree on this: the origins of your power rest with the people. The agenda, then, belongs to us. Any use of power which is not consistent with our expectations is an abuse of power, the exercise of which will no longer be authorized, pursuant to an enduring American constitutional mandate. While your duty is certainly a noble one, it is, at its core, a simple and practical task. We ask you to govern and, by this, we mean to govern responsibly — or not at all.

Thank you.

Nancy O. Gallman & Phillip Barron
Durham, NC

amoco

amoco.jpg

NYTimes on bicycles and bicycling

For those of you who have not seen it yet, the New York Times now has an XML feed for their articles on bicycles and bicycling. Use your favorite RSS aggregator to sign-up.

Unfortunately, it looks like most of the articles are available only to those with Times Select accounts.

sunset security guard

“What’s goin’ on, boss?”
“Hey, what’s up?”

The security guard walks toward me across the top deck of a local bank’s parking garage. From the far corner, I should have a clear view of the last orange glow from the sun on this Saturday evening. The parking garage is the least restrictive high place in the area; there is a twenty story bank adjacent and a four story apartment complex behind. There is a sloping field to the northeast, which is where I was originally headed to take in the evening spectacle. But from the field, the bank, the apartments, and the parking garage blocked my view. So, I walked west until I found the exterior stairwell for the parking garage.

“Do you work at this facitlity?”
“Nope”
“Well, this is private property.”
“OK”
“Sir, you’re not allowed to be here.”
“I’m just headin’ over to that corner to see if it’s a good place to watch the sunset.”

I hold up the camping chairs in my hand as proof of my claim.

“Sir, this is private property. You’re not allowed to be here in case something happens.”
“Well, I won’t hold you or anyone else responsible if something happens.”
“Sir, I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”
“Really?”
“Sir…”

I turn and walk back down the stairs I just climbed. I normally sympathize with blue collar work; I would hate for my job to be to tell people that they’re not allowed to be in a certain place. And his employers would probably tell him that he did his job well. But that’s just the problem. Why in the world do we need psuedo-authority figures defending parking garages from sunset watchers? What kind of world is this?

The Outspokin’ Cyclist: Take time to unplug, be outside and watch the sunset

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun

DURHAM — There was a year when I watched the sunset almost every evening.

Across the street from the school I was attending at the time began a neighborhood of houses that had been built in the 1950s. These streets and dwellings brought unprecedented order to the post-war town, carving their grid-like stamp into Southern countryside. The streets parallel to the main road separating the campus from the neighborhood ran only four or five deep, and the last street had houses on only one side. The far side of the street faced an open pasture where a farmer kept cattle.

The thin drainage ditch and barbed-wire fence formed an artificial boundary between the built environment and the natural, but it felt like the edge of the world each evening I sat there. Facing the trees on the far side of the pasture, you are facing due west.

I rode my bike to the same spot on that road each evening. After eating in the dining hall and before buckling down with books for the night, I rode through the twilit streets. I made no secret of this cyclical ritual, so occasionally friends rode with me. Tommy once tried to dance with the cows that were dining alongside the fence. Jennifer sat with me one evening before leaving for Honduras. Kimberly shared the sunset with me a few times years before she served and died in Iraq. Leighton, Joey, Josh, and Cathy each joined me other evenings. But mostly I sat there on the eastern side of the drainage culvert, bike on its side next to me, alone. And I sat there to make a daily point of being outdoors.

In the process of describing the physics of sunset, Christopher Dewdney, in his meditation on all things nocturnal Acquainted with the Night, tells of a group of friends, nature lovers, peace seekers, poets, and fellow scholars who gathers to watch the sunset each evening in Toronto. And although he explains both the science and mystery of that planetary spectacle, he talks too about the healthy reasons he looks west with friends each night.

Durham is a green city. It’s flush with trees, both deciduous and evergreen alike. Trees that astound you with color, like the fall fashion show on Wrightwood Ave, or with grandeur, like that amazing hundreds of years old oak on old Erwin Rd between Dry Creek Rd. and Mt. Moriah. Even as we lose acres of forest each year to development, Durham is still a lush environment. All of which mean that Durham is a great city in which to be outdoors.

Bike commuters know that an outdoors activity after work brings a different perspective to daily life. So do the folks who walk the tracks at Shepard Middle School and Durham School of the Arts, as well as members of Duke’s employees’ Live for Life running and walking clubs who walk and run the gravel path around Duke’s east campus each week. The city’s open spaces and trails, from Whippoorwill Park to the New Hope Bottomlands Trail, are designed just for a morning or evening stroll, ride, or skate.

As we come out of the sickly-saturated consumerism of the holiday season, the empty promises of the cell phone and the plasma TV may catch up with you – especially around the time the first credit card bill comes in. These empty promises have to do with buying into the ideas that we need to surround ourselves with electronic stimuli and that everything we need is indoors. But the iPod generation needs to know there’s a life without electronic media.

A recent Scientific American reported that women who worked out regularly had about half the risk of colds as those who did not exercise. Public health officials agree that being outside in sunlight for 45 minutes a day contributes to your health. It strengthens your immune system and is the most efficient way for your body to generate the Vitamin D needed for health.

But absorbing healthy Vitamin D is not the only reason to step out of doors. Since most people spend most of their time indoors, the experience of outdoor environments is a refreshing transition. It does as much for your mental health as exercise does for your body.

How would our lives be different if we each found time each day to unplug and adopt a low-tech outdoors habit like walking around the neighborhood? Why not take an evening bike ride with a friend?

As for me, I’m still looking for a place in Durham to watch the sunset.

–
Durham sunset pictures found on Flickr: LaDeeDah Lu, tsmyther, bikinisleepshirt, and elander

bike rack with built-in air pump

Now this is a smart idea — a bike rack with built-in air pump. First spotted over at cycling edinburgh.

I’ll find out whether any of Durham’s new bike racks will (or can) include one of these.