a blab by idle

At work, we are celebrating Earth Day 2006 today. I really dig this new logo that Jean from the IRC came up with; it has all sorts of elements that harmonize nicely. It was too nice to stay on internal emails and posters, so I felt compelled to put it here as well and share it with all of you. I really think it deserves much broader distribution, so in the spirit of "think globally, act locally"… it's here.

"It's OMNIVERSAL on the INTARWEB!"

Thanks to DrCoachChris for this tip-off: apparently, the recent Apple MacOS X security update (Security Update 2006-003 1.0) may cause bootp process explosions and thus prevent you from being able to log in to the new Intel iMacs and perhaps the Intel Mac Minis (though his MacBook Pro survived it fine). He's trying to track things down (and was tipped off by someone else's blog post), but I'll share the advice for you: do not apply this update to an Intel-based Macintosh until you do some checking first. My guess is we'll see Security Update 2006-003 1.0v2 or 1.1 within a few days.

(If this turns out to be accurate, he scooped Macintouch. Well done, Chris!)

[Updated 10:35 AM] There are problems all over the place with this update. Chris just told me that MacFixIt is having solid coverage of this emerging catastrophe (things as bad as "hosed FireWire drivers"). We've implemented a team decision not to apply this patch to any Macintosh, PowerPC or Intel, until Apple puts out a revision.

Upgraded the server to Media Manager 1.08 and MTAmazon 3.07 today. Also upgraded Annoying Old Guy's excellent regexp enhackment to SpamLookup. Hopefully things should flow a little better and I'll be able to cut out some of this new spam that seems to be bypassing my filters.

I said I was going to make some changes.

One of those is that I really wanted to have a centralized place to post things about the world of food and dining — mainly reviews, but some other little essays and notes as they struck my fancy. In short, I needed a place where I could babble about food, solely about food, where people would know to go look for it in a centralized place and I could customize the structure *for* food.

I could spend months still trying to get features ready, but that's not the web way, and besides, I'm sick of sitting on this. I need to stop tweaking and start getting content into it. You'll let me know what tweaks I need to make to the UI or usability.

So, as of today, Memorial Day 2006… I hereby launch gourmet babble, the all-things-food blog. Yes, you'll see a little recycled content from daily babble, and it'll take me a while to get things cleaned up. Part of the problem is that, although I have been well advised by the likes of Aster and Bofh Groot, 100% of the work thus far has been mine — including, that means, the UI. So if anybody has any suggestions or wants to help me clean things up or make things better, I am totally open to the concept. Please let me know what you think and I hope you enjoy this new, all-food, hopefully-all-fun delving into my passionate affair with gastronomy!