If you build it, they will come

Ever since I got a dog, and realized said dog would fetch himself to death given the opportunity, I have threatened to build him an automatic ball thrower. Unfortunately, I have the mechanical skills of a chinchilla. Fortunately, someone else has done all the hard work for me:

The Automatic Canine Fetch Machine (catchy name!)



This is great for those people who want a dog, but don't want to have to actually interact with the dog. It's like getting a television for your toddler.

Even a cold, soulless ball throwing mechanotron bucket can't say no to these eyes:

I don't get KDE

Last night while browsing the internets, I saw some screenshots of KDE 4.3 running on openSUSE 11.2. I've never tried KDE, so I installed the openSUSE 11.2 M8 build to briefly play with it.

What got me interested was this element of the KDE desktop:


I look at that and see hope. It is elegant and refined. It is glassy and tasteful. It says: "I can easily compete with Windows 7 and OSX." Simply put, it is beautiful.

Yes, there are some problems with it. The buttons do not highlight in any way on hover. There are no tooltips, so I don't even know what the top two buttons do. From what I can tell, they do absolutely nothing. But it really lives up to KDE's reputation of eye candy.

And then you open a window:


It is.. gray. There is no glass. There are no gradients. There is no depth. There is no elegance. There is just gray. It says: "I am kicking Windows 95's ass! Barely!"

I just don't get it. How can half of your desktop (let's call it "Plasma") be so beautiful, while the other half (let's call it "the stuff that is always going to be covering up Plasma") be so ugly and uninspired?

Errata:
- I do not know if I am complaining about KDE, or openSUSE's implementation of KDE, or both.
- I lamented on the aesthetics of GNOME previously, so it's not "let's start a desktop war".

iInnovation

Has anyone created a farting app using MonoTouch yet, or is my golden ticket to riches still available?

RMS mistakes and malattribution

Given the recent environment of reflection on past statements made, I have looked at my past to see if there are things I have said that might not be verifiably true.

I have said multiple times in the past that Richard Stallman was actually Weird Al Yankovic with a costume beard. I had heard this through various sources, but there is no published source that confirms this, and I now believe I may have accidentally completely made that up and passed it off as fact.

I have no way to verify that Stallman is not Yankovic, but there is no basis to claim he is. I apologize to Mr. Stallman, and, should he be a separate person, Mr. Yankovic.



While Mr. Yankovic may not actually be RMS, he does a have a history of Stallman-esque leanings, as exhibited by the original titles of his hit songs before the record labels changed them:

- It's All About the GNU/Pentiums
- Living in an Amish Paradise (To Escape the Evil, Proprietary Monopoly that is Microsoft)

So I don't withdraw my claim that RMS and Weird Al might be the same person. But I do withdraw my claim that RMS and Weird Al are the same person.

Planning for Spontaneity

I have recently felt like my popularity is waning a bit, people just aren't talking about me enough. Fortunately, current events have given me an idea. At this year's PDC, if I go, I will yell something horribly distasteful during the keynote, and then immediately apologize like I never meant for it to happen.

What this means to you dear reader is that we only have roughly two months to come up with what I should spontaneously yell with no forethought whatsoever. I'll start the ball rolling with a few:

- "Clippy is racist."
- "Windows ME was the best version of Windows ever."
- "You lie", in response to the cloud being the future.
- "Steve Jobs is a handsome man."
- "That guy was lucky Ballmer only threw a chair at him."
- "Anders Hejlsberg is a no-talent hack."
- "I'm really happy for you Windows 7, I'm gonna let you finish, but Vista SP1 had one of the best videos of all time."
- "Hitler used Windows."
- "Google apps are an adequate replacement for desktop apps."
- "I swear to God I'm [expletive] going to take this [expletive] Zune HD and shove it down your [expletive] throat, you hear that? I swear to God."

Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments, and let's make this a PDC to remember! (for being about me!)

[Reporters and podcasters, feel free to begin booking me now for my heartfelt apology!]

My Name is Jonathan And I'm a Geekaholic

Today when I visited Stack Overflow, I was excited to see I had unknowingly earned a gold badge:



Unfortunately, that excitement quickly turned to despair when I saw what it was for:



At this point, there are two things that go through one's head:

1) I should show this to my girlfriend.
2) Perhaps if I did not have said badge, I might have said girlfriend.

Holy $#!T! I AM GETTING THIS!

IT'S COMING!!!



Just reading the features page gets me excited! Check out these innovative new features in Snow Leopard:

• Faster, more reliable installation
• Automatic updates for printer drivers
• Easy PDF text selection

And my absolute favorite:

• More reliable disk eject

I think this one is especially key! Who's gonna want to use an ancient operating system like Windows 7 or Linux with their inferior (and unreliable!) disk eject technology?


Kidding aside, I will probably get this since it is correctly priced at $29. It's just interesting to see the hype machine running on all gears.

UPDATE:
At the request of a friend, I have re-added the blood to the snow leopard that Apple apparently removed.