Just loving today's Doonesbury 

I'm thinking that the first of Merlin's RSS wishes could be granted by dynamically generated reading lists. 

Scoble has stopped reading Memeorandum. I never started. That said, I'm not a scandal monger or snark monkey. Yet I still hit the front page of Tailrank quite often. 

IceRocket is now pretty much useless. 

And you thought I switched because of the Blue Screen of Death? No, Dave Chapelle is right on the money (shot). 

Missouri have gone super, super, Christian fundamentalist stupid. 

OPML provides interesting new solutions to old problems. Don't ask me how I found that... 

Check out CelebSafari.com, a community driven, Web 2.0 Heat magazine-a-like. (Via Steven Cohen) 

I've just updated opml.root. Dave hasn't announced it yet, but it'll change your Community menu - removing a few items and putting a new menu item in for Preferences (which takes you to http://127.0.0.1:5337/dotOpml/prefs) 

Next thing: I would love to be able to play my old PSX games on my MacBook. If anyone could tell me the best way of doing that, I'd be very grateful (legally: I have both an old PlayStation, a PSone and a PS2, so, despite the protestations of certain industry types, I think I'm legally entitled to play PSX games on my Mac). I've tried a few of the things I found on Google, but can't get it to work. I'll just have to play games at home. 

Ars Technica have a decent review of the MBP. Seems accurate based on my experience (although I haven't reproduced benchmarks - because, unlike my brother, I don't do that kind of thing). 

Just did the sums, and my desktop currently has 5,136,000 pixels. If I hooked up my rickety old iBook, it'd 5,922,432. My current setup features 1600x1200 for Windows / Linux, 1440x900 for my MacBook, then another 1600x1200 as a secondary monitor for my Mac. The 1600x1200 montiors are both Dell 21" screens. All of this is controlled from one keyboard and one mouse.Very cool. 

Mark Fisher on JS:TO: "Jerry Springer the Opera is returning to these parts and the very fabric of our society is once more under threat". (Via MediaWatchWatch) 

Sometimes I get rather worried about poor Donovan. Perhaps the answer is a keyboard command, so that when it gets to midnight, you think "flip to tommorow", hit a key command and it's done. Or perhaps simply a dialogue box when you try and post a new thing to today's outline saying "You're posting to an old outline - do you wish to post your current node to tommorow?" (not great - I can see problems already). 

A right-wing (read: not socialist or 'social democratic', steal all my money and spend it on Diversity Coordinators) Lib Dem party ain't a half bad idea. Now lets sit back and watch them cock it up. 

You'll be pleased to know that I don't use my mother as an example of cluelessness. I use teenages who don't know what RSS is and think MySpace is the height of civilization.  

Want to know something really funny? Ken Ham's Answers in Genesis has left the Creation Ministries International. Why? That "checks/balances/peer review" thing. Heh. 

Don't be dumb 

Apple, don't do it. It may be cheaper to hire Indian tech support, but every time I've been bumped off to India for tech support, they've been absolutely and completely useless. For instance:

What companies need to do is have a "I don't have a clue" line, which you ring if you're a newbie, and a "What the fuck's wrong with this?" line for people who know what they are doing and need to talk to someone who know's what they are doing.

Perhaps you could take a "Geek With A Clue" test - basically you hop on the website, show that you're not clueless through taking a comprehensive multiple choice test, and as a result get access to the "Geek Line". They can save money by getting people off the phone quicker, by getting bug reports to the relevant people quicker and not pissing off opinion formers (geeks are the ones with blogs and who get the "I want to get a computer - what should I do?" questions all too often).

Note: this is not racism. It's quite simple. I like Apple's Tech Support - they're helpful, usually pretty quick to respond, and (bar when they wanted to charge me £500 to fix a trackpad) reality-based (also doing nice things like emailing you after you've called with full details). The last time I phoned Indian tech support was when I had to call Belkin. They were totally clueless about the hardware, about operating systems and drivers that aren't Windows XP, about networks and telephony (quite useful in a DSL router).

I've phoned numerous tech support lines that ended up being routed to the Indian subcontinent - mostly from cheaper, cookie-cutter hardware providers.

Companies can cut costs all they like, but if I find out that their tech support is coming from the Indian subcontinent, I stop buying. I don't want to have to spend an hour explaining the existence of non-Windows operating systems to someone in Bangladesh because the manufacturer of my POS DSL router wants to avoid the responsibility of fixing the problem.

With the Belkin thing, what ended up happening - eventually, through a process of refined Googling, multiple calls to directory enquiries and searches of Companies House, I found their UK phone number. A family member then spent about three weeks calling that line every day until they actually got their arse in gear and replaced the router.

If you want more reasons, browse through the comments over at Jeremy Zawodny's blog discussing Dell's abysmal customer service.

DIY project: Cable Grab 

I spend a lot of time under my table, moving cables around. I hate it.

Today I thought of a simple solution to my woes. A cable grab.

Basically, at the back of my desk, sticky tabs which I can attach things temporarily while under the table.

I think the best material is probably Blue Tack. I currently don't have any, so I'm using folded over sellotape.

The next task is to hang a little coloured tag down from the back of my desk, so I can see whether I'm on target or not.