canspice.org

It was the best of cuts, it was the worst of cuts.

Last weekend I went to get my haircut. Alice said it was getting shaggy, and since she looks at my hair more than I do, I had to bow to her wisdom. I went to get it cut at the usual place, Supercuts. Now usually when I get my haircut I don’t mind getting the electric razor around the sides and back, but this time I just wanted a trim. You know, just a tidying-up of the shag carpet.

Thus I was not surprised when the hairdresser asked if it was going to be a scissors-only cut. Yes, I said, expecting some kind of decent haircut. But you know, I thought hairdressers were supposed to be trained on how to use scissors properly? I guess that’s not a requirement to be hired at Supercuts.

It takes a special type of hairdresser to cut bangs crooked. It takes a special type of hairdresser to cut off just enough hair so that it all sticks up in the back, unless you put on a gallon of gel. It takes a special type of hairdresser to cut hair over the ears so that it puffs out over one and tapers in over the other.

She didn’t get a tip.

Alice got her hair cut and styled and coloured at a proper hair salon on Wednesday. It was a full-out affair with bleaching and colouring and straightening and cutting and trimming that took a total of five hours. The results were straight hair (for a couple of days) and a more colourful look. Now we’re not just a brown hair family, we’re a brown and blue hair family.

And I have a new place to go get my hair cut. Sure, it’ll be more expensive but at least my hair won’t look like it’s been chopped at by a blind hairdresser-in-training.

On the 15th day of every month, Alice and I donate some money to a charity. It could be local, it could be national, it could be international. This month we’re donating to Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders in the US.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international humanitarian aid organisation that provides emergency medical assistance to communities in need around the world. It believes that all humans should be able to be treated medically in times of need, regardless of where they live. It works to improve medical aid to those without, to provide safe and clean environments to heal and grow, and to educate local healthcare professionals. MSF also seeks to raise awareness of abuses and emergencies. It tries to give a voice to those who are too weak to get the world’s attention, such as in Galcayo, Somalia, where the number of malnourished children arriving at the MSF’s theraputic feeding centre is increasing dramatically, and in northern Uganda, where 18 years of war has displaced 80% of the population — nearly 1.6 million people — into government-run settlements.

MSF won the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize “in recognition of the organization’s pioneering humanitarian work on several continents.”

We are donating to MSF, not to their South Asia tsunami relief efforts, but to their general Emergency Relief Fund. MSF says that they currently have enough money for South Asia so are requesting the people donate to the ERF so that MSF can respond quickly in the case of future emergencies. Funds donated to the ERF will also go to humanitarian efforts in over 70 locations around the world.

Americans can donate to Doctors Without Borders by visiting this page. Canadians can do so by visiting this page.

Steve Jobs’ keynote address at MacWorld San Francisco 2005 has ended, and now it’s time for all of the discussion to start. Confirming some of the rumours, he announced the addition of the Mac mini and the iPod shuffle to the Apple hardware family.

The Mac mini looks to be a bit of an homage to the old G3 Cube. At a size of 6.5″ x 6.5″ x 2″, it’s about the same size as five CD cases stacked. Go ahead, go get five CD cases and see for yourself how small that is. Small, eh? Inside that little bundle you’ll get what Apple hyped a couple of years ago as a “supercomputer”. The base model comes with a 1.25GHz G4 and a 40GB hard drive and the upgraded model comes with a 1.42GHz G4 and an 80GB hard drive. Both come with 10/100 baseT ethernet, a 56k modem, DVI output, a slot-loading Combo Drive (which can read DVDs and read/write rewritable CD-RWs), and 256MB of RAM. Other than the RAM, which should have been 512MB, it’s a really good computer. The base model costs $499 and the upgraded model goes for $599.

Now the Mac mini doesn’t come with a lot of bells and whistles. In fact, it doesn’t come with a keyboard or mouse. This may be because Apple might be targetting those people who already have computers and are looking for an upgrade. Already have something from Dell? Just throw away that big black box and replace it with this tiny anodized aluminum one. In the day of the $500 computer they’re almost becoming replaceable components, just another cog in the machine like a printer or a scanner.

It would have been nice for the Mac mini to come with 512MB of RAM, particularly since the RAM is not a user-serviceable part. This means that if you want to upgrade without voiding your warranty you have to take it to an authorized Apple repair shop to get them to do it for you, at a price, of course. Adding Bluetooth would be a good idea if you wanted to, say, use the Mac mini as a home theatre PC, allowing you to watch movies stored on your computer on your TV. You don’t want cords all over the place, so you’d go with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Wireless ethernet is also an option, as is upgrading the optical drive to a SuperDrive that allows you to burn DVDs.

And the iPod shuffle. I was right in saying that Apple wouldn’t make a random-only iPod, and they didn’t. The iPod shuffle has two play modes: Shuffle Songs and Play In Order. It doesn’t have a display on it, and the play mode selection is done via the power switch on the back of the unit. It’s tiny, weighing less than four US quarters and smaller than a pack of gum. There are two flavours, a 512MB model for $99 and a 1GB model for $150.

The coolest thing about the iPod shuffle is its integration with the new iTunes 4.7.1. Instead of explicitly picking which songs to load onto your iPod shuffle, it can randomly choose songs from a playlist with a feature called Autofill. Not only do you not know what song you’ll get next when you’re listening to music, you won’t know which songs are actually available for you to listen to, other than they’re songs that are on your computer. This is incredibly cool. I have an iTunes playlist for all of the songs I’ve rated to be 4 or 5 stars. It currently has 160 songs on it, and these 160 songs take up 930MB. Now, if I had the 512MB iPod shuffle, how would I pick which songs to put on? Take the top hundred that fit? Just the 5-star songs? With Autofill I don’t have to figure anything out, iTunes just picks a random sample that’ll fit on the iPod shuffle. And each time I connect my iPod shuffle to my computer I get a different selection. Cool, eh?

I think Apple has hit two home runs with these announcements. They should be seen as less hoity-toity and expensive and more down-to-earth with these relatively inexpensive bits of hardware. Their profit margins will undoubtedly be smaller than for their more expensive hardware, but they should hopefully make that up with volume. And like all Apple hardware these two just look incredibly cool. Well-designed and completely functionable. And lickable, like all good Apple hardware (and software) should be.

The MacWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco (MWSF) happens every year around this time, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs typically gives the keynote address. These keynotes are often fodder for speculation for rabid Mac fans for the weeks leading up to any MWSF, and with good reason. In 2002 Jobs announced the lamp-like iMac, iPhoto, and stated that Mac OS X would be the default operating system on all new Apple computers. In 2003 he introduced the 17″ PowerBook, the 12″ PowerBook, Safari, iLife and various other bits and pieces of kit. 2004 was a little light hardware-wise with the iPod mini and the Xserve G5, but there was also iLife ‘04 which includes GarageBand, and Jobs announced that the iPod had sold over two million units, pretty much owning the hard-drive based MP3 player market.

2004 has seen renewed excitement around Apple, with its stock price nearly tripling from mid-20s to just under $70. MWSF 2005 brings all kinds of rumours to the plate, from a collaboration between Apple and Motorola which will result in an iPhone to a new version of an iMac that will come without a monitor to a flash-based iPod. These three all have some basis in reality and have been rumoured about for a few months now. Of the three, the headless iMac looks most likely as Apple is suing Think Secret for disclosing the news about it on their website, a tactic that Apple has resorted to before to help protect their trade secrets and keep a firm hold on their releases. The flash-based iPod (possibly to be called the iPod micro) is rumoured to have about 1GB of space, enough for 240 songs, and cost between $100 and $150. MacityNet has pictures of a possible advertising poster for the iPod micro with the tagline “Life Is Random”. Some are saying that this lends credence to the rumour that the iPod micro will not have a display on it and will just be able to play songs using a shuffle function. Essentially all it will have is a Play/Pause button on it, supposedly.

I’m in favour of Apple moving into the flash-based MP3 player market as they’ve almost completely sewn up the higher-end hard-drive based market and can make some waves in the lower-end market. There is a lot of competition already established here, so Apple will have its work cut out for it. Given the experience they’ve had with selling iPods they should be able to make a dent there. But an MP3 player without a screen? Only being able to listen to songs randomly? I don’t know about that. Given Apple’s previous views on “do what you want” with music purchased from the iTunes Music Store I don’t see them locking people into one specific play mode. Some people do like to listen to albums straight through or have playlists in specific order, and they wouldn’t be happy with this random-only mode. I’m sure that I’m going to have to eat some of my words, but I just don’t see a random-only iPod. Flash-based, yes. Random-only? No. But then again, what could the “Life Is Random” slogan mean?

We’ll have to wait and see what Steve Jobs announces Tuesday. As with most MWSFs there will be disappointment afterwards, usually with people saying that the hardware is too expensive or under-powered or just stylish for the sake of being stylish. There were a remarkable number of remarkably wrong predictions about the iPod when it was first announced, like “A total waste of time” or “iPod is a good product, but nothing to get excited over” or “There’s no doubt it’s a cool device. They’ll just never sell any of them.” One prediction I can make is that there will probably be an equal number of wrong predictions and teeth-gnashing over each and every announcement by Jobs tomorrow.

Last week Alice and I went up to the apartment of our apartment’s owners to pay the rent (they live in the same building as us), and during the conversation it happened that they said we could have a cat if we wanted one, contrary to building rules. Luckily one of them is on the board of directors for the building, and besides, we’re planning on moving to a house in March.

Alice rang me up at work on Wednesday and said that she saw some kittens at the Farmers Market and could we rescue one? See, the kids that were around were saying that Uncle would drown them if they couldn’t find homes, so we had to rescue one. Of course I said yes, and I came home to a little black and white meowing machine. His name is Aki and he was born on November 18, so he’s about seven weeks old now.

He’s a meowing machine, and we found that out the first night we had him. Because he’s not completely litter-trained yet (he goes just fine if he gets put in the box, he just hasn’t learned how to find it yet) we put him in the bathroom for the night. Nothing but meowing for a good hour. Then he started at two in the morning, so we went and slept on the pull-out bed in the living room, as far away from the bathroom as is possible in our apartment. Then at five-thirty, when Alice got up and played with him. Luckily he’s getting more used to being put in there, so he only squeaks for five minutes before calming down.

And of course, there have to be pictures. Here they are!

(click for larger versions)

Unfortunately the day after we got Aki, our betta fish Bartlett died. He’d been suffering from ich for a couple of days and I guess we didn’t catch it in time before administering the anti-ich stuff. He had a happy life swimming with plants and snails. :-(