dsandler.org

I hereby announce that I am nearly two weeks into Decaf 2008, the latest in a series of attempts to reduce or eliminate my caffeine intake.

It had become clear to me that I have grown to depend on coffee’s (sometimes uncontrollable) capacity to power my brain. Ever since I started drinking coffee (my freshman year at Rice), it has been a perennial companion. We even threw a couple of parties—under the moniker “Devil Mug Café”—in honor of its awesome and terrible power:

Coffee giveth, but coffee taketh away. It has exacerbated my predisposition to anxiety and panic. It makes Erin not want to kiss me. And when I try to give it up, it fights back. I’m unsettled by the degree to which I appear not to function without it.

For more than ten years, coffee has been by turns my friend (making me the best version of myself) and my enemy (making me the worst version of myself). Its companionship is mercurial and destructive. Erin has therefore dubbed coffee my bad friend. (I tend think of it more as a seductress, but I can see how she might not share that characterization.)

On a related note, I am now officially looking for other, less-harmful habits to pick up. Ideally: something that will give me the feeling of inner warmth and cerebral industriousness without the unpleasant side-effects of 200 mg of caffeine. Tea is perhaps an option, but it must be reasonably decaffeinated (as anyone who was present at Pei Wei two weeks ago will attest—stupid iced green tea!).

My (non-bad) friend Jeremy has proposed “weekend coffee” as a way to enjoy its effects on occasion without developing a mind-bending tolerance for them, but I fear I would find my bad friend on the couch long after the weekend is over. Recidivism is a potent risk with such a strategy.

However, as the father of a three-month-old, Jeremy also offered a word of warning: once our baby arrives, I may need my bad friend more than ever. Coffee, it is said, is the third parent.

When Apple decides to produce an extensive set of audiovisual introductory teaching materials, you can be sure they think they’re on to something that will:

1. change everything, but
2. take a little explaining.

To wit:

1984:

Macintosh Guided Tour.

2007:

iPhone Guided Tour.

On a related note: Does the presenter in the iPhone tour remind anyone else of the pixellated dude from the later Mac tour, “Macintosh Basics”?

Fig. 1. The Macintosh Basics guy.

Fig. 1. The iPhone Guided Tour guy.

The later incarnation trades the dorky white polo and rainbow Apple logotype pullover for a plain black T, but keeps the no-nonsense coiffure. Also, um, his framerate is better this time around.

Discuss.

As I am no doubt the last person to point out, Google Maps has added a street level view to (a few) urban areas. It’s the first Google app (besides Picasa) that I’m aware of that requires Flash, but it’s also (as fellow Be alumnus pixelknave points out) the first Google app to feature the Be Man:

Fig. 1. The BeOS Man.	Fig. 2. The Google Maps Man.

I guess it was only a matter of time, given that there are so many Be alums at Google now. I figured I’d send him home after all this time away (screenshot).

Update: The Google Maps Man now has his own instructional video.

(Barely) in time for the fourth of July, I’d like to announce the first release of Pyrothèque, my new fireworks screen saver for Mac OS X. Four years (off and on) in the making, it’s my favorite OS X project yet; it combines elements of the old and the new in a simple, clean presentation. In short, it’s toasty. Read on for the story.

The following (somewhat incoherent) blog entry is best justified using the following formula:

B = a × p(t) × E^-1 + h

a = Attempt to clear out excess beer from previous parties
p = probability that beer has gone bad since time t
t = time of previous parties
E = rationalizing force usually in effect around the house
E^-1 = lack of said force
h = HBO film schedule for summer
B = sappy blog entry

This entry is thusly subtitled:

I finally realized what the boxy, raised keys on the MacBook keyboard remind me of! Compare: