No, not the Democrats briefly acquiring power in Congress. Something serious: a lightbulb burned out in my foyer. 25 feet above ground.

I own one of those telescoping lightbulb-changing poles, but I’ve never had much confidence in its ability to grab onto the bulb firmly, and I really don’t feel like cleaning up broken glass, so I guess it’s time to drag the big ladder inside and climb up there. I think I’ll change both bulbs while I’m up there, since the other one is sure to go soon.

This seems like a nice tool for syntax-coloring code. I rarely feel the need for this feature myself, but it’s nice when it works, and this one works a lot better than BBedit’s, although it shares a less-extreme version of the coloring bug I found when I was testing TextWrangler.

I don’t have nice things to say about the download/install process and documentation, though; it looks like the Python community is trying to come up with something similar to CPAN, but it doesn’t seem to be ready for general release yet.

They’re off to a nice start, but I think some more of these slogans would be improved by replacing words with “sprinkle”.

Pete linked to this Aya Matsuura fansite in my comments. It’s nicely laid out, and seems to cover her career quite comprehensively. My favorite part is the DVD review section, which includes a 評価グラフ that rates each release by:

• あやや度 - how much Aya?
• ウキウキ度 - how cheerful is it?
• ニヤニヤ度 - are there lots of smiles?
• 泣ける度 - how sad is it?
• 芸術度 - how artistic is it?

Being a purely subjective scale, many of them go beyond 100%. This one’s Ayaya-do is off the charts. I can’t imagine why…

more...

But Brian, isn’t it always?

Oh, you meant the online store. Apparently it’s sending people all over the world today, and not just those who took the 7.0.2 update. I’d guess that their region-guessing heuristic goes by netblocks, and the database got corrupted somehow.

[I was tempted to title this entry 「また会う日まで」, in response to Brian’s Mr. Roboto quote, but it doesn’t really work, even though it’s the refrain in one of the songs pictured]

…John Kerry and Arnold J. Rimmer?

Based on the frantic spin surrounding today’s juicy soundbite, I’d say Rimmer was the likeable one. He also honestly admired the military, despite his failure to achieve the rank he felt he deserved.

"Well, if you'll just bear with me, I think I've devised a fair and equitable system of choosing who should survive. It's based on age, rank, seniority, usefulness... to cut a long story short it's me. I was as stunned as you are, which is why I demanded a recount. But blow me! It didn't come out of me again!"

[Update: I like the way the Leftie horde has descended on the major sites discussing this, insisting that no one could honestly interpret his comment “that way”, and that’s it’s all just a VRWC smear-job. In fact, it’s all too easy to believe that a Democrat would feel that way.]

Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu guy, on Linux success:

"If we want the world to embrace free software, we have to make it beautiful. I’m not talking about inner beauty, not elegance, not ideological purity... pure, unadulterated, raw, visceral, lustful, shallow, skin deep beauty.

We have to make it gorgeous. We have to make it easy on the eye. We have to make it take your friend’s breath away."

A company called Intego, whose business model is “scare people into buying our products”, announced today that they’ve created a proof-of-concept Bluetooth exploit that can crack your Mac wide open in seconds, without any user interaction. You’re vulnerable if you have Bluetooth turned on.

…and haven’t installed any of the patches Apple has released since May.