So Mark Cuban thinks that “The Internet is Dead and Boring”:http://www.blogmaverick.com/2007/08/24/the-internet-is-dead-and-boring/.

Finding little evidence to the contrary, including the fact that those goddamn “LOLcats”:http://icanhascheezburger.com/ just won’t go away, I have no choice but to agree.

Update: Seems Techcrunch made the “same connection”:http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/25/is-the-internet-dead-and-boring/

It’s amazing how easy it is to just live with something that really isn’t that great. Case in point, Apple’s recent “crumb-catcher” keyboards have pretty much sucked. Other than the desk-goo aquarium nastiness, the keys have always felt somewhat mushy. There was a certain lack of confidence while using them.

That’s changed. I think Apple has redeemed themselves somewhat with the latest iteration, introduced a couple of weeks ago along with the new iMacs. Got mine yesterday and now that I’m getting used to it I’ve decided I love it.

• Short, snappy strokes

• Dedicated iTunes controlling keys. How many hacks did we need to work around that omission?

• It’s incredibly thin and looks, well, cool.

I wish it was wireless, but Apple for some reason decided that they’d cripple the Bluetooth version by leaving off the numeric keypad and other useful keys. I hope they reconsider, but for now, this one is working just great. Thumbs up.

Someday I’ll probably write something more about the “Drobo”:http://www.datarobotics.com/ but in the meantime, I’ll jump the gun a little show you how I pulled the 500Gb drive from a MyBook in order to use it in my Drobo. This is in no way meant to be a how-to. More like a “how-did.” Make sense? Good.

Short version: I bought a Drobo and 2 500Gb drives as a replacement for 2 external drives. One of the external drives I replaced was a 500Gb MyBook, which uses a standard SATA drive wrapped in a bunch of enclosure hoo-ha. Since I had no good use for it as an external drive I thought I’d pull it apart and throw it in the Drobe with the others.

I started by trying to work the case loose with a small screwdriver. That worked pretty well for most of it, but one last bit was “stuck.” I peeked in and noticed one of the corners was actually screwed in place, and the screw was just hidded behind some black “paint.” Scratched the paint off and removed the screw.

From there it was just a matter of taking out screws and prying a little to hard until the drive was free.

Now to see if the Drobo worked as advertised. I should be able to just slip the new drive in and have the space immediately available.

Whaddaya know, it worked!

Taking stuff apart is fun.

wn

Apple’s Mighty Mouse is my favorite mouse. It feels good, and the little trackball is the best thing ever - when it works. Mine has been acting up for a few weeks now. Suddenly the ball wouldn’t scroll in one or more directions and the rest of the time it would scroll, but with “dead spots.” Tonight it just stopped scrolling downward and no amount of rubbing or yelling at it helped.

So I took it apart…

A little alcohol (for both me and the tiny mouse rollers) and a few curse words later and it’s working just lovely again. The only casualty was the grey ring for the bottom just will not go back on properly. I can live without it.

I’ve been using Parallels to run Windows on my MacBookPro since the day it was released. Virtualization is pretty sweet, but tends to bring my machine to its knees. And then, after trying “VMWare Fusion”:http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/ for a few days, I uninstalled Parallels without a second thought. The reason? Fusion felt a whole lot faster and more stable. I didn’t have any charts or anything to back that up. But now, “CNET does”:bhttp://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9760910-1.html.

For Windows when I need it, Fusion wins.

OpenID is a great idea. One that just might not work. “This post”:http://miksovsky.blogs.com/flowstate/2007/08/openid-great-id.html does a pretty good job of summarizing some of the problems.

For another example, try logging in to any 37Signals app. I’m reasonably clever but the first few times it took me forever to finally authenticate. Or maybe I’m just not that clever.

The desk in my home office had been attracting clutter for months. I had chords everywhere, unused speakers, unused EyeTV, barely used Mac Mini and 1.25 inches of dust. It’s easy to ignore, and for a while I can. Today however, I snapped.

It was with great joy that I yanked every wire, cable, power chord and device and threw everything in a giant pile in a different room. Then, slowly and while taking deep breaths, put only those things back that I actually use. Clutter kills productivity like you wouldn’t believe, and the insidious part is that you might not even know it’s happening because you’re too busy to deal with it. Here’s a tip: Just deal with it.

I feel so much better I can hardly stand it.

It’s just so much damn fun playing with web apps. With “Movable Type 4”:http://www.movabletype.org/ released how can a fella resist?

Like: Static files, thoughtful UI, Multiple blog handling

Don’t Like: Static files need publishing, Perl can be a bitch. Tags, Categories and keywords? Menus should be clicked to open - not hovered.

I could not get DBD::mysql to build on the CentOS box my site was on so I dropped a quick Ubuntu slice at “Slicehost”:http://slicehost.com/ and had the whole stack running in under an hour.

Quicksilver is the best launcher available. It’s got triggers, plugins, every conceivable option you could think of, third party contributions, and it’s free.

And yet… 

Yesterday I switched from Quicksilver to Launchbar. Why’s that, you ask? In this case it’s because Quicksilver’s 43 quadzillion features haven’t stopped it from crashing pretty regularly. Like 3 or 4 times a day regularly. Turns out that LaunchBar is faster, easier to understand and has all of the features I actually use. It’s not free, but with something this indispensable, $20 isn’t a factor in the decision. Whodathunk.

After hearing a story about companies making micro loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries, I ran into Kiva.org.

Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can “sponsor a business” and help the world’s working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you’ve sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.

This feels like a great idea, I’m in.