"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

Nike Campaign "Borrows" Album Art
Classic cover art of Minor Threat's self-titled 1984 compilation vs. Nike Skateboarding's poster image for its "Major Threat" 2005 East Coast Tour.

"[Nike] stole it and we're not happy about it. Nike is a giant corporation which is attempting to manipulate the alternative skate culture to create an even wider demand for their already ubiquitous brand. Nike represents just about the antithesis of what Dischord stands for and it makes me sick to my stomach to think they are using this explicit imagery to fool kids into thinking that the general ethos of this label, and Minor Threat in particular, can somehow be linked to Nike's mission. It's disgusting." --Dischord representative

"Noooooooooo!"

Watching the Sox game on ESPN last night, I was reminded once again that watching Joe Morgan call a game drives me nuts. Last night's big thing for him was the Sox lineup: it featured four "non-regulars": Mirabelli instead of Varitek, Millar instead of Ortiz, Youkilis instead of Mueller, and Payton instead of Nixon.

And all throughout the game Joe wouldn't stop repeating over and over that when your team's not winning (like the Sox of late) you have to put your best players out there. And these four guys' results?

Mirabelli: 2-4, 1 R
Millar: 2-4, 1 R
Youkilis: 3-5 (one a HR), 2 R, 1 RBI
Payton: 2-5, 1 R, 1 RBI

Not bad at all. Yet Joe never once said that he was wrong, or even comment that the Sox were still able to easily beat the Cubs despite having some of their best players on the bench.

One good thing you can say about Joe Morgan, though: at least he's not Tim McCarver.

Enhance your photos by using the High Pass Filter (Veerle's blog)
This is a good tip for sharpening photos in Photoshop: rather than use the Unsharp Mask filter (my filter of choice), use High Pass on a duplicate layer of the photo, changing the Layer Mode of the duplicated layer to Overlay, Soft Light or Hard Light.

This is a great idea if you really need fine control over the amount of sharpening going on in different areas of a photo: you can simply erase parts of the High Pass layer to change the amount of sharpening.

Announced earlier this week, Apple is switching from IBM PowerPC chips to Intel chips. Todd Dominey points out:

The best part about the Intel deal is that the whole silly megahertz war will finally be over. For all intents and purposes, Apple and the whole PC hardware industry will share nearly identical components. Even if Apple sold their hardware for 5-10% higher than a Dell, and used nearly the same components, that extra amount would be a bargain when factoring in Apple's product design skills, the value of the bundled operating system, and the applications contained therein. The battle will no longer be about platforms, but software.

That last sentence is pretty key, in my opinion. If people are no longer getting hung up with Apple vs. Windows computers' chip speeds and it's now down to software, that's nothing but good news for the Mac.

Regarding the lack of posting here: last week we moved from Tewksbury to Bridgewater (so I apologize if I haven't replied to any email you may have sent). To summarize: moving's no fun, unpacking is better than packing, and Comcast sucks.

Fox saves Arrested Development

In a major surprise, Fox has renewed its critically-acclaimed but little-watched Arrested Development for a third season.

Nice!

After last night's Yankee loss to the Devil Rays, this photo of Steinbrenner and Cashman is pretty funny. "Off with his head!"

The product manager for Yahoo's Gift Finder writes about it:

I want to take this time to discuss the Gift Finder we created along side a great Y! partner, ChoiceStream out of Cambridge, Mass. The gift finder was built as a collaboration between Yahoo! Shopping, the Yahoo! Personalization team, and ChoiceStream. It was one of the better collaborations I've been involved with and I feel lucky to be the Product Manager for this feature...

[W]e set out to make a simple, comfortable gift-giving tool that can be used to provide recommendations for products, product categories, brands, and even stores. At the very least it's a valuable brainstorming tool that does the work of weeding out millions of products. At best, it hits the nail on the head for a quick and easy gift giving experience. It's unique to the web by its breadth and depth and its ease-of-use -- we're very proud of it.

Read the whole entry here...