I don’t know if he noticed yet, but today marked one year since the first post appeared on radiofree and unlike life, he hasn’t abandoned it yet. Congratulations.

Well, not really ticking anymore. I’m finally getting exhausted so it’s time to get some sleep. Nighty night everyone.

So I’m not buying the real thing just yet. Might as well get something that will hold me over for a little while. Click on the images for a larger view.

I’m not tired. This is what I get for sleeping all damn day. I know I’ll be kicking myself in the ass at work later today.

I was cleaning my office just now and I deep in the corner of my room, I found a paycheck dated back to 9/23/2002. Talk about a pleasant surprise. Now I have to go into work tomorrow to see if they have to print me out a new one because this one might be void.

I’m home sick today. Actually, I’m not very sick. The day was just too nice. What better way to enjoy that by staying in and sitting in front of my computer working on my site and photo album? I’m trying to get my Christmas, New Years, and auto show pics up this week. Probably head out later to just take some bullshit pics too.

I don’t have time for a full update right now, but I wanted to show you one of my favorite cars in the show. It was a nice, but simple, modified Nissan 350Z in the aftermarket department under the main hall. Nothing fancy on the outside. A little lower, different set of rims, and a different grill made this thing easily the nicest car there in my mind. Click on the image for a larger version. Be back soon for a full update.

I’m telling ya. If it’s not one thing, it’s the other. My DVD player broke a couple of days ago right after I had finished setting up my home theater system. It was this nice Sony but now it’s a big ass paper weight. I take real good care of my stuff and anything I’ve owned that was Sony has just never kept. Their products (both high and low end I’ve bought) are just cheap and chinsy and I’ll never be buying anything from them again (except Playstations). I urge you to do the same.

Anyway, I can’t live without my DVD player so I hopped over to Circuit City and picked up this very nice Onkyo 5-disc DVD changer. Well, it’s awfully big and (go figure) it doesn’t fit properly in my entertainment system. It does look bad ass next to my HTS, though, because they’re the same material and brand. Now I’m thinking it’s time to get a new entertainment system but I really should stop since I’ve spent $550 on the receiver and speakers, $250 on cabling (Monster all around), $100 on speaker stands, and another $300 on a new DVD player. I’m also looking into the HDTV by summer this year. Consumer whore? Yes, and I love it.

I’m gonna try and take that QTVR pano sometime this weekend so you can see how the setup looks in the living room. I know you can’t wait for that.

Yesterday morning, Apple released the public beta of Safari. Safari is Apple’s open source OSX only web browser based on KHTML, the Konqueror rendering engine. I’ve been playing with it all day and here are some of my first impressions.

The very first I always do whenever I get my hands on a new piece of software is go into the preferences and check out all of the settings you can manipulate. After doing that with Safari, you can tell right away that this is a “no nonsense” application. It’s made to do one thing and one thing only: browse the internet. You aren’t going to find auction trackers or messenger services built in here. There are no web page editors or built-in e-mail clients. It’s a very trimmed down, very light program and, as a result of this, is very quick and responsive.

First with the good (and there’s a lot to be happy about). Rendering times are fast, though I don’t think it’s as fast as Chimera, another very trim and sleek browser based off the Gecko engine and also for OSX only. Program navigation and window scrolling are definitely faster on Safari then on any other browser on OSX (or any other type of OSX app in that case). The overall appearance is simple, but might be a little bland for most people’s taste (total lack of color when compared to other browsers). I tend to like it a lot because of its consistency with other Apple applications. The navigation buttons (the little there are) are small and simple. Organizing bookmarks is an absolute breeze, especially If you’ve used other iApps. There’s also a built-in pop-up blocker that works beautifully and feature called SnapBack that helps you backtrack through your page navigation. All very nice.

Now Safari is currently a public beta release and you can tell. Sometimes pages wont render correctly. Working with any kind of Shockwave content is a little on the slow side. Then there’s the occasional crash. It’s nothing that will pull me away from using Safari as my main OSX web browser for now. The bugs are really small fries for me because I know they will be fixed before a final release. What I am upset about is the lack of basic “features” that should really be considered a necessity in any modern web browser. Tab browsing (as found in almost all Gecko-based browsers) is a must for me. I mean how can having multiple browser windows arranged within one window be a bad idea? Apple missed the boat on this one and it’s inexcusable. Another item completely missing from this release is the auto-complete forms. If you do a lot of shopping over the internet like I do, then you really come to appreciate this feature when putting in addresses for shipping or billing. Again, this is something that just needs to be in any web browser you’re asking me to use.

Overall, this is a good start to what could be a great browser. “Refreshing” is a word that keeps coming to mind. It integrates very nicely with some of the other iApps and it’s going to remain my main browser for the time being. If you’ve tried it, let me know what you think. Don’t forget to send your feedback over to Apple. They do seem to listen and will act on what the community has to say. More to come.

So I got the 1st prediction partially right. Apple updated all of those pieces of software except iChat and they did make it a commercial package (as stated in the 2nd prediction) called iLife. I also got the 3rd prediction right. We now have AirPort Extreme which is a consumer friendly way of saying 802.11g capabilities. The 4th item wasn’t so much a prediction, but there was a strong emphasis on wireless technologies. The 5th prediction was partially right. There is Bluetooth on the high and low end PowerBook and FireWire 800 on the high end PowerBook. My 6th prediction was WAY off the mark. Apple introduced a 17-inch PowerBook that’s set to be a type of desktop replacement. What I’m highly interested in is the 12-inch “ultra portable” PowerBook. I’ve been looking to replace my Pismo and this is exactly what I’m looking for. It’s small, powerful, and super sexy. Other things released were Keynote (a presentation tool like PowerPoint), Final Cut Express (a trimmed down version of Final Cut Pro), and Safari (the Apple-branded web browser made specifically for OSX). All in all, a very exciting show.

I’ll be on my way to the Apple Store tonight to pick up a new AirPort Extreme hub and I’m seriously debating on putting in my order for the 12″ PowerBook. Sofa? What sofa?