Mokka mit Schlag

Fowler’s Toad, Bufo woodhousii fowleri
Robert Moses State Park, 2007-07-07

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Clouded Sulphur, Colias philodice
Liberty State Park, 2007-07-05
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Yesterday I finally got around to filing the paperwork to officially transfer my account from the TD Ameritrade spammers to Scotttrade. I should have done this months ago when I first realized the problem, but I’m not an active trader and it always seems like there’s more interesting things to do than filling out forms.

I had considered various online brokers, but there weren’t as many choices as I expected. Scotttrade seemed to have the best combination of low fees and decent user interface. Internet gossip about them was relatively positive compared to what was said about other online brokerages. The kicker was the local offices where I could drop off paperwork and get immediate feedback instead of having to mail forms back and forth for a few weeks. USAA was a close second. If Scotttrade doesn’t work out, I may switch to them.

The transfer itself is supposed to take 7-10 business days. I’ll let you know how it goes. I’ll need to make a test trade to make sure it all works once the money and equities are shifted over. There’s nothing in my portfolio I want to sell right now. I guess I’ll have to buy something. Anyone have a hot tip?

Carolina Grasshopper, Dissosteira carolina
Ridgewood Reservoir, Queens County, New York, 2007-06-30

Since JavaOne, I’ve been thinking its time to upgrade my roughly 5-year old TiBook. The wireless is having trouble connecting, and it’s really a little slow for some of the things I’m doing now. It can’t even play my Doctor Who AVIs without skipping a lot of frames. Apple had just released some new MacBooks, and I’ll need a laptop at Architecture and Design at the end of the month, so I was thinking this was a good time to buy.

Then I read this:

Back on June 20, I reported that there’d be new, slimmer MacBooks coming in October that along with being made from new materials would also feature some “speeds and feeds” updates to the internal components. Today, another “trusted source” told us this was correct and added that the iPhone’s multi-touch technology is theoretically supposed to roll out with all the new laptops, including those coming out in October. The feature will be built into the touchpads, allowing you to navigate through your notebook’s files, applications, etc. the same way you can on the iPhone. (Yes, I know you can already scroll with them, that’s nothing new. I’m talking about all the other finger gestures that can be done on the iPhone’s screen.)

Since size is really everything to me in a notebook, I think it makes sense to wait until October before upgrading. I’d hate to buy a MacBook now, and miss out on a smaller, sexier model just a few months later.
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Run , don’t walk, to http://perian.org/ and install Perian, a simple, Mac-friendly collection of open source video codecs that finally lets QuickTime play and encode many popular video formats that Apple has ignored including Divx, XviD, FLV, AVI, MS-MPEG4 v1, MS-MPEG4 v2, MS-MPEG4 v3, DivX 3.11 alpha, 3ivX, Sorenson H.263, Flash Screen Video, MKV, Truemotion VP6, and AVI.

Yes, I know there are other products out there like VLC that can play some of this stuff some of the time. This is the first one that actually works.

Definitely worth a donation.