You've heard about the devastation in New Orleans (Don't build a city under sea level!) Here's some little things you may not be hearing:

• College students from the ravaged areas are either going home or starting to go to classes at other universities. Some Tulane students (particulalry internationals) have been taken to Georgia Tech. One Tech student posted about seeing the students getting organized. I just got a mass email from Bernie Machen, president of the University of Florida, saying we will also be having affected students attending classes here on a space-available basis.
• You can make donations directly to the Red Cross through many good websites (like Amazon) now those with iTunes Music Store accounts can use those to donate also.
• Craigslist.org has listings of people offering help an others looking for loved ones. Since internet access is unavailable in most affected areas, the posters are hoping those outside the area can help.
• A poster on boingboing, look for Erik V. Olson, tells what we can really do to help (the most reasoned list I've seen). Techies and engineers want to help but driving to these areas is not the way to go. On the list are:
  • Give cash
  • Stay away from New Orleans
  • If you are a rescue worker, call your local relief org
  • If you really think you can help with skills or materials, go to your LOCAL Red Cross and tell them
  • If you want to help in the future, start working with rescue orgs now so you can get trained.
• Fats Domino is missing
• New Orleans satellite overview

A wedding ceremony is not a technicality.

OK, this is big. Intel x86 processors will be powering all new Macs by the end of 2007. No this is not a spoiler for some new techo-intrigue movie, its real life. Despite spending years and a lot of money convincing us Pentiums were too hot and too slow, Steve Jobs says Intel's "roadmap" is so much better than IBM's, Apple has to make the switch.

As soon as I read on one of the sites that Jobs was not in his typical blue jeans and black turtleneck, the rumors must be true. It was a symhbol, Jobs loves symbols. No, he did not get up that morning and decide "No jeans today!" It was certainly planned.

And does anyone think this switch deserved more than 45 minutes of keynote time?

Anyway, let's go through the reasons that were presented to us for making this switch. First, IBM's lack of performance - particularly the promising G5 processor that has not reached 3GHz yet or appeared in a PowerBook. I was hoping that there was just some glitch and IBM would follow through soon. Apparently troubles with the G5 are worse than that. Also, Motorola's G4s weren't up to snuff prompted the switch to the G5 in the first place so going back to Moto seems out of the question.

The main reason is the aforementioned roadmaps. Jobs says Apple cannot build the computers they want to build for us with IBM's future processors. With Intel they can. I am very skeptical because 2 years ago the G5 was the greatest thing since sliced bread. IBM had these great fab plants, etc, etc. Now? Not so much. So what did Intel do to prove to Jobs that it would follow through? Just because they are Intel we're supposed to believed they are going to be able to keep Moore's law going?

Questions abound and I'll say I'm optimistic but not as optimistic as some of the commentators and reporters. And I wonder how much the press are inside Jobs' Reality Distortion Field. I'm extremely happy with how he has rebuilt Apple. The iMac and iPod are great. But look at some of these quotes. MacWorld's Jason Snell says "Now, let’s step away from the emotion. Apple has chosen a new chip vendor." Mr. Snell does a great job for MacWorld but this isn't quite accurate. Apple chose a new chip vendor when they switched to IBM from Moto. Switching to x86 is a much bigger deal, really a change of processor philosphy that we all hope will pay dividends.

I probably will not be buying a new Mac until the first of these Intel machines come out and many other people will feel the same. My new PowerBook is running great, my QuickSilver G4 is my media server and my Mac mini is my media center. Why get another PowerPC machine with this transition coming?

Cue the confusion too. People with 5 year old Dells will be thinking Tiger will be running on their machines next year. People thinking of new Macs will have to be convinced that Apple's hardware designs are really just that good. New mac sales that were going up may not keep going up once people realize what change is happening.

Increasing mindshare due to the iPod's "halo effect" is a great thing. Isn't it? More sales of Mac minis and iMacs is a great thing. Isn't it?

The short answer is of course, yes! Two main negatives I have noticed mentioned on the Interweb (that's what the *former* TechTV people call it).

First, increased tech support needs. According to Chad Dickerson of InfoWorld, IT departments are going to see a sudden influx of Mac users. Three options: don't allow them in, allow them if they support the Macs they bring, or provide support. Dickerson provides his own (for his PowerBook) and tells new sales people they must do the same. He says many Mac enthusiasts are used to taking care of the few problems they do have while new switchers may not be as self-sufficient.

Second, is Apple ready for a surge in demand? In a column for AppleMatters.com, Chris Seibold says the company may not be ready. He sees several reasons for Apple not taking advantage of the halo effect with a series of commercials or magazine ads. (Apple does have some Tiger ads in magazines right now, though) Possible reasons include straight high prices of advertising, segmentation of the television market, or the difficulty of putting together a powerful campaign. But the last reason he mentions is Apple may be unprepared for the demand. Lead times on getting Mac minis to customers is a problem noted by several writers. Mine took a while to get to me too. Imagine if demand doubled?

Steve, if you need to sign on another company or two to build Mac minis or iMacs, please do. The demand is coming....

In an April interview with Wired magazine, Bill Nye, the guy who has made science fun for millions, talks about his new show The Eyes of Nye. Meant for a more adult audience then his previous ones, the show will broach topics such as addictions and cloning.

The interviewer asked him about an episode called "Evolution of Sex" in which he says the main function of sex is to keep germs and parasites at bay. In response Nye says, "The germs are mutating like a son of a gun, but with sex you can derive these crazy new gene combos that can lock them out. Beat that!"

Finally, someone is willing to take the theory of evolution to one of its few logical conclusions. If evolution is true (in the microevolution, small genetic mutations at a time sense) those of us blessed with extraodinarily brains, physiques, immune systems or anything else need to replicate with others similarly lucky as fast as we can to pass on our good genes and get some valuable mutations going. It's for the greater good! Perhaps our great-great-great-grandchildren will be smarter or more heat or cold resistant or more resistant to disease.

Most people who believe in evolution are not willing to go that far. They believe that societal rules are necessary to prevent chaos. So we set up governments that give us rules that are decided upon in some half organized, half arbitrary manner. Perhaps we get them from the gods we invented, perhaps from social evolution, who cares! Just find something that keeps us from killing each other so we can keep moving forward. But why bother? As Nye says responding to a quesiton about making "serious science funny" he says

There's all this PB&J: passion, beauty and joy. But there's also the futility of the whole thing. We're just humans on this dying planet, and it doesn't much matter what we do.

Of course, I don't believe any of the precepts above. But it doesn't just come from what I've "been taught". God made the universe, earth and us. He also intends sex for inside marriage which prevents all kinds of emotional chaos and disease (interesting how that works, seems designed). He reaches out to us in love, its up to us to decide if we want a relationship with Him or reject Him.

I believe a true skeptic is willing to consider the God of the Bible as a possibility and does not avoid researching Him and Jesus.

Take a chance and look at the following resources:

• Book of John (HCSB) - click single arrows to change chapters
• Answers in Genesis
• Josh McDowell Apologetics
• More later....

TobyMac, member of DC Talk and Christian solo artist, is the only musician to have a music video featured in Apple's High Def QuickTime gallery. (One other artist has a live video) The HD Gallery shows off the quality of high-def video compressed with the H.264 codec. TobyMac's video is one of only nine featured (including movie trailers). QuickTime 7 required.

The video for "Gone" is the first Christian HD video I have seen and it looks amazing. Toby has to be a Mac fan because I have heard him use an Mac speech voice on at least one song. The fact that his video was edited in Final Cut HD then compressed to H.264 in time for the release of Tiger shows he and his team trust Apple's products.

Props to TobyMac for a great song and video and getting featured by Apple in a big way.

Quote of the Post (verse from "Gone"):
She said it's gonna be alright
'Cause God made a way through the pain and He opened her eyes
And she said you came crawling back
But after what you did to her she wouldn't have any of that

Check out some photos from my new Mac mini setup here. I just got it today and how crazy is it to have a tiny Mac hooked up to a 30" HDTV? It is working great except for some overscan which is normally for TVs to block out extra information encoded into the edges of the broadcast picture. That results in only having half a dock and no top menu bar.

When CenterStage (the Mac Media Center) comes out it will take into account the overscan on its interface.

Quote of the Post (Joel Santo Domingo, PC Magazine):
If you've been thinking of switching to a Mac but have been put off by the high price of a new system, Apple wants you.

Last week Star Trek: Enterprise, the prequel to the original Star Trek, was canceled. Ratings had gone down significantly though many fans and the cast felt this last season was the best. I believe that Paramount caused the problem in the first place and therefore, killed the show purposefully.

One thing they did (or allowed UPN to do) was to decrease the true length of the show from 43 minutes to 40 minutes to allow for more commercials. I've never understood how television producers get a full story into the time they have. To decrease that time by three minutes seems absurd. Anytime you do that, you sacrifice valuable dialog and action.

The most recent thing was UPN moving Enterprise to Friday night for this fourth season. This put them up against the longest running sci-fi series, Stargate SG-1. A foolish thing to say the least. SG-1 may be on cable but it has a loyal fan base as shown by it just being greenlighted for a ninth season and a successful spin-off, Stargate Atlantis. UPN forced fans of both shows to tape/TiVo one or the other, or to choose one. I chose Stargate.

Quote of the Post (Stargate SG-1 - Major Carter, about Jack's crossword puzzle):
The clue for seven down is "celestial body." And he wrote "Uma Thurman."

The introduction of the Mac mini quickly brought speculation that Apple is at work on a Media Center app or OS similar to (but of course better than) Windows Media Center. Well, one intreprid group of developers or designers wants it now, so badly, they are going to do it themselves.

The Mac Media Center project, soon to be renamed with the name voted on for the app, will feature at least iPhoto and iTunes compatibility and QuickTime and AVI playback. After that, other functions will be added using a plugin architecture including Mail messages, iChat messages and RSS reading. Wouldn't you love to have these on your TV?

Visit the project site to find out more or to offer your help.

Quote of the Post (Steve Jobs):
"Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation." Said soon after he declared in a keynote address that Apple would innovate its way through the recession.

Steve Jobs initiated what could be called the new Age of Apple by announcing products meant to take full advantage of the surge in the brand's popularity. Why a new age? We now have a "cheap" Mac and "cheap" iPod!

Also, both iMovie and Final Cut Express are being upgraded to support High-def digital video and to usher in the year of HD.

Quote of the Post (Steve Jobs, from today):
"That's why we have backup systems." - said during Jobs' demo of photo capbilities in Tiger Mail when the program froze after he selected a different feature than he meant to show. The audience laughed because Mr. Gates had no such backup ready during his demo at CES.

The Southern Baptist International Mission Board has a large disaster relief response team that swings into action when needed. They have been needed in a big way since the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia. Baptist Press reports that checks have been given number in the thousands and added up to $1.4 million by January 6th. This money goes specifically to relief; "Cooperative Program" money given through local churches usually funds the more evangelistic efforts abroad and in North America and support the personnel that will be distributing the relief. "The timing of the relief work is going to be as important as the supplies we distribute," Julian [director of IMB disaster relief in Asia, named changed for security reasons] said. "We want to help people immediately; that's always our first instinct. But we don't want to be just another relief agency. We want our work to have a face. We want to establish relationships so they see us as individuals who love and care."

The reason for protecting his and others identities is that missionaries have been deported from countries in that region. Thankfully, we have people there, not "officially" missionaries, who know the land, language and quite often the people necessary to distribute relief in the best way possible. They also hope to establish long lasting relationships with the people of the region that may grow into openings to tell them about Jesus and what he did for them. You can give here.

Quote of the Post ("Here We Go" by GRITS):
Y'all need to heed these words from the wise / Rhymes so meaty like jambalaya / Got truth for hire / Can you stand the fire / To see you come alive that’s my desire now

Apple has filed suit against ThinkSecret claiming that the site violated trade secrets and encouraged those under non-disclosure agreements to disclose said trade secrets.

According to CNet, in the process, they virtually verified a forthcoming "cheap Mac" without a monitor and office software suite based around their popular Keynote. The suit talks about these two products fairly specifically. Read more about these and other rumors at MacRumors.

It's no coincidence that the last time I posted was before November. Halo 2 came out and between that and work, I've been busy. Halo 2 is amazing with a dramatic single player/co-op campaign and the most fun online play I have seen.

Recently, some online friends showed me part of the Headlong map that is not meant to be seen. How do I know that? Textures are missing! The only way to get there is to force a banshee between the invisible ceiling of the map and the roof of a certain building. See more images of us checking out the top of Headlong.

Who was there: ShakerFuzzball, Jackel586, Phoenix350, RelientK1229 and TheNutBS. See below for my XBox Live stats.

Starting this week, my church will be among 2600 participating in the October-November session of the '40 Days of Purpose' campaign based on the book The Purpose-Driven Life. A USA Today article claims one million people will be reached with the message of the book in this two month period. How?

The 40 Days campaign combines Sundays of special services and Sunday School classes with in-home sessions led by a video message from the book's author Rick Warren. At least 21 members of my church are hosting home sessions and expecting 5-15 people at each home.

The book The Purpose-Driven Life is very much Bible based, though the verse references are usually not in the text to help it flow better. Warren uses a variety of translations to emphasize certain points. It is divided into small chapters meant to be read one per day for 40 days. iTunes also offers the audiobook version . It is read by Rick Warren and meant to be listened to in the same way over 40 days.

Vice President Dich Cheney mentioned during the debate tonight that a website called FactCheck.Org had the truth about the Halliburton issues. Shortly afterward, I typed the address into Safari. Apparently, many other Americans did too because I received a "Server Too Busy" error.

I'm sure it will come back up soon, but I find it interesting that so many people wanted to look it up right then.

``We've been getting 50 to 75 calls a day just to see if we have them since the day it was announced,' Nikki Veneziano (assistant manager of the Cambridge, Mass. Apple Store) told the Boston Herald concerning the new iMac G5s. The store staff claim half of those are potential switchers.

So, get the iMac G5s to us Apple! Plus, Walt Mossberg of the Wall St. Journal is the latest to fondly review the new iMacs. He calls it "the most elegant desktop computer I've ever used" and notes that the iMac G5 is cheaper than the Gateway Profile 5. He also notes the low standard memory. Which brings us to the memory discussion. Mossberg and other Tech writers have brought it up.

It has been noted that 256 MB is not enough to run OS X and several apps at once. As soon as someone uses a Mac for more than a few minutes that is exactly what happens though; Mac users multitask and expect their computers to also. The lack of sufficient memory Apple provides was likely done to bring prices down while still keeping some profits. Still, the iMac G5 can hold up to 2 GB of RAM and can either be upgraded by Apple or by the user by removing the back panel. Kudos to them for making this easy in the iMac.

Tonight, CBS apologized for reporting on memos they could not prove authentic. The documents were meant to call into question President Bush's service during the Vietnam War.

One of the many bloggers who began the debate of the memos' authenticity within a few hours was "Buckhead", a poster to freerepublic.com. His post claimed that the documents were likely created on a PC.

The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts.

Check out the rest of Buckhead's post and it's responses. Early the next day, Charles Johnson of LittleGreenFootballs.com offered a replica of the one of the memos produced with Microsoft Word. You can also read more about the effects bloggers have had on this conrtroversy in this article at ZDNet.com and one from the L.A. Times.

The weather is getting pretty crazy here in Gainesville due to Frances and I have lost power a couple of times but for some reason it came back. What we are feeling is minor compared to much of the state though.

It's just after 8 pm and Alachua county has put in place a curfew until tomorrow morning. Alachua is one of the last counties in the area to do this. This a photo of the rain outside my door earlier. You can see what a flash does with so much rain coming down.

Hip-Hop mogul P. Diddy got a surprise during a phone call from Nelly.

I got a call from Nelly, and Nelly told me he wanted clearance on Mase, and I was like, 'To use some old vocals?' . . . And he said, 'No.' He was playing basketball with Mase and Mase jumped in the studio and they did a song together.

Shortly afterward, Mase officially came back to Diddy's label. You can read more about it in three MTV.com news articles ( #1, #2, #3 )

And not only is Mase back, he's back with a message (and a critical one at that). Mason Betha became a Christian in 1999 and has been maturing in his faith and even preaching while keeping his art in the back of his mind. Unlike a few other Christian celebrities have done, Mase waited 5 years to mature before returning to the rap game. That's what sold me and I bought his album "Welcome Back" because of it. He says his message is very different from his previous albums:

"Them days is over," Mase says, as he catches a bit more than an eyeful of a pair of models. "They gotta put some clothes on," he insists. His tone is, as usual, nonchalant, but his face is serious. "I want them to respect themselves. That's why we doing this, to be of influence. I don't want the young ladies with their shorts that short.

Check out his new album, including the beat and the lyrics! You will not be sorry.