Here's the latest from my friend Lucy Edwards, currently accompanying a Jesuit priest, Father Ismael Moreno, who has been threatened under the current political situation in Honduras. Lucy and Rev. Pam Shepherd of Ashland, OR UCC have been in Honduras for about a week. See previous post… Read full post »

A good friend of mine, Lucy Edwards, is in Honduras, where there are fast-moving developments, and rather than my usual techie posts, I felt these were worth relaying.This first report is from Tegucigalpa, Honduras May 20 and 21:

Dear Jim,

Five  judges began a hunger strike on… Read full post »

I had a good reason for buying an iPad the first day: it's my job! I have the privilege of getting paid to work on iPhone and now iPad apps. 

Since our first iPad app, Art Authority, was already for sale in the  store, it was urgent that we get the actual device… Read full post »

Yesterday I needed to help a customer with my VPN software. She had inadvertently canceled our installer before getting to the final screen that tells how to connect, and was somewhat at a loss as to how to proceed.

 As often happens, I got an email asking for help with… Read full post »

When npr.org gets a bad URL, the error page displayed does a nice job of putting things in context. Read full post »

Every now and then someone asks me the best way to learn programming. BASIC, my first language, even with a name that starts with "Beginners," is not the answer today. (Admittedly this ignores the popularity of Microsoft's Visual Basic, which I'm unfamiliar with. But basing one's core experie… Read full post »

[Since my blog is on Open Salon, I can't resist telling this as a story. But below are some little-known tips about restoring a entire hard drive  (full restore) with Time Machine, so skip down if you need them.]

Monday morning at 9AM, I looked at my MacBook's screen and nothing… Read full post »

"Computer system design" is the largest category (PDF link) of high-tech industry in Silicon Valley, employing 23% of high-tech workers in 2008. Semiconductors now employs 13%, scientific research a growing 12%, "Internet, telecommunications, data processing" a shrinking 11%, and furth… Read full post »

Thanks in part to Apple Inc.'s very effective secrecy, there's practically an industry around predicting what they will do next. Much of the predicting these days is around the possible introduction of an Apple tablet computer. 

We've gone from tea-leaf readers are looking at component p… Read full post »

Last week there was a lot of media coverage of a "North Korean cyberattack." As often happens in technology stories, the reports were pretty far off the mark. While there were some minor, temporary outages at some sites, this was nothing that unusual, smaller than some previous attacks, and quickly d… Read full post »

Not only does Salon offer a great range of material, the readers interests are just as wide. (And don't you just need potato salad after reading the other 4?) WTG Salon.  Join us. Read full post »

One of the things Neal Stephenson's books do is celebrate the particulars. The details. The minutia of reality, philosophy, and truth. By truth I mean something that includes mathematics, human character, and the arts martial in the broadest sense. Which can be daunting to a reader because of the oth… Read full post »

Email attachments are so Twentieth Century. It's time to stop putting up with all their shortcomings and move on to sharing by reference! 

 (Full disclosure: I wrote and sell an app that does this, but it's a small player among giants. This article was written not to promote this… Read full post »

The "Apple Tax Return" recently posted doesn't hold up if you have the facts, just like most of what you hear from right-wing pundits. Doesn't "Apple Tax" sound like it came from that marketing firm that transformed "estate tax" into "Death Tax"?

 Like all good right-wing propaganda, it starts w… Read full post »

Halfway through the Ashland Independent Film Festival, I'm having a barking good time. 

 Bill Plympton world-premiered Horn Dog, the latest animated short in his dog series (and made on-the-spot drawings (see above) for everyone in the room!). He's able to turn 2 or 3 simple pe… Read full post »

My favorite film festival starts Thursday. While Ashland, Oregon is nationally known for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, for five days the attention is on features, docs, shorts, animation, and filmmakers. Last year I had a personally moving encounter with legendary documentarian Albert Mays… Read full post »

Ok, in 39 minutes I'll turn off all the lights in my house as a symbolic statement (Earth Yes, Global Warming No, Hope Yes, Waste No). The computers go off too.  

There doesn't seem to be any Earth Hour activity in my small town; I left a message for… Read full post »

California has shown us the future, and it is bleak indeed.

 A single Republican lawmaker held the California budget for ransom, prevented a minor move twoard sane energy policy (a slight gas tax increase), set up massive education cuts, and shoved an open primary amendment through the legislatu… Read full post »

I'm proud to present Ashland, Oregon's 21st annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebration. A mashup of african drumming, inspirational speaking, singing, and last but not least, krump dancing.

This year's theme is "Transformational Leadership, the Life and Legacy of Martin Luther King." The keynote… Read full post »

Yesterday Cathy and I attended the "We Are One" inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Attended by watching on our TV, but also in the sense that we paid special attention and we were moved. It wasn't any one person or moment, although Pete Seeger's love of people and country and… Read full post »

So Steve Jobs won't be at the keynote next month, or ever again. Well, I'll be there anyway (probably in a much better seat :-). Hey, I like Phil Schiller, let's give him a chance. He's not afraid of going the extra mile, like the 1999 keynote where he lept… Read full post »

While doing my part to help the e-economy stay relatively strong, I again ran across my pet e-commerce peeve: the "no spaces or dashes"-labeled credit card field.

 There is no reason for having this, other than sheer laziness of web form programmers. It would take a few mi… Read full post »

As requested, a larger version of my avatar image for the poster. Great idea (the poster, not the avatar).  Read full post »