Sometimes, teh intarwebs are useful

I've just heard about http://whocalled.us/ which is a service for looking up numbers, often for telemarketers; so if you have CallerID and are annoyed by telemarketers, it might be worth scoping out that site. The main page doesn't mention Canada per se but Canadian area codes are in there.

Stevenote 11.6.2007

I'm not energetic enough to retype my thoughts about today's dull Stevenote from WWDC, so I shall paste my remarks as posted on freyburg.com:

I did a very rough and dirty test of Firefox vs Safari in Vista this afternoon, and Firefox renders pages about 2-3x faster than Safari. I'm talking solely of typing a url, hitting go, and waiting until the page is fully loaded. It was... dismal. Firefox on the OSX side is sluggish there's no doubt, but once it goes Cocoa in v3 maybe it'll be nicer. Nonetheless, Safari is so ugly and feature-deprived versus Firefox I can't see giving up the 'fox.

As for the Leopard features, not counting the ones already discussed/known, nothing is exciting. Transparency and 3d effects in the Finder... whoopie tilt. How about fixing the bugs instead of padding the fluff? The unified look and feel, well, it's about damn time. There's no good reason why the Finder, Mail and iTunes (arguably the three most-used apps for OSX users) each look different from the other. Coverflow in the Finder? Yawn. QuickView? How 1980s. Stacks? How 1970s. A fixed download folder in the dock? Wasted space!

Leopard is a fine-looking OS, it has a lot of spiffy features that I know I'll use, but I couldn't contain my yawns while watching the Stevenote transcript coming flooding across Firefox. I've said it before and I'll say it again... the more new stuff Apple releases, the more I realize I'm nowhere near their target demographic.

Other remarks from me not yet posted elsewhere:

I realize the WWDC is a software event, but why were there no hardware announcements? Last year we get the Mac Pro, this year we get... zilch. The iMacs and Mac Minis are each long overdue for a refresh. The Cinema Displays are even longer overdue for a refresh.

How about even having better price parity here with the US Apple store, thanks to the dismal US dollar? The Canadian dollar is trading above 94c US as I write this, making (for example) the recently-released 15" MacBook Pro 2.4GHz about a $150 premium ($2799 CDN is the Canada store list price, whereas the US store $2499 USD list price works out to about $2650 CDN). I don't doubt it's as bad or worse in other parts of the world either... for instance, at the UK Apple Store the same 15" MacBook Pro sells for £1599 (including VAT) which translates to about $3150 US... a $650 premium! Exclude the VAT and it's $2680 US, a nearly $200 premium ($2499 US translates to roughly £1270). Maybe Canada's not so bad off after all!

Colour me disappointed and move along, I guess.

Thanks, Sens.

The Sens gave it a good run this post-season, far better than they've managed for a very, very long time... they just hit a brick wall with the Ducks and now will have a year to wait to see if they can repeat their Eastern Conference domination.

Thanks for a wonderful season and playoff guys, we still love ya!

Still here...

I've not posted much lately, but then I've not had much to post. I've not been going to the casino (though I did go to a home game a week ago and finished out of the money, 6th of 25; the top 2 wound up getting paid), and aside from Saturday, I've not been keen to write about hockey. So, this is just a quick late-night-can't-sleep post to say that yep, I'm still here. Crib is this coming Thursday after an extra week's gap... I came in fourth last time so I got paid for the first time in ages there, and hopefully I'll fare better yet as it's the second-last event before the summer break.

I might be glad when the Stanley Cup finals are over though... I've been consuming WAY too much beer as of late (even on non-game days). Except then we're into the summer beer-drinking season, so who knows.