ExpanDrive

For many people two numbers is a reality. And while some people might be okay with one number which serves both for work and personal – I am not. Up until Google Voice, this basically meant two handsets. Two handsets suck unless you’re one of those goofballs toating around a man-purse. Even then it sucks.

Google Voice on the iPhone, with an application that lets you dial – like GV Mobile by Sean Kovaks, lets you accomplish the impossible: you can stop carrying both a personal cell phone and a work cell phone. It’s now possible to have one GSM phone with two numbers, two voice mailboxes and the ability to dial out or text from either number.

About 8 months ago I transitioned my business number over to a Google Voice account. Google Voice includes an important feature which lets you choose if the caller id sent to your handset is your Google Voice number or that of the caller.

now all incoming calls on the Google Voice account ring as “ExpanDrive – mobile” on my iPhone.

This allows me to filter calls based on availability – but perhaps more importantly, answer with the appropriate greeting. It’s lame to always answer with a business greeting for any unknown number – and you can’t just answer a work number with “Hello?” Additionally, Google Voice gives you the luxury of two voice mailboxes. When you don’t pick up, calls that came in on your Google Voice number go to your Google Voice inbox – and your personal to your AT&T inbox.

What really makes this a feasible solution for fulltime use is a dialing application. Without this the ability to dial out on either number, you always dial from your personal number. You can receive calls on your business number, but you can’t make them. Customers or partners with whom you’re trying to develop a relationship will always have your personal number. That is a recipe for disaster.

GV Mobile lets you dial from Google Voice number directly from your handset. If you’re not familiar – it goes like this. You open GV Mobile and thumb through your contacts or enter a number – hit call. GV Mobile initiates a Google Voice call – which rings your handset – you pick up. As you pick up it dials the other party, showing them your Google Voice number on their caller ID. It is awesome.

As you might imagine, I’m fairly dismayed that Apple is pulling all Google Voice apps out of the app store. While I am sure that somebody, if not Google, will create a web-based dialer that serves the same purpose, it is quite unsettling that Apple is pulling all of these apps off the market – because they mean a lot to guys like me.

Poor, lonely <font>. You were irritating to use, and so you were kicked out of the treehouse in favor of stylesheets by HTML 4.01. But cheer up <font>; you can still be extremely annoying! Just try a Wikipedia vanity search, with a few of your pedantic modifiers thrown in for good measure—let’s use <font face=cursive size=50>:

Not only that, <font>, but your old and even more annoying buddy <table> is back in the game, too. And when you two team up,  there’s almost no limit to the amount of carnage you can create:

This works across browsers, though there are obvious differences in how they render the horribly mangled code these querys will produce. It’s the best lesson in input santization since since Little Bobby Tables.

If you’re good, you can theoretically purpetrate some serious mayhem with this bug—and considering how widely MediaWiki is used around the web, that could be a real problem.

In reality, though, the trickery is probably limited by the abilty of your dirty, dirty inputs to generate search results; without those, it looks like most of your code modifications get cancelled.

That having been said, I endorse using this exploit only for your own personal amusement, not serious destruction. You have been warned.

I got a new (June 2009) MacBook Pro recently. It performs reasonably well, but I ran into two beefs that a lot of people seem to be having:

• the built-in audio stopped working after I installed the EFI firmware update.
• there’s no friggin’ Enter key (instead, a second Option key has been added).

Because the MacBook Pro ships with an unconscionably small 160GB hard drive, I wanted to pull the replacement 500GB HD directly out of my old MacBook and use that. I figured this would surely result in some disastrous driver issue, but Jon Shea insisted that everything would be fine.

Yet, immediately after installing the Bluetooth and firmware updates, the only sound I could get out of my computer was the startup chime. Checking the Sound preference pane, I found:

Built-in sound in was similarly absent:

This isn’t the jammed optical connector that plagued the previous edition of MacBooks, and it seems to be happening to quite a few people. The standard solution is to archive and install from the restore disks, but that takes a long time, and restore disks aren’t something you’re likely to have access to on the road.

My short-term solution? Plug in a USB amp or microphone. Yes, it costs you a USB port, but if you’ve got one around, it works immediately. What’s really crazy is that the USB amp I used when this problem came up was from a PowerMac G4 Cube. Why the MBP recognizes a decade-old, one-off part with no hassle at all, but not the hardware architecture its software is custom-tailored to support, is beyond me.

Then there’s the second option key. Don’t ask me why on earth Apple thinks I need a second option key when I barely use the first—probably Steve Jobs loves keyboard symmetry as much as he hates buttons. Anyway, I think Enter is awesome because it doesn’t carry the burden of an old typewriter carriage return, and my 1st gen white MacBook had one—but now it’s been replaced.

So if you want to submit a form, send an IM, record a transaction in Quicken, or any number of things that you don’t want to muck up with accidental line breaks, you’ll need to do some key remapping. There a plenty of options out there, but I’ve had the best luck with KeyRemap4MacBook. While other options like Ukulele offer easier access to special characters and custom key layouts, KeyRemap is perfect for altering the various function keys—just a simple SystemPreferences pane, plus cool support for hackbooks and no-BS text editors like Emacs and Vi.

ExpanDrive v2.0.3 will add support for Snow Leopard, but until then we are offering a modified ExpanDrive v2.02 for those who have started to run Snow Leopard full time. Please consider this beta software and not that it has not yet been heavily tested. You can download here

The first line of text translates to “Stalin’s secret weapon.”

http://toyster.ru/forum/showthread.php?t=1277

Kind of incredible.

The Tour Divide is a mountain bike race along the continental divide from Banff, Alberta to Antelope Wells, New Mexico (on the border with Mexico.) It’s “self-supported”, which means that you can’t pre-arrange any outside help, though you can buy food and bike parts as you go. And it’s “one-stage”, meaning there’s no rest off-the-clock (unlike that wimpy Tour de France bike race).

This year’s winner, Matthew Lee, finished the 2,745 mile course in under 18 days. It rained on 16 of those days. There’s a great interview up on Outside’s blog. Here’s my favorite snippet:

There are certain elements you have to try not to think too much on: comfort, eating well, sleeping well, safety. All those cares are cast with the winds. You establish a new, temporary regime on day 1 and just stick with it religiously. When the alarm on your wrist watch beeps at 4:40am, you don’t roll over. not even once. you sit up, rip the sleeping bag off and suddenly you’re freezing! The only solution is to get dressed. Then the only way out is to saddle up and ride. This forced routine is the key to success. If you get up and go, the biking takes care of itself. after about an hour you start to feel okay. the soreness is masked, the beauty unfolds before your eyes, perhaps a bear gives you a shot of adrenalin.

“For filmmaker Michael Bay slow motion and badassery are part of a complete breakfast.”

I got to pull apart some bolts with an Instron strain tester in college, but this looks way more fun. Here’s video two and three.

Ze Frank is doing a new weekly show for Time Video. Those of you that watched The Show know that this is something to be excited about. (Those of you who didn’t watch The Show wasted your 2006, but you can make up for some of it by watching the Brain Crack episode.) So far Ze’s first two videos have had all the creativity, wit, and insight that his best commentary had on The Show.

Unfortunately, the only RSS feed I can find links not just the Ze Frank videos, but also every other boring, watered down video that runs on Time. Fortunately, we live in a world where Yahoo Pipes lets you solve this problem in about 45 seconds. Double fortunately for you, I’ve already made the pipe that filters out only Ze Frank’s videos from the Time feed. And here’s a direct link to the Pipe’s RSS feed.

PS: I’ve made analogous Pipes for Mindy Kaling on her Things That I Bought That I Love, and Dan Savage on The Stranger Blog.

Around this time last year, I wrote a post lampooning those who would compare Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. And for the most part, I feel the same way. It’s nothing against Kobe, but Jordan is Jordan. Even if you can put up numbers like his in games like his with a style like his, you’ll still never be able to surpass his legend.

To emerge from a shadow like this, you’ve gotta make your own legend. Eddy Merckx is the Jordan of cycling. During a five year stretch at the peak of his career, Merckx won one out of every three races he started. He dominated opponents in the fastest sprints, the toughest cobblestones and the highest mountains. And you know why you never heard of Eddy Merckx? Because Lance Armstrong won 7 Tours de France in a row.

This year’s NBA Finals were significant for Kobe. No disrespect to his current supporting cast, but they don’t hold a candle to any of Jordan’s teams, or the 2000-2002 LA title squads. Kobe was in a position to be The Man for LA, and this time he came through. 30-plus points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists in each of the games? Those are Jordan numbers—literally.

So how else to step out of MJ’s bald, large-eared shadow? I’ve got a few suggestions that I think will let Kobe create his own legacy in the annals of the NBA.

Make Your Own Records—Jordan is (at long last) done with the NBA record books. But rather than compete against history, Bryant might to better to take on a few challenges Jordan never thougth of. The press loved Kobe’s 61-point record-setter at MSG this February. Granted, Madison Square is the Mecca, but collecting the full-set of NBA arena records would be huge.

Focus on Spectacle—MJ was a rockstar spokesman, who handled fame with aplomb. Kobe, not so much. But I think Number 24 could actually use his aversion to the spotlight as an advantage. Rather than constant exposure, shoot for fewer, high profile appearances. Case in point: Bryant was awesome as the face of the Redeem Team at last summer’s Olympics. Focus on one-off events—maybe try and turn the 2012 All-Star game into a 50th Anniversary of Wilt’s 100 point performance at Hersheypark.

Beat the Legends Alone—Though he was always amazing, it wasn’t until the development of his supporting cast—especially Scottie Pippen—that the Bulls of the 1990s were able to overcome seriously good teams in playoff situations. Defeating a revived Boston Big Three—or better yet the newly-forged Shaq/LeBron partnership—with the current Lakers squad would make Kobe’s performances stand out separately from Jordan’s.

Love The Game—Kobe, I know you love basketball. But man, sometimes I feel like you’re just out there to make money. You always get so sour when the screws are on. If that’s your on-court demeanor, so be it—change your court. Get caught on cell phone cameras goofing around at a pick-up game somewhere. Take a basketball out on a jog every once in a while. You don’t even have to talk to anyone—just play and have a good time. Secretly, I know you want to.

Change The Game—When Jordan started losing a step in his 30s, he enlisted a variety of new maneuvers to create space in front of his jumper. It converted the turnaround from a low-percentage, desperation move into a must-have weapon in every player’s arsenal. His Airness’s second retirement began seconds after a beautiful (and some would say illegal) jumper—it would be nice to see Kobe put his signature on the game in a similar fashion (and maybe be a little more serious about retiring).