Someone wanna tell me why iChat, when sitting completely idle (only logged in to Rendezvous, not logged on to Oscar), takes up 256MB of virtual memory? And that’s after I restarted it… earlier today it was eating up over 350MB of VM and over 120MB of real RAM… while not doing anything.

One of the neat design features of Matthew’s new iMac G5 is the slot-loading DVD-R drive, which like everything else, is built “into” the display.

Apparently the guys at mekentosj.com thought it was cool, too, and decided to take things one step further. They created the free app Disctop, which completes the illusion of the disk sliding right into the computer… upon inserting a CD or DVD into your screen, this app animates a rendition of the disk sliding onto the desktop. After a few seconds, it seamlessly melds the disk image with your desktop image, giving you a visual reminder that there’s a disk in the drive.

You can even set preferences for the type of machine you have (causing the disk to slide onto the screen at different locations), and change the timing so that when you hit the eject key, the animation lines up perfectly with the physical ejecting of the disk. Cute? yes. Practical? maybe. Would you ever see this on a Windows box? probably not.

A nice addition would be the ability to set multiple locations for those who have multiple optical drives (like me).

Wonderful sculptures found at the site of artist Bathsheba Grossman. The sculptures are designed mathematically on the computer, then constructed via a special process that literally builds the steel up particle-by-particle. The process is described here.

Here’s an interesting device: a display with built-in multitouch control surface. In other words, it’s a touchscreen that can register multiple “touches” at the same time. Good for use in realtime applications, like audio and multimedia.

Matthew turned 9 today. Wow. Do I feel old.

So, anyway, after a fun birthday party at Dave and Busters, we came back to the house to open birthday presents. Some Lego, a video game, and what’s this? An AppleCare box? What does that have to do with anything? Michael got Matthew to go upstairs for the remaining gift (what Michael thought was a stand for Matthew’s synthesizer), and lo and behold, a bright new shiny 20″ iMac G5 on the computer table.

Needless to say, he was a little bit surprised.

Of course, the main thing here is I get my G5 back now. Ahh.

You’ve got to be kidding me:

A Pennsylvania woman who was struck by a train has sued the rail company — for failing to warn her that trains travel on railroad tracks.

Patricia M. Frankhouser filed suit on Nov. 4 seeking damages in excess of $30,000 from Norfolk Southern Corp. (search), according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Last January, Frankhouser was hit by a train as she walked along railroad tracks in her hometown of Jeannette, Pa., a southeastern suburb of Pittsburgh.

Amazingly, she came away from the encounter with only a broken finger, some cuts and, according to the lawsuit, “pain.”

Apparently, however, the incident was traumatic enough for her to hire a lawyer.

“Defendant’s failure to warn plaintiff of the potential dangers negligently provided plaintiff with the belief she was safe in walking near the train tracks,” Frankhouser’s suit asserts.

geez.

Just saw a great quote used in the context of the age-old Mac v. PC debate:

There are more cockroaches than humans. Quantity does not denote a higher life form.

Heh.

Here’s a nifty site for a shop in England, Grand-Illusions. Apart from being a Toy store specializing in magic tricks and the like, their site has a number of fascinating optical illusions. Be sure to check out the hollow face illusion and a variation, the Dragon. Also neat is the Torofluxus and the Gaussian gun.

Check out the explanations and the video.

The boys and I just got back from seeing The Incredibles, the new animated film from Pixar. In a word: incredible!

What a blast! The animation was spectacular, the story was great, the gags were side-splitting, etc. etc. etc.

If you’re over the age of about 5, go see it; you won’t be disappointed!

O, by the way, in addition to the main feature, we also got to see the new Pixar short, Boundin’, which was hilarious, and the first teaser trailer for Star Wars Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. Applause around the theater on that one. Looks good. Looks dark.

Apple released OS X 10.3.6 today, sporting lots of updates, including Safari 1.2.4. In addition, they released DVD Studio Pro 3.0.2, with support for dual-layer media (supposedly on the new dual-layer DVD-R burners), and general stability improvements.