The latest release of inkscape is out. I’ve linked to this in the past. While it can’t yet actually replace Illustrator or Freehand on the professional graphic artist’s desktop, it’s more than competent enough for the average piker like me. There are windows and linux binaries and mac users can grab it if they have fink up and running. Well worth grabbing even if you do use Illustrator regularly.
Monthly Archives: December 2004
Everyone must have…
…the Brain Bullet! It’s good to know that snake oil has successfully evolved with the digital age. I would love to meet someone who’s actually purchased this.
Wait, strike that. No I wouldn’t. Anyway, click the link, it’s good for a quick laugh. The software purports to do…well, many of the things snake oil would purport to do, if it were re-imagined as a digital product.
So that I won’t actually have to play with my dog…
An enterprising family member could get me this thingamajig for Christmas. OK actually I’m kidding, though I could see this being useful if you had a fenced in yard and left the dog at home during the day. Depending on the breed it shouldn’t be too hard to train the dog to dump the ball in the bin again too. It’s a dog toy that automatically plays fetch with your dog, for those of you too pressed for time to click on the link, goes for around $150.
More industrial poisoning
Jesus. It’s no revelation that modern industrial society is poisoning us in ways obvious and subtle. New research shows the stuff in rocket fuel is found in overabundant quantities in lettuce and milk. I eat salads comprised of amongst other things red and green leaf lettuce 2 times a day, usually 6 days a week. Because of the diabetes there’s not much I can do about this, I need sustenance and this rocket fuel stuff is less likely to kill me in the short term than high blood sugars will, but …shit! I’d love to get my hands on the decision makers who allow this stuff to be dumped into our water supply.
7 years later, I get ripped off
I’ve been an ebay member for a long time, 7 years according to my profile but I think it’s actually been longer than that, I had to switch identities years ago when an email address I had was no longer accessible to me.
Anyway despite that long usage, and hundreds of transactions, I’ve never been ripped off until now. I’ve had a few questionable trades (one guy sent me a cell phone charger when I had purchased a palmpilot cable and I ended up having to cover the shipping, another guy claimed a chess set I sent him was wrecked in shipping but failed to file the required insurance paperwork), but recently I was flat out ripped off for the first time. It was only $10 or so, for a graphic novelization of a short story by George RR Martin, but it’s not the money, it’s the principle. What kind of person expends the effort it takes to get an ebay account, build up positive feedback, photograph items and list them, all so they can rip off someone for $10? It makes no sense, even if they do it to a bunch of people, which this person seems to have done. You would make more money for less effort working as a clerk at walmart or something. But whatever, I just thought I would mention this since I know a lot of my friends have actually been ripped of more than once on ebay, one for a fairly large sum of money, so I’ve sort of felt lucky until now. Meanwhile, I still need a copy of the Hedge Knight.