BilikFamily.com

Timothy - Yesterday I got a call late in the afternoon. Michelle was asking for a bit of computer advice. Once again "Timothy did something to the iMac," she said. "The screen is all messed up. That wallpaper you have of me holding Timothy looks like an x-ray." Over the phone I wasn't sure what to do. I tried a few things to reset the video but it always came up "psychedelic".

When I got home I saw what she meant. It was like a photograph negative. Remember those? Before 99% of the cameras went digital? *grin* I knew that the video controller must have gone into inverse video mode for some reason. I tried restarting the computer. Everything came up normal... at first, but as soon as it finished booting it went back to inverse video again.

I knew it must be some software setting he accidentally triggered. I had read in the past that Macs have a lot of options for accessibility and the visually impaired. Sure enough, looking under System Preferences (that's like the Control Panel in Windows) there was a selection for "Universal Access". It had options for using voice, zoom, and display options. Under display options there were things for increasing contrast, using greyscale, and inverse video.

It turns out if you press the awkward sequence of control-option-command (they're next to each other on a Mac keyboard) and '8' it kicks the computer into inverse video. They intentionally made it obscure so that you wouldn't accidentally activate it unless you knew what you were doing, or you have a curious Timbo in the house.

Keep that bit of trivia in mind in case you want to mess with any Macintosh owners you know. I can guarantee it'll freak out about 95% of them.

By the way that picture is an old one from January 2004. I really should update the wallpaper on the iMac...

Kill-A-Watt - Yesterday my engineering curiosity got the best of me. When you're looking to cut electricity usage in your house, it helps if you have a good feeling for where your power goes. I'd read a lot lately about so-called "phantom loads". They are often the things that you think are turned off, but in reality are drawing power. Sometimes the device, like a television or DVD player, is in a "sleep mode" waiting for the remote. Sometimes it's just a power adaptor brick that's plugged in but not in use. AC to DC transformers nearly always leak current. In most cases it's a pretty small load — between 5 and 25 watts. But accumulated over all the little gizmos you have in the house, it adds up. Before you know it, you have 250-500 watts of power that's being wasted 24/7 to maintain an appliance's "always ready" state.

So I ordered the little device you see at the right. It's called a Kill-A-Watt. You can order it from Amazon for about $30. You plug it into the wall socket and plug your appliance into it. From there it can tell you all kinds of things about the quality of the power supplied by the wall and consumed by the appliance. It's useful for understanding what a particular appliance or gadget really costs you. From there you can make more decisions about what you want to do about it.

Tookie - I've been following the Tookie Williams story a bit. I have to admit I'm a bit bipolar on it, opinion-wise. As an observant Catholic I would have preferred he had life in prison. But on the other hand, I couldn't help but be struck by Hollywood's endorsement that he not be executed. The same types who normally scream that the Sacrament of Abortion^tm not be infringed upon in any way, enabling the deaths of over 3000 innocent every day in the US, suddenly became passionate advocates of a convicted criminal. They aren't even arguing that "he could be wrongly convicted" as often happens in debates about capital punishment in general. We know his background and no one denies it. No, it's simply "he's changed".

And they continue to wonder why middle America doesn't identify with them... Perhaps if Terri Schiavo had been a convict, Hollywood would have protested her euthanasia.