Anatomy  of a Computer Virus, written by Scott Mitchell and directed and animated by Patrick Clair, is probably one of the scariest computer virus videos I’ve seen. After watching the video you realize that computer systems will never be completely secure. As computer software gets smarter so do viruses. Eventually computers will all get smarter than us anyway and wage war on humans. Maybe they’ll start making their own viruses to control us. I probably shouldn’t say that. The computers could be reading this and I don’t want to give them any ideas. I need to stop thinking about this.

Over the past few years I’ve started paying more attention to food and it’s design. Maybe it’s because of all the cooking networks. Maybe it’s because Meg, my wife, is such a “foodie”. Anyway I figure food is a fun thing to post about. Last night Meg and I had simple deconstructed BLTs. She split a head of romaine lettuce, sprinkled it with salt, pepper and a little lemon oil and bacon on the grill and cooked it for about 10 minutes. She put that on a plate with tomato, cheese and a homemade yogurt dressing. She even made the sourdough bread from scratch. The meal not only looked amazing but the simple flavors of the tomato acid, salty bacon and cool on the tongue dressing became a party in my mouth. Not like a dance party though, more like a dinner party brimming with passionate conversation. I’m sure we’ll be having it again. Oh and for dessert we sprinkled the left over bacon on chocolate ice cream. If you’ve never done it I highly recommend.

Aside from having a great website design, ReachLife Ministries has an interesting talk by Shai Linne on Christianity and the Arts. Even if you’re not yet of the Christian persuasion, or into hip hop I think you’ll gain some artistic insight out of it.  Check out the site and the talk here.

So finally Smallville is over. For those of you, like myself, that went all the way from season one to the finale in season 10 I congratulate you. Like me you enjoyed a few good years of the show and then because you already put the time into it you wanted to see it out to the end. Like me you’ve had a love hate relationship with the show feeling excited about characters like, Dooms Day, Brainiac and Krypto the Super Dog, and disappointed characters like in Booster Gold and the Toy Man.

The final 2 hour episode did it’s best to tie up loose ends and managed to do so for the most part while still adding to them poor, circular and contradicting dialog that really didn’t make any sense. But that’s how season 10 was. Despite that, it was great to finally see our contemporary Clark Kent take to the skys, with the cape and everything. One of my biggest questions was how are they going to handle the red underpants on the outside of the suit? It really didn’t seem like red underwear fit in the bill of the show. Clark was already wearing a cool leather get up while he zipped around fighting crime. Out of all the choices made in creating the final episode, somebody in the writing staff didn’t want to show those red briefs and I commend him or her for it. Unless Clark was a tiny speck in the distance throwing planets or catching airplanes, every show was pretty much boots, cape from the back or chest up. That alone helped make up for the show’s shortcomings. All in all I enjoyed it though. I think it ended better than it could have and it made me want to watch a Superman movie. So if you TeVo’d it or are thinking os watching the encore on Thursday I say go for it.

What did you think of the finale?

Here’s a fun video I came across a few months ago but haven’t posted yet. It’s made by two fellas named Daniel. They’ve collaborated on a bunch of music videos and a great Levis ad. All of their work is fantastic but Dogboading is well… you’ll see. Check out their site here.

I’ve had an interest in flocking birds for awhile now. There’s something so amazing about the movement almost like water floating in outer space. I don’t know much about the video or the person who made it but it’s cool to watch. If you want to see other posts about flocking including the pattern I designed check out the links below.

Collective Swarm Theory
Flocks Herds Swarms Pattern
Flocking

Just a nice “longish” video by Juan Rayos from Madrid, Spain, of a lot of mediocre skateboarding. The video is  really good. I found myself enjoying every second because of how well it was shot. Hope you enjoy. To see more of Juan’s work click here.

So IE6 is down to 11.6% usage world wide. Still not under 10% but it’s getting closer and closer. The calls from people using IE6 and complaining that a site looks strange is almost nonexistent but until IE6 is truly dead we’ll still be using that stupid old *html css that only all web designers know too well and hate. Internet Explorer 6 Countdown is a site developed by Microsoft that both memorializes and tracks IE6′s eminent demise.

To a web developer/designer who probably spends close to 9 hours on a computer every day, a simple thing like a computer mouse really becomes a quality of life issue. I’ve been so blessed. My boss, for a baby gift, just got me an Apple Magic Mouse. I know they’ve been around for a while and there are probably thousands of other reviews but because I’m so excited about this thing I’m writing my own little review. Let’s start off with the pros.

Pros -

1. The biggest improvement over the Mighty Mouse is there is no longer a track ball. I’ve gone through three Mighty Mouses (the Magic Mouse predecessor) and the track ball on every one ended up being completely useless after about a month from dirt or hand oils that would get on the track ball and make their way inside the mouse to take permanent residence. Even Apple’s website is full of reviews claiming the same issue. Apple finally solved this in the Magic Mouse by removing the track ball completely and replaced it with a track pad.
2. The second improvement, though it takes some getting used to, is the shape. The Magic Mouse’s lower profile is easier on the hands and wrist.
3. The battery life also seems longer. The Magic Mouse adds some basic track pad gestures which are nice when surfing the web or working in photoshop.

Cons -

1. The Magic Mouse did do away with the side buttons that the Mighty Mouse had. I know a lot of people didn’t like those side buttons, but I used them to switch windows open windows with Expose’ all the time.
2. I used the track ball button with the Mighty Mouse to open up the Dashboard. With no track ball there’s no track ball button.
3. To get back what’s missing you need a third party plugin. I’m not a fan of adding plugins to the OS core. But to get the functionality back on my Magic Mouse I did a little digging and found Magic Prefs, a free third party plugin that lets you add those missing functions back through added gestures. It’s too bad Apple didn’t just build them right in but Magic Prefs is easy to install and makes life a lot easier for me.

For those of you that have a PC or use bootcamp, I haven’t found anyone really claiming that they get the Magic Mouse to be more than just a one button mouse . There are a few hacks I saw online but a lot of comments from people saying they tried to do the hacks but it didn’t work for them. I think it’s safe to say getting similar functionality on a PC is not easy but probably possible. You can read up on it here if you’d like. If you Google it you find even more.

So that’s my quick review. Do you already use a Magic Mouse? Do you like it or dislike it? Is there a mouse you like better?

Nothing really new to report. As of today the baby is one week late. Meg did have an ultrasound though. It looks like the baby is working on her kissing skills.