Count of Ron Paul spams received so far this morning: 2

Opening sentence:

“Hello Scott, Ron Paul is for the people, unless you want your children to have human implant RFID chips, a National ID card and create a North American Union and see an economic collapse far worse than the great depression.”

Yet another example of that “Pick Your Candidate” calculator completely failing me. If Ron Paul is the only one who can save us from “human implant RFID chips,” we’d best get behind him!

The Associated Press: Porter Wagoner Dies at 80: Everyone else will remember him for stuff besides “Rubber Room,” which is an awful shame.

for jbm: Today’s No. 1 Gmail support question.

IMAP’s creator on Gmail’s implementation: “I feel that their current server should be considered to be a ‘work in progress’ and not as a viable ‘ready for prime time’ IMAP server.”

Macworld Review — Mac OS X Leopard:

In Leopard, Automator has been updated to address its two greatest limitations: you can now set and read variables during a workflow, and you can set a workflow to loop. Automator also now has a Record feature, which lets you record yourself performing certain tasks and then integrates those tasks into an Automator workflow.

I’ve recently rediscovered Automator, having decided I was wasting way too much time insisting on doing stuff in Applescript when it just wasn’t necessary. So out of all the things Apple has changed, these changes are easily in my top 10 list, because they’ll undercut the need to resort to Applescript even more.

Ed got Leopard yesterday, while we’re on the subject. Sorry to read there’s MacPorts breakage because I know I’ve got some stuff down in the guts of my workflow that depend on MacPorts bits. On the other hand, I built a GIMP development release from MacPorts just yesterday so I could take a look at the Resynthesizer plugin and was reminded why none of the MacPorts stuff I use involves a GUI — It never feels right and it doesn’t seem to talk to the rest of the Mac very well.

My inner tech Spartan id wants to mock the soft, indolent Mac bunny I’ve become when I try to drag an image from the Desktop into a GIMP window for editing. My tech superego reminds my tech Spartan id that only a dumbass would make fun of people who expect a UI to make sense and work fluidly. My inner Mac bunny whimpers gratefully (both for my tech superego’s intervention and Al’s substantial student discounts) and loads Photoshop.

Uncluttering your digital music collection (links to investigate)

“If a foreign national is suspected of terrorist activity, the FBI will threaten to have a brutal foreign government punish his family.” And then our courts try to cover it up.

When Copyright and Privacy Collide: An actual lawyer discusses the “teen sues Virgin and Creative Commons” story. I thought the CC portion of the suit was a loopy idea, too, initiated because the teen doesn’t want to sue her own youth minister for being careless.

GIMP 2.4 Release Notes. The perspective cloning tool looks neat (video demo).

Freedom of the press sux … unless it’s hawt: “… while the real Judith Miller may be remembered as a stylish, slightly scary reporter of 59, headed off to jail in a quilted black jacket and tortoise-frame sunglasses, in the movie she is a sizzling Kate Beckinsale, 34, dressed in a, shall we say, form-fitting skirt.”