4/2/07

-Mousing around:
During the past few weeks of driving OS-X, I’ve discovered a few things about the mouse.
Under 9.2 it was a simple one-button mouse; fine, since I could navigate quickly with the scroll-bars.
And like all Apple-mice I’ve ever had, holding the clicker down over a picture was the same as a right-click on a Windoze two-button mouse. It presented you with a “get-pik” menu.
But the OS-X mouse has biases.
Same one-button mouse, but only clicking the left side is the same as an ordinary mouse-click.
Clicking the right side is the same as a right-click on a two-button Windoze mouse.
Plus it opens up menus of whatever you clicked.
Right-clicking a two-button Windoze mouse may do the same. —I don’t know, as I usually avoid right-clicks, except for “get-piks.” (Those menus also seem to be be presented clicking the toolbar item.)
The Apple mouse also has a tiny button on top that activates a scroll-function similar to a scroll-wheel.
Laa-dee-DAH! I’ve driven a scroll-wheel mouse, and it seemed a waste (waist?) compared the scroll-bars.
Just a turgid gizmo to allow techies to scroll lazily through a document.
Well, suppose I wanna move fast? A scroll-bar booms-and-zooms.
So Apple imitates the scroll-wheel function with its OS-X mouse.
I avoid it and use the scroll-bars.
(Expect noisy torrent here......)
-“Cruel Sport:”
I’ve finally finished reading “Cruel Sport” by Robert Daley. It was loaned to me by the all-powerful Tim Belknap of the mighty Mezz.
Had to shove everything aside to read it; two Trains magazines, two Car & Drivers, a giant article on Conrail, even two weeks of the Sunday comics.
“Cruel Sport” is an old book; published in 1963.
Robert Daley apparently wrote motorsport coverage for the New York Times back then. Apparently “Cruel Sport” was sort of his swan-song — he gave up following Formula-One racing about that time. It was the same-ol’ same-ol’ that turned me off: too many drivers were getting killed.
Plus back then spectators were getting killed too. That’s gotten better with better crowd-control, and lining tracks with Armco (see Elz’s pik of Sebring).
More likely was that a racecar would ride the Armco and kill the driver; but the spectators were safe. The first driver-fatality I ever experienced, back in 1973, was François Cevert at Watkins Glen. His Formula-One Tyrrell rode the Armco and made a mess of him.
Yet “Cruel Sport” was a classic. Even though the Formula-One cars at time time were tiny (the motors were only 1.5 liters), the drivers were as driven as they are now. And spectators, like me at that time, came to witness them brushing death and surviving — dashing heroes. The death of Cevert was devastating — it wasn’t supposed to happen.
-Memories of Sabrina:
Yesterday morning (Sunday, April 1, 2007; April Fool’s Day) we took our only remaining dog, Killian, to the so-called elitist country-club for a walk.
We walked the trails instead of the road in.
It was rather depressing — no Sabrina, and she loved those trails.
One trail had two long staircases. Sabrina was weak in the rear, but she’d march right up them.
Who knows what else was wrong; probably lots.
But she loved that park. A very classy dog — mellow but classy.
We haven’t tossed her ashes yet. It’s hard to let her go.
-The mighty Curve web-cam is kaput.
In fact. it’s been kaput all weekend and is still kaput.
I’ve tried firing it up with various browsers, and it bounces. I even checked for a new address, but it’s still the old one, one that a link on the Horseshoe Curve site also bounces. Hup-hup!

My noisy blowhard brother-in-Boston insists the PC-platform (which he uses) is vastly superior to the Apple-Macintosh platform (which I use), which are mere Tinker-Toys.

My brother-in-Boston also noisily insists “waste” is spelled “waist.”

“The all-powerful Tim Belknap of the mighty Mezz” is City-editor Tim Belknap of the Canandaigua Daily Messenger newspaper where I once worked. I once posted one of his e-mails that had a few spelling-errors to our family’s web-site, and my brother-in-Boston immediately declared the whole reason the Messenger was so reprehensible was that Belknap was the editor — he’s only one of many. Like me he’s a car-guy.

“Elz” is my sister Elizabeth (Betty) in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. She attended the recent Sebring 12-hour sportscar race in Sebring, Fla.

The “so-called elitist country-club” is nearby Boughton Park, called that long ago by a judgmental editor at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper where I once worked, because it would only allow usage of the park by residents of the three towns that own it. I was on the volunteer board that administered the park at the time.

“Horseshoe Curve” (“the mighty Curve”) near Altoona, Pa., is by far the best railfan site on the entire planet.