Well, it's finally happened. There is something that I want to write about, yet I know I can't put it into words here. Quite a quandary, and the problem with the format that I'm using. All along I've been subtly censoring what I write, knowing that people could be reading these words. But there are some things that you don't want other people to know, and yet you do want to write them down, if only so that you can reflect on what is going on.

Change of subject. 3Dfx put out a press release urging Apple to change the way they see desktop Macs. They want people to have the choice of using 3Dfx cards, or the ATI cards that Apple has been using for years. The only thing I can write to this is: where the f*ck was 3Dfx five years ago? Apple has used ATI because they commited to supporting the Mac market, something that 3Dfx and other card makers ignored until recently.

All they needed to do was put out Mac drivers, admittedly not that easy. But the hardware costs which are predominant are already spent for PC development, Mac support only requires specific drivers. They didn't do that. Some small Mac company wrote drivers and sold 3Dfx cards with these drivers, without support from 3Dfx. It just seems wrong for them to ignore this market and then cry foul when they want to get back in because someone else has established themselves here in the meantime.

Looks like Mac OS X is going to be delayed until January. Well, that's not exactly true. Apple will release a Beta version this Summer, and before they had been promising to release a Preview version. It's mostly just a name change, but a Beta version is probably not going to be supported the same way as a Preview version would have been. I'll probably still get it and install it on the second partition in my PowerBook.

NBC cancelled The Pretender, along with Profiler and The Others. So much for their Saturday Night Thrillogy. The Pretender was the only I watched and it's basically a good show. Each episode had Jerrod pretending to be one thing or another, solving crimes and helping people in need. Then there was the B plot as Ms Parker tried to find out what really happened to her mother.

That was all nice and good. The problem was every time a plot thread was closed, another bigger thread was introduced. Mr Parker marries Bridget, then she becomes pregnant (when one or the other was supposedly sterile), then is killed as the baby is born. Mr Raines goes from sinister mad scientist, gets set on fire and becomes a born-again Christian, then tries to take over The Center and gets shot. Jerrod has a brother, who's killed. Then he finds his father, who disappears. Then he finds his sister, who almost dies. Then there's another brother who's insane. Way too many soap opera plots on an otherwise fine concept for a show.

I'm watching Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles which just started to run another cycle. It's a kids show, done with CGI only, like Reboot. Much like the movie, although it ignores it. Same characters, same basic costumes, same bad guys, more tech stuff like battle suits. Each week is another campaign of five episodes. Not a bad show, other than only the bugs are killed.

I've been going to ShortCourses.com the last couple of weeks. Dennis Curtin has a site where he sells various print-on-demand publications on digital photography. Some of the introductory manuals are on the web, which I've read. Very good introduction to photography in general. I also bought his Nikon CoolPix 990 book, which includes a lot of the material I've just read, but focusing on the 990 features in side boxes. I recommend reading A Short Course in Digital Photography when you get a chance.