Changes is a new file mod­i­fi­ca­tion appli­ca­tion. Looks to be really nice. It’s Leop­ard only, so I’m going to have to wait until I upgrade to try it out.

I’ve been look­ing for a good appli­ca­tion like this ever since I found my self writ­ing a diff-​based app in Automa­tor to check for dif­fer­ences between my iTunes libraries. This one looks like it will do that and a lot more. It also inte­grates with my favorite text editor, Text­Mate. For the old school folks, it works with BBEdit as well.

There is a com­mand for Ter­mi­nal in OS X which allows you to take screen­shots from the com­mand line. Creepy creepy. Here is the format:

screencapture -x FileToSaveAs

The -x option tells it not to make the shut­ter click sound. There is also an -i option which trig­gers an inter­ac­tive mode, although I’m not sure why you would use the Ter­mi­nal to do that.

There is also a cute little tidbit in the man page for screencapture:

There is a pretty good dis­cus­sion going on over at 456 Berea Street about “Look­ing for open source CMS and portal soft­ware options“.

I’ve been think­ing a lot about this for the last couple of months. I’ve worked exten­sively with Word­Press (for this blog and a few others) and I really feel com­fort­able with it. I am con­fi­dent that I can work with it and bend it to do most things I want with a little effort.

Cur­rently I’m using Word­Press for a con­tract job to create a small­ish web­site man­aged by a CMS. The client wanted to use Word­Press, and I am rea­son­ably con­fi­dent that it will achieve their goals. That said, I think they’re get­ting uncom­fort­ably close to WordPress’s limits. There’s always a point when you are extend­ing soft­ware that you have to stop and con­sider, “Am I really using the right tool for this job?”

I’d really like to branch out and learn some other con­tent man­age­ment sys­tems that are more pow­er­ful than Word­Press and also more geared towards CMS rather than blog­ging out of the box. I tried using Drupal a few months ago, and like many of the peo­pling com­ment­ing on 456 Berea Street, I found the admin inter­face to be abso­lutly over­whelm­ing. It’s def­i­nitely designed with the men­tal­ity that more is better. I had a very clear vision in mind for what I wanted to accom­plish with my Drupal site, but I ended up stum­bling on some key things that felt like they should be very easy. Pri­mar­ily deal­ing with attach­ment links.

That said, I was very impressed in gen­eral with Drupal. It seemed liked the sky was the limit as far what could be accom­plished with it. The user roles were also a wel­come depar­ture from more restric­tive sys­tems like WordPress.

In the end, I was left with the impres­sion that given a lot of time and energy (to learn Drupal) I could make some very cool sites. I wonder, are there other solu­tions that are better?

Happy Birth­day KJ!

The big news today in Wash­ing­ton (other than that other big news) is that Pres­i­dent Bush’s new pro­posed budget would increase the deficit.

Pres­i­dent Bush sent Con­gress a $3.1 tril­lion budget on Monday that would increase mil­i­tary spend­ing and curb the growth of Medicare and Med­ic­aid but raise the fed­eral deficit by nearly $250 bil­lion, a major set­back for a pres­i­dent who is trying to restore his cre­den­tials as a fiscal conservative.

Hardly sur­pris­ing news for anyone that’s been alive for last seven years, I would say. Nev­er­the­less, one graphic in the New York Times that really hit me was this one that tracks the deficit for the last four pres­i­dents (shown on the right).

This is a really good illus­tra­tion of just how ridicu­lous it is when Repub­li­cans call Democ­rats big spenders. It kind of makes them look like monkeys.

Read­ing fur­ther into the arti­cle, I came across another gem (Empha­sis mine):

If the Defense Department’s pro­posed $515.4 bil­lion budget is approved in full, it will mean that, when adjusted for infla­tion, annual mil­i­tary spend­ing will reach its high­est level since World War II. The figure does not include spend­ing on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the war on terror and sup­ple­men­tal items.

Okay, so the mil­i­tary budget does not include the two eter­nal wars that the US is engaged in, the “War on Terror” (which can and has encom­passed just about every­thing), and sup­ple­men­tal items. What’s left? Didn’t the last emer­gency spend­ing bill for Afghanistan and Iraq come in at about $100 bil­lion alone. This makes me think again about the The Fed­eral Budget: the Public’s Pri­or­i­ties.