…And he’s out

Okay, true confession time: I’ve been watching “Beauty and the Geek 2.” I’d love to say it was only because of the MIT connection (one of the male competitors, Ankur, is an MIT grad student), but honestly it’s a sweet reality show. The concept that smart-but-klutzy geeks and smooth-but-dumb beauties can actually learn from each other…  and that they can grow fond of each other… brilliant. Every geek in the world is guaranteed to become hooked on the first viewing…

Alas, Ankur was eliminated tonight. But I’ll keep watching. I’m a fan of the Woody Allen-esque Josh. I guess this means I’m now officially TV deadweight; this is the first reality show I’ve watched consistently, and it’s hard not to be hooked.

Entrepreneurship livin’ large

In the We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful category, I was eating lunch at a local diner yesterday and heard a familiar name on the nearby TV, which was tuned to Fox News. I looked up and there was an old college classmate, Lash Fary (yes, that’s his real name), who has started Distinctive Assets, “a Los Angeles-based entertainment marketing and gifting company.” Briefly, Lash, or the Gift Fary as he’s apparently known professionally, is part of the system responsible for getting high-priced merchandise into stars’ hands through the gift bags and baskets distributed at events like the Oscars (this was the context in which he was on Fox News). He’s also written a book, Fabulous Gifts, about the art of gifting well.

And to think he lived next door to me first year. Man, the places people go.

I think Lash’s story is interesting because it illustrates how an individual can carve out a business path by following his bliss. It’s also interesting because of the overall fabulousness level, of course: “the Gift Fary,” indeed.

Give me a PowerPC Mac mini

Well, the Intel-powered Mac mini is out, released as part of a home-focused set of Apple product announcements yesterday. And my only criticism is that they’ve eliminated the current PowerPC based models from the channel. I understand the reasoning—pricing them at a discount, as has been done with the PowerPC powered iMacs, would lower the price point too far to allow the channel any margin. But I still want one of the original series of Mac minis, even after our purchase of a MacBook Pro (anticipated arrival date still March 22).

Why? It comes down to Classic. At first I didn’t cavil too much at the thought of losing access to programs that run under Mac OS Classic aka Mac OS 9. There is nothing that I run on a daily basis that requires Classic, and that’s been the case ever since the release of Microsoft Office for Mac OS X.

But I’ve been a Mac user for 16 years, and there are quite a few programs that I ran in the first 10 of those years that require Classic that I’ll miss an awful lot if I can’t access them again. Some, like the Talking Moose, have made the jump to Mac OS X versions; for others, like most multimedia CD-ROMs (e.g. the Laurie Anderson Puppet Motel or Peter Gabriel’s media titles), it’s already too late. But there are a host of programs, including the LucasArts Star Wars and Indiana Jones games, Crystal Quest, and even the Mac version of MORE that will be inaccessible to me after this platform transition.

So it’s impractical, but I think that having continued access to the Classic environment in a small form factor machine would be really useful. It appears that Amazon still sells the original Mac minis; I may have to decide about putting my money where my mouth is.