Don't listen to the people saying a Macbook is good enough. I'm typing on one and I've loved it for the years I've been out of school. Never felt any jealousy of the MBP because I loved the white look so much better. It's a great machine.

But it can't even run Spore. Not even at the low end. Nope. No graphics card, no dice. I think the newer MBs can but the fact you even mentioned games means MBP.

Also, the screen space on the MBP will pay off.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 8:54 PM on September 9, 2008

If an embarrassing memory comes up (along with some sort of "oofy" noise or clutching my body like I've just been covered in slime) if I'm in the car I have to change the radio station or the track playing on my iPod. I don't know what that has to do with it but the song must go, right now...
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 12:25 PM on July 23, 2008

Thanks everyone for all the answers. Kirby has adapted to drinking water from a bottle, so its not out for roaches. If they aren't attracted to chinchilla pellets or hay, we are in good shape. He likes to eat fresh fruit, but usually hand fed, so it wouldn't be out in his cage. We've recently been towel drying the sink after each use and I haven't seen a roach since before this post! the actual problem with them getting in was through the drains but also through the windows which do not seal,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 11:14 AM on July 18, 2008

The beginning of The Devil Wears Prada I think has that. But intercut with models getting dressed.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 1:07 PM on July 13, 2008

There's a theory that popped up recently that dreams are the way our brain rehearses for things it thinks might happen.

Here's how I interpret dreams. Instead of getting caught up in the situation, look at the feelings. Also look at how the situation differs from the obvious.

1)I am locked in a house and there's somebody else inside, most of the times a robber. This prompts me to wake up and check all the doors for the nth time.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 12:12 PM on June 20, 2008

We did what Blue Beetle suggested. fabric ripper on the top, sawed some of the back beams in half. Ta-da!
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 1:56 PM on June 2, 2008

I'm going to be a bit glib here. Please excuse it, I'm rushing on my way out from work. Also excuse the numerous links to Creating Passionate Users, Kathy Sierra says everything much better than I can.

I think only grumblebee hit on it here. Let's not debate the merits of each language, let's talk about how angry you get when something doesn't work.

What seems to be your issue is that you can't get past the Suck Threshold and into the Passion... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 4:01 PM on May 14, 2008

I MeFi mailed you, that okay?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 10:14 AM on May 13, 2008

I think she'll be doing that week thing.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 10:16 AM on May 13, 2008

Even though I marked some answers as best answers, I'd still love to hear more. Does anybody have any bad experiences?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 10:41 AM on May 13, 2008

kmennie, that's kind of the idea I got.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 12:07 PM on May 13, 2008

beerbajay, is the color of the fences thing (reasonable) speculation or something they mentioned? I don't think my mom would care about what color her fence could be, but I'm just curious.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 1:56 PM on May 13, 2008

My mom practically never goes to the city. Like 4 times total in my living memory, the small town thing won't bother her at all.
Oh, nothing else mentioned since I last visited? Well that's all I have to say. Yup. All I have to say.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 3:25 PM on May 14, 2008

In 2001 the novel it explains pretty clearly that it was the neurosis in Octothorpe's explanation. At least I'm almost positive.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 12:25 PM on February 12, 2008

I do a whole lot of InDesign scripting at my job. This sort of thing would be so flexible, it's almost difficult to say what would be the best way of doing it. No third party people needed. Completely free and ready out of the box.

OS X or Windows? Adobe InDesign Scripting forum is where you want to go. The people there are knowledgeable (as in: they wrote the scripting code in InDesign) and friendly (they might just post an example script) and can help you out immensely.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 6:12 PM on December 11, 2007

Ted, thanks, I'll check that out. Again, I can port it to AT&T...just not be added to the same family plan.

fusinksi, I did speak with a person who told me that it could not be eligible for a family plan. I was shocked so I figured I'd do research before I fought for something illegal or let myself be told fooled that something was illegal, when maybe it was just unpreferred. I have no problem speaking to somebody else!
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 9:42 AM on December 11, 2007

Hmmm, it seems to have something to do with AT&T's back-end billing I swear this wasn't on google an hour ago

Still, that article doesn't say HOW to go about doing it, so I'd still love any suggestions on what department to call. Porting or some other, higher dept?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 9:46 AM on December 11, 2007

Octo, Thank you! Exactly what I was looking for!
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 11:29 AM on December 11, 2007

A bit late but...

I think a good way to get what you might be looking for is the Uncanny Valley. However, this requires a bit of literary dexterity. See, King refers to this a lot, with "even though the man seemed perfectly normal, there was something about him that was a little strange". I love him, but he says stuff like that all the time. Why not just get on the telegraph and type out "The guy is a monster, people are scared of him, you should be,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 1:09 PM on November 27, 2007

The Dracula Tapes was pretty good when I read it as a...12 year old?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 8:02 PM on November 25, 2007

Put it in an industrial complex, right under the primary heat exchanges, wait for hive/eggs/fun. Keep Ripley away.

i.e. ant farm
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 1:29 PM on November 20, 2007

Cooker, that brief summary does not quite seem to do his theory justice. However, as an abandoned paragraph I just wrote shows, I cannot actually do it justice either. So I shall not even bother trying. Suffice it to say, it isn't quite as cause > effect as that quoted sentence makes it sound. There needs to be a situation PLUS genetic predisposition in the child for it to develop.

I might look into Edward Hallowell as well.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 2:42 PM on November 19, 2007

I once heard this Lovephones exchange (shortened for impact):

Caller: "yeah, hi, I'm worried because my penis is kind of small"

Dr. Drew: "You feel unimportant. The best solution is to get a job where you make a difference. Working at a soup kitchen or something. You'll stop feeling like your penis is even an issue very quickly."

*click*

Sometimes (most times?) the cure for a... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 6:25 AM on November 7, 2007

We're adding blank space to the edges so the files are 8x10, with 10x6.6 image areas to be cropped by hand after she gets them. I'm hoping this works...
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 10:30 AM on November 6, 2007

If it doesn't work, Spectra is our next stop! Thanks Blaney!
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 10:31 AM on November 6, 2007

I had a bunch of friends who did this back in high school and video taped it. One time they decided to let one of them fall down (figuring they'd just slump). He went off the side of the door jam, crashed through a glass table with his ass and his head bounced off the floor with a concussion.

It's on my youtube.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 10:42 PM on September 27, 2007

This one time I was playing Half Life 2 in my living room with the lights off for maximum immersion. I had a slice of store bought lemon merangue pie next to me. I was eating it slowly (see: immersion) and as I raised the third bite to my mouth, it looked a little..."dark"? in my peripheral.

I look down and there's an inch-long, clear/brown spider. On the Merangue. On the fork. Three inches from my mouth.

I love my peripheral vision and... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 10:39 PM on September 27, 2007

I'm gonna plug my old band, the Brimstones, and give you access to a ton of our old tracks. Many are creepy surf in the Los Straightjackets/Munsters vein. Abandon All Hope Ye Who Surf Here is particularly minor.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 3:48 PM on September 18, 2007

Dan Margulis is the guy you're looking for.

There are LOTS of post-production fixes. The first thing to do would be to color correct it, setting proper range. That can be found in this pdf. This will often bring back a lot of saturation.

Another thing is, if you genuinely ARE losing color when you go to CMYK, you might want to try Converting to a different RGB profile to reign in some colors before converting to CMYK (Photoshop Edit >... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 8:30 PM on August 31, 2007

I got my hopes up when it said Long Island...but it's not the one across two rivers.

I just got back from a three week vacation so I can't really justify taking a big vacation anytime soon so I'm really looking for something that doesn't have much travel overhead.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 5:21 PM on August 3, 2007

All of the drug reasons for the lollipop are also the reason raver girls wore pacifiers. Oh the early 90's
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 5:29 PM on July 19, 2007

I live in the super-gentrified Hamilton Park area and never really explored much, but my girlfriend was walking around looking for jersey city college and was telling me how nice Journal Square was and how we should move there when we're done having roommates besides each other.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 5:21 PM on July 19, 2007

I recommend all these books constantly: Time Traveler's Wife Professional Photoshop. & How the Mind Works. Not amazon linked because i wanna get it in before this is closed.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 9:30 PM on June 14, 2007

STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP!

I feel like I've been waiting years for this question to be asked. I thought, like you probably do, that getting photos to look "better" was kind of a crap shoot. Nope, no way, nuh uh. It's just as much a science. When I discovered that there was a method to doing this, I was shocked. I'd been using Photoshop for years and my jaw dropped when I found this.


Everybody else here has good ideas and... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 1:52 PM on May 30, 2007

On a closer rereading, here is are processes you could set up for a Photoshop Action. I use a very similar process in handing product photography shots.

Before you do this, open up curves and Alt-click or shift-click or whatever the shortcut is on the gridlines in the curve box to change to a 10x10 grid

Contrast
3. Convert to LAB
2. Bring up the Curves dialog box.
3. in the L channel set the curve so that the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 2:39 PM on May 30, 2007

Here's Dan's 5 minute recipie for wedding shots. My notes are in parenthesis.

We make sure that the images don't all have a cast

enhance the highlights and shadows,
(I believe he means with the highlights/shadows command)

then apply the green channel to the RGB as a luminosity layer
(Copy Green, paste on new layer, luminosity blending mode)

apply a further contrast... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 9:46 AM on June 1, 2007

Well, since this is for the application (wow, I can't believe I left that out...I must be frazzled) I can't really take advantage of any professors.

A couple of general essays: what are your academic goals, what classes would you want to take, what book changed your life.

I have the answers...but in an unformed way. I just can't see to flesh them out well.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 7:49 PM on May 14, 2007

Kronoss, it's the roadmapping I have the problem with. I have trouble figuring out the core of my ideas to figure out where they should go in the essays.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 7:58 PM on May 14, 2007

Wow. Great advice.

Lobster & Phire, you guys seem to have hit the nail on the head. I've been writing these essays more as narratives, getting caught up in expositional detail and then feeling like it's not answering the question (it's not) and scrapping it.

Lobster, since you asked, one of the questions is:

Write about a book that gave you with a new way of thinking. Describe how this work has... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 8:19 PM on May 14, 2007

Oh the program I'm applying for is Adult Bachelor at New School, to do a concentration in software design.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 8:21 PM on May 14, 2007

Summarize your present educational plans and goals. Explain why you have decided to resume your education now. Discuss in detail how study in the liberal arts will enable you to realize your academic objectives.

- to get my bachelors, go on to do a graduate program in software design, create amazing things.

- i stumbled across software design and realized it allowed me to combine several of my loves/obsessions to do things... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 8:38 PM on May 14, 2007

Thank you so much guys. I'm going to go try and apply this all now. I'll be coming back here while I'm working on it so don't be surprised to see best answers pop up after a while.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 8:53 PM on May 14, 2007

I can't believe nobody mentioned this but Stephen King allows you to film his short stories for the total of one dollar.

Another vote for Lighting > Camera
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 1:47 PM on May 14, 2007

Blue Velvet?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 4:48 AM on May 7, 2007

I did a whole album layout on an Intel Mac running PowerPC CS2 in (memory hog) Rosetta with 512 megs of ram. Not only that, the Photoshop files we used (due to poor planning) were several hundred megs each. It crawled sometimes, but everything worked. If the deal is that good, go for it, then get ram when you can!
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 4:10 PM on April 19, 2007

I can only second pineapple's recommendations, all of them. They are exactly the path you should be looking at.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 5:22 AM on March 27, 2007

Maybe this is why I've read that it's important you uninstall the Test Drive before installing the full thing. (How Microsoft is that advice?)
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 6:16 AM on March 22, 2007

Phearlez, your last sentence is actually exactly what I'm trying to do. I study cognitive interface design, so rest assured, the workflow is first and foremost in my goals. I was afraid of this. My fault in trying to make the question more consise. I downplayed my abilities and up-played the glitziness. Here I shall launch into the entire situation to assure you.

I layout a monthly flyer. The current workflow is that people cut and paste previous from months to create... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 8:54 AM on March 20, 2007

Thanks Malevolent, I downloaded that builder and the example. It built but it's giving me an error so I have to look that up.

I'm totally fine with the idea of middleware, just didn't want to have to reconfigure my whole system as an .asp server.
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 9:05 AM on March 20, 2007

Is this the only sax solo ever? As I thought it was this too. This should go in the FAQ, right next to "What's this font?" and "Should we break up?"
posted to Ask Metafilter by Brainy at 6:44 AM on March 6, 2007