April 28, 2005

• I have a book idea and a screenplay simmering around in my head. The problem is that both are too big. In fact, either of them alone would be too big, so the two of them together is bigger than big. As someone who's programmed computers, I can appreciate the value of being lazy... A programmer who is lazy will accomplish more with less effort. Unfortunately, writing in English doesn't work that way. One of the things I've always tried to do when writing was to give the reader the opportunity to be lazy, because I like books and movies that let you be lazy while also enabling you to be an active participant. So the situation is backwards.

  I've been writing a little (for absurd values of 'little') computer program to wipe free disk space on hard drives. All it does is make a bunch of files and re-writes data across them a few times, according to some rules. No sweat. I did this because there are no freeware or open source programs to do this on Mac OS 9. None that I could find, anyway.

  See, I'm getting rid of my old Macs. I have a bunch. Too many. WAY too many. If you want a Mac Portable (the original pre-Powerbook luggable) or an SE/30 or LC III or an 8100/80 with a G4 upgrade card in it, now's the time to mention it. But these things have hard drives in them, and the hard drives have old data on them, and I'm not sure what the old data is, so I need to wipe them. And there's no solution that's free.

  • 4:08 am
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