Yup, I’m now an official, card-carrying, t-shirt wearing member of Daring Fireball =) T-shirt and membership card arrived in the post today.

Why, you ask, given I’m a Linux user, did I choose to support a Mac pundit site? I’d have to say it is simply because I enjoy reading the material on the site.

John Gruber’s articles are consistently well researched, well written and well, darn good reading. When he put up a request for sponsoring, I saw an opportunity to support a guy that I enjoyed reading. Support him in a venture to see if enough capital could be generated to make Daring Fireball a full time occupation. I’m not sure whether that target was reached, but I’m pleased to have supported the effort and the milestone it could represent in internet one-man publishing.

In a way, I suppose I’m fairly lucky. A common complaint brought up whenever I advocate the use of an alternative browser is that one site or other — that is essential to the person I’m recommending the browser to — doesn’t work in a browser other than IE. This is especially prevalent with online-banking sites, I am told. (Usually, upon visiting such a site, one is told to “upgrade” to a “more secure” browser. Don’t get me started on that, we’ll be here all week.)

Herewith some instructions on setting up your iPod Mini with Linux with USB and the FAT file-system, using gtkpod to access the iPod. I’m assuming a few things for this little howto:

• You have access to a Windows box to reformat your iPod to FAT.
  
• You have a working USB 2 install along with VFAT support in your kernel.
  
• You know how to use the command line and edit files on it
  
• You have root access to your system
  
• You know how to install software
  

That’s about it, so on with the instructions:

iPod Mini.

I have one.

Works on Linux.

Rock on.

Herewith a political diversion. We’ll see how it goes, shall we?

Fearing that terrorists might attack in an attempt to disrupt the US elections, we’re proposing to enshrine into law a mechanism that would automatically disrupt the US elections in the case of a terrorist attack?

Head… hurts…

I really think that the idea’s a crazy scheme for the precise reason mentioned. An entire tenet of anti-terrorist policy seems to be based on carrying on as we are, to the maximum extent possible whilst protecting our safety. So, here we’re promising to do just what the terrorists would like. Great idea guys!