Did you know you can make your Mac speak out loud whatever you want via command line? I didn’t.

Here’s how:

1. Open a terminal (Applications>Utilities>Terminal).
2. Type in say eat my balls (or whatever you want, just put “say” in front of it).
3. Sit back, listen, giggle and waste your entire day making your computer say really dirty things.
4. Know you are really, really cool.

You can also have your mac read entire text files by using this command:
say -f PATH/TO/FILE.TXT

Sweet! You may find that for some words, in order for your Mac to pronounce them correctly, you’ll need to spell them phonetically, but whatever…

Type the command man say for the manual on how to use this command and the various options and things you can do with it.

I just read this article on security advice by Kevin Mitnick and I’m equal parts pissed and laughing at it. It’s a classic case of ignoring the elephant in the room and it really makes me wonder where Mitnick’s integrity is since I don’t think he’s a particularly stupid person.

He starts the article with the old “We live in dangerous times. Evil hackers can attack you with their viruses!” line and then proceeds to outline ten steps he feels will increase your safety and security. Some are common sense recommendations that I agree with:

1. Back up everything
2. Choose strong passwords
3. Be diligent with applying security updates
4. Use encryption for sensitive data
5. Disable unused services
6. Use a firewall/router to restrict/limit access to your machine
7. Encrypt your wireless networks with uber-strong passwords using WPA

All these points I agree with. All are basic, simple, common sense things everyone should do, but often do not. His other recommendations are what give me pause:

8. Use commercial antivirus products
9. Use one or more anti-spyware applications
10. Avoid Internet Explorer and disable scripts in your email client

This is where I completely disagree. Recommendations 8-10 can be simplified to one step:

1. Stop fucking using Windows already

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This morning I felt like I wanted to try something new, so I installed Flock, the plugged-in, oh-so-social spin-off of the Firefox browser. Flock is basically the same as Firefox, but with integrated support for Flickr, Photobucket, del.icio.us, Shadows and most popular blogging software. Lotsa whiz-bang fancy shit going on.

After installing, I went through the setup and hooked Flock into my Flickr and del.icio.us accounts as well as this blog (typing that word makes me feel dirty… go figure). Currently, I’m typing this post using Flock’s built-in editor. I write the post, click publish and the post should go live, I guess, we’ll see.

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