There's always Fark to get in the way of productivity... or making a really good sandwich.
Or leaving comments on someones blog... alright already! I'll go and do some work.

wonder what's going on at Fark??

mmm....i could go for a sandwich right about now.

You want me to help with your iBook? I work as a tech support specialist at Apple.

Send me an email :)

-Summer

Ooer good luck sorting your ibook. Damn tools of the trade braking on you. tsk tsk.

Try holding the power button several seconds until it powers down. Does your iBook have a reset button (which needs to be pressed with a pen or paperclip)? If so, use it (my last iBook was several years old; I have a PBG4 now; the power button trick works with it).

Next try holding shift-command-option while pressing the power button for several seconds to reset the power manager or command-option-PR immediately after rebooting to zap PRAM.

Your interview for Geek Extreme is a nice read. Thanks for sharing.

I think I am most excited about the good things release.
I have heard great things about that movie and have been dying to see it for a long time.

Sorry about the I-book man, if you want I can ask Thor if you can borrow his hammer... it always does wonders for his PC. ;)

Yay for Wil's projects on DVDs. The Good Things is that short with Pat Mastrionni, right?

It's funny (and not in a "guffaw snicker" kind of way): Amazon.ca calls "Jane White" an "Import" and apparently ('cause I just checked again) it's "Out of Print--Limited Availability". I must see Neverland.

We always knew you were an extreme geek.

It's official. My iBook is currently having a near-death experience. Hopefully, the Apple folks will be able to coax it back from The Light sooner than later.

iBook: if you need it to reset, there's always taking the battery out and back in to really really get it to power down.

I upgraded my battery recently (via the apple web site), which took me from 1.2 hours of non-plugged-in life to 4, which made a huge difference. Perhaps replacing the battery would be a good thing.

Additional DVDs for the Christmas list. Whoo-hoo!

Hmm...my powerbook is sick too. It is currently at the apple hospital, and hopefully getting better. The Apple tech people have been really good to me...I hope they are good to you too. May our laptops be healed quickly. =^)

'The Good Things' was an unexpected pleasure and the DvD is gonna be a must buy.
Saw it during the Chrysler Million Dollar Competition.
It's a short story about nothing and everything. A low keyed performance and the subtle direction made me forget who the actor was. I only saw Zack.

Wil,

Sweet interview. I consider myself more a philosopher geek as well, or maybe a useless-knowledge geek. I would like to learn more technobabble and gadget-knowledge as well, but that comes with more financial resources than I as a student have, I think! =)

I was wondering if you had any advice for aspiring writers - how did you learn how to capture moments and sentiments as skillfully as you do? Was it just practice, or did you take a class or two, read a how-to book? =) Any tips you have would be GREAT for novices like me. I think my stuff has potential, but I'm not quite where I want it to be, you know?

Thanks and keep writing! I look forward to it everyday.

Why don't you use OpenOffice for X11 on OS X?

If you ibook crashes try calling Leo maybe he has a suggestion why it died.

So, this means more Audblogs and photoblogs right? ;)

I saw Neverland at a film festival in LA. I would encourage y'all to see it--very cool indeed. Wil will make you laugh and it's way hipper than the Neverland being released this Christmas.

Hi Wil,
Is Neverland ever going to be shown, or be able to be bought in the UK, because I would really love to see it!

Spike
9.16pm GMT

Wow--I just read the article about leaving the G4 show. That's really, really awful, although not a particular surprise. It's presumably such things that generate the TV that's out there.

When I was on the set of Screen Savers, I chatted with the host a little before the show, and asked why clips of the show were only in Windows Media format, making them inaccessible to Linux weenies like me. He just shrugged and said that the upper-levels of TechTV weren't every savvy about those sorts of things. :-/

Frank Herbert wrote a great article about the making of the Dune film one time. He says in there not to forget that the Hollywood machine is a business, and that the way it's often played is to take something that's already been successful and copy it. Wise words...

[not about the DVDs coming out, or Wil's iBook, but it was the first time _I_ had read the thing about G4]

Happy Holidays, everybody!

I may not be the first to say this, but plug your ibook ac adapter in, and then hold the power button for few seconds, it should bring your Ibook back to life

previous message, first paragraph: that's supposed to read "It's presumably such things that generate the bad TV that's out there."

Switch to Office X for Mac. A much better experience for writing than the open source options, IMHO.

I understand your anti-Microsoft tilt. Office is the only MS program I proudly use.

k.

Pat Mastronni aka Joey Jeremiah from Degrassi - Just had to say that -

Anyway - Sorry to hear about you iBook but congrats on everything else Wil -

Thanks for the news about "Good Things". I know about a million people who worked on it. (One of whom was absolutely gushing that she was going to get to meet Wil Wheaton... it seems she had quite a crush on you.)

Did you get to talk much with the crew? I went to KU, where most of the crew came from. I sadly, found out about it when all my friends came home from working and asked why I hadn't been there... they had failed to inform me, you see.

Now, get to work on JAG.

Wil,
Sorry to hear about the iBook, mine sometimes does that to me too. I just hit the power button and reboot, but that might not be the solution to your problem. Hope you get it fixed soon, Apple does a great job with everything!

Wil, it's your iBook telling you to get going with writing JAG and never mind the web. ;^) The Apple techs will nurse your baby back to life. (Sending good thoughts to Wil's iBook.)

On another note...thanks for the good news! Now I have more stuff to add on my "must acquire" list!

The one thing that gets me alot with my iBook is when it's in sleep mode and won't wake up. On a lot of older Macs, this usually meant it was crashed, but this iBook NEVER crashes. I just assume it does.

It always turns out that it went into sleep mode because the battery was nearly dead and all I needed to do was plug in the AC adaptor and hit the spacebar to wake it up. Of course, I never manage to realize this until it powers down right after booting because the battery is nearly dead. Then it dawns on me...

My husband's iBook started freezing on us a few weeks ago. Turned out that the logic board had gone bad and had to be replaced.

Hope yours is back soon!

I'm off to put "Neverland" on my wish list!

Great interview!!!!

i'm sure that apple will be able to help you, wil, but i thought i'd toss in my two cents' worth of pixels, too: i just had this same sort of problem with my powerbook, and i found this article at apple support that seems to have helped (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449 ). seems that i needed to reset my Power Management Unit (PMU). it's apparently a fairly common thing on the powerbooks and ibooks. took me about 30 second to do, and so far, so good...! hth - best of luck!

I mean, sure I'll watch "Neverland", but I'm secretly hoping that one day there'll be a Special Edition of "Python".

I'll be checking out The Good Things. The interview was sweet.

i hope your iBook gets well soon...i wish i had an iBook!

hey wil, great interview! these silly computers! whoever thought of inventing them...hold on, without it, i wouldn't be able to write this! oh well...:)

i'll be sure to check out the movie...been looking for it for ages! now i know where to find it!

take care,
rach

Um, sorry about the iBook.
Very cool about the DVDs.
And the interview was interesting.
But- am I thus a movie-geek for clicking on the link and knowing it should have been "Pretty In Pink", not "Sixteen Candles"???.....

Assuming that you are having the same trouble that I have... just unplug the laptop and take out your battery. Then replace the battery/plug in and it should work. It's a simple trick but it works with my iBook. Later, Dude.

Wil, first of all, we love you man.

but we just watched "Jane White is Sick and Twisted" and it was abominable. seriously.

I like Wil's definition of 'geek.' My favorite definition of "nerd" comes from Douglas Adams. In "Triumph of the Nerds," he said, "a nerd is somebody who uses a telephone to talk to other people about telephones." :)

Good interview. About the DVD's, I echo SPIKEs comment, "WHAT ABOUT US IN THE UK!".

I take it from reading everyone's woes with various iBooks that Apple doesn't have a "Hibernate" feature? That's one thing I can't live without: storing the current state to the harddrive, and then powering the machine *all* the way down, so it uses no more power than being off.

I'm using a Dell right now, but I had hopes of switching in the future. I don't know if I can do that until Apple can hibernate....

Howdy Wil! I occasionally encounter a similar problem with my much older mac laptop. The way I solve it with said laptop is by removing and replacing the battery, then booting it up. Seems like that's what everyone else is saying so let us know if it works for ya!

Wil, we just got your movie book of days at the video store i work at yesterday.I took it home last night and am planning on watching it tonight when i get home from work. what was funny is my friend that was working with me turned to me with the dvd in her hand and was heres something you're gonna wanna watch and handed it to me knowing what a fan i am. i found it funny that she remembered how much i like you!!!

Macs are the best. I hate Intel and M$!!! Macs are the best - they're so easy to use and reliable. Like linux!!

I love that no matter how often the contrary punches people in the face, I still have to listen to the greatness of mac's and linux's etc. Listen: Macs go down just like PCs do. Linux the O/S and Linux based apps and Macs and Mac apps are JUST as impossible to use as PCs. Each has their advantage in particular circumstances and each human's technical bias and preference plays a HUGE role in selecting either for use.

Can Mac users and Linux users EVER admit that there tools suck just as bad as PC-based stuff??????????????? Wil????????????

Damn Slapdinger, how do really feel? I own them all - I prefer to use my mac for most things, though definately not all.

Anyway, Ordered my copy of Neverland! :-) YAY!

Is it available on netflix also?

*Please* tell me the Good Things DVD will be available, and playable, in the UK.
I really liked it when I saw the mini pixelated version online, so it'd be nice to see it properly.

Have you tried BBEdit?

BareBones

For about ten years I have been wishing for a plain text editor with inline spell check. When I found out the OS X version of TextEdit had it I threw a party.

(ok... it was a small party.)

I'll try to refraign from the obvious "Neverland" comments. Its been in the news a little too much. But the movie looks kinda good, and interesting telling of the "Peter Pan" legend. Although Amazon paired it up with an Odd movie. I'm a big fan of "The Trip", and I'd see "Neverland", just on the reommendation. Its just an odd pairing of those two films.

I have to say, I always thought Ducky to be more interesting than Blaine any day of the week. I love geeks and quite honestly say I am one.

Great interview. I wanna see The Good Things now too.

Great interview at Geek Extreme. Awesome insights on what it means to be a child actor with a greater body of work than normally thought. I agree with your ideas on STNG, Wesley is a fantastic, misunderstood character that we will be seeing more of in the real future. Heck, most IT companies I know of have very young CEOs. They are torn between company meetings and surfing. I think you HAVE really matured into a fine outstanding young man. Wish I could say the same!

Nice interview, but didn't they link your reference to 'Blaine' and 'Ducky' to the wrong film (to _Sixteen Candles_ instead of _Pretty In Pink_)? *betrays his John Hughes geekdom*

Hey Wil,
I just finished watching The Good Things, and I thought you did an excellent job. The movie was fairly decent for a 25 minute film, but you did an awesome job !!!

-Zack Shutt

Yeah, I got beef with my ibook too. Trevor (that's my man) did some updates and changed the power whatever so that it would be quicker when it's plugged in instead of when it's using a battery. Yeah. I've watched a slug slime it's way across my kitchen floor before I can open a web page or send an email.

Anywho, cool about the dvd's. Never seen either movie. I just a few months ago watched Stand By Me. Cute movie.

Hey,
I was at the holiday Unscrewed taping and chatted with you for a minute. I'm glad you're home safe and sound. I had a similar kind of week in SF.

Not that it'll help your model - but i just picked up a g3 powerbook and the 4gb->30gb hard drive update causes the bigger drive to fool the internal sleep 'button' to think that the lid is closed. Apparently, I need to install a brass separator or wrap the drive in electrical tape. For now I'm forced to touch the computer just to the right of the delete button with a small (San Francisco) refrigerator magnet. It seems to reset the sleep sensor.

It was nice to meet you.

DDS

Wil,
You really love those interviews. You really do love to talk. In The Good Things, it seemed like, your character did not like speaking. That role seemed to be far, from you, as a person. It reminded me of a music video but without the top 40 sound.

FG

For those who are interested here is a link to a good site for Neverland
http://www.newmediaentertainment.info/
It has a great little trailer in there
Good job Wil and I am waiting impatiently for it to hit Australia
Cheers

SO I went and watched the trailer for Neverland. It looks awesome. I ordered it immediately.

You don't write in TeX using vi? And you call yourself a geek? :)

Not that there aren't a ton of suggestions already, but a friend of mine consistently had that problem with her iBook, and it turned out to be a problem with the power cord... the iBook would go to sleep when the battery ran out (even though it was plugged in,) and just wouldn't wake up (because the battery was dead.) She borrowed a fellow teacher's cord, plugged it in, and it fired right up. Apparently the power cord program is a common issue with the iBooks... worth a shot anyway - check your power cord and make sure it's glowing orange or green when it's all plugged in.

Anyway, my two cents... sort of.

I had a similar experience with my Toshiba Satellite laptop, it just decided not to work anymore. Perhaps this is a common trend in the notebook world.

Wil buddy.. sorry this is a little off topic, but you should really start a video blog. I'm sure a lot of us fans would love to see whats going on in your life. Its fun too.. You could take a sledgehammer to your laptop and video tape it. I've got one at Avoidinglife.com. There are a couple other cool ones at Vidblogs.com that could give you some inspiration. Just a thought.

Most notebooks have a small pin-switch somewhere along the edge of the lid or keypad, to tell it when the lid is closed. When closed, the cover pushes the pin "in" and when open its supposed to spring back "out." The pin-switch tells the notebook its state: open (on) or closed (sleep).

Sometimes when the pin-switch spring is worn, the pin doesn't spring back out, making the notebook think the lid is still closed. Usually, a slight tap on the pin-switch helps it to spring back out.

Aloha,
MM

Long time Mac product:

http://www.tex-edit.com/

You might enjoy this, (keep drilling down).

http://www.searchlores.org/

Dude, your iBook won't wake up? Call Apple tech support, I work there. We'll fix you up good, no problem