I went to the Apple store a couple weeks back, intent on buying the lovely new 24" Cinema Display. When I got there, I learned that it wouldn't work with my previous-generation MacBook Pro, and that there was no way to make it work (note that a new adaptor is coming in September, for the hefty price of $179).
Frustrated, I went home, and eventually wrote a review on Apple's website, saying that the display was gorgeous but that the inability to use it with my older Mac was a failure, and gave it one star. Here's a screenshot of what I submitted:

A couple weeks later, I still haven't seen my review show up on their site. If you happen to see it, please let me know in the comments below.
Thanks!

I wasn't sure the crude NASA feedback website reliably submitted my comments, so here they are again. These are my comments on
Exploration Beyond LEO: Process and Progress (pdf, 144k)

We lack the political and public will to see through an effort of the complexity and cost of the Apollo program. But it's possible a direct and urgent Mars mission could capture the public's imagination sufficiently.
A manned landing on Mars, with a stay sufficient to do significant research, as well as engaging in communications (blog posts, twitter, email, etc) with individuals of the public and the public as a group, is the best way to ensure a) that we can maintain interest long enough to get there and b) ensure a lasting legacy of public support for HSF.
Furthermore, such an effort should endeavor to do two things: re-use as much existing technology and expertise as possible, and engage the private sector in competition for the development of the technology and hardware.
Th re-use of existing technology is embodied by efforts such as Jupiter Direct. It could conceivably allow the current Shuttle program to continue operating without adversely affecting new development efforts, due to the degree to which hardware is shared between the two programs. It saves substantially on development costs, and shortens development cycles, which is critical (politicians and the public must see constant progress in the form of launches, or they will get bored).
NASA should sponsor competitions among private industry (as the X-prize foundation does) to develop technologies, as outlined in Zubrin's _The Case for Mars_. NASA can serve as evaluator and integrator. This will speed development and lower development costs, while prompting private industry to employ people.
We've already been to the Moon; we know how to do that, but we're rapidly forgetting it, because all of the scientists and engineers of the era are disappearing. We need to leverage what they know *now*, and use it to develop a manned Mars program, the only thing that can capture the public's imagination in the way necessary to ensure the human space program's future.
Only after a Mars effort is well underway should we turn our attention to the next steps, including a permanent base on the Moon (for example, a far side telescope).

I am by no means a Photoshop expert, so there doubtless better ways to do this. With that disclaimer out of the way, hopefully this will help someone.
Yesterday I needed a nice-looking dot, like the one next to unread email messages in the iPhone Mail client. At first I tried lifting the dot from the phone directly, taking a screenshot. But that gave me a 13 x 13 pixel dot that was antialiased to white, and I needed it antialiased to transparent, so that it would work against any background. This is the dot I wanted (the final result is at the bottom):

So I tried my hand at creating it from scratch in Photoshop, and it turned out to be surprisingly easy (even easier when I reproduced the steps in order to create the screenshots here). The Photoshop tools are very well designed for exactly this sort of graphic.
For this, I used Photoshop CS3 for Mac OS X. This article assumes you have a basic familiarity with Photoshop, but I try to be specific in how to carry out the operations. I glossed over the configuration of the Marquee tool a bit, but hopefully you'll get it.
Start by creating a new document of the overall size you want. I wanted a 13 x 13-pixel dot, so I created a 13 x 13 document. It's important that it be RGB, and have a transparent background:

Zoom way in on the document, by typing Command-+ a few times. I worked at 3200% zoom. Then choose the colors you'll want to use. I used just two shades of blue, lifted right from the screenshot of the Mail dot. You'll need three, one for the border color, and two for the gradient start and end.
For this step, make sure the darker color is the front color:

With the Ellipse Tool, create a circle by clicking in the very upper-left corner of your document, and dragging to the lower-right:

It should fill in a nice antialiased circle of the chosen color:

Then choose the Elliptical Marquee Tool:

And create a circular selection that's smaller than the circle you filled before. I did this by holding down the Option key as I clicked in the center of the image, and dragging toward the lower-right. Holding the shift key while you do this will constrain the proportions to be square:

When you let go, it'll change shape to show the actual pixels that are selected:

At this point, you want to fill in the circle with the gradient, to give it a highlight. On Mac OS X and iPhone OS, lights are always directly above the graphic.
To fill the gradient, Photoshop needs a layer into which it can draw. Click the New Layer button in the Layers utility window:

Set up the colors for the gradient fill. Since I chose the colors I was going to use already, I just had to make sure the light color was on top:

Then select the Gradient tool:

And make sure the tool is set up to do radial gradients. At the top of the screen, there's a tool bar that lets you configure the gradient tool. Set it up so it looks like this:

At this point, you should have a selection of pixels and a new layer selected that match the steps above, and the colors you want your gradient to be. Then use the gradient tool by clicking near the top-center of your dot, and dragging downward, not quite all the way:

When you let go, you'll have a nice gradient filling just the selected pixels, and properly antialiased, to boot, although that's not as noticeable here since we painted over the same blue color:

Now you can use "Save for Web & Devices…" from the File menu to save this as a 24-bit PNG file with transparency, and it'll be ready for use in iPhone apps. Here's the result (it might be ever-so-slightly different, as this is the dot I got from my first run through these steps, and the screenshots above are from the second run through them I made to write this):

I'm sitting here suddenly overwhelmed at the utter coolness of what I'm doing. I'm sitting at my desk in my home office, "working from home," as NASA's LRO/LCROSS mission prepares for launch in a few hours. In front of me is a 22" Apple Cinema Display attached to a 15" Aluminum MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo, 2.5 GHz).
Thanks to NASA and Spacevidcast, playing on my desktop I have no less than six video streams, some with multiple angles, showing me the rocket and various other video. Thanks to ScanAmerica, I'm listening to the Kennedy Space Center ground loops via iTunes internet radio streaming. A NASA Java applet shows the Atlas countdown information. I'm chatting with friends via AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, and GTalk, as well as Spacevidcast's chat room. I'm following NASA agencies and employees via Twitter. And I have my as-yet-unfinished iPhone app MissionClock counting down to LRO. It looks like this:

This is all cool by itself, but every now and again I get a tweet like this one from Andy, who works cryogenics (fuel) and other things on the launch pad:

Been on the tower for the last 5 hrs. Finally got down and now they are kicking us out for the Atlas launch.

They just started the go/no-go poll. Time to do some real work while I listen/watch. Weather is a bit of a concern, here's hoping it holds!
One last bit of commentary: this ULA/Atlas launch has a lot more transparency/awesome geek factor than NASA Shuttle launches. I get to see a lot more info, and hear a lot more. I hope the Shuttle public outreach can surpass that of the Atlas someday soon. There aren't many opportunities left!

Last night I saw the most extraordinary thing. The shuttle bus to the Cairns Night Zoo stopped to pick up another passenger in the middle of the Cairns downtown area.
A small parakeet, in flocks numbering in the thousands, was racing round and round the block! Right down the street, anywhere from one to 5 meters above the ground. They came in wave after wave of dozens or even hundreds of birds, at incredible speed, weaving and dodging among the people and cars in the street.
And the waves never seemed to end. I asked the driver what was going on, and he told me that these birds like to race around the block at this time in the evening. They start up some time after the sun sets, and keep it up until it becomes too dark for them to see well enough.
I stood in the middle of the street as these flocks flooded the space around me. I tried to reach out to touch them, but they were far too agile and quick for that.