resolutions

No, not New Years resolutions, screen resolutions. Apple has just bumped up the resolutions on their laptops, and it's got me thinking about how I use mine. I've got a 1024x768 display which I use for nearly everything on my laptop, and 1600x1200 displays (sometimes two of them) on my desk at work. I like my 6x10 font, 80 column wide text editors and shell windows, and 500 pixels is also a good width for some of the helper apps I use in development. I have Thunderbird and Gaim set up in the classic sidepane mode which means that they really wants to be about 1000 pixels wide. I've chosen default fonts in my other apps so that they work well at either 500 or 1000 pixels wide, too. It works great at either resolution. But the more I get stuff working well at 1024x768, the less well it works on the 1280x1024 flat screen I've got on my desk at home. Strange -- perhaps it's time to decommission that.

puddle jumper

I recently found myself buying a pair of tickets from Kona to Kapalua. AA.com (who I find have the easiest-to-use all-airlines schedule) found me a nonstop with an Aloha Air flightcode for $121 each, plus $5.70 in taxes. AlohaAir.com had the same total price, but claimed that $14.14 of it was tax. Expedia and Travelocity (the latter of whom win the prize for slowest web search) agreed with Aloha about how much was tax, and added a $5 per ticket "booking fee". So far, so straightforward, so much for the online travel agents. But what AA.com didn't reveal is that the flight isn't operated by Aloha, it's operated by Island Air. Buying an Island Air-designated ticket on the same flight on Travelocity lowered the total price to $94.93 each. On Expedia, it was $85.00. And on IslandAir.com, it was $64.27! And the frequent flyer miles are United miles either way.