My Daring Fireball t-shirts arrived today.

You can choose a subscription to John Gruber’s site which includes a t-shirt (or two). That way you not only get the pleasure of supporting one of the finest independent voices on Mac matters, you get to replace your rattiest t-shirt with something much more tasteful.

Of course, I put mine on right away.

I started research for a freelance assignment on Vista today, so I felt a need for the extra protection:

This is actually a photo of me on the couch, thinking about starting the research. (You can see other, more ruggedly handsome people modelling their DF t-shirts here and here and here and here )

A paying membership of Daring Fireball scores you a full-content RSS feed for the site and a feed for Gruber’s Linked List, a daily list of links and blurbs.

Why is it worth it? For two reasons at least. First, the Linked List is astute and interesting. There are plenty of sites that are interesting but not astute, and some that are astute but not interesting. This list is both. I always start my daily NetNewsWire workout there.

Secondly, the longer articles are as well-written as they are informative. I rarely leave a piece John has written without a better understanding of how Mac OS X works (or should work!).

I get all of this for less money than my wife hands over for her PC’s antivirus subscription. It’s money very well spent.

You should think about subscribing too . daring fireball, john gruber, independent Mac commentary, tshirts, apple, blogs, not apple mail

Speaking of bloggers, plagiarism and content theft, earlier today high profile Mac blogger John Gruber posted news of a site that had completely ripped off Daring Fireball’s CSS and design.

The site looked like this:

Click image for a full-sized view

The only changes, John noted, were the removal of his name and copyright statement from the code.

By tonight the look of the site had changed . How the change happened I do not know, whether by natural contrition or some form of self-regulation among the blogging community.

In his apology the blogger said that “the site was meant to be a sandbox (test) site and was not supposed to [be] public-facing.”

He continues: “My apologies mostly to John – for not asking permission to tinker with his code and also to his readers – for any confusion.”

Daring Fireball is a very fine source of Mac news and opinion. Its Linked List elevates “human aggregation” to an art form. You can subscribe to the site , not only supporting John’s own writing but keeping alive the greater dream that quality can succeed in the online world.bloggers, content theft, plagiarism, intellectual property, Internet, daring fireball, apple, mac

John Gruber of Daring Fireball fame has an announcement up his sleeve.

Responding to criticism that he doesn’t blog often enough, he says , “I’ll be announcing the fix for that one later today.”

I guess this means we will read more of John’s writing and that can only be a good thing.

Half the time I don’t understand what he is writing, but even then it is still good. He probably deserves his reputation as the most influential individual Mac blogger.

And he is not a stuck-up wiener either. Which is refreshing.

When an unknown Australian approached him out of the blue asking for an interview on what he thinks of Mail.app, he cheerfully agreed.

He sent in a great piece on Mail and what’s good and bad about it. He threw in some free advice too on how blogs should be formatted, which has made Hawk Wings nicer to look at and easier to read.

You can’t beat that. Intelligent, witty and a gentleman.

I imagine that’s enough adulation now. Keep your eyes on Daring Fireball and enjoy with me more Gruber more often (I hope).

UPDATE: John Gruber quits job, goes full-time on Daring Fireball .John Gruber, Daring Fireball, blogging, Mac commentary, t-shirts, gentleman of the blogosphere