So I reverse-engineered the iChat .chat log format the other day for Logorrhea 1.1, Spiny's iChat log manager. It's a pretty simple NSArchiver layout, but it's sort of guesswork to figure out what gets archived into the objects, and where in the hierarchy they need to be unarchived.
It sure would be useful to have a tool that could generically unpack NSArchiver and NSKeyedArchiver formats, or at least give you some guess to how the the archive is laid out internally. Unfortunately, the format is proprietary, as near as I can tell.
Since Jan & I are so generous, Logorrhea is open source, and available over on the Logorrhea site.
Reading Laughter: A Scientific Investigation lately. It turns out that armpit tickling produces the most laughter, on average.
So the other night, I was in Manny's Mexican Restaurant with my girlfriend and brother, and had just paid the bill, when the lights went out. When they flickered back on, smoke was pouring out of the kitchen. Apparently the fusebox had caught fire. We decided it would be best to leave the burning building, and therefore vacated the premises.
As we stood outside, in the parking lot, the transformer started making horrible screeching and clattering noises. I then noticed that building's powerline was smoking. A few minutes later, as the police and fire engines started to appear, the entire powerline caught on fire. After burning for a minute or so, it snapped in half and fell to the ground. That's when we decided to leave.
So hopefully the building didn't burn -- otherwise there will be no worthwhile place to go eat.