Countdown

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

13 days until 3 new Stereolab EP's are released.

For the first time in memory, I'm not sure which file-sharing app would be the best bet for finding these before they're released.  If you're "hip" to the pirate "lingo", hook me up.

Yesterday's lesson

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

...as applied today:

Do zen masters do effectively nothing or nothing effectively?

Cheat Codes

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

If real life had cheat codes, I'd use one that would give me a fucking bazooka to blow up the fucking construction equipment that made a fucking racket at fucking 8am and fucking woke me up.

Don't Do Drown?

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

Eloquent as always, we get this pearl of wisdom from brother Jeb: "'We ask people to use common sense after a hurricane.  Turn around don't do drown is our motto the day after the storm,' Bush said."

WTF?  Sad part is, he's likely to be president on day.

Celebrating Ezra

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

No, he didn't die.  He's just leaving us to follow his dreams.  Tonight was the third send off I've been to for the guy - SF just loves him that much.  It was also a sort of housewarming for Anil, who's moving in just down the street.  In a way, I'm proud of myself for coming out and making an attempt to be social.  It's underscored my need (desire?) to get over the insecure feeling that I'm simply not fabulous enough to be hanging out with these people.  I suspect that my self-imposed introversion is beginning to do more harm than good, and it's something I plan to work on.

Working with Ezra was one of the main reasons I wanted to work for SixApart.  The irony being that we never got a chance to work on the same project at the same time.  Perhaps someday that will change, one can only hope.

Pick your battles.

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

This, is retarded.

But I don't think anyone should waste time trying to fight it.  The changes that this country needs are, IMO, too large to allow ourselves to be distracted by these little things.

Public Relations

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

I just spent some time touring the major news sites to read about the death of Peter Jennings.  They all reported that he had died of lung cancer, but the only one that acknowledged him as a "longtime smoker" was foxnews.com.  In all the other articles, smoking wasn't even mentioned.  How can you report on death-by-lung-cancer and not bring up smoking?

note to self

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

dorothy ashby - essence of sapphire, as heard on solid steel @ 1:12.

off "the fantastic jazz harp of dorothy ashby", atlantic 1965

if anyone has a copy of this, please let me know.

Scotty's Fourth of July Visit

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

We had marvelous sushi from KISS (the restaurant, not the band) and explored the Headlands, Mount Tamalpias, and Muir Woods.  He took pictures.

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

Who needs an entry subject?

Today I learned that the office is exactly equidistant to the two closest Quiznos' - 0.3 miles.  I was also briefly reminded that it can be nice to have a technologically-proficient Mother.  Little IM's with familial updates can be humorous or depressing - today's IM was neither, but I was still grateful to receive it.

[MP|RI]AA's Sinister Plot

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

I'm convinced that this breakthrough was masterminded by the MPAA and RIAA to finally have an excuse to cut off our hands when they find we've pirated their crap.

clarity

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

sometimes it's good to be reminded that feeling absolutely nothing can feel so wonderful.

Flickr schwag

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

Just another quick link to free stuff.  This time, Flickr schwag.  I want the "howdy" button.

Beethoven Downloads via BBC

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

As of today, symphonies 1 through 5 in their full un-DRM'd glory.  Check 'em out.  They plan to post the rest as they are broadcasted.  Keen.

Aliens gave me an ankle probe!

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

When I went to bed last night, my ankle felt just fine.  When I awoke, it was searing with pain.  The only possible explanation was that I was abducted by aliens by cover of darkness and given a most humiliating ankle probe.  Oh, the humanity.

Stereolab Playlist on iTMS

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

I feel I'd be remiss in my evangelical duty if I didn't point out the celebrity playlist from Stereolab on the iTunes Music Store.

Every now and then I'll cruise through the celebrity playlists, just for kicks.  David Duchovny's got some funk.  The Cure likes Nirvana and Mogwai.  Reading the little one-line descriptions - even if they're faked by some marketing droid - is entertaining.

From the Stereolab playlist I purchased Barry Adamson and Grace Jones songs based solely on the 30 second clips and description from Laetitia.

One of the celebritys had a Gainsbourg song that I'm going to try to leech from Mena's collection.  It was pretty good.  Don't remember which, but I'll find it.  One of the slogans, perhaps.  Started with an E.

Five Fives

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

Here it is, 5:05 on 05/05/05.  Yep.  Also noteworthy: Cinco de Mayo is Rhea the Dog's birthday.  This year she's three.  Or twenty one.  Depends on your philosophical beliefs in canine mathematics.

New Stereolab & a Fond Farewell to Tatsuhiko

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

I received the new Stereolab box set today.  3 CD's of goodness and 1 DVD of video content.  I rushed home from work to pick it up and immediately watched the entire DVD.  By the time it was finished, I needed to get ready for a night out on the town.

I drove out to Portrero Hill for the first time and picked up Randy and Ezra, then headed downtown to collect Tatsuhiko from his hotel.  Tatsuhiko had been in town on business and tonight was his last night so we decided to show him a good time.  We had a lovely dinner at Kiss Sushi (with a bottle of Louis Jadot Pouilly-Fuisse) and then cruised the J-town mall for some drinks.  Afterwards we hit the Boom Boom Room and met up with Garth.  Some Dave Matthews-like band was playing and it was pretty painful for me, but I stuck through it.

We adjourned to Garth's place (which was just a few blocks away) for some Karaoke Revolution and I got my first real taste of Katamari Damacy.  Honestly, I don't see what the big fuss is over it other than the music (which was top notch).  I'll give it more of a chance when I can afford to pick up my own copy.  Oh, and when I get a better TV.

So yeah, a nice day.

Oh, the songs I had to sing for Karaoke Revolution were: Billie Jean, Bizarre Love Triangle, and Son of a Preacher Man.  Though I came in second place on each round, I still feel I need to apologize to the guys for the pain of my off-key, off-tempo, off-off performances must've induced.

Why U-Haul Sucks

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

I search the uhaul.com site for U-Haul locations in my zip code.  I get six results.  Half of those aren't open seven days a week, and it's Sunday.  I call the first that claims to be open.  Closed.  The second?  No trucks.  The third?  On hold.

Five minutes later...

Representative: "Hello, in order to best serve your needs and find you the most affordable solution, I need to take your name."

Me: "My name?"

Rep: "Yes, your name."

Me: "I'm not giving you my name, I just want to know if you have any trucks available."

Rep: "Well I need your name."

Me: "Well you're not getting it.  Do you want my business or not?"

Rep: "Well, ok.  Where do you want to pick your truck up?"

Me: "San Francisco, zip code 94105."

Rep: "Ok, please hold."

...and then she transfers me to a different pickup location altogether.  In Oakland.  Wow.

The DMV

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

The only thing more soul-crushing than wasting an entire day at the DMV is finding out you have to come back again tomorrow.  On a weekend.  And then again next week.  To quote one of my fictional heroes, Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth: "tell them I hate them!"

Full Circle

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

Quick backstory, for those who are unaware: I've recently moved to San Francisco to work for Six Apart as a software engineer on TypePad.  More and more of my time has been spent poking at and learning about web services, APIs, and publishing applications, it only made sense to make it my job - to get paid for it.

Since I've been here, I've made friends with a handful of people on the LiveJournal team and my interest in their app has been renewed.  They were kind enough to reclaim the stagnant "crw" account for me, so I'm going to try to put it to use each day.  What I write here are my own personal thoughts and feelings - hell, I may even restrict it - make it friends-only.  We'll see what becomes of this space.

My Wanderlust Dream Fulfilled

(originally posted at crw.typepad.com)

It was sometime prior to 9/11, on a particularly disparaging day of work. A couple co-workers and I skipped out to lunch early and headed downtown to sit in the shadow of the WTC and have falafel. Though the wind was quite strong, it was still a comfortably warm and sunny day. I sat between the towers, listening to whatever MP3 player I had at the time. An unfamiliar song came on; it resonated with me and filled me with a sense of wanderlust. I wanted to get in a car and just go. Just drive. Explore.

During all the major turning points in my life since then, it's been a theme. Is now the right time? I remember sitting in my aunt and uncle's new house in DC, the night of the 2004 elections. As my heart sank and I realized how out-of-touch I am with the majority of the voting public in my country, my desire to explore grew.

Well, now's the time. As in, today. I set out in a few hours.

It'll be an adventure in the true sense of the word. I have but one or two set stops to make en route, and the ultimate destination has no mailing address - simple, San Francisco. Like the song that originally inspired me, I've got myself a Trucker's Atlas, and I'll see where it leads me.

One way or another, I'll be in San Francisco to start work on March 1st.

Music Meme via Suw

(originally posted at crw.typepad.com)

I've been pinged by Suw with a music meme that's being passed around. My initial reaction was just to post a link to my last.fm profile, but that doesn't really answer the questions being asked. Here goes:

1. Total amount of music on your computer? Egads, I've got music spread across many computers, iPod, backup DVD's and firewire drives. My core set of music is 30gb and it lives on my iPod.
2. The last CD you bought is: Margerine Eclipse by Stereolab
3. What is the song you last listened to before reading this message? Had to consult last.fm for this one. Last night the last song I heard before unplugging my iPod to plug in my iSight was... I'm Deranged, by David Bowie.
4. Write down 5 songs you listen to or that mean a lot to you: Come and Play in the Milky Night, Glass Museum, Clockwise, Your Signs, Trucker's Atlas, People Eating Fruit (bonus, sixth!)
5. Who are you going to pass this stick to? (3 persons) and why? Hmm, I think I'm not going to propagate this meme and let it quietly die.

I've also come across some interesting bugs in ecto when dealing with nesting lists. I've had to compose this post in HTML-view and hope that it turns out alright when I publish it.

Working for Six Apart

(originally posted at crw.typepad.com)

I have just formally accepted a position with Six Apart as a Software Engineer on the TypePad team. I'm more than excited and still catch myself giggling, sighing, and feeling completely overwhelmed at the prospect of moving west in less than a month.

After being hired by Technorati, Niall Kennedy wrote a wonderful post about the interview process he went through. I enjoyed reading it so much that I decided then and there that I'd craft a similar post about my experience interviewing with Six Apart.

Round One: The Application

Per the job posting, I sent my resume with a brief cover email to jobs@sixapart.com. I cc'd Ben Trott, who I'd had brief prior contact with during the MT3 alpha/beta period and whose job title was listed as the manager of the position I was applying for. Within a week I'd heard back from Ben directly, suggesting that we chat a bit more about the position.

Round Two: Instant Messaging

I was sitting in Amtrak's Acela loung in New York City - en route from DC to Rochester - when I received an IM from Ben. He told me a bit about the company, but I was already pretty familiar with their products and services. We chatted about my work history, my current consulting work, and my history as a blogger. We talked a bit about Six Apart's move from San Mateo to San Francisco and the new office space they were still setting up at the time. At the end of the conversation he said he'd like for me to chat with some other staff members - but as the holidays were approaching, we had some scheduling difficulty.

Round Three: Phone Interview

After the holidays, we scheduled back-to-back phone calls with three staff members:

• Byrne Reese: Product Manager, TypePad
• Randy Reddig: Software Engineer, TypePad
• Paul Lindner: Server Engineer

The night before, however, news broke about the LiveJournal acquisition. I was up all night reading community reactions in both the blogosphere and the journaling community and chatting on IRC about the ramifications of the deal.

Byrne called first and we had a nice chat about what TypePad offers and some potential future developments. Randy and I talked about the development process of the TypePad team and the tools that they use to get things done. Paul and I discussed the back-end of things and the tools used to manage them as well as some of the projects I'd be interested in working on. Each conversation had an obligatory mention of the LiveJournal deal.

Each discussion went longer than the last as I began to wake up and not feel so groggy. After the last conversation I was thoroughly excited at some of the things we'd talked about and some of the pending product developments.

Round Four: Face-to-face Meeting

About a week after the phone interview, I received an email from Ben asking if I could fly out to meet the team. Of course, I jumped at the opportunity. After being unable to escape the Boston blizzard, I returned to Rochester where it was still snowing. I was ready for some sun, and boy did I get it.

I met with Ben first, right after a staff meeting. We talked for a bit and he showed me LifeBlog and we discussed the structure of the rest of the day. He showed me around the office and introduced me to Jay, Ezra, and Brad from the MovableType team. The latter two and I split off into a conference room and chatted a bit about MT. I was then introduced to the TypePad team - Mark, Garth, and Randy. We moved to the "make love not war" room, and discussed the TypePad app, my development history, and I was quizzed on things like regex and debugging methods.

When our time was up, I got to have a quick break before meeting with Byrne. We chatted about his function as TypePad Product Manager and how he interacts with the team. He gave me a couple of brain teasers that reminded me of the kind of interview techniques I hear Microsoft uses. They provided me with a nice mental change of pace and gave him an opportunity to witness my problem-solving skills.

Byrne then took me to meet with Mena. It was about three and a half hours into the interview process that day and I was beginning to burn out. Thankfully, Mena insisted on me removing my tie and relaxing a bit - she even made me a cup of green tea. Her office had the most comfortable chairs on the premises and I immediately sank into one of them.

Mena wasn't really interested in my technical capabilities. She wanted to know more about me as a person, and gauge whether or not I'd fit in with the slightly off-the-wall Six Apart crowd. She surfed my Drupal blog and checked out my musical taste at last.fm. She'd mentioned her upcoming trip to Japan and I informed her of my fondness of Japanese culture and my desire to learn Japanese. I found that it's quite hard to sum yourself up into a few easily digestible nuggets of information and I probably ended up just seeming awkward in attempting to do so.

Mena took me to meet with Ben again. I recapped all the conversations I'd just had for him and then we discussed compensation packages and availability. He asked if I had any questions for him, but not having signed an NDA, I was unable to ask any questions that he'd be allowed to answer - so that concluded this round of interviews. Interesting fact: Ben's mobile phone has a Hello Kitty bangle on it - and if it's not Hello Kitty, then it might as well be. Grin.

Round Five: The Offer

What are you, nuts? I accepted it. Six Apart offers a competitive salary with great benefit plans available. My start date is the first of March. The interview process was the most rigorous one I've ever been through and lasted just over two months. There has been no talk of a "probationary" period - which I think the interview process was meant to nullify. They have a pretty good idea of my technical capabilities and shortcomings, and have been exposed to enough of my personality to make sure I'm not completely psychotic.

The Future

I'm a firm believer in eating your own dog food, so this TypePad blog will be seeing quite a bit more use in the months (and hopefully years) to come. I'm not sure if this will become the new ninjafish or not, or whether I'll be able to continue a development role on the drupal project - all that remains to be seen. In the meantime, I've got quite a lot of preparation ahead of me for the move and will likely be around a lot less. I'm still available via IM or email - ping me if you need someone whose good mood may be contagious.

TypeKey Pushing TypePad

(originally posted at crw.typepad.com)

Last month on ninjafish I mused about comment tracking. Through chats on #joiito, #suwcharman and IM, a number of people identified the need for an easy and transparent way for users to keep track of the comments they leave scattered throughout the blogosphere. This lead to pie-in-the-sky fantasies about everyone having a web space of their own and the current practice of commenting giving way strictly to trackback pings.

Naturally, with all this talk of commenting, thoughts eventually turned to TypeKey - Six Apart's centralized identity service for comment authentication. It dawned on me that 6A had a golden opportunity with TypeKey: they could use TypeKey to drive TypePad sales if they educated their users on the difference between comments and trackbacks.

If you go to the TypeKey site, however, you'll find no mention of other 6A products at all. I believe this to be because 6A would like to see mass-adoption of TypeKey across other blogging platforms to maximize its usefulness. Turning TypeKey into an advertisement for TypePad would be counterproductive to this goal.

Potentially Working for Six Apart

(originally posted at crw.typepad.com)

I've applied for the Software Engineer position at Six Apart.

This comes after two long months of stumping for a job in the defense industry in the DC area.  There, I was wooed by the promise of steady work at decent wages, with no chance of having my position outsourced.  The trade-off would be the potential of my work being immoral and possibly repetitive and boring (which I would consider immoral as well).  It quickly dawned on me that such work just wouldn't suit me.

Enter Six Apart.

While helping AKMA with an oddly-borked MT upgrade, I serendipitously found the job opening at 6A.  MT was the first blogging app I ran on my own hosted server, and I'd spent a good chunk of time testing it during the version 3 alpha and beta phases and playing with the new plugin architecture.  It's a good codebase surrounded by a great community - who wouldn't jump at the opportunity to get paid to hack on it?

I applied and soon found myself in contact with Ben Trott.  Ben and Mena have a reputation in the blogosphere as being a ridiculously cute couple and as such I find myself tempted to give in to a false sense of informality when chatting with or about them.  It's quite disconcerting and will probably only disappear once I actually get to know them.

After initial contact, Suw was kind enough to hook me up with a 90 day free trial for TypePad.  Luckily she was able to attach the TypePad account to my pre-existing TypeKey account - which at first glance seemed an entirely non-obvious process.  TypePad auto-imported my profile data from TypeKey and I was off - ready to explore!

breathing new life into...

(originally posted at pixeljuice.livejournal.com)

into nothing, really. i'm just testing out ecto with various web-based publishing platforms. i remembered i had this old livejournal account and wouldn't you know, it seems to still work.

go fig.

Nintendo's New Portable

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

The Register has an interesting story about what could be some leaked specs on the new Nintendo portable system - possibly dubbed the Nintendo Nitro.

It had been confirmed early on that this would be a double-screened device, which led me to question where the buttons would reside if it were a clamshell design.  The possibility of a tri-fold device dawned on me, but just didn't seem too likely.  The leaked document claims the device will have at least one touch screen.  This makes a whole lot of sense, but I'm not sold on whether it's a good idea.  Let's explore...

Nintendo's GameCube controller has one main "A" button and on diminutive "B" button which are the basis for most menu-driven game controls.  The "A" button (cleverly colored green) accepts a selected menu item and the "B" button (just as cleverly colored red) cancels selections or backs out of the menu.  During normal gameplay, these buttons (along with X/Y support buttons) take on a "virtual" quality - where their use is context-sensitive.  Their current context is usually displayed on the screen in the form of "A will now attack!" and the like.

Couple this with Nintendo's use of the GBA as an input device and support screen for some GameCube games.  In Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, the GBA is used as an extra menu system, but also shows maps and meta-data that you wouldn't normally have access to in the game.

So ask yourself, what lessons might Nintendo have learned from these experiences?

It sounds to me, that with the use of a touch-screen, Nintendo is looking to take input to a completely new level by making it completely virtual - an experience to be programmed by the game designers, not limited to the hardware.  You'd have a clamshell device with a main screen on one side and a support/input screen on the other.  This would allow developers to create input zones of arbitrary size and number, and at the same time use the input screen to display gameplay meta-data.  Sound neat, sound innovative?  You bet.

Here's the problem: people like the tactile sensation of mashing buttons with their fingers.  No, I don't have any evidence to back that up other than common sense and a myriad of gameplay hours since I was young.  What's more, with the GameCube's controller and virtual button setup, you could instantly pick up any GC game and almost instantly know which buttons do what.  If developers are allowed to go wild on interface design, that level of cohesion is lost.

Also in the specs are shockers like 802.11 and hardware-accelerated 3d graphics.  But those are side issues for me.  What's up with the touch screen, Nintendo?

iChat Wishlist

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

About a week and a half ago, Apple responded to my iChat feature requests.

First and foremost I asked them to support XMPP-Core now that it's an IETF proposed standard.  This would effectively make iChat a multi-protocol instant messaging application.  During development of the first rev of iChat, the developers used the Jabber protocols as a model while the biz-heads worked things out with AOL.  Here's a post iChat's history.

Secondly, I asked them to fix their implementation of buddy groups.  Currently they use a drawer with checkboxes for the displaying of buddy groups.  Most other clients on the market use a tree-view, folder-list metaphor.  With their innovative implementation, Apple "fixed" something that wasn't really broken to begin with.

They responded by calling both items "known issues."  Obviously the lack of XMPP support is "known" - as it was simply a design choice.  But calling the current state of the buddy group implementation a "known issue" really surprised me.  Either they didn't really read what I wrote, or they're admitting that they made a mistake.  Either way, I hope I don't have to wait until 10.4 for the next rev of iChat.

OS X Application Roundup

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

I've just finished updating my newly-serviced 15" Powerbook G4, and now I have the fun task of downloading the newest versions of my favorite applications.  Here's what makes my OS X experience so much fun:

• BBEdit (text editor for programming projects)
• Firefox (mozilla browser)
• iChat AV (latest beta does AIM vidchat)
• iPulse (graphical system monitor)
• iRoster (rendezvous browsing)
• iTerm (tabbed console/terminal)
• iWork (time-tracking and invoicing)
• MacStumbler (wifi detection)
• mplayer (does divx better than quicktime)
• NetNewsWire (rss/atom newsreader)
• OmniOutliner (mind-mapping, outlining)
• OmniWeb (innovative web browser)
• OSXPlanet (xplanet front-end)
• Psi (jabber client)
• SubEthaEdit (rendezvous-enabled text editor)
• Teleport (software kvm)
• Vim (for quick and dirty text edits)
• VideoLAN Client (yet another movie player)
• WeatherPop (menuling with local weather info)
• X-Chat Aqua (irc client)

I'm not linking to them right now because I plan on adding each of them as nodes to the wiki when it's up, that way I can document my usage.  If you want to find them, head on over to google and slap an "osx" after the application name.  Quite a list, eh?  Who says there's not enough software for the Mac platform?

iTunes Error

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

I ran out of RAM, the iMac crashed hard, and my iTunes Music Library file became corrupted and unusable.  I'm not a big stickler for application-specific metadata, but tune ratings are an important part of my iTunes/iPod experience.  A quick trip to google yielded this tip page, which is a bit dated but still valid.

What it boils down to is: if you have a valid .xml file but not an iTunes Music Library file, import the .xml file and you'll be fine.  If you've got a particularly large .xml file (mine's 16 megs!) it'll take quite a while to re-import.

On the one hand, it's a pain.  On the other, Apple could've easily kept the file format totally closed.  By choosing XML, they saved me quite a lot of time and effort.

Quickies

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

iPulse upgrades to 2.0.2

Unannounced iSight update to 1.0.2

Zengobi announces a sketchboard app Curio, which looks nice in theory but not something I could find much use for... at least not until Apple releases a tablet...

MacXWare announces LogoCreator - which I could've used just a week or two ago.

Teleport

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

This Teleport software is amazingly useful.  It allows you to control two Macs with one keyboard and mouse entirely through software.  It even has Rendezvous discovery for quick and painless configuration.

First come across a month or so ago over at the tao of mac, I found a review over at macosxhints and decided to give it a whirl.

Installation was easy, just drag the supplied .prefPane file to a PreferencePanes folder either in /Library or ~/Library (depending on if you want all users on the computer to have access to it).  It took two minutes to configure and to my surprise and delight even required authentication when connecting the two machines for the first time.

This is fantastic for me, because it allows me to clear up the clutter of a keyboard/mouse on my work table.  I've got a large table with a Powerbook dead-center, an iMac just left-of-center, a television to the right and peripherals to the left.  This doesn't leave much room for open books or half-full diet coke cans.

Now my table has some free space and I can control my iMac simply by "throwing" my cursor off the left-edge of my Powerbook.  Once I'm better-equipped, I may need to switch to osx2x which has similar functionality, but also lets you control machines with VNC and/or X server running on them.  Hot stuff.

Firefox 0.8

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

By now you've heard that Firebird has been renamed Firefox and a 0.8 release has been, well, released.  Here are a few first impressions for the OS X user:

• Startup time is not noticeably faster than Firebird 0.7, but it is noticeably slower than Safari 1.2.
• Yes, you still get that tiny phantom window when you use Apple's Expose feature.
• Woohoo! They've included DOM Inspector, I now have no reason to have the full version of Mozilla installed.
• Yes, the new Pinstripe theme is that cool.
• OS X hotkeys like cmd-m to minimize and shift-cmd-left/right to switch tabs still do not work.  Bummer.
• about:plugins shows they're still working with Java 1.3.1, so still no Newsmonster support.  Argh.

Enough to get me to switch?  I dunno.  It's tempting to want to use a cross-platform browser, but I'm really only using one platform on the desktop these days anyway.

AppleScript and Airport

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

The goal was simple, create an AppleScript to automate some of my daily functions - but only to do so when joined to a specific wireless network, and over a specific signal level.

As a newbie to AppleScript, I tooled around in Script Editor for a while and tried opening different dictionaries. I got online and searched through Apple's knowledge base, versiontracker, macosxhints, all the usual places and only came to find references to "Airport Scripting Application" - which appeared to be an AppleScript library to allow you to interface with Airport. The library was bundled with Airport software version 1.3. The current version is 3.2 and the library is no longer included (I braved the download and checked the manifest).

All was not lost, however, it only took a few minutes in #joiito to learn that the functionality was bundled into the new Internet Connect application, and that I should be checking out the associated dictionary - which I did. It's got everything I need, now it's only a matter of writing the script I want.

BBEdit Discovery

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

It started when I wanted to create a User Friendly plugin for iComic.

iComic has an "open architecture, supporting plugins written in perl." Neat. So I found one of my plugins in ~/Library/iComic/Plugins and dragged it to TextEdit. No dice, didn't open. Odd, I thought, the plugin should just be perl. So I dragged it to BBEdit, which launched a type of window I hadn't yet seen - the Disk Browser. Come to find out, the plugins are more like application packages.

Disk Browser mode is a two-pane window with file navigation on the top and text editing on the bottom. Looks great for switching back and forth between resources and property lists. Neat.

Debugging Feeds Apps

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Turns out there were three sites that were the problem. One site has a bump php script that yields an XML parser error instead of the expected RSS and two sites had invalid RSS by not specifying the DOCTYPE, thus creating undefined entities.

I've culled them from the database, and hopefully cron will rest easy this evening.

Evolution and RSS Feeds

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

While reading an article yesterday about what UserLinux might look like, I learned that Ximian's Evolution now does RSS aggregation on its Summary page. Neat.

As Evolution 1.4 comes standard in the Fedora Core 1 Personal Desktop Installation, I decided to give the feature a whirl. To find it, you have to be at the Summary page and click Tools, then Settings, then select the News Feeds tab. Simple enough.

The most immediate feature lacking was the ability to import OPML files, which is important when you've got a lot of subscriptions... which brings me to the next downfall: the feature doesn't scale well. As evidenced by Ximian's screenshot of the summary page, the formatting and display of the feeds takes up quite a lot of screen real estate. Most RSS aggregation software uses a 2 or 3-pane view for a reason. If I wanted one long list of news feeds, I'd find a way for php to parse opml and collect the news items for display on a webpage.

Which brings me to the third and most important point regarding Evolution and RSS aggregation. RSS is a technology more closely tied to browsing than to e-mail. So why isn't RSS aggregation built into the browser?

Web Services

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

• Google AdSense
• Amazon Web Services

I've signed up for both of these services and will be exploring what they have to offer over the course of the next several weeks. I'm looking for Amazon to supersede the functionality of AllConsuming.

So far, Google AdSense has been wonderfully straight-forward and simple to use. After signing up you're re-directed to a page that helps you pick a color and layout scheme and generates the code for you to paste into your website. Once that's done, you simply wait until Google crawls your site and associates links suitable to your content.

On the MT front, I'll be looking at the blogroll plugin which would do away with the blogrolling account... as well as considering writing a custom plugin to link MT with PhpWiki either automatically or via a custom tag such as <$MTWikiLink$>.

Quickies

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

• gillmor on data mobility
• search engine decoder
• cranky old man hates bill gates

I skimmed Gillmor's column and it reminded me of an idea I had for a next-gen automobile cockpit UI. The car would receive speed limit data as it travels and the speedometer would glow green if you were obeying the speed limit or red if you were over the speed limit. A lot of the data presented by roadside signs could be broadcast directly to the car and displayed according to the driver's preference.

The future won't come fast enough.

Removing Smilies from iChat AV

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

This one comes courtesy of dkp, but since he's being stubborn about posting to his blog, it has to appear here.

Find the file SmileyTable.plist nested way down in your /System/Library folder and rename it to SmileyTable.plist.bak

This will prevent iChat AV from rendering the smilies with images and will instead render them using text.

Because your change affects the entire system, you'll need to go into the Terminal and use sudo to mv the file. To undo the change, simply apply the instructions in reverse.

Simple.

Feeds

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Based on ~stevenf's post RSS to Web, I've finally gotten around to building a page of the feeds I read daily.

In the comments section of his post, to which I've posted, I found a link to Feed on Feeds, a fully-featured php/mysql aggregator application. In fact, it was so fully-featured, I wasn't comfortable using it for a public feeds page!

However, I was also able to find in his comments a link to Magpie RSS, a php-rss parser. With it and Feed on Feeds, I was able to hack together a rudimentary page to be updated hourly by cron.

Not too shabby for half a day's work, though I'm just told by Brent that the CSS isn't rendering properly in IE. Now there's a surprise. Gah.

Update: IE now renders it decently, at the expense of the other browsers - but the compromise was minimal. Also; I'd be remiss to not mention the other inspiration for the site, and that's Brendyn Alexander's RSS roll for the #joiito IRC channel.

Quickies

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

This is a quick article on what happens when you sit users down with operating systems they aren't familiar with. Naturally, the Windows user doesn't fully understand the power of the underpinnings of OS X.

This is in the same vein as the Ars article on Panther, but it touches on more of the little things that makes Panther awesome.

New Front-End, New Back-End

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Well, not entirely.

The front-end is new, the back-end isn't quite ready yet, but you can check it out here. I've gotten PhpWiki up and running, now I just need to hack it into submission.

I've mixed feelings about the new design. I disliked having everything hidden, but it looks a bit busy with everything showing. We'll see how it weathers the test of time.

Ars does Panther

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

This is a fantastic, in-depth look at Apple's OS X 10.3 (Panther).

The most interesting bits to me were...

• packaging/marketing of 10.1 v. 10.2 v. 10.3
• the mini-widget set
• the brushed-metal usage guidelines
• nested tab-area views
• OS upgrades make the system faster*
• the history of window management
• hitting tab while in expose-mode

* - really fascinating, this bit was. Especially in light of my recent hardware inadequacies. In the world of Windows and Linux, we've come to expect a performance hit with each new version if the hardware stayed the same. That OS X has turned that around completely is something that I quite simply took for granted.

Fedora Core 1

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Downloading this was a pain. I eventually gave up on all the US mirrors and found a server in the UK that was blazingly fast.

Installation went largely without a hitch. The first time I tried to install, I skipped the disc verification. This crashed the installer program and I needed to reboot. The second time I tried to install, I went through the disc verification process and everything proceeded smoothly.

I noticed that beside looking prettier, the installer still couldn't find my ThinkPad (A21p) monitor. That didn't stop it from loading suitable drivers enabling 1600x1200 full-color display. Also curious was in the Personal Desktop installation, samba isn't selected by default.

During the final stages of installation, I chose eth1 (my orinocco card) as my default connection. This was a mistake, though not a drastic one. During the first boot of the new installation the network wasn't located because the pcmcia drivers hadn't been loaded yet!

Once I booted into Fedora, everything was going, well, not smoothly. Rather choppily in fact. Turns out 128 isn't the magic RAM number. Not surprising, I suppose. I checked pricewatch.com and RAM looked dirt cheap. Of course, the kind of RAM I need for the ThinkPad (144-pin, 64-bit SDRAM in SODIMM form running at 100mhz) tops out at 256mb per SODIMM - which means I can only have 512 total. What's more, IBM wants $150 per SODIMM. Three hundred bucks is a good chunk of what a decent new laptop would cost. So I'm faced with the question of when to upgrade versus when to buy-new. CDW has similar SODIMMs for just under a hundred, so I may just get one to see if it speeds things up.

Apart from that unpleasantness, I was pleased to find Evolution 1.4 to provide suitable enhancement over whatever version came with RedHat 9. With my previous experience, setting up Firebird and NewsMonster was a snap.

We'll see how an infusion of RAM helps the situation. As I've just told Scotty, Fedora is almost enough to get me to switch from OSX - but not quite.

Spam and MT Plugins

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

In my last post, I received my first blog comment-spam!

I've been hearing about the current spam epidemic in the blogosphere, but as I don't ping any of the major sites and don't really advertise myself (yet), I haven't had many hits and consequently, not much spam. In fact, I wasn't quite sure at first - based on the content - whether it was really spam or someone just being an idiot. It was solicitous in nature, pointing to an angelfire webpage, posted with a fake email address from what looks to be a modem pool IP. So it's spam.

This gave me the perfect excuse to mess around with MT plugins. I quite easily found and installed Jay Allen's MT-Blacklist plugin. Installation was as easy as extracting the files from the archive, moving them to the right places, giving them the proper permissions and downloading the latest spammer list. I did find a quick bug in the CGI that I emailed Jay about - he inadvertently left a localized link in the documentation.

Recent plugin success aside, I've not found many other MT plugins that would easily replicate the functionality I'd gain using phpwiki, so I'm going to continue exploring that option as a back-end for this technical log.

As for the spam itself, I've decided to keep it for posterity. However, if keeping it means more spam, I'll nuke it in a nanosecond.

PhpWiki

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

It took a short while, but I've finally gotten PhpWiki up and running on my laptop under Panther.

The pre-requisites were PHP and MySQL, which were easy enough via installable packages.

Once I got phpwiki installed - which was as simple as dragging the folder into my ~/Sites directory - things got a little trickier. Launching index.php in my browser yielded nothing at all.

This gave me a good opportunity to check out Apple's latest version of Console - a log viewer. They seem to have added a tree-view pane to quickly jump between logs. My httpd/error_log showed quite a few errors, luckily all but one were from the same bug.

As I found out searching through phpwiki's known bugs, newer versionf of PHP have deprecated call-time pass-by-references - so the code in a few of phpwiki's .php files needed to be slightly altered. Annoying, but no big deal.

The next error was a bad function call to dba_open, which I later found referenced in TFM. Turns out some installations get this by default if they don't pre-configure database support. I had wanted to test out phpwiki with flat-files first, but it wasn't really important so I created my database, installed the schema, and updated my index.php. Voila, it worked.

All that and a cat sleeping in my lap. Sometimes life is good. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get some time to mess raound and see what phpwiki can do.

Webalizer Fix

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

I've recently noticed that my Webalizer results have been drastically skewed due to the MT back-end and how much I've been using it. I've altered the Webalizer config to ignore blog* for both this site and ninjafish.

Update: I've added a link to my webalizer results in the Site Info side panel. I'm also playing with MT's entry Excerpt for Scotty to see how it displays in my feed.

Finishing the Site

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Tonight I fleshed out the rest of the MT templates. I fixed the CSS on the individual entries, the comment popups, comment preview, comment error, master archive index (which is now linked in the side panel), category indexes, and date-based indexes. Phew.

So that should do it, you won't have to be afraid to leave comments now. Tomorrow I'll do the same for ninjafish.

NewsMonster on Linux

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Well, it works. I needed to install java and manually register the plugin with Mozilla, but it works. The good news is that it works, and it's pretty damn cool. The bad news is that the java plugin slows the launching of Mozilla way down.

What's worse is that registering the java plugin causes Firebird not to launch at all. This tek-tips thread explains the problem and gives a quick solution - don't register the java plugin with Firebird. I think the issue may be that I registered the plugin with Firebird in the same way I did with Mozilla. I'll look into the proper way of registering it.

NewsMonster itself is great. It's got the familiar 3-pane interface and has the neat "website filters" feature - which grabs headlines and thumbnailed screenshots of non-RSS-enabled sites like CNN. The news items themselves are rendered with a standard stylesheet, but the right-click context menu is that of Mozilla, which allows me to open links in a new tab right from the aggregator. Very cool, exactly what I was looking for. It also allowed me to import my .opml from NetNewsWire, however it didn't leave my folders in tact. But again, it's slow but I think the biggest issue is that I'm running RedHat 9 on an 800mhz laptop with 128mb of ram - so things are bound to be slow.

Update: Turns out I was registering the wrong Java plugin with Firebird. The Java plugin and the Firebird browser need to be compiled with the same version of gcc - in my case, 3.2. Using Firebird makes NewsMonster a bit quicker, but overall it's still crawling along (which again, is probably just the system). I can't wait until Apple and Mozilla get their problems sorted out so I can start using this software day-to-day.

NewsMonster, Mozilla Woes

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Wow, this one's a doozy.

It all started when I wanted a quick and easy news aggregator for Linux. Mozilla comes standard, so NewsMonster seemed a logical fit. I've always thought that rss/rdf news aggregation was a natural extension of browsing. After using NetNewsWire for quite a while, I've decided that switching back and forth between aggregator and browser was a bit tedious. I even went so far as to submit a feature request to Apple for aggregator functionality in Safari (yeah, right).

Yet I digress, NewsMonster didn't work. This, I later found to be my own fault in not checking dependencies before installing - so NewsMonster may still be an option under Linux. Before finding that out, however, I decided to try installing Mozilla + NewsMonster under OSX. Hey, cross-platform is cross-platform, right?

Well, it didn't work either, for an entirely different and much more diabolical reason. What I missed was that NewsMonster requires Java 1.4, which comes standard in Panther. I checked Mozilla's about:plugins, and it told me I was only using 1.3.1. What gives?

Heading on over to mozdev, I thought I might find a way to upgrade to a new Java plugin. A quick search yielded the plugin support matrix, where I discovered an open bug on the plugin issue. The bug has been open for over 6 months - not reassuring in the least.

Turns out, Apple had ported Java 1.3.1 and 1.4.1, but hasn't documented what the Mozilla developers need to implement support for 1.4.1. So Mozilla stands on OS X, at version 1.5, with Java lingering at 1.3.1. Harsh.

What's a geek to do? Well, as luck would have it, the NewsMonster developer (Kevin Burton/burtonator) hangs out in #joiito - but with my luck, he wasn't online at the time. I was, however, able to find his screenname on a newsmonster-list post and we had a quick chat where he acknowledged Apple's complicity in the Mozilla issue. He's a nice guy and surprisingly accessible.

So until this all gets fixed, the OSX browser/aggregator remains unattainable.

Widescreen NetNewsWire Hack

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

I've just implemented this hack which will move the preview pane of NetNewsWire to the right, giving it a widescreen effect. This just makes sense for widescreen LCD's.

I found this via The Tao of Mac, which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite technical web spaces. The author uses a wiki to blog, which is something for me to look into.

Canceling EMusic

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

I just cancelled my EMusic account. Basically, the company was bought out and they decided all-you-can-download accounts weren't helping their bottom line. I received an email notifying me that for the low, low price of $10/mo I could have up to 40 downloads per month, with a bump to 300 downloads for $50/mo.

Ah, thank you, I haven't laughed that hard since I was a little girl.

So over the past few weeks I've bled EMusic dry, downloading as much of the good stuff as I could. I fleshed out my collection from the Emperor Norton label, also beefing up my selection of jazz.

MBOX, MSF, Mozilla and Evolution

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

It seems that all I needed was to sleep on it and then research the .msf issue. This link proved invaluable, as it bridged the knowledge gap I was suffering.

Turns out, .msf are mail summary files and that Mozilla does indeed still use the .mbox format. It simply doesn't append the .mbox extension to the end of the files it uses. For some reason, this was tripping me up in the Evolution-import process yesterday. Today it's not. Lovely.

Evolution only allows one import at a time, which, quite disappointingly mimics Outlook's limitations. The next challenge will be to figure out NewsMonster's issues, as my linux-on-the-desktop experiment continues.

Fink 0.6.1

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Fink 0.6.1 is now available with Panther support. I've got it installed and am now installing gimp to test out the integration with Apple's X11.

Mail Blues

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Well, I'm giving up for the night. Wrapping things up...

I started with .pst files on cd (well under the 2gb limit) and the goal was to import the .pst files into Evolution. The first obstacle was that Evolution simply wouldn't import the files. My prior post listed the options given to me by Ximian's support center and a quick google search - and they basically told me to get Mozilla or Netscape. That route had problems as well and I had to scrounge to find a Windows box with Outlook still on it.

Then began the arduous process of re-importing my .pst files one-by-one, because importing multiple files would've been too intelligent for some Redmond engineers to handle. Sigh. Once they were all imported into Outlook, I got to import the folders and messages into Mozilla - which intelligently enough, imported them all at once. Unfortunately, that's where Mozilla's intelligence ended. Instead of the .mbox format of previous versions, the latest version (1.5) stored the mail in .msf format - which Evolution can't import. Yuck.

So tomorrow I'll be reverting to an earlier version of Mozilla and starting the process all over again - simply because Microsoft hasn't learned its lesson regarding proprietary data formats, and the world hasn't learned its lesson regarding Microsoft. I need to research this new .msf format and find out why in the world Mozilla made the switch.

Interestingly enough, Apple's Mail.app uses the .mbox format. If i were switching from that, it'd be easy.

Website Syndication

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

A little late on this particular bandwagon, but I've finally signed up over at blogrolling.com. A new side panel has been added for my "techroll" - that is, the technical sites that I frequent and subscribe to via NetNewsWire.

Blogrolling has some nice include options - I'm using javascript, but that may change if this site ever goes php. I was also able to populate my first blogroll with an exported .opml file from NetNewsWire.

I've also installed NewsMonster on my linux-on-the-desktop box, err, laptop... though it doesn't appear to be working quite yet. I'll dig a little deeper later. Right now my mail filter process is just about done and I'm itching to see if I can get this stuff into Evolution.

Mail Fun(k)

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

The goal was simple, import my old Outlook .pst files into Ximian Evolution. It's a sort of Outlook clone, y'see. This should be simple, nay?

Evolution itself wouldn't import the .pst files, so I hit google in search of an answer. Word on the net says Netscape or Mozilla can handle these imports. No sweat, I say, Mozilla comes standard with RH and I'm all up-to-date with my patches. Let 'er rip. Nope. Won't work either. So I download Netscape - which believe it or not is up to version 7.1 now. Besides needing to use a netscape.net/AIM-network login to launch the app, it won't import the .pst either. Egads.

It seems there's no way to import a .pst into Evolution without quite a hassle. There's LibPST, but that seems like quite a hack and was last updated about a year ago. My other options restrict me to using a Windows machine - and they are Outport or Mozilla for windows. Why on earth Mozilla for Windows would allow you to import .pst's and Mozilla for linux would not, is beyond me.

Luckily, I brought two projects to entertain myself with tonight. The mail can wait, the really fun stuff is .opml, RSS feeds and php. Woo.

Panther Installation

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Panther came yesterday, so I backed up the data in my home dir on my laptop and installed it. The whole process took just over an hour and went without a hitch.

When reading the following, please keep in mind that the installation is being performed on an 800mhz Powerbook with a 1mb L3 cache and 512mb of RAM. Here's the breakdown:

Minutes/Action

• 1-15: 12+ gigs of home dir being backed up to firewire drive
• 16-33: Reboot, begin installation - skipping disc verification, I choose to erase and install from scratch.
• 33: Disc 1 prompts a reboot, finishes installing and asks for disc 2
• 33-48: Disc 2 goes through its installation process and finishes successfully
• 48-53: User interaction begins. I'm prompted to create a user, fill out product registration information, set up a network connection, and enter Mail configuration.
• 53: Finder launches for the first time and software update immediately launches itself.
• 53-58: Software update installs new iPod software, iSync 1.3, iTunes 4.1, and Security Update 2003-10-28 (which requires a restart). While this process is running, I begin to clean up my dock.
• 60-66: Disc 3 installation begins. I have chosen to install X11 and the additional fonts (as I can barely read some Arabic) - but not the additional drivers for ancient printers. While this process is running, I begin to explore the System Preferences and start personalizing my OS X experience.
• 66-79: I begin the XCode disc installation with the default settings. I continue to tinker with my System Prefs. Oddly enough, when I try to turn on FileVault it prompts me to log out and log back in - but the Installer cancels the logout request automatically and prompts me to tell me I'm an idiot. I shrug and let it finish.
• 80: Fully up-to-date, usable, Panther installation on my laptop. Hooray!

So there you have it. It takes an hour and twenty minutes to get Panther installed from scratch. Figure another half-hour or so of meticulously going through my backed up ~/Library to selectively restore preferences for applications like Safari, iCal, iChat, NetNewsWire and my Keychain... but while I'm doing that I can be installing Panther on my iMac.

Webalizer

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Today I got a localized copy of webalizer up and running on the web server.

I ran into a snag when the webalizer binary couldn't find libgd.so.2 even though I had compiled it with the --with-gdlib and --with-gd flags to point to the proper directory. With some minor messing about, it was quickly resolved by re-configuring with a new --prefix set. It's important to note that this snag was simply a result of my trying to install webalizer and gd into my $HOME dir instead of their rightful places in the system. Such are the constraints of not running your own server. :)

A few config files later and all three of my websites have usage statistics for the month of October. All that's left to do is set up and hourly cron to run the script for each of the sites using their respective config files. To be honest, I had no idea I had so many readers - and the search strings that found me are rather funny. Perhaps I'll compile a list of them.

Quick Change

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

I changed the CSS for the side menus because bolded links were beginning to wear on me. I've also changed the archive link format and added a list of categories.

I'm considering adding Google search results for the topics I blog about. It's a neat way to use the API, on the other hand, you're all perfectly capable of googling things yourself. Anyone have any thoughts?

RedHat 9.0 for the Desktop User

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Tonight in a fit of misguided geekdom, I resurrected my old ThinkPad, which had been kicking around my room. I didn't expect it to fully boot, but when it did, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity. With Panther on its way and my Yellow Dog installation a fun success, I felt it necessary to try out RedHat's desktop experience.

While I suffered none of the installation issues I had the other night with YDL, the ThinkPad doesn't seem as responsive as the iMac, which is odd since they're similarly spec'd. A pleasant surprise came when my Lucent Orinocco card was found and easily configured for wireless access.

With YDL using KDE, I chose Gnome for my RedHat installation, and I have to say I still like Gnome better. Maybe it's the fish.

Mozilla Firebird 0.7.1

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

I haven't used a Mozilla product in a while, but was prompted to do so today with the news of 0.7.1's release for Panther compatibility. It doesn't launch quite as fast as Safari, but once it's going navigation seems to be just as fast. Page rendering, however, is a tad slower.

Even though Firebird is a lightweight version of Mozilla, it still sports more features than Safari. If not for the speed issue, it'd be a toss-up as to which would become my primary browser.

Yellow Dog Linux

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

I'm typing this from Konqueror in YDL 3.0. There were some initial problems with Monitor detection and Screen configuration in the XF86Config file. Trolling around the ydl-lists I found the correct configuration and got myself up and running.

I was pleased when my XHTML standards-driven sites rendered properly. I was also pleased to find MT working smoothly.

After a celebratory bottle of root beer, I'll begin to tool around with my first Linux-on-the-desktop environment for the PPC.

Yellow Dog Linux & a Rebuilt Server

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Now that my legit copy of Panther has shipped I'm feeling the urge to explore new horizons. To that end I've begun a download of Yellow Dog Linux to run on my iMac. It looks neat, I just hope it doesn't destroy anything.

Meanwhile, I've built another server since the HD in my PowerEdge died. It's got RedHat 9 and I've begun configuring Apache, Jabber, PostgreSQL and MySQL. I'm also copying my backups from HQ over in order to build a repository of code. I've been given a verbal all-clear to display generic versions of the code I wrote for HQ on my site, so hopefully that'll give me something productive to do and maybe help in the search for finding the right job.

In My Dock

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Almost a month ago a craze swept the blog world, but I was too busy to take part. Rabid Mac users posted screenshots of their docks and explained what they have in them. I won't waste time with a screenshot, but my dock contains:

Finder, System Preferences, OtherTime, iPulse, iSync, Activity Monitor, iTerm, X11, VNCThing, iCal, AddressBook, Mail, Safari, NewNewsWire Lite, iChat, Psi, Fire, X-Chat Aqua, Sherlock, BBEdit, Stickies, TextEdit, Preview, Quicktime, iTunes

I order mine roughly by function. Since the new version of iPulse (of which I use the Tron.2 jacket), I've been keeping the iPulse window on my desktop and keeping the icon from rendering the changes in the dock.

Kilogram Scale

(originally posted at ninjafish.org)

As happens so often this late at night, I've just had a relatively mundane eureka moment.

As I stared down at the nutrition information on a package of fake hot dogs, I realized the fat, protein, and all the rest of the good stuff was measured using the metric system.  Whereas I, like any good American, measure myself in pounds.

So rather than bother with unit conversions, I've decided to start keeping track of my weight using the metric system.  It should help me get a better grasp of the actual amounts I'm ingesting.

I just wanted to remind myself to find an appropriate scale.

Wong Kar-Wai

(originally posted at ninjafish.org)

Julie and I have just finished watching Wong Kar-Wai's film Fallen Angels for the first time as a couple.  I first caught this flick late one night on IMC back when I was living in Murray Hill.

What initially drew me to the film was the blend of "kaleidoscopic" color, cinematography and the amazing soundtrack.  The fact that it was filmed in an urban asian locale (Hong Kong, which I had initially mistaken for Tokyo) was also a plus.

Jules loved the execution of the film and is looking forward to experiencing both the works that came before and after Fallen Angels.  As I've never seen anything else from this director, I'm quite intrigued as well.

(actually this entry was posted by jules and i together)

Minor Crisis

(originally posted at ninjafish.org)

Nothing dreadfully serious, but Julie and I may be offline for the next few days.

Dell and the iPod Generations

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

stevenf has a great rant about Dell's iPod-clone (DellPod?) and online music store. I was quite taken aback to see the similarities between the iPod and the Dell Digital Jukebox. Shameless.

While Scotty awaits the delivery of his new 3rd-gen iPod, we briefly discussed the pros and cons of the connector design. The 2nd-gen iPod that I've used for almost a year now has a standard firewire port. This allows me to lose firewire cables at my leisure and replace them with a cheapy from the local Radio Shack. It also avails me the option of toting multiple firewire devices and only stowing a single cable.

The 3rd-gen iPod uses an icky Apple-proprietary connector between the iPod and the dock. This ickyness can almost be overlooked by the practical application is provides. The dock can then connect via USB or firewire. So, no more Windows- or Apple-only devices. This undoubtedly makes business-sense for Apple, but... icky.

Still, with my 20gb iPod maxed out, the 3rd-gen devices are mighty attractive for their disk space.

Panther Build 7B74

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

This one came in on 3 discs. The first disc was, again, the system disc. I decided to upgrade my 7B68 installation instead of installing fresh. The installation prompted me for the second disc, but errored out nicely when I didn't provide it.

After the first reboot, I was presented with the newly-styled Apply logo at the login prompt. I then installed the third disc (skipping the second for now, as it would only have applications on it) which, alas, did not include XCode. However, it did include an X11 with true GUI-system integration. Very slick.

On to disc two, which actually included the new versions of iCal (1.5) and iSync (1.2) which are rumored to be days away for release on 10.2 systems. I got to play with the new iCal for a bit and think the improvements make it much more usable. I'll blog a bit later about the specific improvements, when I actually have it in front of me. I did not get to play with iSync, since my iMac is not my production machine and has no AddressBook entries, iCal calendars, or Safari bookmarks. Come to think of it, I don't have any mail accounts set up on it either, which means I haven't had a chance to play with the new version of the Mail client. I'll have to look into that.

Panther Build 7B68

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Much much much better than the alpha that was released at Apple's 2003 WWDC. Here's a list of what I've found in the first two hours of playing:

• The system itself is both more stable and more responsive.
• The new DVD player seems to lack the memory leak of the old one.
• The new Finder has a less-buggy implementation of the column view.
• The Accounts prefpane now has user limitations implemented.
• The Simple Finder limitation for Guest users is pretty slick.
• Fast-user switching is, well, faster.
• Default bash shell.
• echo $SHELL /bin/bash
• Expose's desktop feature doesn't completely hide open windows.
• The new Activity Monitor has a process filter and is more usable in general.

Phew. Fantastic. I can't wait until they release this to the general public.

BitTorrent

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

BitTorrent has some flaws, but what p2p app doesn't?

I was exposed to trackers and seeds and .torrent files and all sorts of oddities while trying to figure out how to get what I wanted.

A tracker is a service (web, app) provided by a server to categorize and keep track of the seeds that people are offering, the number of current downloads, and meta-data of that variety.

A seed is a file-for-offering. The first time a specific file is made available via the server, a hash is made. When people complete a download of the file, a checksum is run against the original seed's hash to validate the download.

To download a file, you'll need its .torrent - which is a pointer back to the BitTorrent server which brokers a connection with users who have what you need. As you download the file, you're also uploading the same file to others as brokered by the server. This is the first problem I encountered.

I don't mind sharing, but the issue is that the download turns into a pyramid scheme. There's a broad base of users who have some of the file, but only a few users who have all of it. Therefore, the beginning of your download is pretty snappy - but the more you download, the fewer the sources you can download from and the slower your download goes.

For a whole day and a half I was stuck at 94.8% of my file download waiting for someone to come online who had the last 5.2% of the file. Such aggravation!

The next drawback is that you just can't be sure of the validity of the file you're downloading. Just because the checksum against the original seed passes, doesn't mean you'll have downloaded any meaningful data. This isn't a BitTorrent-specific problem, but it's one I encountered when the installation disc I burned from the .dmg I downloaded didn't pass its internal validation process - which, luckily for me, was a skippable step of the installation.

What have I learned? Depending on what you want, it may be difficult to find trackers. Once you've found the right tracker, you still can't be sure you're getting what you want.

P2P user: "I also like to live dangerously."

Yesterday's Adventures

(originally posted at ninjafish.org)

Yesterday was an interesting day.

Julie had a "girl's night out" with some of her friends at a festival in the city.  I stayed at her place for a bit and hung out with her mom and sisters.  Her mom beat me at Scrabble, again, and I watched the first two Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy episodes with her sisters.

Later on, Cory and I ended up watching Dead Man, a strange black and white film starring Johnny Depp as an accountant accused of a double-murder out on the western frontier.  I won't stoop to call Depp's performance "quirky," but he plays an odd character in an intriguing way.  The movie had plenty of hilarious moments, but the most striking thing was the feeling that it portrayed life in the American West much more realistically than your average Hollywood western.

After a few games of billiards, and a few rounds of Soul Calibur 2, Cory took off and I headed upstairs to check my various downloads.  I was pleased and confused to find my download of Cornelius' new PM album showing up in my "uploads" pane - when it didn't even show as being finished in the "downloads" pane.  Lo and behold, I had a complete copy of it that never registered as being downloaded.  Twilight zone.  It's an interesting album, but definitely not easy-listening Cornelius-style.  The best bit was when I went to cornelius-sound.com and found the flash link.  My favorite little game is the lightning-bug one - I spent a good 15 minutes making music with Cornelius.  What a great time.

I went to sleep and woke up to a completed Panther 7B68 build download, well, CD1 of it at least.

Radiohead Rorschach

(originally posted at ninjafish.org)

It is no longer possible to have an original opinion on Radiohead, or so this article claims.

Someone subjected fifth-graders to Radiohead music and had them draw out what the music invoked in them.  Some of them are quite interesting, but what interested me most was the lack of color.  Eleven out of eleven pictures were done in black-and-white, which seems to indicate the children weren't given color media to use in the task.  Wonder why...

Safari's Auto-Tab

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Here's a Safari feature that I just ran across today that has a very slick implementation. It's called Auto-Tab, and you can turn it on inside the Bookmarks pane.

Basically what it does is take a sub-folder of your Bookmarks Bar and turns it into a button instead of a context-menu in the bar itself. Normally the sub-folders of the Bookmarks Bar are displayed with a down-arrow to the right of them, indicating that if you click-and-hold, you'll get a menu of the items in the sub-folder. Auto-tabbing turns the down-arrow into a square, and changes the functionality from a menu to a button. Pressing the button loads all of the items inside the sub-folder in tabs of the current window.

So what? Mozilla does bookmark groups, too. Indeed, but the implementation is simply less polished.

I'm now using a mix of sub-folders and auto-tabbed folders in my Bookmarks Bar.

Quick and Easy

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

With the experience gained from setting up ninjafish, it was quick and easy to rebuild the MT installation for this site.

I've created category archives, and re-done the archival structure of individual and monthly entries. I'm sure there'll be some CSS kinks to work out, but I'll deal with them as I find them.

Testing New Blog Layout

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

This is a test of the emergency blog-redesign system. If this were an actual redesign, sirens would be going off.

Stereolab's New EP, Site Update

(originally posted at ninjafish.org)

It's called Instant 0 in the Universe.

It comes out the day before Naqoyqatsi, and there are RealAudio files on their website for a nice preview of what's to come.  I listened to them all today, which was quite a welcome break from the hectic household.

Yes, today we found the betta fish on google and photoshopped it together and added it to the site.  It took me quite a while to find the picture of the waves at the bottom of the side bar, but once I did, it was pretty easy to implement.  And yes, Microsoft's IE gave me issues when implementing standards-based CSS.  The bastards.

Site Update

(originally posted at ninjafish.org)

Where to begin?

First, I exported all the entries from bigbadgeek and imported them to ninjafish.  Then I culled the ones related to technology or my tech-studies.  Later, I'll need to cull the non-tech entries from bigbadgeek.  Then I went through the remaining entries and categorized them, creating new categories as I went.

Then I went through the MT config, got Google searching working and chose a Creative Commons license for the site.  I chose the ShareAlike license, which means I'm withholding rights from anyone who won't share their derivative works in a similar fashion.  BTW, very cool of Six Apart to include built-in CC licenses with MT.

Still need to show Julie how this all works so she can start posting.

Testing Kung-Log

(originally posted at ninjafish.org)

Just testing Kung-Log with the Ninjafish installation.  I'm hoping that the archival system works with KL, I can't see why it wouldn't.  I still have XHTML/CSS validating to do.

Timing

(originally posted at ninjafish.org)

You were off by just a bit, dear.  I had leftovers around 4:30, just finishing now.

This evening I've been playing Soul Calibur 2 on the GameCube.  Fun, fun, fun.  I've unlocked all but one character, but I've got quite a ways to go.  I've left three high-level dungeons for tomorrow, and then I simply must catch up on my chores/studies.

I've also got to move the MT entries over and put up a "reconstructing" sign on bigbadgeek.

But now that I'm dozing off, I'm not really in the mood for either of the Qatsi movies - but I did find out that Naqoyqatsi is being released on October 14th.  Let's mark our calendar!

I'm putting AYBS? in and drifting off to sleep.  G'night.

New Archival System

(originally posted at ninjafish.org)

Thanks in no small part to Joi Ito, I've set ninjafish up with a better way of archiving our entries.  Granted, he basically told me to RTFM, but he did it in a genuinely nice way, and that's what really matters, isn't it?

For the record the string I'm using for the individual entries is:

<$MTArchiveDate format="%Y/%m/%d"$>/<$MTEntryTitle dirify="1"$>

Pretty neat, I think.  Now that I've tinkered a bit more with MT 2.64, I'm thinking of adding a Creative Commons license and replacing my standard MT search with a Google search via the Google API.  It's about time I put that dev key to some use, I figure.

Third Test Entry

(originally posted at ninjafish.org)

Alright, just about everything seems to be up and running for the main page.  I've created a new user because MT has silly ways of dealing with user information and I didn't feel like going through the db and updating what needed updating.

I'm still going to be screwing around with the CSS to get it just right.  Perhaps later tonight or tomorrow I'll try the MT export/import process to move my entries over from bigbadgeek.com.

Second Test Entry

(originally posted at ninjafish.org)

hmm, first entry didn't show up after the blog was re-built.  investigating by adding another entry.  please bear with me.

Test Entry

(originally posted at ninjafish.org)

the first test entry for ninjafish.org.

meanwhile in the background, wil wheaton as wesley crusher is putting the moves on some princess in the holodeck while her shape-shifting bodyguard is strangling lieutenant worf.

MS Bites Back

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Got a kick out of an article over at Infoworld called Microsoft releases Windows Rights Management client.

Here's the kicker:

When detailed in February, Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) was described as technology for Windows Server 2003 designed to give enterprises the means to secure internal business information such as financial documents.

Richard M. Stallman couldn't be reached for comment, but I wonder how pissed he is about this. When I think RMS, I think of a man who fights for open standards and open software - definitely not a rights management package designed to restrict what users can or can't do with their software and documents.

I really can envision a team of MS jerks sitting around late one night trying to come up with a suitably "closed" product to attach RMS to. Evil, I say, just evil.

Change is Afoot!

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

In a previous entry I spoke of a new project space.  I've registered ninjafish.org for use as a personal space for myself and Julie.  That means new email addresses and all that jazz.  It also means this blog is moving, and that Big, Bad, Geek will be born anew, as my technical/professional outlet - complete with resume, sample code, and blog-as-I-learn journal.  Consequently, both sites will tend to be in a state of disarray until everything is sorted out.  Meanwhile, I need to thank David of Lucifer Media Corp. for helping me find the right place for everything and getting everything set up and working properly.  Also, I'm rather excited to have gotten Kung-Log working, as it'll make managing the blogs on each individual site just that much easier.  Hooray!  Anyway, please by patient during the move - which could happen at a moment's notice.  Keep you on your toes, I will.

Test from Kung-Log

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Very strange problems getting Kung-Log working - we'll see if this gets posted or not...

Update: wow, it works... but it has revealed a potential issue with my CSS... testing.

Updated Update:  nope, it's just hoe kung-log interprets line breaks.  it'll just take some getting used to.  this is a keep app that i should have gotten up and running earlier.  xml-rpc sounds like a difficult thing to implement, but just RTFM'ing gets it over and done with rather painlessly.