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Dave's Handsome Radio Blog!
More devs
| "Next up, Palm." Tom Bradley, COO of Palm to show off new Palm Desktop beta. The engineer from Palm is very engaging, much like a pine board. Instant Palm Desktop from the Dock menu, drag and drop VCard and VCal from Palm Desktop to a file (scattered applause). "How do we sync in OS X?" Hotsync demo. No word about infrared sync. "You can now download the public beta" (scattered giggles from the crowd, since the server's only been allowing a handful of people on at a time.
Now Apple's Mike Evangelist about Final Cut Pro 3.0. (What a great name! The 80s and 90s were about weird job titles, the 00s will be about ideal last names for business!) Demo of Final Cut Pro. Realtime effects engine, color correction (oohs and ahs. I gotta say, I've never done digital video and the workflow is boring the hell out of me, but I can appreciate the complexity of what they're doing as a programmer.)
-- toj8j@alumni.virginia.edu @ 1/7/02; 12:28:50 PM
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Discuss Adobe's news
| Maine: "1 down, 49 to go.... We know that Texas is going to be a challenge, but we're working on it." Now Mac OS X: Same screen shots we've seen since since 10.1. A new UNIX Based badge. "We've seen more and more Unix programmers become Mac programmers, and more and more Mac programmers become Unix programmers." (I can attest to that.) Last three months a focus on getting developers to ship apps, and "the floodgates have opened." 1500 apps in October, 2500 apps in January (after 10.1 came out). Microsoft Office for Mac OS X (polite applause--then Steve says "and I just wanted to give them a round of applause.") What's up with Adobe? Shantanu Narayen, executive VP of Adobe comes on stage. "All of our applications are going to take advantage of the Mac platform." This morning we announced After Effects 5.5 is now shipping for OS X. Russell Brown: Illustrator 10, InDesign 2.0 (native Photoshop files with transparency, autowrap around photos, export to XML), GoLive 6.0... waiting for..."Why don't we take a look at Photoshop. It's real, it's almost here..." Lots of automated stuff with AppleScript. Spellchecking in Photoshop of editable text. InDesign 2.0 is now release candidate. "I think we're the poster child of applications for OS X."
-- toj8j@alumni.virginia.edu @ 1/7/02; 12:20:50 PM
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Discuss First: the state of the mac
| Here comes Steve. People in the store are applauding. "We have some great stuff to announce today, so let's get started." He starts with the update: iPod: Between November 10 and December 31, 125,000 iPods sold. And they're building more. Retail stores (the crowd here applauds). 40% of the customers buying CPUs in Apple stores don't already have a Mac. 40,000 people at MacWorld. Last month Apple retail stores had 800,000 visitors (over 27 stores). "Last update: the great state of Maine." (Every 7th and 8th grade student and teacher gets a networked wireless iBook.)
-- toj8j@alumni.virginia.edu @ 1/7/02; 12:09:22 PM
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"topicApple" |
Discuss Waiting for the tree to shake
| The screen just lit up but no audio yet--oh, there we go. Music: "Runnin' Down a Dream" from Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever album; "Shakin' the Tree" (the Peter Gabriel version)... suddenly I'm not clear whether this is from the video feed or whether the guy in the store is playing it from iTunes. There must be eighty or a hundred people packed into the theatre here in McLean. I'd like to pause and thank Apple's enlightened policy of putting unrestricted Airport access in all of their stores. Closeup on a guy's woodgrain custom PowerBook in the audience; a couple of water bottles next to an optical mouse and flat panel screen on stage. There's an old iMac at the center podium, away from all the flat panel machines (probably to be used for the obligatory Photoshop shootout). Gee, an old iMac--wonder wy they chose that to be center stage. (Foreshadowing with hardware placement, a new trend at MacWorld keynotes.)
-- toj8j@alumni.virginia.edu @ 1/7/02; 12:04:24 PM
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"topicApple" |
Discuss And the next winner...
Discuss Waiting for Steve
| I'm blogging from the Apple Store in McLean, Virginia, waiting for Steve Jobs' announcement about the new product lineup. They've pulled up a bunch of extra chairs for all the Apple fans. There are three other PowerBooks (another Pismo, a Titanium, and an iBook) all surfing away while we wait. I'm going to try to realtime blog the announcement--we'll see if my machine keeps up. What did I do on my road trip? Sat on my butt and watched a satellite transmission from San Francisco.
-- toj8j@alumni.virginia.edu @ 1/7/02; 11:34:32 AM
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"topicApple" |
Discuss Road journal: My bistro's fires have gone cold
| Today's update is posted, complete with pig's feet, no chicken feet, and bad rhyming dictionaries. Tomorrow I go to the Tyson's Apple Store to see what they have that's so much bigger than the rumors.
-- toj8j@alumni.virginia.edu @ 1/7/02; 12:01:19 AM
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Discuss Congratulations, Wes
Discuss The manor life
| I just realized I described the "Cheeselord" part of Cheeselord Manor, but not the Manor part. The house that Skip and George own is best described as having a crumbling gentility. It's situated on a corner lot in Northwest DC, measures about 20 x 60 on each floor, and has three floors, a finished basement, and a tower garret room. The "crumbling" part is due to the old roof, which Skip and George recently replaced, though they haven't had the chance to fix all the interior damage yet.
The house was built in 1912 (as Skip puts it, the year the Titanic sank), and used to be offices for a nonprofit organization. These days, the front room sees a lot of Cheeselord rehearsals, complete with an upright piano that may be older than the house is and wood floors that have a tendency to slope in unpredictable directions (the last is notable as the Cheeselords have been self described as a "drinking group with a singing problem").
Skip and George have known each other for years since Georgetown. Skip directs a diagnostic lab around the corner, used to be a monk, and sings countertenor; George has more muscles than I know what to do with and a deep bass voice, and composes music when he's not doing medical things. I met the guys in the Cathedral Choral Society when Skip invited me to come over for dinner one night while they sightread the Tallis Lamentations of Jeremiah. As an old Renaissance music buff, I eagerly accepted, little knowing I'd spend some really amazing years with the group. We did a lot of music, from early medieval chant and conductus through Renaissance and Early American to late twentieth century masters like Arvo Päaut;rt and John Tavener (and of course George). Today I'm singing with them at the group's second home, the Franciscan Monastery in Northeast DC, which is best known for its replicated catacombs under a fairly magnificent sanctuary. I can't wait.
-- toj8j@alumni.virginia.edu @ 1/6/02; 8:58:36 AM
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Discuss Now playing
| Currently playing song: "Ulalume (Edgar Allan Poe)" by Jeff Buckley.
-- toj8j@alumni.virginia.edu @ 1/6/02; 1:22:07 AM
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"deptMusic" |
Discuss Long day's journey into DC
| I would say I'm tired, but that hardly seems adequate. It's been a long day, and a good one. I left my inlaws' place in New Jersey this morning around 10 am and started driving south on the Turnpike toward Washington. On the way, I decided to call my mother at my grandfather's in Leola, PA; the family Christmas party was to be on Sunday and I wanted to make sure she got in OK. "Oh," she said, "it's actually today, from 12 to 6." I looked at where I was and decided to forgo an afternoon in DC -- and spent a lovely time with my relatives in the church basement, catching up.
I'm now at Cheeselords Manor, where my friends Skip and George live. I used to sing with them in a twelve voice men's Renaissance ensemble called the Suspicious Cheese Lords (it's badly translated from the title of a Tallis motet, Suscipe Quaeso Domine). I'll be guesting with them tomorrow morning at DC's Franciscan Monastery. I feel humbled after running through the music--it's been too long since I sang.
-- toj8j@alumni.virginia.edu @ 1/6/02; 12:38:22 AM
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Discuss Unexpected snag
| I'm going to have to delay the release of Manila Envelope. When I used it yesterday morning it was working, and now the preferences have broken. This, I guess, is a danger of using someone else's code without fully understanding it. I'll have to do some digging through Cocoa to figure out what's going on.
In the meantime, I'm hitting the road after a great night's sleep at my in-laws in New Jersey. Next post will be from Washington, DC.
-- toj8j@alumni.virginia.edu @ 1/5/02; 9:42:45 AM
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"topicScripting" |
Discuss On the Road Again
| Not much time for an update today, I'm afraid. I'm tired of there being no snow in Boston so I'm heading south to where the action is.
Okay, that was a little flip. I've been wanting for a while to see some of my friends in the Washington DC area, and I haven't been back since July of 2000 when I left to come to "MIT Sloan". It was a transitional time--I sold my car, hopped in a moving van, and dropped myself in the middle of Cambridge while Lisa started looking for a new job. I need to see what's going on with my friends. And I'm getting a chance to sing with my friends in the Suspicious Cheeselords.
I will be stopping in New Jersey overnight to pick up my car. While I'm there, I hope to borrow my in-laws' DSL connection to post the alpha release of Manila Envelope for general consumption. After all, I will have about five hours in the train to fix all the bugs. :)
So queue up Paul Simon singing "Graceland." My traveling companions aren't ghosts and empties; they're a PowerBook G3 and an iPod. It's time for some catch-up.
-- toj8j@alumni.virginia.edu @ 1/4/02; 9:54:49 AM
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Discuss Richmonders: easily impressed
| There's an icicle outside my window. There's an icicle outside my window! Hate me, one and all -- it's a snow day. There's too much of the white stuff for me to get out of my driveway. "Tom n' Jerry"'s on now, please excuse me...
-- estajarrett@hotmail.com @ 1/3/02; 2:33:37 PM
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"Tim'n'Esta Small" |
Discuss Manila Envelope - Part 9
| One additional thing about Manila Envelope -- it's a little bit of a paradigm shift from my scripts. I think the change is for the better.
With TextEdit2Blog, I started out trying to write a universal "save to the Web" script menu item for all text applications. The script was supposed to grab the selected text from the frontmost application and post it to the web. I soon realized that this just wasn't feasible. There was no way to address all text applications universally--some had a "selection" property and some didn't, and each exposed it differently. I decided instead to tie the script to one easily available application with a simple AppleScript Dictionary.
With AppleScript Studio, I don't think this makes sense any more. It's too easy to slap a text view onto the user interface, add some menu items, and essentially have all the functionality of TextEdit inside the app. Besides, as someone pointed out to me, copy & paste and drag and drop are pretty universally understood ways to get data into different places.
So Manila Envelope will have more of a text-based application feel to it. Cool. Now it just needs an icon. Anyone with skills want to share?
-- toj8j@alumni.virginia.edu @ 1/3/02; 8:22:46 AM
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"topicScripting" |
Discuss
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