Scripting News

Geek dad and Junior the geek

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 03:48:23 GMT

At Fry's this afternoon, where I bought two 500GB Firewire drives for $169 each.

Which it turns out I needed because after I got home all three external drives attached to my desktop were reported as damaged beyond repair by the new Mac OS. Coincidence? Lucky that I had exactly the hardware I needed to dig out of the mess? Who knows!

Funny thing is it's taking over 10 hours to do the copying. It won't finish until tomorrow morning, Murphy-willing. When the disks got big, all of a sudden restoring from backups takes a lonnnng time.

Terminal commands to nuke the 3D dock in Leopard

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 20:24:20 GMT

And recapture some valuable screen real estate and a portion of your sanity.

defaults write com.apple.Dock no-glass -boolean YES
killall Dock

Screen shot.

Thanks to Mark Johnson for the tip.

Okay so it's not user friendly

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 18:27:47 GMT

Thanks Yahoo!

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 20:38:42 GMT

The numbers are up at nytimesriver.com.

Here's why. It's the top link on Yahoo under newspapers.

Two hops off the directory home page.

Very nice!!

Yahoo!

PS: What's next? Link love from the NYT itself?

Dear lord of Leopard...

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 01:19:12 GMT

I want my white menubar back.

I think the idea of the translucent menubar is wrong.

Here's a screen shot.

See how dark it is in the upper-right corner. You look in that corner all the time, it's where the clock is, it's where you see how much battery you have left, how good your wifi signal is, etc. We don't have much room for a dashboard on these machines, but that's where it is. If it changes appearance just because I changed the desktop image, that's new and unexpected behavior, and it can make it hard to read for people with old eyes. And for what purpose? It makes the desktop background choice something that impacts a crucial part of the user interface.

I want an option to have a white menu bar.

1996: "I came here to get my work done."

My Friendfeed coordinates

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 04:16:01 GMT

It's kind of like Facebook's feed for people who don't do Facebook.

http://friendfeed.com/davew

It seems pretty cool.

I'm a Dog Whisperer fan

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 15:59:37 GMT

I just started watching The Dog Whisperer on the National Geographic Channel a few weeks ago, and I'm hooked.

I really like the way the star, Cesar Millan, explains stuff. He shoots straight, with love. You can't be politically correct and get a dog to behave.

And he never misleads the owners, they have to change in order for the dog to change.

Dogs are very simple, they can't just be your friend. The dog's world is hierarchic. Someone is the boss. If you're not the boss, he or she is. Every pack has a leader.

Watching the show I wish I had a dog so I could try out his ideas.

I also wish news shows were like this, get to the real story, find a solution to the problem.

Maybe he'll run for Governor of California. I'd vote for him.

Sue Polinsky loves the Dog Whisperer too.

My Halloween disguise...

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 00:15:21 GMT

I have to admit I don't like Halloween, or actually I liked it when I was a kid, a lot, and I would like it as an adult if there was no expectation that adults had to behave like kids!

Well, actually, something I don't like about Halloween is that you have to buy candy and keep it in the house for trick or treaters, and the temptation to eat the junk is overwhelming, and it's not good for adults to eat so much sugar. And you buy too much and you have it left over, and have to find someone to give it to.

So what's left with Halloween? Uhhh, yeah you see there's the problem. So what I do on this holiday is find some friends who feel the same way and go out to dinner. If anyone asks what I go as on Halloween, I say "The Invisible Man."

My first review of Leopard

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 07:12:59 GMT

Update: "I want my white menubar back."

First a little background. I stopped using a Mac in 1997, as Apple was transitioning to the new operating system. I started using the Mac again as my primary OS in late 2005, a little more than two years ago. This is the first new version of the OS to come out since I switched back.

Based on a tour of the new features, pretty late at the end of a long week, it's safe to say an OS is still just an OS, the purpose of the OS is to stay out of your way until you need it. Leopard may be prettier than the last version, I'm not sure it is or isn't. Not sure I'll use many of the new features. For people who hadn't used VNC before, "screen sharing" would certainly be a big new feature if they're working in a networked enviroment. And maybe the new backup code will fit into my routine. I have some ideas about that. (Maybe I'll just have one computer on my LAN that is backed up and copy things there if I want them backed up.)

File sharing is more convenient in Leopard, the shared computers are listed in every Finder window, and this is good. FInding the disks that are available on each of these computers is one step easier too.

The Preferences applicaiton appears largely unchanged, except the Networking section where a lot of functionality seems to be missing. I have to look at this more closely.

The Download stack is lost on me since I don't use Safari or Apple's mail app. I would find it useful if Firefox had a similar feature (but they kind of do, I can direct all downloads to a specific folder).

Update: The Download stack is just a folder, you can direct Firefox to download to it. I think I saw some Apple marketing on this feature that implied that only Apple apps could use it.

All in all, changes to an OS aren't that important. The action is in the apps, and for me, just a couple of primary ones, the web browser and my integrated writing and programming environment. It's been quite a while since there have been meaningful improvements to either, and those improvements would end up meaning a lot more to me than improvements to the OS.

There isn't much you can do, after the Mac has been around for 23 years, that hasn't already been done.

Net-net, my first impression of Leopard is that it isn't a big deal one way or the other.

Matt Neuburg takes a dim view of the changes in Leopard.

PS: I wonder if the next version of the OS will be called Leonard, to honor Leonard Rosenthal, a famous Mac developer in the 80s and 90s.

The scoop on the Leopard delays

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 22:31:44 GMT

7PM: I got my disk.

9:25PM: Updating in Leopard. The OPML Editor seems to work. Whew. Not sure what I would have done if it didn't. When it finally finished installing it started playing some really happy music and of course it sounded really good. Things definitely look nicer. Screen sharing is very nice, nicer than Chicken of the VNC which I had just started using. Obviously there's a lot of new stuff to learn. I'm backing up my laptop now so I can really dig into this tomorrow. I got started on my Mac Mini in the den, a relatively new system. If I had to wipe it, it wouldn't have been that big a deal.

First, the big news is that lines are forming at Apple stores. Send links to pictures. Oh the humanity.

Second, the reason those of us who ordered in advance are not getting our Leopards is that Fedex couldn't handle the load.

Even so, when I called Fedex this morning they said I would have my package today, even though the website says otherwise. Their gears are stipped on a good day. Is Fedex the AT&T of package delivery? Will Apple end up leasing their own fleet of trucks to deliver the next version of Mac OS? I guess we still have to make it through this release.

Will we be able to have a Flash Conference on Monday to discuss Leopard? Only time will tell.

MacInTouch first look. (Clearly canned.)

Ryan Block has his first review up.

Chuck Shotton found a workaround for an issue that seems likely to bite many Leopard newbies.

Raines Cohen was in Austin for the Leopard ship.

You can see how Apple has not! prioritized getting Leopards into the hands of people who might help others get started. John Gruber of Daring Fireball is posting pithy observations on the size of human eyeballs, Brent Simmons is giving up for the day, no Leopard on his doorstep. Are there problems with Leopard? Chuck says so. Do we have any idea the scale of the problems? Nope.

No Leopard for Dave??

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:00:36 GMT

Anyone have an idea what "Future delivery requested" means?

Very perplexed and somewhat unhappy.

No one seems to know what "Future delivery requested" means.

Update: Now the Fedex site says I'll have it by 5:30PM. On the bright side that means I'll get more work done today.

Flash conference, day 2

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 12:52:04 GMT

Chuck Shotton has his Leopard, but hit a wall. "Leopard's migrate user function has failed 3 times on 3 separate clean installs. This is a seriously broken, critical piece of the OS."

Mossberg and Pogue missed it, didn't make it into USA Today.

That's the motivation behind the flash conference idea. After two or three days, organize the knowledge as covered by the bloggers, really cover it as tech news has never been covered before.

If necessary, have another flashconf two weeks or a month later.

Flash Leopard conference, Monday PM?

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 01:19:53 GMT

An idea I've been thinking about for a while and looking for an opportunity to do is a "flash conference" along the lines of the flash mobs that were so popular a few years ago.

Here's how it would work...

Some event happens that focuses the attention of bloggers, one where there's a lot of ground to cover and at least two or three different ways to view it, one where the combined expertise of 5 or 10 bloggers would make a big difference.

The event would last at most 3 hours, would be webcast live, and be edited into a 1 hour program within 24 hours.

As many of us are waiting for delivery of Leopard, the new Mac OS, it seems that this may be an opportunity for such a conference.

We'd have to find a facility in San Francisco that could house this. There would need to be room for 20 or 30 people, and it must also have decent networking.

Then the question of who would we turn to for expert opinions.

Some ideas...

1. A Mac software developer.

2. A gadget blogger (Engadget, Gizmodo, etc).

3. A creative artist (it is a Mac after all).

4. ???

5. ???

This is meant to be an instant idea. I have asked the question on Twitter and your comments are welcome here as well.

Update: Loic Le Meur has volunteered the offices of his SF startup to host the flash conference. Cooool.

Eric Callis wants to have a flash conference on Leopard in Chicago on Monday.

USB-DACs

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:27:05 GMT

A USB-DAC connects through the USB port to a Mac or PC, and to an amplifier and speakers. Apparently you can get much higher quality sound from your computer, for as little as $200 with the Stereo-Link 1200. I didn't know these products existed until I heard a report on the Tech Talk podcast, and read the article in today's NYT.

Seems like I'm going to have to buy one. Amazon doesn't carry them. Not sure where to buy.

Later: Not so fast...

Update from Kevin Newman: "If your audio receiver has optical digital inputs, and your computer has optical digital audio output, connecting them digitally allows the receiver to do the D-to-A conversion. If you have an expensive receiver, it already has nice converters. That would almost certainly sound better than taking the analog minijack output from your computer. I'm not sure how the sound would compare to one of the external DACs listed in the article, but a digital connection is less clutter and less expensive."

Postscript: Newman was right. I have a good Denon receiver (the one with the integrated HTTP server) that has several optical inputs on the back, and when I replaced the analog cable connecting the Mac Mini to the receiver with a digital cable, the increase in quality was incredible. There are physical sensations to recorded music that I had never experienced before. I have some flac recordings and I ran those through the new setup and was blown away.

Illustration: The important thing about the back panel is that there are four optical (digital) inputs, which are compatible with the digital output of the Mac. So when you play an MP3 from the Mac, and connect to the receiver with the optical cable, the D-to-A conversion is done by the receiver. The Mac is $500 of computer hardware (and damn good at what it does) and the Denon is $2K of audio hardware, and also very good. This setup lets each system do what it does best. The result is stunning sound. Really hard to explain how good it is.

Why I bought AAPL on Oct 8

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 19:01:29 GMT

First, let me gloat.

I bought $49,761 of AAPL on Oct 8.

My investment is now worth $54,933.

That's 10.5 percent growth in less than a month.

Hah!

I bought the stock because I was going to buy everything Apple sold from now until forever. The last product I had yet to purchase was the company's stock. That was a mistake. The beauty of owning the stock is that you can use the increase in value to fund the hardware habit. So far so good.

My very dear friend Sylvia Paull bought an iPod a month ago. In a blog post today she calls it a gateway drug. Having read early reviews of the new operating system, she's ready to buy a 24 inch iMac.

I recognize the signs.

It's like a virus I tell you.

PS: I just checked on at the Apple store. My family pack of Leopard has shipped, and will arrive tomorrow by 10:30AM. Now that's cool! No penalty for ordering online vs visiting the store. Way to go.

Open till midnight

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 06:21:47 GMT

A poem for Facebook

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 18:15:35 GMT

Now that Microsoft has invested in Facebook, I'm reminded of a poem an anonymous correspondent wrote when I was working with Microsoft in the late 90s.

There once was a lady from Niger who smiled as she rode on a tiger. They returned from the ride with the lady inside and the smile on the face of the tiger.

It didn't turn out that way then and might not turn out that way now, but it's still a cute poem.

Facebook app or Firefox plug-in?

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:27:29 GMT

Which is a more interesting platform -- Facebook or Firefox?

This was a topic of conversation at the Web 2.0 Summit last week in SF, not on stage, but in a LobbyConversation between myself and venture capitalist Bijan Sabet.

Bijan Sabet: "I like that Firefox developers don't have to live in a world where they lie awake at night worried that the platform company is going to make life hard for them."

What do you think??

Your living room on the Internet?

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 17:38:28 GMT

Click To Play

New search tool

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:27:24 GMT

I replaced the Google-based search tool in the right margin with one from Lijit.

Screen shot.

I found the Google one took up too much space, and I couldn't easily configure it, I never used it, and I grimaced every time I saw it (it felt like an eyesore).

Let's see if this one works better, it sure looks better.