This morning I downloaded iCal from Apple’s site and looked through it; I failed in finding a way to import Eudora info into the Mail client, and I’m not sure if the Mail client supports APOP authentification for my mail server. I also don’t know how fonts work in OSX and if I have to buy new fonts all over again (not a happy thought) or if I need to convert them somehow…
Goodbye DAVE. I just logged in to the Win2000 server here at work. I also found Palm Desktop 4.0 and got that installed- now I’m trying to figure out what to do with fonts. I got Eudora working on OSX in the Classic mode, so that’s another thing I don’t need to depend on the FireWire drive for. I got Palm to open my existing data file, and exported my address book out into the OSX Address Book; I’m going to see if I can export my calendar data file to iCal.
It’s hard to stop going to the upper right corner of the window to switch applications.
I’m typing this in BBEdit running in the Classic environment in OSX 10.2; it’s seamless and fast and extremely impressive. It’s going to take me some time to figure out exactly how to use this system, and I’m probably going to re-format the hard drive again into one partition (I did two, and installed the system on one), but for right now it’s running via a FireWire drive off the back of Scout. I have a few days of installing my Classic software onto the second drive ahead of me, organizing the files, and figuring out how to organize the OSX volume. I’m going to have to buy a book on OSX just so I can catch up with the system and understand what to prune and what not to touch. There are a lot of things I want to learn about, and so far, after a somewhat rocky start, it’s gone pretty smoothly.
The lag I noticed with the beta is gone. The Classic environment comes up quickly and painlessly. Fonts look beautiful in OSX. I was able to hook up with my server in about three seconds, and I’m going to attempt to organize it as a Favorite here in a minute. Probably the biggest thing to get used to will be the new layout of the Finder–after ten years or so, it’s hard to re-program the brain.
For a few hours on Saturday night, I felt like time had stood still–or at least flashed back to a summer six or seven years ago, when none of us had houses except for Rob, nobody had the responsibility of careers and children, and we were all living for the next party weekend. There were a few people missing, and their absence was felt, but it was great to have a scattered group of friends come together and have fun with each other.
All that having been said, it’s great to see everybody happy and doing well in their adult lives. Gracie is beautiful, Charles is living back in the ‘hood, Jen and I have standing monthly plans with Rob and Karean, and I am motivated to get back with a lot of people.
Sunset over the Archie Bunker backyard, 9.10
Tonight Matt rolls into town from San Francisco. I probably won’t get to see him tonight, but tomorrow some other friends have organized a party and I’ll see some folks that have been AWOL for a year or so. I’m really happy to get together with some of the old crew and I’ll be sure to take a lot of pictures for everyone.
OS X looks real nice, but I can’t install it on a remote FireWire drive, and I don’t have the star-head screwdriver here to switch out my drives. So it will have to wait for sometime in the next couple of days.
I like when good things infiltrate mass media. This made me smile. It was a good episode, too.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
I would have punched the guy too. | God help us all. | I’m gonna buy this book. -thread link
I did hear on NPR that the former head of the U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq was on one of the early morning shows speaking out against the “regime change” policy, and offering an alternate solution. He went so far as to describe the current plan as foolhardy (my words, not his). I am impressed by his courage and proud of his ability to take a stand. Let us hope the Congress and U.N. dissuade the government from this plan.
Curious.
This link will tell you what else you might be listening to if you like Massive Attack. (Remove them from the URL bar and replace with your favorite artist; replace spaces with the “+” sign. Or take their survey.)
the final product
… Other than this link, I’m avoiding this subject today.
My drive and case showed up today. Both look great; I can’t wait to set everything up. But I don’t have a copy of OSX yet and we’re not getting paid yet. In other news though, the game shipped today, and it looks really good. The four-sheet insert I put together in Quark on my laptop turned out very clean and very good (*WHEW*) so there’s my first game in the can!
Update on the Appletalk over IP thread from yesterday: I set up my 8500 as a server, opened a port on the router and was able to connect up-from inside my house-over IP. I still can’t connect up from work however. I also found that you can’t leave your digital camera out in the sun- all the photos I took Saturday were corrupted.
Update on 3dsMax: I built my first model yesterday, and I was able to do a bunch of stuff that previously was impossible to figure out. And I actually had fun with it. Stay tuned… (today I’m working on promotional stuff for the rollout party of Emperor tonight. Also, inside sources tell us that as of yesterday, the demo has been downloaded over 20 thousand times since being posted last week.)
I found this article via camworld about an MIT professor who was ambushed on Donahue when invited to come and speak about violence in video games. It’s too bad he wasn’t able to explain his ideas in detail, but that’s modern media culture, baby.
I got an email from my friend Todd last week, who commented on my
half-formed August 30 post about personal freedoms:
“Adjusting Amendment 1 or abolishing it as we know it today is taking
a basic freedom guaranteed for so many generations away from me and
future generations….I refuse to be dictated to about what to think
is right or just cause for persecution of those who oppose the
mainstream.”
Right on. I couldn’t say it better myself.
Jen also had a comment, about the Cusack/Max article on Salon yesterday:
“People don’t like to see things in anything else but black and white because at heart it means that they might be forced to acknowledge their own failings and possible evils.”
Which is a very, very good point. I can understand Spielberg bailing on the project for obvious reasons- his commitment to the Shoah Foundation is not considered lightly, and the Holocaust is a very sensitive subject- but the folks who backed away should stop and consider what they failed to offer the public as a means of discourse and self-reflection.
I spent a good portion of last night alternately getting a backup Mac server up and running, and listing the CD’s I own so that I can A. figure out how many I have, and B. start trading stuff with my friend Rob to augment our individual collections. I now need to figure out how to share the Mac out through my DSL line– I’m going to give this a whirl again tonight.
Work is going steadily on the freelance project, and we have business cards, letterhead, advertising, a sellsheet, and a ton of other materials. I’m thinking that the official rollout will be sometime in the next few months, and for that I’m happy. There’s other stuff in the works that I need to jump on tonight, as well as some possible stuff down the road.
The trellis is up and secured in place, so now I get to the part I’ve been dreading- drilling a plate into the sill of the house under the back door for the stair platform. I’m trying to decide whether I should do that or just build a support and anchor it to the ground. Either way, I’m going to have to cut off the vinyl siding under the door, and I will be able to see what color the brick is behind my house for the first time in 5 years.
I’ll Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It Dept.: John Cusack and two other producers have spent the last year or two scraping funding together for a movie about the young Hitler in Munich, exploring who he was as a man before the Third Reich. One quote from the article really was interesting: “Walter Benjamin said when you fuse aesthetics with politics, you get fascism.”
The three producers interviewed all share a strong interest in the subject and have researched the subject extensively. Also interesting was the reaction Cusack got from Maureen Dowd of the Times— she had never seen the movie but came out against it. Personally, I’m interested in seeing it.
I found a link to the work of Adrian Tomine, who writes some very good comics. I’m going to look into finding this one up at Atomic Books sometime.
So I went out this morning and bought this book and this book for to learn 3DS Max. I’ll have a review of each as I go, but for now, out of a total of seven books at Border’s, I think I got the two that will help me the most. And hopefully the company will reimburse me.
Jen and I went down into DC last night to see her brother Rob, and we had some very tasty Mongolian buffet (you throw a bunch of ingredients in a bowl, and a surly Oriental man adds sauce-type ingredients, then stir-fries it on a gigantic drum in the middle of the room). After eating we found an Irish pub and had some beers until it was time to leave town. Catching the final train out of Chinatown, we made it home to bed by 1am. Jen was glad to see her brother and I had a really good time. I miss DC and the cosmopolitan feeling I get there- Baltimore just doesn’t have the same vibe.
My shout out to Other World Computing, a firm specializing in Mac sales; I sent in an order for some gear yesterday and got an email back asking to confirm my ship-to address, considering I’m having it delivered at work. So i called Visa and had them update my record there. Hopefully my stuff will show up on time next week. But I was happy they took the time to check that out. That’s good customer service.
Friday Humor Dept.:This is a funny little satire of 2001, a Space Odyssey, and very well done. Plus it’s in Legos. Rock on.
Lake, NY state 9.1
Well, after another beautiful vacation stay at my parents’ place on the lake, a small disaster befell us on our trip home. The Tortoise decided that it was upset at me for neglecting to fill the oil and coolant, and the thermostat blew up on us. Luckily we were only 30 minutes away from my parents’ place, so we were able to get it towed back to a good garage and be on the porch sipping vodka tonics four hours after the first sign of steam. Yesterday, after a morning of freelance work and worry over getting Jen to Rochester, we found out that it was only the thermostat and a hose, and I had not in fact fried a piston. $173.88 lighter, we packed it up for the second time in two days and made our way homeward to a house of worried, hungry cats.
I’ll probably write some about the trip in a day or two, but for right now I’ll just mention one of the first things that I think of: Crossing the street in front of my parents’ house to try to take a picture of the stained glass window at the church in bare feet, at 10pm, realizing that there were no cars in either direction on Main Street, and that the Big Dipper was huge, clear and hanging over the village.
Thinking about catastrope this weekend got me jump-started today into ordering the drive and enclosure that I was thinking about; after some figuring I felt this was the best bet. (I was considering making an old 8500 a server, but decided not to support any more legacy equipment.) It will be good to have a definite backup solution in place.