There is a fantastic article on the state of the OSX Finder at Ars Technica today; John Siracusa takes Apple to task for the bastardization of the original Finder into its current incarnation (which he argues is not even a finder at all, making good the point that the Finder is the computer.) He outlines a number of good points about the way things work, why they do not follow the original model (and break most of the fundamental principles of the Interface Guidelines) and offers suggestions as to how they could be better. For anyone who works with interfaces and UX models, this is good juicy readin’.
Also via Slashdot, an article about a photographer who was fired from the LA Times for digitally altering a photo which ran on the front page. This isn’t the first time, but it raises serious questions about ethics and the art and science of journalism.
Which is more disturbing—this music video, or the fact that Crispin Glover is still getting work in Hollywood? (via Todd)
Over time, I’ve noticed that the screen on my Pismo has gotten looser, to the point where there’s about 1/2″ of play at the top of the case. I did some reading online to find some fixes for the problem, and it appears that other folks with older machines have had the problem before me. There are some links to parts dealers, but it looks like the issue will be at least a $180 problem to fix (est. pricing on left and right clutch assemblies.)
Let us all hope this is the end of our nightly timeshare and telco sales pitches.
Geek Update. My attempt to get the AppleTalk printer working is successful. I hooked up the 8500 and re-connected the cabling (AppleTalk -> DaynaPrint -> AAUI transceiver -> RJ45) and magically, the printer appeared in the Chooser. Now I just have to bring it to Jen’s house and set up her laptop.
Anybody remember this show? For some reason this popped in my head this morning.
Album of the Day: I’m between the Pogues’ Peace and Love and Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash. Ah, this brings me back. (one of the many things that originally drew me to Jen was the fact that she had a lovingly worn, paper-thin Pogues Peace and Love concert shirt.)
Hint. I got prescription lenses put in my diving goggles today. Besides a slight pull to the left eye (a mild astigmatism), they are like looking through my glasses. I can’t wait to try them out underwater. Also in the works is a plan to get an Ikelite housing for one of the digital cameras—either the company’s Nikon or a (possible) Canon G3.
The report on the MusicBrainz tagger is that it works, but the amount of information re-written to the meta tags is minor. I was hoping for more individual information like year, genre, and track numbers, and I got just the track numbers. Maybe as more and better information is written to the site, the quality of the tags will improve.
Another very good link I found this afternoon is Constantin Von Wentzel’s Base Station page, for all things AirPort, including some crafty solutions to heating problems (avoid frying that pair of capacitors) and uploading your firmware without hosing the unit. Also included are some handy links to repair outfits who will fix your ailing ABS.
28th street bridge, 2.26
I got the eyes checked this afternoon, and it turns out that my prescription is just a wee bit stronger than last time, but no marked difference. Here’s to that. While at the mall, I also stopped in to the Apple Store and bought an Airport card for Jen’s Powerbook, so we’ll both be wireless from here on out.
As it stands now, we may get a foot of snow tonight through tomorrow, or we may get an inch. It’s hard to say, because the local forecasters admit that they just don’t know. Meanwhile, I spent $20 putting a little more than 9 gallons of gas in the Scout this afternoon, just in case.
Via Kottke, here’s a great link to an idea I wish I had: Using a peephole for a fisheye lens on a camera. I may have to unscrew the peephole on the back door to try this out for myself. Also from the same source: The Lomoizer, for all of us who can’t afford the camera right now.
Ok, I’m stupid. What I didn’t do was set the Base Station up as a bridge;, I left it in its original configuration as a DHCP/NAT router, so in effect I had two machines (the SMC broadband router in the basement and the Base Station) battling over the right to serve the machines on the network. No wonder I couldn’t see the other machines on the network, or the printer. And I think this will allow the autosensing features in OSX to work as advertised. Jen’s computer is up and running flawlessly, after a brief detour to the network to download Airport 2.04 for OS9 (it was not included on the enclosed disk).
One final bit of good news: We ordered tickets to see David Sedaris at the Lisner Auditorium in April. It promises to be a funny and interesting evening. Jen hopes he’ll talk about the Rooster. (I think the last time I was at the Lisner was to see 10,000 Maniacs back in about 1990 or so.)
One drawback to switching between Airport and Ethernet on a laptop: apparently OSX (and most likely OS9) don’t each like having a port open simultaneously for AppleTalk, with is a drag, because I need it for fileserving. I haven’t figured out how to set up the system to autosense and compensate, so it looks like I might have to go back to the old Location settings. Which would be a drag, because I haven’t had to worry about that for a few years, and I was getting spoiled with Airport auto-sensing the connection.
Update: read the entry for February 26.
I found a very interesting article about a guy who woke up one day with a great idea, and who just happened to have a lot of spare time on his hands. I wish I had the resources and programming background to do something like that.
Yesterday I dug the Scout out and bundled Jen up on the warm sheepskin seat and we ventured out into the snow in 4-Hi. Canton, my neighborhood, was an absolute disaster of yuppies frantically scraping off their BMW’s and Navigators and blindly zooming around each other to Get There As Soon As Possible. We gamely avoided all these jerks and motored up to her office, and I returned home quietly. Returning to pick her up was a different matter, as aforementioned yuppies were out en masse Getting Home As Soon As Possible, which involves lots of traffic, ignoring red lights, cutting in front of people, blind lane changes, and charging down a one-lane road after seeing you’ve started and are halfway towards them already. Two and a half hours later we returned to eat steaks and drink beers and lay around on the couch, and we went to bed like good Scouts at 11.
This morning, we rose at 6:15 to be out the door by 7 to drive our neighbor Dick and his wife Thelma to the hospital, where Dick was scheduled for anyeurism surgery at 9:30. I felt like total crap, and by the time we stopped at the BK Lounge for some coffee and food after successful delivery, I felt like dying. Upon delivery of Jen to her office, I crawled under the conference room table, curled up like a dog and passed out until 10 (scaring the life out of Carl, her boss, who thought I was a dead body.)
At first I thought it might be carbon monoxide poisoning from the truck exhaust, but I can’t be sure, as I’m feeling fine now. Props go to Jen for putting up with my grunting and generally rotten mood. And everybody cross your fingers for Dick, who needs to quit going to the hospital (the guy fought his way across the Pacific in 1945 and still works part-time as a driver for the local funeral parlor.) He and his wife are the best neighbors ever.
I got my Airport Base Station in the mail today, plugged it in and within minutes was working wirelessly. I can’t wait to get it home and test out the signal. Thanks for the heads-up, Mike! In somewhat related news, Looks like I’d better go get a copy of VirtualPC 6.0 before it’s gone.
Renie sent me a link that’s worth a chuckle or three: Kiwi caught speeding semi-naked on motorised barstool.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
I posted some pictures of the fun this morning. I heard from Todd that the office is closed again today, and we’re both thinking that we won’t be able to make it up there until Thursday. I don’t doubt it.
Apparently some folks have had problems upgrading to OSX 10.2.4, but I’ve been running smoothly so far (knock on wood.) Overall it’s stable and smooth, and because I’ve never used the modem on this machine I’m immune to what seems to be the majority of the connection problems. And anything to fix the printing problems from Carbon applications is a good thing.
On Mike’s advice, and knowing that I’m finally getting paid this weekend, I ordered a used Airport Base Station from Small Dog Electronics. With the purchase of another AirPort card for Jen’s laptop, we’ll be totally wireless, at least at my house. It will be very cool to lose the cat-5 cables laying around, and also to have the PC, laptop and printer on the network at the same time.
city life building 2.11
I read last week that the old City Life building is being developed into a restaurant/nightclub venue. It was a crime to charge visitors $7 to see a thin display of local kitsch, but this will hopefully be a better use of a very beautiful space. Good luck, folks.
Jen and I have been working for the last few days on freelance work, and the stuff we have so far makes me very happy. I’m very excited to sink my teeth into this work, because I have a ton of ideas for the website and I think we can make really strong products for each client.
I will have to look into a product called Konfabulator, which is a sort of do-it-yourself widget maker for OSX, made by the guys who brought us Kaliedoscope (which I never used.) I have a few things I’d like to configure through AppleScript but I can’t seem to make the Script Editor record my actions anymore, either in Classic or in OSX. I used to have a series of scripts which would open the three main programs I use every day, and another to mount my remote web drive and publish my log page, and it made the day go by faster. I’d like to set that up again in OSX, but I don’t have the technology yet.
Ted Rall writes a very interesting (and very sobering) article about the cost of college, or more importantly, the cost of graduating, and the increasing gap between the folks who can afford it and those who can’t. Personally, I count myself lucky to have had parents who believed in me enough to send me to an art college. I don’t know exactly how much they paid to send me to school, but I know it wasn’t cheap, and I got off very lucky.