lifebsideben

I’ve been staying out of the HD-DVD / Blu-ray format war for a long time, but Val sucked me in to it. You see, she got me the BBC ‘Planet Earth’ DVD set for X-mas… only it was the HD-DVD set. One of the reasons I hadn’t bought it previously, is because I hadn’t wanted to get it on standard def DVD, since that would be a ‘travesty’ to lose 3/4ths of the detail that it was shot in, for such sweeping and compelling nature content. But, now she had bought it for me, and I didn’t want to return it. I quickly did some research, decided yep, HD-DVD was the format I preferred, and bought a Toshiba A3 from Amazon for $179 (this was January 2nd). Of course, a week later, and obviously because Ben Margolin finally jumped into the fray and cast my dice, Warner Brothers threw all their weight behind Blu-ray, and the couple remaining HD-DVD allied studios look soon to follow. Toshiba was taken by surprise, and canceled their press statements at CES a couple of days later. It looks bad for HD-DVD as a format. You’re welcome! You’re now free to buy Blu-ray now… but here’s why you shouldn’t.
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Tags: apple, Apple-TV, DVDs, format-wars, HDDVD, iTunes, movies, Technology

I got a new MacBook, and bought VMWare Fusion, so I could… well, I’m not exactly sure what I planned to do with it, but since I have no other machine in my house that runs Windows, I guess I thought I’d use it for that occasional windows app (PowerISO for example) or to test prince.org through the eyes of IE7. Well, I installed XP into it and that was just dandy, it really knows exactly how to handle hosting Windows, great vmware tools integration, the whole shebang, flawless.

More interestingly, I thought I’d install an Ubuntu instance, and maybe retire the big honking RAID5 Ubuntu server machine, and save the corresponding energy usage, etc. I mostly use it for mysql slave backups of prince.org, and some minor code development (it used to also host my music and photo libraries on the raid disks, but I’ve since moved that to an external drive on the MacBook with TimeMachine on a different device, providing the redundancy.)

Sounds well and good, and vmware also “understands” Ubuntu, but uh, not nearly as smoothly as Windows… the whole vmware tools setup is, while not painful, certainly not “one-click”. But, it works. Well, I thought it did–my networking was hosed. I futzed with it a bit thinking it was their special vmxnet drivers/devices, and then realized my host OSes networking was not working, either. Since I connect via 802.11n, and it’s sometimes flaky (hard to know if it’s Leopard or the wonky apple gigabit router), I turned airport off and then back on and it came back in the host… but Ubuntu was still not happy. If I reboot Ubuntu, it takes out the host networking again… hmmm. Try swithing to bridged mode instead of shared… same thing. Hmmmmmm…. a head-scratcher.

Finally, I hit upon the root cause… I bet the router isn’t happy with my “lock this IP to this specific MAC address”, when there are 2 OSes both sending packets, on that MAC! Yep, that was it. I removed the settings in the Airport itself that caused it to always hand out a specific IP via DHCP to a specific MAC, and assigned IPs manually to the MacBook and Ubuntu, and all was well. Yay. I’m still not sure what magic was going on to make networking in Windows work, but no worries.

I actually wonder if I were to use the “DHCP client ID” instead of the MAC address, if it’d work that way… I just don’t know where to set that in Ubuntu… something to try another day!

Tags: apple, debugging, mac, software, ubuntu, vmware

…is that you end up demo’ing it to everyone who noticed you have one

It’s a pretty awesome device, and the (relatively short–90 minutes) wait on Friday was definitely worth it! Bragging rights are fun, sure, but besides that it’s just such a hugely more useful device than my previous (Nokia 6682)… the browser is such much better you can’t compare, Wifi is great, and overall usability (except for it being a little “slippery” by default, without a case) is leaps and bounds over any combo device I’ve ever had.

Now if we can just get Flash working on it… c’mon Apple, let Adobe play We all love QuickTime but let’s be serious!

Tags: apple, hardware, iPhone

[tags]TextMate, apple, software, coding, blogging, emacs, Ruby, rubyonrails, wordpress[/tags]

I’ve been trying out [TextMate][] for a couple of weeks on the Mac. So far, I’m really impressed, and very likely to fork over the license fee (around $75). Which is really quite a lot for an editor when you consider the wealth of good editors already out there, and free, not the least of which is Emacs, which I’ve been happily using on and off for hmm, probably 15 years at this point. Sure, I’ve forayed into the Visual Studio IDE when I was developing on Windows, and used the Borland (text-mode) environment when I wrote a lot of Turbo C++ before that; I’ve toyed with Eclipse as well more recently. But Emacs ports on the Mac aren’t too great (including stability issues), and TextMate pretty much seems to be written with an Emacs state of mind with regards to extensibility, etc. It even has some Emacs keybindings lurking in the default configuration.

But what got me on this kick was playing with [Rails, or RoR, or Ruby on Rails][rails], the almost sublime web-application framework built on [the Ruby language][Ruby]. It seems a lot of the influential RoR community, are Mac-heads and use TextMate for developing code. The Ruby support in TextMate is quite good, and there is special ‘modes’ to use Emacs terminology (’Bundles’ to use TextMate terminology) just for Rails as well. And they’re very nice.

My essentially frothing at the mouth praise for Rails and Ruby can wait for another post, although let me say they are both quite excellent, especially if you keep in mind the problem domain, and don’t think of them as C++ or J2EE replacements. (But PHP and typical Java web app replacements, well that’s another story… and I recommend reading [O'Reilly's Beyond Java book][Beyond Java] to get it.) The interesting bit is how much having an excuse to feel out the editor and understand some of the hooks and extensions available for it, have made me really understand how it can empower me. I guess it was always that way with Emacs as well, although the alternative was something edlin-ish (I don’t think the Prime I first started using it on had a vi port, even.)

But here’s my first words on this: TextMate is excellent, so far. Ruby (and Rails) are as well. I feel excited to be exploring this stuff.

and p.s., this blog post was written and edited from within TextMate using the ‘blogging’ bundle and [Markdown][], via the [PHP Markdown Extra][] plugin for WordPress! About all it needs now is to support the [Ultimate Tag Warrior][] plugin, and I’m never using WordPress’ writing interface again… from my Mac anyhow. (**Update** it seems you can still get the main tagging stuff to work if you turn on ‘embedded tag support’ in UTW and then use the SimpleTag format. Cool! Thanks to [this blog post][vimposting] about posting from vim of all things, for the hint!)

[vimposting]: http://coopblue.com/blog/2006/06/posting-to-wordpress-from-vim-with-tags-and-markdown/
[Ultimate Tag Warrior]: http://www.neato.co.nz/ultimate-tag-warrior/
[Beyond Java]: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/beyondjava/
[Ruby]: http://www.ruby-lang.org/
[rails]: http://rubyonrails.com/
[TextMate]: http://macromates.com
[PHP Markdown Extra]: http://www.michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
[Markdown]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax
[Wordpress]: http://wordpress.org/

Tags: apple, blogging, coding, emacs, Ruby, rubyonrails, software, TextMate, wordpress

So the new Mini is announced. Let’s forgo the cheaper model as pointless, and focus on the higher-end one. Here’s the relevant differences IMO:

• Dual-core Intel CPU (yay!)
  Yeah baby, bring it!! This is the oomph the Mac needs. My 1.42GHz mini is definitely underpowered. Definitely the highlight.
• Cheesy onboard graphics chip (boo!) with shared RAM (mega-boo!)
  Sorry, but the Intel GMA950 seems pretty lame for 3D performance. I suppose gaming isn’t the Mini’s (nor Apple’s, for that matter,) forte, but still. Can this thing pump out 1080p HD via the DVI port? Yeah, but don’t expect to do any cool frontrow effects on it smoothly. And what’s with the shared RAM?
• DL DVD-R drive (sure, fine)
  Yeah, whatever. If it helps bring down the cost of blanks, I’m all for it. My mini is already upgraded to this, so obviously I think it’s got some value.
• Port changes
  The subtracted the modem (yay!) and 1 FW port (boo!), add more USB ports (uh, mild yay).
  Who is going to use a mini via dialup? Nobody, exactly. They’ve wisely ditched the useless modem and added USB ports. I’m guessing the FW port is only staying there at all because of legacy iSights and harddrives… but sounds like USB2.0 is definitely the wave of the future. Honestly, I think this is a Good Thing, even though FW seems to be a technically superior (certainly, more sophisticated) design, and faster in practice.
• Up to 2G RAM (big yay!)
  And even better yet, the mini gains another DIMM slot, so you can populate it with 2×1G DIMMs. Nice. Why no go with a 4G max then, I wonder?
• SATA drive (yay) but still 5400rpm (boo)
  Right interface, wrong rotational speed. Sounds like this is going to cripple the video streaming capabilities out of the box. Again. Can’t they just punch a few holes in the lid to let the few degrees extra heat from the faster-spinning drive, out the top?

There’s some other changes as well, like audio in as well as out, which are nice but nothing amazing–they’d be big disappointments if they were missing, however. iLife 06, great, I just bought that anyhow. [Update: I just discovered it does NOT come with the Mini standard, but is a full-price option!] Bluetooth 2.0 is a nice upgrade, although unlikely to matter for most folks.

Looks like I won’t be upgrading, as much as I really really want the dual core Intel and 2G RAM. I’m hoping there’s a version that’s 1″ taller, with dual 7200rpm SATA drives and a better video chip in the future. Hopefully, this will be timed well with a new OS and iLife upgrade so I can save $200 or so on those, as well But I am interested to hear how this is working with large LCD panels for HTDV/HTPC playback use… I suppose I could still be swayed, but it’s over a $1000 investment–considering the base model is $799, and gotta upgrade to 2G RAM as well.

Tags: apple, hardware, mac

I usually leave my PCs on 24/7, so I can ssh in if I need to, and let my various cronjobs to their thing, and because I’m lazy, and to do my part in keeping the US reliant on foreign energy sources. Yesterday however I decided to give ’sleep’ mode a shot on the Mac mini. Works great. Except for one thing… if you’ve got a wireless keyboard and mouse, apparently the signal doesn’t get through to wake it back up! Well, I’m guessing it’s a artifact of the wireless nature of my K&M, or perhaps it’s another part of the vast Microsoft anti-Mac conspiracy (”if we can’t get them to use our OS, at least they’ll use our keyboards and oddly shaped pointing devices! Muahahaha!”)

On the plus side, it’s not that big a deal. Tapping the power button (but it’s all the way on the baaaack of the compuuuter) also wakes from sleep. Wish I could say it was as easy for me to wake up in the a.m…

Tags: apple

I finally hit the 10,000 mark of photos in iPhoto. It’s taking about 15 seconds to load now, which I think is fairly reasonable. And what’s even better, the 5.0.2 upgrade Apple released a few days ago actually fixed a problem I had intermittently with importing photos from my Canon digital camera. (Well, it’s possible the OS X 10.3.9 upgrade actually contained the fix, as part of the Image Capture application, but whatever.)

Now if only it was speedier when moving between photos. And I’m really looking forward to the Spotlight integration in Tiger, so I can do fulltext searching against image comments, etc. That’ll rock.

While I’m on the subject of digital photos, I want to plug one of my favorite apps, JAlbum. It’s Java freeware, and creates kick-butt static HTML albums for uploading to any webspace. Super flexible, almost too good to be free. I donated to the author, so ya know it’s good. Although, I find myself doing that a few times lately, which is something strange for me considering my uber-pirate past. I guess now, my time really is worth enough that anything cool enough, or time-saving enough, is worthwhile me tossing a few bucks to the author. Not a bad trend.

Tags: apple, iPhoto, jAlbum, photography

I’m trying to figure out where to post entries when I do happen to do so, which is a pretty rare event anyhow. Here, or at 360°? WordPress pretty much kicks 360’s ass at the moment when it comes to editing tools, so I suppose I’ll keep posting the majority here. But, 360 is all Yahoorific, and more at my fingertips while working. I guess I shouldn’t blog from work much anyhow

Well, in the meantime, just a few interesting links… Mac serial number decoder–find out when your Mac was made.
As a guy at work would say, this is totally ringing the bell on the nerdometer. Some guy made Mac OS X Engineer Trading Cards. Yeah… but I have to admit his Ajax-style commenting system rocks. Pretty sweet effect, if a tad useless. Well, I like the submit-without-refresh bit, but the live preview bit is not too useful IMO.
One more: dissecting WordPress themes, seems handy.

Tags: apple, blogging, DHTML, wordpress, Yahoo

I admit it, I’m totally geeked over the new Mac Mini. When we upgraded my wife’s old G3 tower to OS X a few years back, I was surely impressed with the “unix with a usable UI”, but it didn’t seem like a real replacement for my windows desktop, especially with the price/performance ratio (perceived or real) of Mac hardware. When we sold the G3 and got a G4 PowerBook, and eventually upgraded to Panther, I started thinking, “hmm, maybe I could use one of these as my desktop…” but again, I didn’t want to fork out for a pricey Mac in addition to my PC. And all the cheaper Macs came with CRTs, and moving to that from my 19″ LCD was going to be an unpleasant experience for both my eyes and my back.

Now that the Mac Mini is out, it seems like perhaps a perfect fit for me. Still not convinced I can switch 100% of what I do to the Mac, but willing to give it a shot. I’ll be able to run “real” apache, php, mysql, instead of the not-identical Windows ports (I’ve resorted to Virtual PC, which actually works pretty well). With the Mac Mini, I can keep my 19″ DVI LCD, my nice mouse, etc. and for a reasonable investment (say $600 for the higher-end Mini; I’ll hack my own RAM upgrade with a spare PC2700 512M DIMM I’ve got), I’ll see if I can be won over to the Gray side (if Linux is Light and MS is Dark?)

I went to order one on apple’s store site last night, and unlike the day before (when it said “order now and receive it by January 22nd”, it now says “ship time: 3-4 weeks”. Ugh! Well, I guess I’ll be standing in line outside thePalo Alto or Burlingame Apple Stores come January 22nd, when they are supposed to be available.

So AAPL is sitting just below $70 right now, buoyed in large part by massive, almost impossibly good iPod sales last quarter–I think it’s got a little way to come down, but I feel the Mini is going to be a big hit (and although the iPod Shuffle seems kind of silly to me, I suspect at its price points they’ll sell a ton of those, too.) I’m predicting the stock to maybe hit $100 in 2005, and split. Of course, I’m the guy who thought “Webvan can turn it around!” and promptly lost over 99% of my investment, so my stock pick track record has its share of missteps.

I’m actually kind of sad I just bought my parents a new Dell, too. And had to spend 2 days copying over stuff from their old dead PC, and teaching them how to use stuff, especially digital camera image importing, etc. That kind of stuff is trivial on the Mac. If I end up loving the Mac later this year maybe I’ll send them one too, and they can sell the Dell. Sounds like a good Mac Mini slogan: “sell your Dell!” I am convinced a lot of people with iPods and PCs are going to get Mac Minis, love OSX and iLife, and buy more expensive (read: higher-margin) Macs. Even if they just encourage more developers onto the platform, it’ll be a win for consumers. It’ll be an interesting 2005!

Tags: apple, big_business

Oh, back-to-back hardware rants! Whee!

So my wife’s buddies “all” seem to have these mac webcams, and so she needs one too, right? Well, ok, it sounded cool so I didn’t need a lot of persuading. So I drop by Fry’s and pick one up (they’re essentially $150 no matter where you buy them), and plug it in. Nothing. No iChat love. No, well, much of anything! Which is kind of weird.

I do a little reading and realize that actually, you need iChat AV to make use of it. Which comes “free” with the Panther upgrade (OS X 10.3), which costs $129. Or, you can get iChat AV alone for $29. Well, I know I want some of the goodies in 10.3 anyhow, but was hesitant to upgrade before because I didn’t want to risk anything going wrong to her beloved Mac. But, I decided should just go for it…

So I’m off to the Apple store (happened to be going by on the way to the bagel shop in Burlingame, actually) and decide to play stupid to the sales staff, and see if I can get any useful help. Oh, it humbles me to do so… but here we go (my side of the conversation in bold). “Need any help?” “Yeah, I’m thinking about getting 10.3 upgrade from 10.2, but wait… when will 10.4 Tiger be out?” “Not until next year” “OK. I’ll take it. Now how do I back up my data before upgrading, just in case?” “Oh, well, do you have an external firewire drive or some blank CDs?” “Sure, I have an external FW HD”. “OK, copy some stuff from your home dir onto it first”. “Uhhh… like what stuff? Everything? What if it wipes my drive and I need to do a full restore after the upgrade” “Uh, that won’t happen.” “But I thought 10.3 had a habit of doing that with there was an external FW HD attached?” “Oh, yeah, well, you want to detach that drive before upgrading.” “Oh.” “Yeah, but actually, the version in this box is probably a slightly newer version than just 10.3, so it’ll not have that problem.” Riiiight. So, out I went, for the second time in as many days having tithed Apple $130+..

After uninstalling and deleting some junk, in an attempt to free up some diskspace on her Mac (it was down to about a gig free), and apparently convincing Finder to no longer be clueful about blank CDRs inserted in the slot (”No volumes that can be recognized” instead of the usual “Do you want to initialize this new disk”), which made it difficult to copy stuff off onto CDR… I finally bit the bullet and started the upgrade. This actually took a couple of tries, because the first time it couldn’t find the internal drive on the notebook to install from, even though it had been thrashing on the CD and disk for a while up to that point. Anyhow, about 90 minutes and 2 CDs later, it was done. And the CDR-recognition thing was fixed, and lots of niftiness ensued… Panther is cool. Although of course, it was stock 10.3.0 on the CDs; it needed about 150M of additional software updates to be downloaded and installed (and a magic file trashed to convince it to install Java 1.4.2, because it didn’t believe me that 1.4.1 was installed, even though it clearly was during the upgrade; this was 20 minutes of hunting on the net to figure out how to make this work, and 3 times downloading 28M of updates… more money for Speedera I suppose.)

So, on to iSight / iChatAV. It works well enough, but got a little tiresome. Let’s see, let’s use the iSight camera to make an iMovie. Nope, not possible. Only your DV camcorder via firewire can be used for that… what? OK, well, maybe I can take snapshots with it for iPhoto… well, if so, I can’t figure out how. So basically, there is a $150 webcam, and I do mean webcam, usable only for iChat, sucking down a bunch of current (and getting a bit hot, I might add) on the notebook’s solitary firewire port. Hmm. It’s now sitting the drawer, actually. I guess she’ll hook it up when she really wants to chat with someone, but… that’s kinda lame. It won’t even work with iMovie?! Come on, Apple, really!

Tags: apple, bitching, iChat, iSight