Archive for the 'mac' Category

Take Control of Your Mail Attachments in Apple’s Mail.app

Published
by
John T Davis
on March 21, 2008
in computers, mac, software and the merch
. 0 Comments

Ever attached a PDF, Postscript document, or image file to an email and had those attachments appear inline (i.e.: the actual picture, rather than an icon representing the picture)? Likewise, have you received email with files attached to them that insist as appearing as their actual selves rather than easily managed icons? If you have, you know how annoying it can be.

For those of us using Apple’s Mail.app, there is no way to control this by default. The software makes decisions on its own, and doesn’t do too good a job of it. Lokiware’s mebeliMail Attachments Iconizer is a $15.00 dollar plugin that gives the user control over this behavior, and well worth the price for the convenience and control it gives, IMHO. It’s got an unlimited trial, too, so you can give it a whirl before you decide if you want to buy it.

As a bonus, Lokiware is currently sponsoring the RSS feed on the most excellent Daring Fireball Mac news and opinion site, and is offering thirty percent off through 24 March. On the order page, enter coupon code “DARINGFB.”

[tags]mac, macintosh, mac os, mac os x, email, e-mail, mail, apple mail, mail.app, apple mail.app, lokiware, mail attachments iconizer, daring fireball[/tags]

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Getting Things Done with Taskpaper

Published
by
John T Davis
on March 20, 2008
in computers, mac, software and the merch
. 0 Comments

I’m a pretty organized person. I use iCal and its rather aggressive reminder system to keep track of appointments, assignments, and other items with deadlines. I’ve used it this way for several years, and it’s worked great.

This approach is not good for a couple specific use cases. iCal organizes events and todos by calendars (e.g.: work, school, sports events, etc.) that don’t necessarily interact well together. (For example, there’s no way to create a project that cross-references events and todos in multiple calendars.)

iCal fails more substantially is in making the creation of simple, cross-refenced todo lists simple, easy and fast. Creating a todo in iCal is a multistep process involving several clicks and decisions that, when you just want to put a list together, be it of groceries to buy, or small but important tasks, or whatever, is slow and overbearing and kind of like shooting at a fly with a howitzer: you can do it, but there’s got to be an easier, faster way, and precision might be difficult.

Luckily, there is. The Getting Things Done time management system was created with action management and large projects in mind, and provides the appropriate tools. For most people though, the full system is overkill. One should not need project management software just to manage a task list.

Hog Bay Software’s Taskpaper is designed to make the creation of task lists organized by project and descriptive tags on list entries as simple and painless as writing a text file. From the software’s website:

For Mac users who want a simpler way to stay organized and get things done. TaskPaper is a simple to-do list that’s surprisingly adept. Unlike the competition, TaskPaper’s text based interface is focused on paper-like simplicity. 

I’ve fallen in love with this software, but I’ve been sitting here for the last fifteen minutes staring at my cursor trying to figure out a concise way to explain exactly what it does and how it works that also conveys how cool it is. Saying “it creates cross-referenced todo lists” is technically true, but it doesn’t really convey why you’d want that. Indeed, this was the explanation someone gave me, and that was my exact reaction until I saw it in action. So, with no further blabber from me, I present this demo. I tried to embed it into this post, but the embed code they use is painfully bad, and appears broken, at least on Safari.

Watching that should tell you everything you could possibly want to know about the software. If it’s something you might find useful, give it a whirl. The developer is very open and communicates with his users frequently, and recently posted about the upcoming 2.0 release (a free upgrade) here, in the Task Paper forum.

I urge everyone to check this out. I can’t say for certain that it’s made me more productive (though I’m pretty sure it has), but I’ve certainly got a better idea at a glance of what I need to get done (and have actually gotten done) than I did before.

[tags]apple, mac, macintosh, ical, getting things done, gtd, hog bay software, taskpaper, applescript, organization, action management, time management[/tags]

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die einzwängenden Finger!

Published
by
John T Davis
on November 26, 2007
in computers, mac and rant
. 0 Comments

Title is the output of feeding Apple’s Translation Widget “The Cramping Fingers.” When translating the phrase back to English with the same widget, I get “the in-squeezing fingers.” Things like this keep me from worrying that machines will rise up to kill us in the near future.

I spend a disproportionate amount of my day in front of a computer, so I’m a bit of a keyboard geek. If I’ve got to use something for hours at a time, I want it to be top quality. For me and many others, the epitome of keyboards were the IBM Model M and Apple Extended Keyboard/Apple Extended Keyboard II, the latter of which was the keyboard I had on my first computer.

Quoting Steve from the Apple Extended Keyboard II page linked above, these keyboards are relics from a time

when building a keyboard actually meant building something that you could, in an emergency, reliably use as a blunt weapon.

Most modern keyboards would shatter if you attempted to use them to defend your person, and that’s just not acceptable. But I would wager that for most, it is not these relics’ value as melee weapons that makes them desirable. Rather, it is the mechanical, spring-based key-switches. These, as their name implies, spring back up immediately after they are pressed, which gives a much more solid feel–the user knows when a key has been hit, because it’s already trying to come back up.

Theoretically, and anecdotally in my usage, this results in a more pleasant typing experience, as the user expends much less energy pressing the keys, resulting in less hand strain and perhaps faster typing. By contrast, most modern keyboards use very cheap rubber/silicone membrane switches that are, for lack of a better word, mushy. There’s no real response in many of these cheap boards when you hit the keys, making it difficult to train your muscles when to know to stop, which means much wasted, superfluous effort and mashing.

There are a number of options for getting high quality mechanical keyboards today. I prefer the Das Keyboard. face-profile.jpg Out of all the boards I’ve seen currently in production with mechanical switches, it’s one of, if not the, sturdiest, and as such serves very well the keyboard-as-blunt-instrument-of-destruction ideal. It’s built with high quality mechanical switches, and doesn’t try to hide the fact that these switches are loud. When I really get going, it sounds like a tiny airplane is taking off, which I like to imagine impresses onlookers and passerby. Plus, there isn’t a single keycap anywhere on the entire keyboard. I’m enough of a nerd that I count that as a feature. And here’s a neat thing that those classic keyboards didn’t have: the keys are weighted. It takes less pressure to hit the keys meant for your pinky than for your pointer finger, etc. There’s even a nice chart on the we site illustrating the pressure zones. Cool! (Bonus: Casual usage of your computer by those just passing through is discouraged, as newcomers are thoroughly intimidated, even if they already know how to touch type. It’s kind of funny to watch.)

The keyboard does have two caveats potential buyers should be aware of. First, it’s rather expensive: 69-80 dollars retail, depending on where you shop. I don’t consider this a negative, per se: it’s a high quality piece of equipment and should last for years. You get what you pay for.

Caveat deux is a genuine negative, one I hadn’t discovered until tonight. The Das Keyboard is designed for Windows devices but since it’s just a USB keyboard there’s nothing to stop you from using it with a Mac. However, two of the key mappings are hardwired to be in the wrong place for a Mac user. Specifically, the Option (Alt) and Command (Windows)* keys are swapped. Since the latter is the key** to 95 percent of all keyboard shortcuts on the Mac, this is a bit of a problem, though it’s certainly not insurmountable. Quite the contrary, the solution is simple: using the Control Panel, it is very easy to tell the system to read a Command signal as Option, and vice versa. I did this several months ago when I got the keyboard and never thought about it again.

But as I mentioned in my last post, we’re moving, I’m writing this from a hotel room, and my svelte Das Keyboard is in the back of a Jeep Rubicon somewhere, which means I’m using my laptop’s built in keyboard again. I didn’t think much of this until I tried to Select All and instead pasted a symbol. Switching the key signals produced the proper behavior on the Das Keyboard, but left the internal keyboard with the key signals incorrectly swapped. Annoying. It took me ten minutes to realize the keyboard circuits hadn’t literally been crossed, and another ten to find the setting to switch the keys back, and thanks to my muscle memory and the odd contortions necessary to do keyboard shortcuts when the Command key is in the wrong place, I was left with a not insignificant bit of finger cramping. Double plus ungood.

This was easy enough to fix, but as far as I can tell, I have to go in and reset it manually every time I need to plug in/unplug my external keyboard. This is, obviously, somewhat lame, and could be fixed with a very simple keyboard driver from the makers of Das Keyboard, but they, like many other hardware vendors, do not believe full Mac support is worth their time, so I find myself faced with an experience that is overly clunky. Perhaps I can learn enough AppleScript to automate the setting changes? I shall have to ruminate on this. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Peace out.

*Yes, I know Command and the Windows key are not direct analogues, but for the sake of this discussion, they’re close enough.
**Pun!

[tags]keyboard, keyboards, apple, apple extended keyboard, apple extended keyboard 2, apple extended keyboard II, ibm, ibm model m, model m, das keyboard, mac, macintosh, macs, macintoshes, os x, mac os x[/tags]

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Moving Day. And also, the pool.

Published
by
John T Davis
on November 26, 2007
in house, internet, mac and my photos
. 0 Comments

I’ve really fallen off with the blogging, haven’t I? I’d like to say I have a good excuse, and while I have been pretty busy, there’s really nothing that stopped me from posting a few sentences here and there. In my defense, I’ve been feeling a bit boring lately. I shall endeavor to be less so. As an act of penance, I will entertain you with pictures that may in fact be boring.

We’re moving into our new house today. For obvious reasons, I’m not going to say much about it or where it is, but I will say I’m pretty excited, especially since I’ll actually have my own home office now (and not just a corner of the bedroom dedicated to my vast swaths of technology), and a swimming pool. Really, really looking forward to the latter–it’ll be great to exercise and work on my mobility in a way I just can’t do on dry land. We’re doing hardwoods (done) and painting/wallpapering (not done), so the usual stories of the trivails of home renovation apply. Not going to go into it save to say it’s not nearly as much fun as Home and Garden Television would have you believe. Perky, crazy people with sledgehammers don’t show up in vans and trucks and cavort merrily around, for one thing.

Pool MosaicThe house we got didn’t actually have a pool, so we’re putting one in. I’ve been sure to take pictures of every stage of construction, because I’m a geek and and a photographic record of the birth of our magnificent water hole. I was going to do a series of posts for each stage, but then I realized that was kind of redundant, as I’ve already got them neatly organized into a collection of photosets over at Flickr, complete with color commentary, so I figure I’ll just link to that. Behold! (Obviously, it’s not finished yet. We’re waiting on the inspection of the fence, not shown in these photos, before the final plastering (laying of the visible surface of the pool). In the meantime, to help you visualize, it’ll be a color called Black Sand. The pool itself is eight-by-thirty-six feet. The whole thing should have a pond-like ambiance.

New Couch 2 And while I’m at it, take a gander at this awesome couch we got. Cool, eh? I suggest clicking through to get a full idea of its hugeness. And just to be clear (even though I already mentioned this on Flickr) that’s the furniture store, not our living room. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, for the moment the giant couch of burnished orange doom is probably the only item of furniture in our living room.

My apologies in advance if these image links break. For the moment, my Flickr Fu is weak and neophyte, so I may be doing it wrong. If so, let me know and I’ll fix it posthaste.

And while I’m on the subject of Flickr, let me take a moment to note that my preferred blogging software, MarsEdit 2, has built in Flickr integration. Whenever I want to put a picture from my Flickr account, all I have to do is press the Media button in my menubar, click the Flickr tab, and then browse (or use the built-in search) to find the picture I want. Size and alignment may then be specified. Most convenient. In case your curious, I use Flickr Uploadr to get my images up onto the site. It serves my purposes quite nicely.

Peace out. Will report in again, hopefully sooner rather than later.

[tags]house, construction, pool, photos, photographs, flickr, marsedit, flickr uploadr[/tags]

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Mac Attack…

Published
by
John T Davis
on October 24, 2007
in computers and mac
. 0 Comments

I really should just give up on this whole post-once-a-week commitment. It’s quite obvious I’m no good at it.

At any rate, some neat things from around the Mac web that have caught my eye over the last few days.

The Look

In honor of Halloween, here’s a guide (with prices) to dressing like Justin Long, the guy that plays the Mac in the “I’m a Mac” commercials. Almost decided to do this for Halloween, but I a) have no where to be that anyone will see me b) will not be getting any trick or treaters, and c) in the absence of (a) and (b) am not willing to spend $157.97 for the ensemble. Looking that casual should in no universe ever cost that much money.

Thought: Apple should sell the Justin Long clothing set at Apple Stores. Booku* bucks from fanboys with more disposable income than me (which is quite a lot of people, I think).

*Is this a word?

Mind Over Matter (and Reality)

Also of note is an eloquent fellow named Chris, who somehow managed to get the graphpaper.com domain and keep it (surely in defiance of the processed paper mega concerns and their armies of lawyer ninja), who frames the issue of switching from Windows to Mac in terms of a 19th century sensory experiment. Thanks to John Gruber over at Daring Fireball for the reference. Quoting:

In 1896, a scientist named George M. Stratton, showing an ingenuity that must have seemed like madness at the time, conducted a fascinating experiment in visual perception with himself as the subject. He constructed a pair of goggles with special lenses that inverted his view of the world by 180 degrees, causing him to see everything upside down, as if he were standing on his head, continuously. He wore the goggles for many days, never once opening his eyes without wearing them (he would shower with his eyes closed, for example). 

The article uses this experiment as a metaphor for the adaptability of computer users to new interface paradigms, and quite handily illustrates how easily and quickly the mind can reprogram itself as needed. I’ve thought for a long while that moving from one computing platform is as easy as sitting down and using your new device, but the fact remains that there are a large number of users out there who won’t consider moving from one operating system (or web browswer, or email client, etc.) to another, regardless of possible benefits, because of some sort of fear that their computer will become unusable for them and they won’t be able to get any work done and in the worst case something might actually explode. Articles like this emphasize the fact that while, yes, there is an adjustment period in any change, it is surprisingly short and painless.

And, so far as the Mac vs Windows debate goes, newer Macs all are able to run Windows out of the box, so retreating to something familiar is possible. Most often, though, one hears of Mac converts buying a new machine with the idea in their head that they’ll dual-boot or virtualize Windows in the begining so they don’t have to completely leave behind what they had before, and then finding themselves so enamoured with the Mac OS that they never enter Windows again, and go on to lead happier, more productive lives, with more disco parties.

Okay, so maybe part of that sentence might be made up. But in all seriousness, switching operating systems isn’t the Herculean task many make it out to be, similar in proportion to attempting to learn a new language by parachuting into a foreign country with no translation tools at all on your person and hoping for the best. It’s much closer to switching from a manual car from 1950 to a modern automatic. The car’s function remains basically the same, but there are a few minor details you’ll have to master to get the most out of it. And to continue to this obviously pro-Mac metaphor to its logical conclusion, once you do master those details, you’ll be much happier. Which brings me to my next item of interest…

Mac OS X 10.5 in (Roughly) 48 Hours

The next major version of Mac OS X, codenamed Leopard, will hit the globe at large on Friday. This is exciting news. Other, better sites have been putting a lot of effort into covering just why this new OS promises to be more awesome than Betty Boop with an uzi and a wakizashi fighting undead zombie hordes (okay, so that might just be my version of awesome, but bear with me here), and I’m not going to try to duplicate that effort here. Rather, allow me to refer you to the guided tour on this page.

That’s all for now. Later days.

[tags]mac, macintosh, macs, macintoshes, apple, justin long, halloween, switcher, switching, mac os x, os x, mac os x 10.5, os x 10.5, leopard[/tags]

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More Apple Ramblings

Published
by
John T Davis
on September 17, 2007
in computers, mac and sports
. 0 Comments

I found a couple other things on the Mac continent of the blogosphere today, and I wanted to share them. Jason Fry over at The Wall Street Journal recently posted this article about the upswing in Mac adoption he’s witnessed, and even though it’s anecdotal evidence, I still find it interesting. There are of course the few emails included from those staying with Windows, but that’s to be expected.

Living in Dallas, I’m of course a huge fan of the Mavericks basketball team, especially given that they no longer blow since being purchased by Mark Cuban, who is an interesting personality, to say the least. So i was especially amused to see that Mr Cuban recently switched to the Mac.

Interesting. I wonder how much mileage I would get trying to get people to switch if I told them it was “good enough for Mark Cuban?” Probably depends on the setting.

[tags]mark cuban, apple, mac, macintosh, macs, mavericks, dallas mavericks[/tags]

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Leaving Microsoft Word

Published
by
John T Davis
on September 4, 2007
in computers and mac
. 0 Comments

For years now I’ve wanted to leave Microsoft Word–it’s the kludgiest app on my Mac that I use regularly, and it always feels like I’m using a badly callibrated bazooka to

shoot at flies. I’m really interested in Pages 2 for regular writing and Scrivener for prose.

So it was with particular interest that I read Steven Poole’s very well written farewell to Word. Nicely written piece that I agree with 110 percent. I remember Word 5.1a on my old Macintosh Centris 610. It really was a great word processor to use because it stayed out of the way. Word 6 was, by contrast, a terrible disaster that no-one at Microsoft apparently actually used, and it only got worse from there.

[tags]mac, macintosh, macs, macintoshes, software, word, microsoft word, microsoft, apple, apple pages, scrivener, writing[/tags]

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Xtorrent 1.1 Released

Published
by
John T Davis
on September 3, 2007
in computers, internet and mac
. 3 Comments

Users of the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol* on Mac OS X might be interested to know Xtorrent 1.1 is out. It boasts improved stability and increased download speed, among other features. I tested it out last night and I’m really impressed, so much so that I’ve already bought a license. It downloads faster than either Bits on Wheels or Azureus in my anecdotal test, and doesn’t eat up my system resources the way those two clients always did (after running either overnight I usually had to restart my computer before it was usable again).

The interface is simple and easy to understand, and the settings are plentiful and easy to adjust. It’s not really missing any features I feel like I need, though I’ve yet to figure out how to check the percentage done on a specific file (though it does show when a file has been completed). That might just be me being an idiot though, so I’m not going to count it as a negative. even if it’s not a supported feature, no big deal. It’s more of a convenience than anything else. Without a doubt, it’s the easiest to use, most Mac-like BT client I’ve used.

And what can probably be said to be its killer feature is the built in torrent search functionality. Out of the box it simultaneously searches Google and Yahoo, though it’s possible to easily add more engines easily. Results are presented in an application window, and all it takes to download one is a double-click. The .torrent file itself is downloaded in the background and the information is loaded into the program automatically. The .torrent file itself is deleted as it is no longer needed.

It also supports torrentcasting, which is a way of using bittorrent to automatically download files embedded in RSS streams.

*This protocol has plenty of legal uses. I’m not advocating piracy. Please don’t sue me. Thank you.

I should note that by blogging about this software release, I will be allowed to participate in the NewsFire 2 private beta. So in essence, I’m participating in a benign (in my view) viral marketing venture. I am not making any money off this arrangement. I would still mention Xtorrent even if I wasn’t, though, because the software is that awesome.

[tags]macintosh, mac, software, bittorrent, bit torrent, torrentcast, torrentcasting, xtorrent, mac os x, os x, azureus, bits on wheels, newsfire, rss, really simple syndication[/tags]

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Mac Noir.

Published
by
John T Davis
on September 3, 2007
in computers, mac and photos
. 0 Comments

My family is, by and large, into antiques. One of my aunts actually works at an antique store (furniture, dolls, knick-knacks, a gorgeous blue-green 1950s bicycle hanging from the ceiling by chains that no-one’s bought in at least 12 years, etc.). I’ve never really been into this kind of antique quite as much, probably in part because I moved to Dallas (and away from the antique store) when I was seven. The fact that I’m a bit clumsy and tend to break fragile things if I’m not very careful also makes me less likely to want to be surrounded on all sides by expensive fragile things.

That said, as I’ve gotten older I’ve grown more of an appreciation for this kind of stuff, and my antique bug has always manifested itself in the form of a love of computer antiques (which I count as anything before Windows and the Mac became mainstream), which I love. Before the Windows/Mac hegemony, computing was really a lot more like the Wild West in terms of innovation and discovery of new technology than it is today, and part of me wishes I could’ve been around for that. It was surely an exciting time. I don’t get too nostalgic because I love my 21st century computer technology, but I quite regularly get jealous of those people who create their own personal antique machine museums. I’d have probably picked up an antique machine before, but I really have neither the money nor the space for such a hobby. I do have a How Computers Work book from the early 1980s aimed at parents wanting to buy their children computers, picked up from the antique store where my aunt works. It contains information on “microcomputers” that contain exciting new technology like “hard drives.” There’s even a bunch of BASIC listings, because that was the time when you pretty much had to learn to program to get the most out of your machine.

Too bad it’s not still that way. A lot of people would have a much better understanding of technology.

Anyhow, the reason I bring all this up is because John Gruber over at Daring Fireball* linked to a very well done set of scans of the original Macintosh User Manual. Take a look at that: it was the instruction manual sent with every single one of the original Macintosh 128k computers in 1984. You hear about how much more effort was put into things and how much nicer they were back in the day, but this is still kind of hard to believe. I mean, look at that. I’ve seen magazines that don’t look that nice. And now when you buy a Windows PC you’re lucky to even get a full restore disk included in the box**. Forget printed manuals. One of the downsides of transitioning from a hobbyist pursuit to a commodity, I fear.

So, anyone else have some good computer nostalgia stories/thoughts?

*This is, oddly, not the strangest name for a Mac related website. See Drunken Batman.
**You can make your own restore disks, but that’s hardly the point. I just dropped a several hundred (thousand?) on a new system, and I’m still expected to make recovery disks. (As a sidenote, Macs don’t include recovery disks. They include full system installation DVDs with recovery capabilities, which is even better. When was the last time you bought a computer that came with a full (not upgrade or restore) copy of Windows? Does anyone even sell computers that come with said full copies?)

[tags]mac, macs, macintosh, macintoshes, apple history, apple, marketing, book, manual, instruction manual, nostalgia, old tech, old technology[/tags]

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Beware Connector Transmitted Diseases - Practice Safe Port Interfacing

Published
by
John T Davis
on September 1, 2007
in computers and mac
. 0 Comments

I’ve toasted more than one piece of hardware (including a not inexpensive scanner) by plugging in the wrong AC adapter before, but I always consider that kind of thing an unfortunate mistake. I just read about the concept of a “mechanical virus“, which is a bit more insidious.

Just goes to show: being kind to your connectors, both on the cables and on your equipment, not only keeps your technological investment in good shape, but prevents spreading accidental (and very difficult to notice) damage to your friends and associates, potentially causing damage on an exponential scale.

(Of course, I’ve always been especially careful handling other people’s equipment solely because it’s not mine and the consequences of my doing something stupid would effect, perhaps financially, someone else. It’s easier to shrug off doing something destructive when you do it to yourself.)

After reading this, I can’t help but reflect on how easy to damage some of these ports are, when they really don’t have to be. Witness the robustness of the old NES/SNES controller plugs, USB plugs, and shaped Firewire ports, all of which prevent the user from inserting/withdrawing a connector in a damaging way. (Theoretically. Damage is always possible if the user is strong enough and careless enough, but it should be really difficult to do by accident in normal, careful usage scenarios.)

[tags]computers, computer, mac, macs, macintosh, macintosh, port, ports, hardware, connector, connectors, usb, firewire, snes, nes[/tags]

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Sign of the Day

Published
by
John T Davis
on August 28, 2007
in computers, humor, mac and photos
. 0 Comments

Logos are important. A drab company or product name (e.g.: Apple Computer) can be made infinitely more iconic and memorable with the proper visual aid. Thus art and design are critical elements of brand image and advertising. Choosing colors, shapes, sizes–incredible amounts of time can go into choosing the most minute of details just to get the right effect.

But sometimes, the stars and planets align just right to produce a result no one expected and no one noticed until it was too late. And even more rarely these unintended results can be far more noticeable and iconic than the intended design.

Such is the case with this Mac dealer. Thanks to Fake Steve for drawing my attention to this.

(If you’re confused at what it’s supposed to say, tilt your head to the left.)

[tags]apple, mac, neon, sign, neon sign[/tags]

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Grar, internet.

Published
by
John T Davis
on May 9, 2007
in law school, mac and rant
. 0 Comments

The next step in the law school process is to fill out a FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid). I did the worksheet for this last night, using Apple Safari. So I just went to actually do the thing, again using Safari, and was told I was using, and I quote, “a non-certified browser.”

Now, I keep Flock (a Firefox deriviative) around for just this sort of thing, but it still grates on me when I’m told the default browser that ships with every Macintosh on the planet, and which most novice users will have neither the knowledge nor inclination to want to change, is insufficient. Especially given that most of the time, these sorts of messages are generated by javascript that is checking not for functionality, but rather a specific user-agent string in the HTTP headers (the string your browser uses to identify itself to the world).

Note that Safari is based on Apple’s WebKit rendering engine, which itself is based on KHTML, the HTML rendering engine built into the Konqueror web browswer included with KDE, the Linux desktop environment. I wonder how many Linux/Unix users are unable to access this form with their standard setup. (Thankfully, Firefox is also bundled with virtually every Linux distribution.)

It also shows bad design in general on the part of the web designers. I was able to do the worksheet and fill out the form to get my Department of Education PIN, with Safari, but not do the application. This is a rather silly inconsistency. I wonder how many calls the FAFSA support hotlines get from people confused about this.

I’ll be starting up Flock now, which like any Firefox related application is dog-slow and somewhat unstable on my (admittedly aging) system, and going to work on this application. Bad Department of Education. Bad. No cookie.

Rant over. I think I’d like some cheese now.

[tags]fafsa, interoperability, safari, mac, firefox, khtml, flock[/tags]

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MarsEdit Test.

Published
by
John T Davis
on March 7, 2007
in administrivia, mac and misc
. 0 Comments

Trying out MarsEdit, a blog editor.

Now for some random text

This is a little known feature of the US phone system set up to allow folks from outside the US to access services that only publish toll free numbers.

Each of the Toll free areacodes has a code you can replace it with to make a toll international call to the number:

1-800-xxx-yyyy -> 1-880-xxx-yyyy
1-888-xxx-yyyy -> 1-881-xxx-yyyy
1-877-xxx-yyyy -> 1-882-xxx-yyyy

Edit (7 March 2007, 9:56 Central Time): Seems to create entries that display right, but locally stored copies don’t keep carriage returns, so everything is just one big block of text. Seems like a major bug, surprised it’s not fixed…

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Believe half of what you see, and none of what you hear…

Published
by
John T Davis
on June 29, 2006
in mac, movies and work
. 0 Comments

Quixotic is a fun word.

Spent most of today with Rex. Sat in on a meeting with the website designer and have apparently been made liaison between management and the designers, especially seeing as I’ve got all the info for our sever space over at Dreamhost. Also probably because my eyes don’t glaze over when things get technical. ;)

I’ll be expanding the site here on tle.org over the next couple months. Not by much, at least for now, but I wanna put up my research papers and such, for those who are interested. I’ll post more on this later.

The trailer for the Transformers movie is out. Apparently the film is due in September of next year. Yowza. Snakes on a Plane is upon us. So, Superman and that are my current movies-to-see. (Saw Cars, may do a write-up on it.)

MacOS X 10.4.7 is out. Installed it today and it didn’t kill my system (installing OS updates is always a bit of a fun thing when your backups aren’t current–will or won’t your system come back up after rebooting?) Speaking of which, I need to find a backup solution. Anybody got any good suggestions besides Retrospect? Absolute worst peice of commercial Mac software I’ve ever had the displeasure of using–and that includes Microsoft products.

That’s all for now.
Phasers on stun. Good luck. Liquid Engineer, out.

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Prison Break.

Published
by
John T Davis
on June 6, 2006
in mac, medical and university
. 0 Comments

I’m done. Completely and totally, unequivocally, done. At least until late August. The Astronomy final was more difficult than the mid term, but I still think I came away with an A. We shall see, I suppose.

My body continues its active rebellion. Last night I was struck with some sort of bladder infection/demonic entity, and it’s proving quite annoying. I’m hitting it hard with Oregano and Uvaursi leaves, both in pill form. Amazingly, it seems to be about gone, and I must say, thank you. Seriously, without going into detail, just, ow.

My new glasses are in. They are indeed awesome, though I think I’m gonna have to go to a glasses place and get them to adjust the arms so they have a bit more of a bend at the end and stay up on my nose. I tried to find a picture of them to link to, but all I’m getting is stuff about the hotel and fine leather.

I downloaded Delicious Library a little while ago. It’s book/movie/CD cataloguing software with a twist. If you’ve got an iSight camera plugged into your Mac, you just turn it on, hold up the book’s barcode to the camera, and the information is automatically downloaded from Amazon. All the info you could possibly want on a book. I went through 20 DVDs and 3 books in about 15 minutes. Doing that by hand would’ve probably taken me hours. (Probably the reason I don’t have a meaningful catalogue of my books, DVDs, etc.) Unbearably cool. I’ll probably end up going on a mad spree and putting in the info for all my books, comics, and movies later.

Those who have been in charge of Proteus, the multi-protocol IM client for Mac, for the past few years (and doing an awful job, IMHO…no major release in years, and it’s still not a Universal Binary and doesn’t support group chat and other critical features) are finally admitting they’ve botched it and preparing to open source the whole project, with a firm development team in place. Yay.

I’ll probably be splitting it out of here tomorrow afternoon, barring some unforeseen disaster.

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