I read this Inc. magazine article online yesterday. In it, Jason Fried described for me what I consider to be my personal ideal scene working environment. I really came away from this article with a feeling of calm.
I like to make note of how I come across things like this. In this case, I was looking through Twitter feeds, I believe, searching for someone. And some tweet mentioned this article. I track the 37Signals blog in Newsstand via Google Reader, but I seldom read it.
I upgraded yesterday. I didn’t want to loose the settings data in my apps, such as saved login info; and I didn’t want to re-define my list of synced music. So I after the upgrade, I restored my user data from my last backup.
This is too bad because I was hoping the restore would restore my apparently corrupted carrier name string. Some Cydia app named MIM that SH referred me to blanked it out but won’t restore it to the default. And I think that creeped into some other storage/settings area the other day and caused me to not be able to send calls and text messages until I’d rebooted and mucked around with a bunch of settings. Phone was restored on reboot, IIRC, but SMS too more fiddling. What a pain in the rear.
The upgrade to OS 3.1.2 from OS 3.1 went fine. I used Pwnage to make the custom IPSW, as I did when I upgraded to 3.1.
I frequently take screen shots of error messages, dialog boxes, informational messages, web page receipts and more. I use OS X’s built-in <Apple-Shift-4> to initiate it. I then choose the area I want to take a picture of. At this point, Sharpshooter intervenes and lets me rename the picture, send it to the trash or move it to a directory other than my user-defined screen shot output directory. I’ve been doing this since… well, my screen shots go back to 28 August 2007.
Enter Dropbox
The latest wrinkle is that I decided it would be convenient to have these screen shots available on any of the machines I use (or even via a web site, in a pinch) so I recently changed my default screen shot output directory to a directory under the control of Dropbox. Now my screenshots are available virtually anywhere for me.
Some blog entry led me to this review of Eucalyptus by Things Made out of Other Things last night.
Eucalyptus is the best ebook reader for iPhone I’ve seen. Worth it for little more than the cost of a paperback (ten bucks). The pinching to zoom out is priceless and the comfort of the book management beats Kindle for iPhone hands down. The page turning beats Stanza. (And I don’t miss Stanza’s annoying, fake page turning sound.) And the book selection beats Classics, though I think Classics is still a pretty nice and unique offering.
The Eucalyptus developers got my ten bucks on the strength of the above review alone and I consider it money well spent. As implied above, I already use Kindle for iPhone, Stanza, Classics and, now, Eucalyptus.
Short version: Newsstand for iPhone and iPod touch is the best goddamned mobile newsreader I have ever laid hands or eyes on. It is the best money I’ve ever spent on iPhone software.
When NewsGator announced that their difficult-to-use web feed service was going down, I was inspired to move to Google Reader and find an iPhone client that would sync with Google Reader. I followed their instructions and moved my feeds with an OPML file.
But what client to buy? I posted about that on 7 August 2009.
I’ve used Newsstand probably every single day since I got it. The days I don’t use it are those rare days where I don’t touch my iPhone for anything. On average, I load Newsstand an estimated ten times on a weekday and less on each weekend day. When I first bought it, it had some forgivable and completely minor rough edges — but it still spanked the competition. And it didn’t yet sync with Google Reader — it just downloaded from it. Syncing hadn’t arrived yet.
Then a new version of Newsstand (2.0) came out which fixed perhaps every single rough edge and, gloriously, added Google Reader syncing. This new version fixed things I’d reported, things I’d seen but hadn’t reported, improved things I didn’t even consider could be improved and added wonderful new features. Some of the improvements include
Now I’ve been using Newsstand version 2.0 (now 2.1) since August, so I don’t recall all the little details that were obvious to me when I had freshly moved from version 1.x to 2.0. So I hope the author forgives my surely incomplete list if he reads this.
The German developer mostly ignores my emails suggesting enhancements. But version 2.0 included so many of my requests, I can hardly complain. I have a few open (reported, largely without any reply) suggestions but they’re not a big deal. I will admit, however, that I when I get something which is as close to perfection as Newsstand 2.1 is, it pains me to see it linger at 99pct. Perhaps I’ll post these improvement suggestions in the future.
I presently follow 133 Google Reader feeds per the NetNewsWire OS X client that syncs with my Google Reader account and which I have used for actually reading feeds exactly twice. I currently have 10,000+ unread posts, according to Newsstand’s badge. I don’t even try to keep up with them all. Newsstand has been rock solid since I bought version 1.0. It opens very quickly and simply never dies. And, boy, it is fast.
The version 2.0 introduced a crash on adding a feed in a certain way. I believe a minor upgrade fixed that. I don’t recall if I had reported it.
There is no question that this is the best five dollars I’ve spent on iPhone software. I spent $80 on OmniFocus (mostly out of dislike of the competing products) and $20 on their iPhone client. And I hardly use either piece of software. But that five bucks I spent on Newsstand keeps on paying me back. Every single day.
If you want a feed reader for the iPhone or iPod touch, you can’t possibly go wrong with Newsstand from omz:software in Germany.
This went down about thirty minutes ago:
Mother: “I’m going outside and you’re not coming with me, okay?”
Child: “Okay. Can I come?”
Reading this Coding Horror article tonight, I was inspired to look for algorithmic problems to solve.
For example, even the Segway is an algorithmic solution, albeit to a questionably monetizable problem. But maybe Segway is highly profitable and I’m just not its target market.
Short version: My advice is to stay away from these.
I got one from Verizon as a perk for signing up for a year of FiOS service (internet and cable TV, not phone).
I went to use it (twice in a row) at Sears a couple weekends ago. The first transaction (about $80 bucks) went fine. The second one was declined. My plan was to empty the remaining twenty-something dollars on the Visa gift card and pay the balance (a couple bucks) in cash. No such luck. Unlike a store-brand gift card, it was not possible for Sears to know what the balance available on the card was. That’s okay for a real Visa card as there is an expectation that the user track his finances and know what’s available on the card.
But in my view, it is a reasonable expectation for the user of one of a Visa gift card to want to empty it completely and without having to track its balance to do so.
At the register, I called the number on the card (888-397-0765) and found myself in an automated system. This system advised me to use the Visa card first (absolutely not second) in a multi-payment-source transaction and to tell the clerk the amount available on the card. This was easy for me because I had my receipt from the previous transaction minutes before. I certainly hope that if I’d waded deeper into their menus, I’d have found an option to get the card’s balance— I didn’t need to but it could be a real hassle for others if this isn’t possible.
These cards are not cash. My advice if you get one is to spend it fast. Just get it off your plate. For example, convert it into an iTunes Gift Card (or several) or some other thing that you’ll definitely use. I certainly wouldn’t suggest using it here and there for various transactions — for something with perhaps a $100 balance to begin with, it’s not worth tracking the balance.
The nice clerk at Sears told me to keep the card around in case I ever need a refund as Sears will only refund to that exact card. Yet another reason to avoid these deceptive little monsters.
Never forget: This this is not cash and it’s not a proper Visa check or credit card. What’s worse, it’s not even as convenient as a store-brand card, which is quite an indictment.
The fresh, cool air hit me when I opened my front door this morning. The temperature of the still air was perfect for a motorcycle ride or a walk in the park with my girls. Anything outdoors. Today is not a day to be indoors. Weather.com says it’s 71 degrees in my zip code.
20090915 Tuesday update: I upgraded to 10.6.1 a day or so ago. Now this feature is working right again.
I upgraded to Snow Leopard this past Sunday. Yesterday, I ran into a totally new problem all day with Mail.app: It ignores the following preference:
Preferences | Composing | Send new messages from: <Account of selected mailbox>
If I set this to a given mailbox, that works, but choosing “<Account of selected mailbox> does not work. Instead, new messages go to the first account in the list on that same option button, which happens to be my personal mail account.
As a result of this, I sent tons of work email from my personal account yesterday. I noticed it on a couple of messages and fixed them as I was writing them. I chalked it up to user error at the time.
So far, I’m not happy I upgraded. That is, the upgrade hasn’t touched me in a way that outweighs this problem and the lack of support for Sharpshooter 0.5, necessitating a Sharpshooter upgrade.
I installed Snow Leopard just now. It was immediately evident that ScreenGrabber didn’t work. =(
And my <Caps Lock> key was un-disabled. =( Fixed that quickly with this article.
While driving home around 8:30 last night, I couldn’t send an email from my iPhone via Edge. Couldn’t browse the web either — I tried it as a test.
Today, still no Edge for email and web. But I can update feeds with Newsstand.
Today, however, when I tested web browsing, I got a web page saying
T-Mobile
To connect to the Internet with the device you are using, you’ll need a webConnect data plan.
Please call Customer Care at 1-800-937-8997 to make
sure you have the correct webConnect data plan
I’m very disappointed. Currently, I’m a very light Edge user. I have a 100MB per month $9.99 data plan from T-Mobile and since 3 August 2009, I’ve used 33.1MB (2.5MB up, 30.6MB down).
I hope this is actually a temporary outage, but I’m not holding my breath. If this continues, I may just switch back to AT&T. Blech.
This is a material change in terms of service. If I leave, I want out of my two year T-Mobile contract without any penalty fee.
Here is a discussion of this I found via google.
Good news: This post from that discussion worked around it for me!
I saw District 9 last night. I’d seen a review for it on Dvorak Uncensored recently. Before that, the movie wasn’t even on my radar.
I loved it. One of the best science fiction movies I’ve ever seen.
About a week ago, I got an email from NewsGator telling me they will soon (31 August 2009) discontinue their “Online” service and that I’d have to start syncing their iPhone RSS client, NetNewsWire, with Google Reader. But the catch: I’ll have to wait for a version of NNW that supports Google Reader? Huh?!?
So I moved my NewsGator feeds over to Google Reader via an OPML file immediately. And today, I started looking into alternative iPhone newsreaders.
I found this 8 September 2008 iLounge review by Charles Starrett, which was terrific. And after comparing a few readers by screen shots and features, I bought Newsstand for $4.99.
It’s immediately obvious that at least one feed, Dvorak Uncensored, which inexplicably wouldn’t show up in NNW is showing up in Newsstand. That’s worth five bucks!
That’s a big number.
Frequently, while working on it, I’m reminded that I’m still in love with my almost-two-years-old MacBook Pro. It’s just still so fast. Checking old posts… holy cow, I bought it on 20 July 2007. That’s two years!
Last night I saw that the dev-team had released ultrasn0w 0.9 18 hours earlier. So I upgraded via Cydia from ultrasn0w 0.8 while brushing my daughter’s teeth last night. Success! This seems to have fixed the problem I had with 0.8 where switching between cellular and wifi usage (by leaving a wifi area and entering an area with no wifi, reauired me to “kick” the antenna a bit. What I would do is quickly turn Airplane mode on then back off. This would get it working.
My initial test of this in 0.9 this morning was successful. Looks like ultrasn0w 0.9 fixed it. Awesome! Time to cancel my AT&T contract.
Went to International Plaza with Oscar and Spencer and bought my 32GB Black iPhone 3G S. Went smooth but took two hours, of course.
Then last night the Dev-Team announced the release of updated versions of their 3G S jailbreak (redsn0w) and unlock (ultrasn0w). (Previously, the unlock was very manual and for serious users only so I was waiting for something mainstream and hopefully already in use by many users and thus would have any kinks worked out.)
To ensure I’d always be able to unlock my firmware, I followed their linked-to instructions from iClarify.com on how to save my personalized and signed dfu/img3 files (two files). According to the article linked to in the previous paragraph, “As long as you have your personalized (signed) dfu/img3 files, you’ll always be able to jailbreak (even if you slip up and install stock Apple firmware in the future).” I don’t know how they’d be used but I went and acquired them and saved them. I’m even planning to commit them to SVN.
Eating the pizzadilla I made for her today, Leyna originated, “It’s so, so good, by [the] way!”
She opens the fridge while I’m cooking and I ask her, “What are you looking for?” Leyna replies, “Food, of course.” Uh oh.
Watching The Holiday today, which is a movie I really like to watch, Jack Black introduced his girlfriend thusly: “This is my Maggie.” I thought that was the warmest, most lovely introduction.
Moved to Dunedin this weekend, both days. Had tons of help from friends and family. Dig the new place. Neighborhood is okay but not great. Last night was the second night I’ve slept here.
Called Tropicana Storage U-Haul dealer this morning at about 8:22 about the truck we dropped off last night. “Jeff” told me everything processed perfectly, no money due them nor me. Perfect.
Last night my wife told me she found a gift for me. Expensive but she’d eventually get it for me. Did I want to know what it was? A Kindle. How’d she know what a Kindle was? In one of her magazines. She even knew that this was the second version. (The article was surely printed before the very recent DX — large screen version — release, which I read about on Amazon.com yesterday.) Nice.
I’ll try the Kindle books on my iPod touch (and eventually the next iPhone I buy) to see if that’s an acceptable (and already paid for and smaller) device for me to use for them than the Kindle.
I’m not inclined to call them eBooks. Well, only a little.
Today a link from a Ramit Sethi (iwilteachyoutoberich.com) newsletter sent me to a Newsweek article on survival by the author of a book I was already interested in, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life.
It was 14 bucks. So I decided to buy the Kindle version (for my iPod touch 8GB second gen) for $7.19 instead. That makes this my first Kindle book.
Yesterday I installed my lovely Powerlet brand SAE-to-lighter adapter with my Garmin nuvi 360’s cigarette lighter adapter. Took some doing to get it installed in the glove box without obstructing the insertion of the seat. I’m happy with the final result.
If I ever want to use it for other adapters, I’ll probably re-mount it (with an SAE-to-SAE extension added) so that it will go into my bike bag as the routing of the cables from bag to glove box (under seat) in a safe way is a trick.
With a new iPhone very likely coming in June, it doesn’t make sense to me to keep this one. So I returned it to Wal-Mart within my AT&T 30-day buyer’s remorse period.
Also, the thing was sluggish compared with my iPod touch. For example. Pocket God took a full five seconds longer to load on my 16GB iPhone 3G than on my 8GB second generation iPod touch.
I’m looking forward to a new iPhone model in June 2009.
Regarding hardware, I’m hoping it has
I installed my new (320GB, 7200RPM) Hitachi 7K320 (0A57547) 2.5-inch hard drive in my MacBook Pro. Copied it from 120GB 5400RPM internal Fujitsu drive yesterday. Maybe didn’t SVN commit trivial changes after 6pm yesterday. No biggie. Here’s a review of the drive by Tomshardware. And here’s the NewEgg page, for user reviews and specs.
These install instructions worked great. I was referred to that page from this page, which I believe I found in a google search.
I got a little scare when the power button didn’t turn the MBP on at first. But pushing it a couple times or holding it a while or the combination of both handled this.
The install didn’t take more than thirty minutes.
I have 202GB fee now instead of 12GB. I can move my iTunes from my G-Drive Mini Triple 500GB onto the internal drive now. And perhaps even move my pictures there. But before I do, I have to make enough room on my backup drive for the extra data that’ll be on my system drive.
A note about my MacBookPro. I’ve been putting off this hard drive install as I wanted to get the top panel replaced on my MacBookPro first. The paint has been coming off under my left palm for some time now. But I called the Apple store the other day and they needed 24 hours to turn it around. And I don’t live near there so I couldn’t do it then.
I’m noting this in my blog, today, 9 April 2009, so there’s absolutely no question that this paint problem was not caused by the new hard drive. The hard drive came way after the paint problem.
My Rebel Simcard arrived yesterday, while in was in Clearwater. I came home, took a big nap and then played with it.
Got the data and voice working on my iPhone. Carrier is T-Mobile (USA).
Called T-Mobile Customer Care to downgrade my $25.00 unlimited data + 400 text messages plan to their $10.00 100MB data plan. T-Mobile’s “Nick” (male) mentioned that I’d lose those text messages (I’d forgotten) and offered their 50MB + 200 text messages plan for $10.00. Yeah! I had him set it up this way. Cool guy, very helpful. He reminded me why we’ve stuck with T-Mobile all these years. Nick also told me — I asked — that there’s no terms of service problem with tethering. Before I asked, he was telling a story about how he was setting it up himself recently.
Now I have to decide if I want to keep the unlimited minutes plan. Seems to me that any lesser plan won’t save me significant money, unless I go down to prepaid. Ick. Then I won’t have a data plan and won’t be able to use the iphone tethered as my backup internet option, which is a big part of my cost justification for the iphone. So prepaid is out.
And if I ever need to use the iPhone as a backup internet source, I can call T-Mobile and temporarily turn on the unlimited internet plan. Nick mentioned this on his own but I was thinking of it myself.
So now the only questions that remain are:
- Should I wait for the next-gen iPhone (if they release one in June, alongside the iPhone OS 3.0 release)? Screw it. I already bought this one. It’s very good. Big improvement over the iPod touch in some ways. If I get sick of it, I can sell it.
- Should I switch the two-line T-Mobile unlimited minutes plans to two unlimited minutes plans? It’ll cost about $10 more total per month. But if either of us don’t want the unlimited minutes in the future, the other person won’t have to lose theirs. Thinking about this, I don’t see myself dropping this since I’m going to want iPhone data forever. I’m pretty confident of that. So let’s just keep them together in one unlimited plan and save the $10/month.
I upgraded my Grand Central account to a Google Voice account today.
Now I see the likely reason they didn’t add support for new, arbitrary caller groups in Grand Central: It would have been a dead-end to enhance Grand Central.
Bugs so far:
I was clicking on Griffin Tunebuds on amazon.com on my iPhone at 3:44pm, just now, and phone said No Service. So that’s the moment at which it sent out. Interesting.
The nice FedEx lady delivered my used Steelcase Leap v1 black/black cloth chair today. The truck was in the driveway when I arrived home with my new iPhone.
So far, so good. The butt of the chair is definitely not as hard as that of the v2 model I saw at Sam Flax in Orlando recently, which is a relief.
T-Mobile is offering a big deal. I called yesterday to cancel my wife’s BlackBerry data plan (unreliable, but we suspect the phone is the problem) and they told me about two deals:
1. Two-line unlimited minutes Family Plan for $89.98 per month. Whoah. That’s $10 less than a single line Unlimited Family Plan and $20 more than a 400-minute two-line MyFaves family plan ($69.99); the same as a 1000-minute MyFaves Family Plan and $30 more than a 700-minutes (non-MyFaves) two-line Family Plan. (All of those comparison plans have unlimited Nights+Weekends.)
2. Transfer a line of service from another carrier (not prepaid) and get $135 credit to your T-Mobile account in 15 days.
So this got me thinking about an iPhone again.
After a lot of calls to T-Mobile and one or two to AT&T, I decide to get a 3G iPhone 16GB at Wal-Mart and transfer it to T-Mobile and upgrade to the unlimited minutes Family Plan. We’ll be paying a lot more than we pay now monthly but I can use the phone for business. It’s unlimited.
I bought the iPhone today, called T-Mobile, transferred it, then called AT&T. The nice AT&T lady, Deborah, told me if it doesn’t work out I have 30 days to come back to AT&T with no hard feelings and no fees. Wow!
I now need to get my iPhone working on T-Mobile. I only expect to be able to get EDGE working, not 3G, but I think that’ll be okay for me.
Also, T-Mobile has a free overnight shipping deal this week so I’ll have my Nokia 6263 tomorrow. (I had to pick a phone anyway. Two year commitment with this deal so why not get the free phone?) My wife picked out the phone. She can use it when she’s bored of her BlackBerry.
Last night the Cyberduck FTP client gave me trouble for the last time. It frequently asks me to overwrite — and thus re-upload — files. And most of my FTP uploads are of large files (hundreds of megabytes.) I don’t know if the overwrite prompts are because the connection disappears momentarily or what. But they are annoying.
So today I decided to get another FTP client.
I started with this review to get a beginning list of contenders.
To cut to the chase, there was only one FTP client besides Cyberduck I really liked using: ForkLift. I bought it today. Once I’d seen the other clients and ensured SCP/SFTP was working for me with ForkLift, I didn’t hesitate to purchase it.
Here are my notes on the FTP clients I considered:
Forklift (on sale via MacUpdate Promo for $29.95. cf. $44.95)
http://binarynights.com/
Tried it today. Instantly loved it. Just loved it. SCP worked (SFTP). I was instantly hooked.
I like its interface more than Cyberduck, though I definitely appreciate Cyberduck’s price.
Cyberduck
http://cyberduck.ch/
Looks fine to me. But in actual use, sucks for me due to one big problem. Constant problems uploading large files to my client’s FTP site. Hassle. Might be a resume (interruption recovery) problem.
Would I go back to Cyberduck (free) if I didn’t have the upload problem? No, I wouldn’t. Because to me the $30 I paid for ForkLift is totally worth it to use the tool that I know is the most comfortable for me. But would I recommend Cyberduck to someone that wasn’t totally in love with ForkLift? Absolutely! Cyberduck is a terrific tool and it’s definitely my second choice among the OS X FTP clients I’ve tried.
Transmit
http://www.panic.com/transmit/
Tried it. Interface sucks. Windows are tiny and borders are damned thick. Not natural. By way of comparison, ForkLift was just fab from the get-go.
Interarchy
http://nolobe.com/interarchy/
Tried it today, 17 March 2009. I didn’t like using it. Not comfortable at all. I’ll pass.
Yummy
http://www.yummysoftware.com/
I just don’t like the look of it from the Flash screen shot.
Tried it. Didn’t like the interface. Thick borders, though not as thick as Transmit’s borders. Causes a mental disconnect for me.
Fetch
http://fetchsoftworks.com/
Looks ugly to me.
Not even going to try it.
Filezilla
http://filezilla-project.org/download.php
Not pleasant to use. To Windowsy. I use it in Windows on machines I don’t have Directory Opus on and it’s a worthy tool with a great price.
My six-month-old Office chair is hurting me. It’s a piece of junk, low-end high-back chair from OfficeMax. Junker I got for probably fifty bucks on sale.
The butt cushion has bottomed out, leaving two leg imprints on the chair and causing pain when I stand up after sitting a while. Damn.
Talked to my wife and she urged me to not skimp on the next chair.
After a lot of research and sitting, I bought a Steelcase Leap v1 black fabric, black base chair from a guy on eBay that ships them out of New York. Used but reportedly in “MINT Like New Condition.” Mint? Okay, here’s my $399 and nothing extra for shipping. If the chair works a long time without trouble and is clean, it’s a deal.
I wanted the v1, not the latest v2. I sat on a v2 at Sam Flax (store) in Orlando yesterday and didn’t love the seat butt part angle. The v1 lets you control that angle but the v2 doesn’t. Suck. And I’ve read the v1 is heavier and with better metal. I’ve also read the v1’s armrests are not as adjustable. The v2’s adjustable armrests — they move on two axes! — are simply awesome. I hope the v1’s wont’ be a letdown for me. But I definitely want a v1, not a v2.
The Leap’s butt pad is indeed hard, as I’d been led to believe by some Amazon.com reviews. But if I can pivot it (v1-only) to the ideal position for me, maybe that’ll be okay. And if not, I’ll get thin gel or foam pad to put on it. Or get it reupholstered if I must. Something very cushy. I like thick but fairly firm cushioning.
Steelcase.com says their warranty (lifetime) is nontransferable. Boo!
My six-month-old Office chair is hurting me. It’s a piece of junk, low-end high-back chair from OfficeMax. Junker I got for probably fifty bucks on sale.
The butt cushion has bottomed out, leaving two leg imprints on the chair and causing pain when I stand up after sitting a while. Damn.
Talked to my wife and she urged me to not skimp on the next chair.
After a lot of research and sitting, I bought a Steelcase Leap v1 black fabric, black base chair from a guy on eBay that ships them out of New York. Used but reportedly in “MINT Like New Condition.” Mint? Okay, here’s my $399 and nothing extra for shipping. If the chair works a long time without trouble and is clean, it’s a deal.
I wanted the v1, not the latest v2. I sat on a v2 at Sam Flax (store) in Orlando yesterday and didn’t love the seat butt part angle. The v1 lets you control that angle but the v2 doesn’t. Suck. And I’ve read the v1 is heavier and with better metal. I’ve also read the v1’s armrests are not as adjustable. The v2’s adjustable armrests — they move on two axes! — are simply awesome. I hope the v1’s wont’ be a letdown for me. But I definitely want a v1, not a v2.
The Leap’s butt pad is indeed hard, as I’d been led to believe by some Amazon.com reviews. But if I can pivot it (v1-only) to the ideal position for me, maybe that’ll be okay. And if not, I’ll get thin gel or foam pad to put on it. Or get it reupholstered if I must. Something very cushy. I like thick but fairly firm cushioning.
Steelcase.com says their warranty (lifetime) is nontransferable. Boo!
Watching a Jeff Bezos interview by Charlie Rose about the Kindle (version 1, not 2) this week, I had some Kindle questions.
I switched to OS X from Windows in late first quarter 2007. I sold my Dell 17“ single-core (Pentium M) notebook and bought a 15.4” 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro to replace it. I immediately started using it with Parallels Desktop 3 with XP Pro and XP Home virtual machines for work. My work requires Windows.
Parallels Desktop 3 has run fine for me since then. I’ve had the virtual machines go corrupt about three times but I always had backups. And no problems recently.
I recently jumped to VMware Fusion 2. So far, it’s been fine. I’m hoping it’ll give me better speed due to its dual-processor/core handling. I haven’t noticed a difference yet. But VMware Fusion 2 has been stable for the month or so I’ve been using it.
Now, why did I switch from Windows? The simpler answer is what kept me from switching sooner?
Reasons Not to Switch to OS X
Reasons to Switch to OS X
Browsing through Charlie Rose interview videos on charlierose.com today, I came across this interview with musician, Ryan Adams. I liked him very much. Bought a few of his songs on iTunes while watching the video.
Apple released a redesigned iPod shuffle today. 4GBs for $79. No navigation buttons on the device. Looks pretty attractive.
As I see it, here are the shortfalls compared with previous Shuffle model:
My youngest brother told me about iPass last week. He was thumbing around the App Store on his iPod touch and found it.
Traveling to the Pena wedding Friday, I signed up that morning. $9.95 per month, month to month plan.
It worked at the Grand Hyatt Tampa Airport hotel, with their non-free T-Mobile hotspot. I used it in the lobby bar to handle a little work email. So far, so good.
Now we’ll see where else it works. I was going to try it at Barnes & Noble last night, but I forgot the iPod touch at home.
Here’s a page where one can search for iPass hotspots: http://ipass.jiwire.com/
I received a WFP email today saying fill out this survey and continue sending them data for four months and I’ll get another copy of Office 2007.
Good deal! I filled out the survey. And I assume the invisible client app is still running on my XP machine. I see WFPAsiEve.EXE in my processes list. That’ll do.
Today I bit the eighty-dollar bullet and bought OmniFocus 1.5. I re-watched their screencast and it really was just the most comfortable way for me to make lists.
I’ll get the iPod touch client sooner or later.
There was a three-day MacUpdate Promo for Parallels Desktop 4 recently. That brought me back to the subject of whether I should upgrade from Parallels Desktop 3, which I use every single day. The upgrade options I would consider are VMware Fusion 2 and Parallels Desktop 4. Sun has some offering, but I’m not seriously considering it. Maybe next time I upgrade I’ll give it a try. I don’t mind paying a little money for a super user experience and blazing speed.
The reviews I read on Parallels Desktop this time, especially Amazon.com user reviews, turned me off of it. Their reports of problems with 4 but no problems with 3 really resonated with me, a happy Parallels Desktop 3 user myself.
So I bought VMware Fusion 2.0 from Amazon.com. There’s a rebate going but Amazon is not listed as a qualifying vendor. However, I priced all the qualifying vendors listed on VMware’s site. Every single one had the same price: $69. And VMware themselves were ten bucks more — for a download! I get a box from the other vendors but VMware had the gall to charge me more for less. So I LM for my VMware sales rep. No reply for days. I called back, talked to a guy who said he’s relay this to my sales rep. No one got back to me.
Screw it, I decided to buy from Amazon.com. Their price was lower than the other guys ($54 the day I bought) and there’s no bullshit and no shipping charges since I have Amazon Prime prepaid second-day shipping. Also, it’s easier to buy from Amazon than the other guys because Amazon’s purchase line is so good and I’m already set up for a quick purchase.
In the end, I calculated that buying from Amazon would cost me $12 more than buying from the guys with the rebate and including eight dollars shipping from one of those vendors. And no rebate hassle with Amazon — just a fair price today.
So I got my VMware box in the mail from Amazon and it had a blue sticker on the box that read, “$30 Crossgrade Rebate; Details Inside; Expires 6/30/09; ALA31045159”. That’s the best of both worlds! Thank you, Amazon! That means Amazon not only had the best purchase experience but also the lowest final price. Wow.
Took my wife to Citrus Cycle Center today to fit her for an HJC CL-15 motorcycle helmet. That didn’t go great. She got a better fit from a medium KBC TL-8. But I had to do my due diligence on that model so we didn’t buy it.
But they did have a smoking hot deal on black/orange First Gear Earl leather motorcycle jackets: $99. Whoah. I bought one (XXL) and I’m glad I did. Great fit, finish and price! I’m really impressed with this jacket. I’d be impressed even if it were twice as much, though it’s unlikely I would have bought it at that rate.
I’m looking forward to using it tomorrow when I ride into town.
There’s a small backstory to the jackets. On the way to the dealership, we saw two riders on the road with these jackets. My wife remarked how great the jackets looked (including fit/cut) and I agreed. Just gorgeous jackets. I even tried to get a closer look at the light but she was turning the wrong way. One of the guys was on a Repsol 600RR Honda (lots of orange in there) so it was an especially good fit with his bike. But it’s a generally attractive jacket for any bike.
iPhone multitouch
GPS
Driving directions
Great OSX sync for address and calendar
Unlimited data (Internet)
Internet cheap — $20/month or less
Tethering allowed by carrier and easy to set up and use
Cheap phone minutes — 100 minutes per month or so. Or at least competitive rates for 300 or 450 minutes, unlike AT&T’s current rate of $40 for 450 anytime minutes, which is robbery. (They throw in 5,000 nights and weekend minutes here, which I consider a mere token gesture.)
Trying to get our daughter to chill out about something, my wife recently expressed to her something starting with, “I’ve been really cool with you…”
That got me thinking. I hope she’ll forgive me for taking her statement out of context, because I expect (at least hope) she’ll agree with me when I say that being cool is not a parental goal of mine.
The following is my longstanding firm policy in the event someone asks me for any kind of contact information about another. I’ve written it as instructions to make it easily reusable:
1. Tell the requester that you don’t give out others’ personal information without permission, including the requester’s own personal information.
2. Tell the requester you are willing to attempt to tell the person that the requester wishes to reach them and to give them the requester’s contact information. Be clear that you are not delivering any specific message beyond the requester’s desire to reach the person and perhaps, at your discretion, the general reason for the desired contact.
3. If the requester wants to do this, then
a. Get the requester’s contact info.
b. Inform the requester that you will not provide him a confirmation that you successfully delivered the message and that you will not be providing a return message. This is a one-way, blind street with zero feedback always. You are not a two-way messenger but are in fact just doing the requester — and possibly the other person — a favor.
4. When delivering the requester’s contact information, be clear that you’re not interested in whether the person is going to contact the requester. That is most assuredly not your business.
My wife has a Sansa Clip 2GB player. Windows Media Player 11 doesn’t seem to like AAC (.m4a) files, which is not a surprise. If I need to rip a CD for her, it’s a hassle. So I’m going back to MP3 imports in iTunes.
DeltaWalker 1.8.6, released this week, adds support for comparing Microsoft Office and PDF files. And it works fast. I’m totally satisfied with how Deltopia implemented this. I use DeltaWalker primarily in OS X and a little in Windows. DeltaWalker has helped me ween myself from Windows and do more work in my preferred environment, OS X. And Office file comparison support is yet another nail in Windows’ coffin for me.
I believe DeltaWalker is the best overall OS X file/folder comparison tool available — it just doesn’t seem to be the best-known yet. Now that DeltaWalker can compare Office files and PDFs, I hope its notoriety will start to catch up with its exceptional feature set and quality.
Just before I purchased DeltaWalker, the developers told me to expect Word/Excel comparison support soon. That was an important feature for me. Deltopia delivered on their promise. In fact, DeltaWalker’s support for Microsoft Office files is far superior to that of BeyondCompare 2.0 — BeyondCompare 2.0 relies upon a VBA macro to extract the text from Word and Excel files for comparison, which wasn’t especially fast nor reliable for me.
But DeltaWalker’s support for Office files has been super fast and bulletproof. And DeltaWalker’s Office and PDF support is part of the core product, not just a third-party extension like it is with BeyondCompare 2.0. And BeyondCompare 2.0 requires a separate download to get its doc/xls comparison support, which wouldn’t bee a big deal if it had proven reliable for me.
Do I Have to Own Microsoft Office? Nope.
Another benefit of DeltaWalker’s more dedicated approach to Office file comparison support is that it doesn’t require the user to have Microsoft Office installed on the machine. Which is awesome for users of alternative word processors, such as OpenOffice.org. Whatever word processor or spreadsheet software you use, as long as you save the files in xls/xlsx or doc/docx format, DeltaWalker supports them. This shows some serious professionalism on Deltopia’s part. A kind of caring for real end users that you usually see more of from open source developers and less from commercial operations.
PowerPoint Postscript
I didn’t focus on PowerPoint support in this article because I don’t use it. But it is supported by DeltaWalker 1.8.6 — quite comprehensively, I’m sure.
I was working happily, listening to Melanie’s Estate Sale at a low volume from my MacBook Pro’s speakers when the sound went out with a sharp but not loud “pop.” Whoah. This sucks. Now I can’t get sound out of my speakers. Gonna have to bring this back to Apple. What a waste of time.
Update: I turned the MBP off, removed the battery and power cable and let it sit a while. When I brought it back up, there was sound. Yay!
My G-Drive 500GB Mini Triple arrived via UPS a few minutes ago. Yeah!
It came with three cables: 4-pin USB, FireWire 400 and, as a lovely surprise, FireWire 800! I’m transferring the data from my read-only-mounted Passport 250GB to it right now. I’m excited.
The big surprise was that this little drive came with a nice carrying case. What a treat.
Returned from our trip today. Equipment was unplugged and off while we were gone.
First attempt to write to Passport 250GB, using iTunes, gave a message that nothing could be written to the drive. Unmounted fine. Mount gave me a warning that it was going to be mounted read-only so I could get my data off and that I should reformat it. Come on.
I ordered a replacement drive immediately, a G-Drive Mini Triple 500GB with overnight shipping from Amazon.com. I’m tired of screwing with this Passport drive — this is a replacement for the drive as it had a total failure once. And this replacement was obviously used when I received it, at least the enclosure.
I’ll update this post with details at some point. Today is our first day back home.
I got the Power Support brand anti-glare Film set (front and back) for iPod touch 1st Generation as a Christmas gift from OHA. It was for the wrong generation iPod touch but the front fit great and the back fit okay.
This is a matte finish screen protector. I love it. It’s easy to read the screen, it was easy to put on — it wasn’t so large that it was hard to get it on perfectly. It was nice and thick, too, which made it easier to get on that some films.
I’m totally happy. Since I installed it a couple weeks ago, it has been wonderful. It looks like new.
Apple Store part number is TP871LL/A. www.powersupportusa.com. If I ever need a new one, I’ll be buying the same screen, albeit the one cut for the 2nd Generation iPod touch.
I switch my Xampp-based SVN server from my Dimension desktop to my new Asus desktop tonight. Couldn’t get Apache to start until I uninstalled IE 7. MWAPI.DLL dependency, I believe was the culprit.
I finally installed my Helibars today. JZ did most of the work. It took the better part of the day.
They don’t look better than the stock bars, that’s for sure. But hopefully they’ll be more comfortable for me given my long torso.
I’ve misplaced my xenon Surefire 6P and G2 Nitrolon high-powered small flashlights. At this point, I don’t know when they’re going to show up again, though I’m confident they will.
I need replacements. And I want a strong purse torch for my wife. And I want to switch to LED-based torches. So I checked out surefire.com and found the E1B Backup. Nice. I really like that it has a clip and that it’s reversible. But I kept looking and found candlepowerforums.com and Fenix lights.
I decided on and purchased on Fenix PD20 ($57.95) and two Fenix PD1-Q5 super-mini lamps ($49.95), one of which is for my wife’s purse. The other is for me and I haven’t decided where it’ll go. I’ll probably buy another one some day, too. But not this day.
LAPoliceGear.com got my business this time. Good prices and free shipping with a coupon code I googled for (“SPECOPS”) on orders over $124.00. The lights already had free shipping but I threw in some off-brand (i.e. non-Surefire) CR-123A batteries that required shipping. — a 20-pack for $23.00.
