This report at MacRumors was interesting. Supposedly, an unreliable rumor (as opposed to some other kind?), suggests that Apple may offer iChat AV on the Windows platform, and that a future revision may support multiple simultaneous AV chat sessions.
I don't see Apple devoting development and support resources to the Wintel platform for something that isn't going to be generating a lot of revenue. They'd be trying to compete with MSN, AOL and Yahoo at that point. I'm sure they're happy to sell iSights to Wintel users, but software support costs money, and my impression is Wintel users require a lot of support.
As for multiple simultaneous AV chat sessions, well, never say never but this doesn't seem likely until folks have a lot more bandwidth. Maybe as kind of a Rendezvous-enabled thing, for folks on the local area network, but not for someone living at the end of the last mile, like yours truly. Right now, Comcast offers me up to 3mbps downstream, which is great until you realize that upstream is often less than 150 kbps. If I try to transfer a large file while I'm doing an AV chat, I lose the audio. If we could all have 512 kbps of reliable upstream bandwidth, multiple simultaneous sessions would be possible, and perhaps much more (like file transfer, white board applications, document sharing, etc.) But the broadband industry seems more focused on treating us as consumers rather than as producers or collaborators. That will likely change eventually, but I don't think it'll be soon.
What I've been thinking would be kind of interesting is either a Bluetooth or perhaps an RFID device that one would wear to indicate presence to the machine, and have the machine ask if you want to be listed as available in iChat when you're near that machine. So if you have an iMac in the kitchen and one in the living room, you could take a chat request from whatever machine you happened to be near without logging in and out all the time. Also, your iCal alert would appear at whatever machine you happened to be near, perhaps defaulting to a specified one if the computers detect no presence, or better yet, they send an SMS message or an e-mail to your work address.
Write down all the stupid serial numbers for software that requires a serial number for activation in some safe, central location.
I tried launching Corel PhotoPaint to do some picture touch-up. It crashed unceremoniously. Oddly enough, Corel Draw, Rave, and Trace all launched just fine. I figured I'd just reinstall PhotoPaint, so I dug out my Corel Draw 11 CDs and the little card with the serial number and started the installer. After I configured it to just install PhotoPaint, it asked me for my serial number, which I dutifully typed in. Then it gave me another dialog box that said I was upgrading from a previous installation, please enter the previous serial number. Then it all came back to me, how arcane this whole installation process is.
I never throw anything away, but I've been trying to become less of a pack rat lately. I can't seem to find the serial number cards for Corel 8 and Corel 10. I must have thrown them away, having forgotten I needed them to install 11. So now I'm going to have to call Corel and hopefully they can give me some kind of a number that'll work. Sometimes I just hate software.
Safari was getting very unstable today with a lot of crashes, even on selecting bookmarks from the bookmark bar. It's been working very well on the iMac and the iBook, so I figured it's something about this configuration on the G4. I went ahead and did an "archive and install" on the G4. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to resolve the contextual menu issues in Safari. I ended up just deleting any contextual menu plug-in that wasn't from Apple, and it seems to be working now. It was either Circus Ponies' Notebook contextual menu plug-in, or Sticky Brain's. I didn't use either one of them, so no big loss at the moment.
I was also able to successfully reinstall Palm Desktop 4.1, but I had to install the iSync Palm Conduit from Apple's iSync page to get it to see the Clié. After that, everything syncs just fine.
The iSight disappeared again, and I had to do the cable voodoo thing again. This is disturbing.
Night before last, I noticed my brother's buddy icon didn't show that his iSight camera was connected, so I did a text chat with him. Turns out, iChat wasn't seeing the camera. This is the same problem I had a few weeks ago. I told him about the tech note I'd read at Apple's support site, after doing all the usual Mac mojo, and unplugging the computer and the iSight for 5 minutes, then plugging everything back in and powering on. He tried that while I was online and it didn't resolve the issue. I don't know if he's gotten it fixed yet, because I haven't noticed him online.
Well, today my iSight disappeared from iChat AV. I did the usual first thing, I unplugged the camera and plugged it back in. That didn't resolve it, so I went right to powering down the G4 and removing the power plug from the back of the computer and waiting for five minutes. After the requisite five minutes were over, plus some (I fell asleep on the couch), I plugged everything back in and powered up. Still no iSight.
Now I'm starting to get worried. I did some other, unrelated, maintenance and then shut it down again. This time I unplugged both ends of the Firewire cable as well as the power cable to the machine. I waited a little more than five minutes, then plugged in the power cord and the end of the Firewire cable that goes into the computer. After it finished booting up, I plugged the other end into the iSight. When I did that, it showed the green LED, which it always does, I heard the shutter open and then iChat launched, which hadn't happened the previous time. So now everything looks good at my end, but I notice my parents' buddy icon isn't showing their iSight. Funny how this happens all at once. Do you suppose it has anything to do with the solar flare? Maybe some type of capacitance charge builds up between the camera and the Firewire interface on the computer that interferes with the signal path. What do I know?
So, Mom, this is what you do:
Power down the eMac and then remove the power cord from the back of the machine. Also unplug the iSight cable where it plugs into the eMac.
Next, squeeze the two white buttons at the top of the camera mount and pull the camera straight up off the mount. Then unplug the cable from the camera.
After waiting five minutes, or a little longer, plug the power cord and the Firewire cable back into the eMac. Don't plug the wire back into the camera yet.
Turn the eMac on, and after it finishes booting up, go ahead and plug the cable into the camera. Then push the camera down onto the mount. iChat should start up if it hasn't already, and you should be good to go.
Well, I didn't watch The West Wing last night. Didn't even remember that it was on. I guess I'm done with that show. Actually, I think it's mostly that I'm sick of politics and a lot of that has to do with the internet. But that's a rant for another day. Maybe several days. I have a topic in my Tinderbox file for Time's Shadow called "The Cooler." I put things in there that I write that fall into the "discretion is the better part of valor" category. It's getting quite a few entries these days. I keep thinking I'll pull some of them out and re-work them so they're less emotional, but that's not likely to happen, so there they'll likely stay.
Anyway, back to TV. I watched the season premiere of That 70s Show. I was surprised to see Red coming home from the hospital following a heart attack. I must have missed a few episodes last season. And Fez married Eric's sister? When did that happen? I'm afraid That 70s Show may have just jumped the shark. Red's heart attack has put him out of work, so Eric has reluctantly decided that he can't go to college with Donna, so there's the tension for that couple this season. A new actress is playing Eric's sister, and I almost never like a new actor playing a familiar character. And I'm not happy about a vulnerable Red Forman. This is escapism people! If I want vulnerability I'll watch WE for cryin' out loud. Oh well, it's just a TV show. I'll give it a couple of more episodes and we'll see, but it doesn't look good.
I read an article that I found via MacSurfer (can't find it now), that said the new Font inspector allowed you to specify all the particulars about a drop shadow in your text. When I went to TextEdit and selected Show Fonts from the Format menu (make sure you're editing a Rich Text document), I didn't see anything in the inspector that allowed you to alter drop shadows. As it happened, Safari got even flakier on me this morning and so I trashed the plist and that solved one problem (the crash on contextual menu copy continues to be a problem), but I had to re-select all my preferences.
When I hit the Select button in the Standard Font preference, it opened the Font inspector, and there was the drop shadow control! So I launched TextEdit to see if something had changed somehow and if it would now appear in the Font inspector in that program. No such luck, it still didn't show the shadow controls. But I did notice the inspector itself was larger in Safari, so I looked down in the lower right-hand corner of the inspector in TextEdit, and sure enough, you can grow the inspector box, revealing the rest of the options.
Duh! What trips you up is that when the box is small enough to obscure the shadow controls, it doesn't give you the >> hint at the right margin to suggest there are more controls that aren't shown. Bad Apple!
I decided I had to have OmniGraffle 3, and since OmniGraffle 2 came with my G4, I could upgrade for the reasonable price of $24.95. The only glitch was I needed to have the serial number from my computer in order to complete the form. Ordinarily, you can use About This Mac, or System Profiler to get the computer's serial number, but since my motherboard was replaced last spring, that hasn't worked. It's also on the back of the computer, so I got down on the floor and tried to look behind the machine to read the serial number. Wouldn't you know? The text is tiny and it's upside down, there's no way I can read it in its normal location. But pulling the tower out involves shutting it down and disconnecting cables, and I am a fundamentally lazy man in these matters.
But I am not without some degree of cunning, or so I tell myself anyway. I grabbed my Canon PowerShot A70, set it on Macro focus, stuck it behind the backplane and fired a few rounds. Pop out the CF card, pop it into the card reader, right click on an image and use QuickImage to rotate the image and voila! There's the serial number!
I've got my Griffin PowerMate set up to zoom the screen image in and out, basically just replacing the keystrokes for Universal Access' Zoom feature. If I zoom to maximum screen magnification, it gets stuck there and won't zoom back out. I can still access the system preference pane and turn off magnification, so everything returns to normal, but it worked fine under Jaguar.
Irony: The Fifth Fundamental Force of the Universe
One gets the impression, apparently not a terribly accurate one, that libertarians are supposedly rugged individualists who respect each individual's innate ability to be responsible for themselves and to achieve their own happiness. Or at least it is not the responsibility of others to see to their comfort or happiness.
But then I read this piece by Dr. Arnold Kling at Tech Central Station. I don't have a good sense of what sort of "list" Dr. Kling is on as a weblogger, or even if he is a weblogger per se. He has been linked to by A-List 'bloggers, the Instapundit, and Doc Searls, so he certainly gets A-list attention. I've had some recent correspondence with Dr. Kling regarding another piece of his, which isn't entirely relevant to this observation.
In the piece I linked to above, Dr. Kling laments how unwelcome he was made to feel as a conservative or a libertarian at the recent Pop!tech conference. In another piece on the same topic, Dr. Kling describes the attendees at the conference as "Bobos" from David Brooks' Bourgeois Bohemians - "overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly liberal." He goes on to describe them as "angry liberals."
The second post I linked to was actually written on the last day of the conference. In that post, he writes:
My only moment of discomfort was during Larry Lessig's talk. He put up a video in which George Bush and Tony Blair were made to look silly by making it appear that they were lipsynching some pop love song. He put it up as an example of re-using works for creative purposes, but clearly he expected the audience to enjoy the insult to Bush and Blair, which they did. It was so tasteless that I wanted to squirm--the way I would have felt if he had been talking about people of color using the N-word. His video received raucous applause, and I am sure that no one questioned his taste or ethics in any way.
and
Maybe I should have stood up and called out Larry Lessig, but I was thinking that it was a job for a liberal. But no one said a word.
But in the first post I linked to, written after the conference and dated 27 October, he writes:
As an isolated incident, the Bush-Blair video was trivial. In a less threatening environment, I might have found it amusing.
...
The informal discussions at the conference also were heavily laden with Bush-hatred. This began on the ride from the airport to the conference in a van that was shared by several of us attending the conference. In that group, I "outed" myself as not being on the left. However, as the days of the conference progressed and I sensed the anger in the hallway discussions, I began to withdraw from conversations. I stopped trying to introduce myself to other people, and instead I spent most of my time talking to people with whom I had established some previous connection.
Somehow I thought libertarians and conservatives were made of sterner stuff. But I'm a bit confused, on the 19th, his "only moment of discomfort" was during the video and a week later, when he wants to make a point about the "angry left," he spent the entire conference in a "threatening environment." What's up with that?
I also thought libertarians and conservatives were big on moral courage, or maybe it's just moral outrage; but it seems to me that it's a pretty damning indictment of oneself to not speak up when one thinks something is wrong, and then accuse others of being somehow morally deficient because they failed to do so as well. How's that "job" thing work again?
It's irritating that Dr. Kling has no problem calling the people he's criticizing "bourgeois bohemians" and how he slips in an oblique accusation of anti-semitism, a popular accusation tossed off far too glibly by those on the right, in this sentence: This year, a conservative or libertarian felt like a Jew among a group of Christians whose main topic of conversation was the despicable nature of Jews. To paraphrase Dr. Kling: If Dr. Kling were not trying to engage in right-wing rabble-rousing, he could have chosen an apolitical example to illustrate his point.
Finally, to address the nominal subject of his piece of 27 October regarding "elitist group-think," I think the group-think phenomenon is pervasive in human interactions, and nowhere more prevalent and evident than the group-think exhibited by right-wingers who voluntarily choose to label themselves "ditto-heads." And yes, I know "ditto-head" refers to the practice of just offering "ditto" when one's call is taken on Rush Limbaugh's show, so as not to waste the listeners' time with "First time caller, Rush. Love your show, I think you're the greatest thing since steel-belted radials." But as an appellation it is startlingly congruent with the views of the host and his listeners and the idea of group-think. If anything, the "Left" is simply adopting the aggressive, and admittedly successful, practices of the "Right" and we're all going to have to live with the consequences. Dr. Kling is just unhappy when the people he enjoys beating up on start doing it too.
But I take special delight in the irony of a white, male, conservative, libertarian asking that others act and behave in a way that is more sensitive toward his feelings. Rich, that.
Just had my first video chat with Euan Semple! I couldn't tell if he was wearing a kilt, and I forgot to ask. Damn. iChat AV just rocks.
I mentioned to him that he might want to be keeping an eye out for the Northern Lights the next couple of nights. We just had another huge coronal mass ejection today, the third since Friday, and this is supposed to be the third largest ever recorded. Cool!
Check out the SOHO site for some great images and movies.
Local caching of iDisk is tres cool. The only downside seems to be the sync isn't very smart. I initiate a manual sync after exporting a note from Tinderbox. The only things that have changed are the index file, the rss feed, sometimes recent items, and the archive file, yet it insists on re-uploading a bunch of jpgs. (If you want to see what it's doing, just select the iDisk icon in the sidebar while it's syncing and you'll see a report of the files it's transferring in the bottom border of the window. That probably a non-standard Human Interface issue of some kind, but it lets you know what's going on. I'm not sure what's up with constantly re-uploading those jpgs, but it makes what ought to be a very speedy operation into a somewhat lethargic one.
I want my instant gratification! And I want it now!
Panther installs Safari 1.1. My installation seems corrupted somehow, as a contextual menu Copy operation will cause Safari to crash, although it works for others. I was going to download a separate copy of Safari to reinstall, but I was disappointed to note that as of this morning, only version 1.0 was available to download. As I write this, the Safari page shows no download link, so perhaps they're updating the site. Either way, I'm kind of stymied for the moment on using contextual menus.
I also found out where the auto-completion function is in TextEdit, only it's not what I expected it to be. Type part of a word in TextEdit and then select Complete from the Edit menu, or type Option-Esc and you'll get a list of what TextEdit thinks you're trying to spell. Kind of cool, I guess.
TextEdit is turning into quite the little editor, you can now save styles.
I found the clock. They made it part of the Date & Time system preference. The downside seems to be if you want the clock in the dock or on the desktop, you don't get to have it in the menu bar. That makes sense, I suppose. What's kind of cool, and seems new with Panther, is you can also have the Mac announce the time on the hour, half hour or quarter hour. That might get a little intrusive after awhile, but I've got it turned on for now.
Happened to catch a link to this interview with Jaron Lanier at the Whole Earth magazine from Tim Bray. The interview is a pdf file, which opened in Preview. I've been using Preview as the default app for pdf files for some time. I still use Adobe Reader (or Acrobat, whatever) from time to time, but Preview is shaping up to be a pretty nice pdf viewer.
Check out the search feature located at the top of the drawer. It lists all occurrences of the search term, and when you select one from the list, it highlights it in the text. Of course, Adobe Reader does the same thing, but Preview begins searching as your typing, while AR waits until you hit Return. I just compared Preview and Adobe Reader 6.0 and Preview renders the pages faster as you scroll through page by page. In Adobe Reader, you see the background yellow blob load, then the remaining text and images. In Preview, the entire page appears almost instantaneously.
Not that reading pdf files is the greatest thing you'll ever do on your computer, but it is something I have to do with some frequency, it's nice to see Apple is paying attention to that.
The "Longhorn Changed My Life" series is named for Robert Scoble's recent remark about how much he loves his job. I will resist the overwhelming urge to comment on what sort of life that might be that an operating system might be said to have "changed" it; but I will use the phrase to preface my own observations about the latest wonder of creation from the minds that brought you Microsoft Bob.
Which sort of brings to mind the somewhat amusing notion that Robert Scoble might be considered, Microsoft Bob - The Sequel.
Looks like I'm getting ready to shut down Time's Shadow just in the nick of time. I wouldn't want to get cross-threaded with MS legal for the "look and feel" of this website, based on the template created by Derek Powazek.Check it out (via Don Park):
I was going to post a screenshot of yours truly, but it's at the top of the page! Still, for comparison's sake, it probably better to have them closer together, so here goes:
Mac OS X Clock (Seems to be deprecated in Panther, this is the Jaguar version):
Notice the photo-realistic reflection from the glass over the face of the clock in the Longhorn version. Also notice how MS respects the intelligence of its customers by omitting numerals and an indication of AM or PM. Anyone smart enough to use a computer, even as easy to use as a computer running Longhorn, can tell time.
No problem syncing the Clié under Panther. Some people who did either clean installs or "archive and install" installations are unable to reinstall Palm Desktop 4.1. I think since I did an upgrade, the necessary components were already in place.
Well, I suppose I've been putting it off in a sort of state of denial, but I went and reserved my tux for Melissa's wedding. Of course I'm renting one, what do I look? Rich? I could have worn Mess Dress, but the tuxedo affords me a little more liberty in choice of footwear.
Just to show that we don't take ourselves too seriously in this crew, we'll be wearing formal attire and flip-flops. Black ones, of course.
There's something about enjoying a cold beer on a Sunday as clouds gather and evening is coming on while listening to Nights in White Satin. It's pretty good.
I've enabled Fast User Switching, and I created an account I've called Classic. I've switched into that account and launched four Classic applications, Claris Impact, Word Perfect, FullWrite and WebArranger and opened a document in each of those applications. I've switched back into my normal account and I'm monitoring the processor load.
Classic eats a lot of CPU cycles. I'm running about 90% right now on both processors just for TruBlueEnvironment. In Classic, I enabled the sleep function, so we'll see if the CPU activity goes down in a few minutes when Classic should go to sleep in that user.
Update: It's been over an hour and Classic hasn't gone to sleep. So this may not be a very good idea.
Just downloaded some pictures from my compact flash card using Image Capture. Previously, a thumbnail of each image would appear as it was being downloaded, with no real transition between images. Now they rotate into view as faces on a cube. I gather the Apple developers are quite smitten with the rotating cube thing.
I tested for black belt (recommended) last night. For the most part, things went really well. I accomplished something that had eluded me thus far, and that was being able to complete my form without being distracted. Part of that was a bit of luck. There were only five of us testing, so there was plenty of room on the floor, and I didn't have to adjust for another person. There's no way to avoid losing focus for at least a small amount of time while you adjust or wait for the other person to get clear, it's too intrusive. But I didn't have to cope with that at all last night.
I was also able to ignore all of the other testers for the first time. I wasn't noticing what move they were on, or how they had performed that move, and that's been a constant challenge for me. I also never heard from my inner critic through the whole form. In fact, I don't recall hearing from anyone. I finally got them all to just shut up! In fact, the weirdest part of the whole experience was that when I'd completed the form, I wasn't sure if I'd done it or not. I just became aware I was in the final position and I thought perhaps I'd skipped most of the moves because it didn't seem as though any time had passed. But at the same time, I also knew I had completed the form, so it was a very cool, if somewhat strange, feeling.
Now, I also know I didn't do it perfectly, but what has consistently been the most difficult thing about doing my form has been focus, getting the voices in my head to shut up, the inner critic, the coach, all those assholes, and I heard from none of them last night. For this, I am very happy.
The final part of testing was board-breaking. In class, I never have a problem with breaking a board. During the test, I had no problem with my hand technique and didn't expect to. At the last testing, I'd had considerable problems with my foot technique. For this test, I'd been practicing to do a reverse side kick or a jump reverse side kick, both are relatively straightforward and an old guy like me can usually do them with little problem. Well, last night I had a problem. I went high, low and wide on my first three attempts, just like last time. It's nerves I suppose. But this time, I also got a huge cramp in my left leg just before my last attempt. I didn't know what the hell to do, the calf muscle in my left leg had turned into a hard knot, and I have to pivot and push off on that leg as I kick with the right. Everybody is clapping and cheering and I don't think anyone is aware that my left leg is kaput, apart from my rubbing it and the grimmace on my face.
I got it straightened out, but it was doing that twitching thing that told me it was going to cramp up again, but I figured it was now or never on the damn kick. I don't remember breaking the board, I just remember my left leg feeling like it was on fire as I made the pivot. I broke the board, my left leg went down and I went down with it. Not a very graceful end to the kick or the test. I was worried that people would think I was making an excuse for not breaking the board before, or being dramatic for some reason. After the kick, I spent some time stretching the leg out while the other students broke their boards. I think I've pulled it or strained it or something because it's really tight and still hurts this morning, both in the calf and at the ankle. I can walk on it, but I don't have any flexibility in it. Of course, that's the leg that's been hammered twice in the last six weeks on round kicks to an opponent's shin. I finally went ahead and bought shin guards after the last episode, but I've still got swelling from the last shot I took a week ago.
So I think I may take a few days off. Class is out of the question today, and I think Tuesday's might be a bit iffy. We'll see how I feel Thursday. In December, I have to take much the same test again, only this time there's four hours of calisthenics, sparring, running, and some other stuff before you do your form before the Chief Master. The big thing for me to do now is just run, do push-ups and sit-ups, break boards and keep practicing the form. And try to stay healthy.
One thing I've noticed that I haven't read a whole lot about is the change to the appearance of the UI. The title bars of windows are a nice gradient-filled gray-to-white, and the widgets are a "flatter" if that makes any sense. Here's a shot of the top of a window:
The menu bar at the top of the screen still has the pinstripes, but they're very faint.
I love the Activity Monitor application! Very nice.
I don't have a sense for overall speedup of the system yet, but some things are definitely faster. Shutdown is much faster, even without timing it. Startup seems faster, but that may be strictly subjective. Chris was playing with the computer while I was away last night and he says it seems much faster.
Whatever my problem was with indexing the content of the main HD seems to have been resolved by installing Panther. I successfully indexed it yesterday and Get Info is showing the correct information. Previously, it wouldn't show it as indexed, and it would seem to indicate that it was in the process of indexing it when in fact nothing was happening. Booting from another HD would show the drive had been indexed, but it wouldn't when it was the boot drive. Whatever, that problem's gone.
I've played with Exposé, and it's pretty cool. I think it'll be a little while until I incorporate it into my habits here at the keyboard. OS X handles applications and windows somewhat differently than OS 9 did, and I adapted my habits to those new behaviors. Now Exposé affords a different way of adapting and it remains to be seen how I'll resolve using LaunchBar, the Dock, the new Command-Tab application-switching windoid, and Exposé.
The new Finder incorporated all the shortcut icons from my default windows in my previous Finder, so I have the Favorites icon in my Finder window. I've read elsewhere that that is on longer an option, or presumably even necessary under the new scheme. I just note it because it seemed interesting.
I've replicated my iDisk onto my hard drive and I want to see if that returns control of Tinderbox to me more quickly than exporting directly to iDisk has in the past. Presumably, what should happen now is Tinderbox will render the html and save it to the HD locally, while Panther will perform the synchronization with the .Mac server. I'm going to try that now...
Whoa, very cool. I get Tinderbox right back! Normally, I'll post an item, export as HTML to iDisk, and then surf around looking for something else to write about while Tinderbox is tied up talking to the iDisk. Now I get it right back! Color me happy.
There's far more that I haven't done in Panther yet. I haven't tried iChat AV, haven't really played with Preview, or Font Book. It's going to take a while before I get to all the new features. I don't get enough e-mail to really care about viewing by thread. AquaMinds has reported that there are some issues between NoteTaker 2003 and Panther, but I haven't played with it to see what they are yet. So far, everything seems great, exept for the Safari glitch.
It may just be me, but I'm consistently getting Safari crashes when control-clicking (a right-click on my Kensington trackball), and selecting Copy URL to Clipboard. I now get a crash report form when Safari crashes, which is something new. I've submitted several reports on this bug just because it's consistently repeatable following a re-boot of the system.
This is kind of a bummer since I happen to use that contextual menu item quite frequently.
Installation took about 40 minutes. So far, no problems.
Okay, I can't find where in TextEdit you can use the spell checker to auto-complete text as stated in this page under the "Get Organized" heading. Not a big deal, but a little disappointing.
For those of you who may be installing Panther, I'll tell you how I went about it. Now, I'm an authority on nothing, so take my advice with a large grain of salt.
First, while I was still working in Jaguar, I repaired disk permissions using Disk Utility. Next, I loaded the Panther CD and restarted the computer holding down the "c" key to force booting form the CD. Panther loads from the CD, and runs the installer program. From the File menu in the Installer program, I selected the option to launch Disk Utility. It launches the Panther version of Disk Utility, which is pretty cool. I used it to repair the volume I was going to install Panther in. I ran it twice. The first time it gave me a list of problems it solved, the second time through everything was great. When you quit Disk Utility, it takes you back to the Installer.
My copy of the Installer didn't present me with the Archive and Install option, the only option that appeared available to me was to Upgrade, so I did. Everything went fine. Afterward, I ran Disk Utility again and repaired disk permissions. I got a long list of files with incorrect permissions, but presumably all is well now. So far, everything seems to be working just fine.
I read this paragraph yesterday in Nishida's An Inquiry Into the Good:
"Consciousness is free not because it functions fortuitously beyond the laws of nature, but rather because it follows its own nature. It is free not because it functions for no reason, but because it knows well the reasons behind its functioning. As our knowledge advances, we become freer people. Even if we are controlled or oppressed by others, when we know this we extricate ourselves from the oppression. If we go even farther and realize the unavoidable reason for the situation, then the oppression turns into freedom - Socrates was freer than the Athenians who poisoned him. Pascal said that a person is as weak as a reed, but because he or she is a thinking reed, even if the whole world tries to destroy him, he is greater than that which kills him, for he himself knows that he will die."
Reminded me a bit of The Oracle's conversation with Neo regarding understanding his choice and the Merovingian's assertion that without a "why" you have no power.
Of course, I have no idea what any of this means. Just thought it was interesting.
The new G4 iBooks look interesting. What's most interesting to me is the fact that you can't get a 1GHz machine in the 12" form factor. I wonder if that's to keep it from cannibalizing 12" G4 Powerbook sales, or if it's a heat/power issue? The new iBooks' tech specs show a 256K L2 cache, so it's not the same new G4 part that's in the new Powerbooks, which has 512K of L2 cache. The new cpu also has lower power requirements, so the old one might impose some greater power management issues in the 12" iBook, which are more easily met in the 14" model with its larger battery. A new portable of some kind is in my future, but not for another six to eight months. Time enough to wring the bugs out of the current crop and have a pretty clear idea of the performance differences.
I haven't received a shipping notice from Apple about Panther yet, so Friday delivery is looking rather doubtful. I expect I'll see it on Monday, but I'll be happy to be wrong about that.
I just heard one of the best lines ever in a re-run of That 70s Show. It was uttered by Red Foreman, Eric's dad and one of my favorite characters (Hyde is the other one).
"I just want to say, when my time comes, I want to be buried face down. That way, anyone who doesn't like me can just kiss my ass."
I wonder if anyone has done any research into the mind-control power of dogs. It's pretty clear to me that they have some. I sat down on the couch last night to watch a bit of TV with Chris when Mandy came over and sat down in front of me and just stared at me. I could sense her intense concentration as she beamed telepathic suggestions to my brain..."Scratch my butt...scratch my butt..." She loves it when you scratch her just above her tail. Apparently, this is an area she can't reach very well. Anyway, it was impossible to concentrate on the TV show with her canine mind-control techniques underway, and I felt compelled to give her a scratch.
You should see her when I'm making a sandwich..."Give me lunch meat...give me lunch meat...or cheese...give me lunch meat...or cheese..." I'm telling you, this kind of thing ought to be investigated.
I was able to capture this photo during a recent episode when I was receiving a powerful suggestion..."play with me...play with me..."
That's part of the reason we rushed to war in Iraq last spring. The Bush administration didn't want to lose the momentum it had drummed up for ousting Saddam Hussein, even if it had to fudge the facts about him. So: weapons of mass destruction? "Check." Links to Al Qaeda? "Check." United Nations support? A pause there. "Not needed." U.S. troops in place? "Check." Ready for action? "Hoo-ah!" Popular support in Iraq? "That's what they say." Popular support in the U.S.? "Just look at the polls!" Pliant press? "Yep." Supine Congress? "Got it."
In the case of Iran, the first part of that checklist is much the same, except the evidence against the ayatollahs is much more damning.
"Getting rid of Saddam Hussein and his regime had been a priority for Wolfowitz and others in and around the Administration since the end of the first Gulf War."
It may be an interesting week. I may or may not have an encounter with a black cat this Friday or Saturday. Not sure how I feel about that, this close to Halloween. Fortunately, I don't regard myself as superstitious. Much.
I've got two weeks to clean up the house and the yard before a bunch of Maria's relatives descend on Florida for Melissa's wedding. Cleaning this much house and yard requires planning, something some people feel is counterproductive or something. If I just sort of wing it, which is something we Americans like to think we're really good at, I'll end up doing most of it twice and some of it three times. I don't have that much energy anymore. But I started yesterday with some of the gross (as in large, not as in "yuck") stuff. One big item was removing the old basketball hoop from the back patio. Nobody's played with it for years, and the hardware was rusting away so it was going to have to come down soon anyway. Fortunately, it was a portable one so it wasn't terribly difficult. Anyway, the idea is that I do the stuff that is least likely to be undone by the kids and the dog first, leaving the stuff that they usually trash 15 minutes after I complete the job until the day before the relatives arrive. Maria will be in Melbourne for all but the weekends, so it's moi, myself and I - Three Live Crew - doing the chores. I'd get the kids to help, and they will a bit, but it's usually less work and aggravation to just do it myself.
Friday I take a test for black belt (recommended). This is the preliminary test to the black belt (decided) test in December. I've got the form down, though it needs work. If I think of myself as a 46 year old guy, who's probably 40 pounds overweight (or more), I suppose I do pretty well. Trouble is, I keep comparing myself to the 21 year old guy I never was, and I don't look so good. Fortunately, I don't have to judge myself, at least not to earn the belt.
On Saturday, Melissa and I have to huddle with the hotel for the final reception planning. Then I'll have to cut them a check for the balance on the reception. My budget planning went really well except for one small detail - I thought I could pay the balance the day before the wedding, so I'm effectively two paychecks short of my budgeted amount. In life, as in comedy, timing is everything. I'll figure something out.
Finally, just something I want to kind of note (as compared, I suppose, with the foregoing in-depth analysis of the issues of the day). Sometime this December, I will have been doing this for four years. For much of that time, it was a valuable experience for me, an outlet or a release if nothing else. It sometimes offered me an opportunity to help clarify my own thinking. Of late, it has been much less rewarding.
I'm not inclined to become a subject matter expert on anything, and devote time and energy to creating a "weblog" that could compete with traditional authoritative sources of information. Over half the hits I receive here are the result of search engines and the vast majority of the time what they're finding here has nothing to do with what they're looking for, so I'm just adding to the noise in that regard. Offering my opinions to the world seems to be a pretty much pointless effort in futility, if that's not being too redundant. The occasional comment I get is as likely to be a turd in the punchbowl as it is an insightful rejoinder. The world has enough pundits and commentarians, perhaps too many, inasmuch as they can't all be right. Ranting and venting and reacting is unfulfilling, and my experience suggests it is often more rewarding to just be still.
So, I'm going to be looking to wrapping things up around here come December. I've got a couple more windmills to tilt at, and then I think I'll have said pretty much everything I want to say. I've learned you can't really tell anyone anything anyway. Everyone has to kind of learn things on their own. As Exhibit A, the prosecution offers himself. Some lessons come easier than others I suppose.
Is it journalism's responsibility to somehow "balance" its reporting? What does it mean to have "balanced" reporting? Is all news equal? Is the calculus something like Representative Nethercutt's x schools > 2 dead soldiers/day? Where's the reference for that?
What do we need to know about? What events draw our attention? How often does "good news" draw your attention? In parenting, or in management, it's often said that it's wise to "catch them doing something good," because as a parent or a manager you don't want to leave your children or subordinates with the impression that the only things you notice about them are the things they do wrong. Is that true for journalism as well? Does journalism have a responsibility to somehow nurture the government, or the public's relationship with the government, by catching them doing something good? If 1000 new schools are opening in Iraq, is there some action I should take to ensure that that news continues? If two soldiers are being killed a day in Iraq, is that somehow "in the noise" and nothing I should be concerned about?
For better or worse, the "news" is most often about "bad news." Presumably, this is because bad news is something we wish to see less of, and it requires some attention to make that happen. The fear on the part of those who feel that the news is unbalanced in Iraq is that the action necessary to reduce the reports of bad news coming from Iraq would itself result in a different form of bad news - i.e., if U.S. forces were withdrawn from Iraq, the ensuing chaos would result in far greater human suffering than we're experiencing with the numbers of U.S. soldiers being killed.
This is indeed likely to be true. But it is not journalism's responsibility to make that case. It is the responsibility of the government that has undertaken this enterprise, to explain the "bad news" in the context of the larger goals and the plan it has for achieving them. To date, this administration has done an abysmal job of doing that, and part of that failure is because it did an equally abysmal job of planning for post-Saddam Iraq.
Pointing the finger of blame at journalism and "the media" is just a distraction. Yes, there is plenty of "good news" coming out of Iraq, but even that good news lacks an overall context from which a citizen may draw his or her own conclusions regarding the progress of our efforts in Iraq, because we have no plan, no timetable, no clearly articulated goals. Does this plan exist? Is it classified for some reason? Would "the terrorists" somehow have an advantage if they knew what the plan was? If there is any thinking along those lines, I think it's pretty short-sighted. It is far more to the terrorists advantage to have both Americans and Iraqis in the dark regarding America's intentions and efforts in Iraq. The uncertainty and doubt caused by this lack of candor will do more to undermine national will for America to do the kinds of things it needs to do to achieve its goals in Iraq, and encourage more Iraqis to abandon hope and join the resistance elements, than anything the terrorists could hope to do.
I read somewhere the other day that an American said more megawatts of electricity are being produced in Iraq than before the war. Of course, in the same article, an Iraqi said that that wasn't accurate. Even if the number of megawatts being produced is accurate, it's kind of a meaningless number unless we know the state of the grid, the distribution network in Iraq. Are more Iraqis receiving electricity than before the war? There's good news, and there's meaningless good news. What is our goal for restoring the electrical infrastructure of Iraq? Is it to achieve pre-March 2003 levels? Is it to exceed that? By how much? Is it to help the Iraqi government establish a goal and a plan for electrification? What is our plan?
People like the Instapundit, are unhappy because the news doesn't reflect what they believe is happening, or should be happening in Iraq, so they blame "the media." The problem is not with the media, it's with this administration. If the administration had a plan, and if they shared that plan with the American people, and thereby the world, the story would be how events in Iraq are unfolding as contrasted with the plan. And while I submit it would still mostly be "bad news," the administration could counter the "bad news" with its progress on the plan, much as the operations people at Central Command did during the course of the war. Contrast the execution of the war plan, as exhibited by the professionals of Central Command, with the execution of the post-war plan, as exhibited by the amateurs and incompetents of this administration. It's going to take more than Condi Rice chairing a working group, and the gang of usual suspects hitting the Rotarian dinner circuit to turn around what is otherwise shaping up to be an accurate perception of an administration adrift in Iraq.
Update: Naturally, someone will point out that the public was not privy to the war plan during the conduct of the war. What is generally known, although the story of this particular war plan is yet to be written, is that the DOD takes planning seriously, and nearly always has detailed plans to shape the course of its effort. Of course it's an old military maxim that "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy," and the same can likely be said for nation-building plans. That does not negate the value of planning though, as our experience in Iraq thus far is proving day after day. Furthermore, the nature of nation-building itself, as contrasted with the nature of warfare (i.e. breaking things and killing people), argues for candor in planning and execution.
Occasional interlocutor here in the Shadow, Mr. Cecil Coupe, in a comment regarding the Reloaded piece below, wonders if I might simply be reading too much into the movie? I reply in the affirmative, because that's the fun of the The Matrix, to read too much and work too hard for what is probably too little in what is ultimately just a movie.
But it's better than watching football, if you ask me.
The president concluded, "The best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world."
Rep. George Nethercutt said yesterday that Iraq's reconstruction is going better than is portrayed by the news media, citing his recent four-day trip to the country.
"The story of what we've done in the postwar period is remarkable," Nethercutt, R-Wash., told an audience of 65 at a noon meeting at the University of Washington's Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs.
"It is a better and more important story than losing a couple of soldiers every day."
He added that he did not want any more soldiers to be killed.
I bought The Matrix: Reloaded at Target yesterday. They offer a nice discount on new releases, I think I paid $15.88 for it. I watched it again last night, this time on the G4. Listening to the dialog again, parts of it made me cringe. It isn't as bad as George Lucas's work on the latter installments (Episodes I&II) of Star Wars, but I think the Wachowski brothers could have used an editor or an experienced screenwriter to help them even out some of the dialog.
I still don't know what to make of Reloaded, what clues are being offered regarding the epistemology of the Matrix. Is the Merovingian a strict materialist/determinist ("causality")? If so, his portrayal in the movie suggests that this view is incorrect, or incomplete. The Oracle tells Neo that he has "the sight," he can see the world without time. She knows that he sees Trinity's death, but he doesn't see all. She tells him he can't see beyond the choices he doesn't understand. If we recall Neo's first encounter with the Oracle in The Matrix, she tells him that he will have to choose who will die, him or Morpheus. At this point in the first movie, Neo doesn't believe he is "the One," but presumably the Oracle is aware that he has already made a choice - that he doesn't "believe in all that fate crap." In the second movie, when Neo expresses refusal or doubt about the choice between Zion and Trinity, the Oracle tells him he's already made that choice too, now his task is to understand it. If one can "see" a "world without time," when does one "make" choices? Beats me.
When Neo confronts the Architect, the issue of the flaw in the Matrix is explored a bit. The first Matrix was a perfect world, which would seem to be an ideal world and presumably an ideal world of causality at that. But humans didn't survive in an ideal world, perfect causality was incompatible with human existence. The Architect speaks of the Oracle as an "intuitive" program, one that was designed to understand human psychology, and the program that was able to discover a means by which a Matrix could be programmed in which humans could survive.
The solution, as it seems to be described by the Architect, is that humans are given a "choice" to accept the program or reject it, although it is apparently, in most cases, an "unconscious" choice. When and how they are presented with this choice is an interesting question that isn't examined. So presumably, at some unconscious level, people are aware that the world they inhabit is an illusion, yet they choose to embrace it as reality, perhaps believing as Cypher did that "ignorance is bliss." Some choose not to accept the program, and these are presumably the people who "wake up," ultimately being unplugged from the Matrix. In the Animatrix, it seems to be suggested that some who wake up are not rescued by humans from Zion, but are killed in the Matrix, causing their physical death.
I really don't get the "function of the One," returning to the "source" and allowing a "temporary dissemination of the code," blah, blah, blah... I'll have to listen to that again. Maybe there's a clue there somewhere.
It seems clear that the current incarnation of Neo is behaving differently from his predecessors. There's the comment by the Architect that Neo noticed that his question wasn't answered quicker than the others. Within the construct of the Matrix, the Architect is apparently able to "see" Neo's biological processes, much as the Merovingian viewed the woman's reaction to the dessert she ate. The Architect comments on knowing what Neo is going to choose, and that it is based on emotion that "overpowers logic and reason" (so the Architect is a Kantian?) Neo seemingly makes a choice that defies the logic of the greatest good for the greatest number, and instead chooses to try to save Trinity.
So, is this kind of a "love conquers all" answer? I guess we'll know more after Revolutions. Control is an issue, as it is beaten over our heads by the late-night insomniac chat between Neo and the councillor. In Zion the humans control the machines, and in the Matrix the machines control the humans; but each is dependent on the other, and so the nature of their respective controls are bound by the consequences of the choices they might make in the exercise of that control. Neo points out to the Architect that allowing a system crash would kill the machine intelligences, but the Architect counters that there are levels of survival they are prepared to accept. A bluff? Who knows? (And does it bother anyone else that the whole Neo/Architect scene sounds a lot like an early Kirk/Spock dialog?)
Neo seems to perceive events as constructed to control him, and he rejects that control. Is that ego? There is the potential destruction of Zion to be considered against the certain death of Trinity if he doesn't try to save her. Is he acting spontaneously, in a Taoist sort of way, according to his true nature? As Neo leaves to save Trinity, the Architect makes some dismissive comment regarding "hope," but I don't think it's clear that Neo's exhibiting hope. Perhaps he's just exhibiting faith, the two are not the same.
Also kind of unanswered is whether or not the phenomenon of Agent Smith has occurred in each of the six previous incarnations of "the One," or does Agent Smith represent some kind of cumulative error that was never fully corrected in each of the previous "returns" to "the source?"
Neo must save both the humans and the machines. The Oracle has made this clear in her meeting with Neo in Reloaded. She believes in "the future" and that they all must get there "together."
Anyway, those are some of my thoughts on the trilogy as it stands now. Undoubtedly, there will be more to follow...
This seems a little surprising to me, as the current design isn't that old. On the other hand, sales haven't been great either. I'm guessing that the current design imposes something of a price premium, and the performance of the G4 fails to offset the cost of the design. That is to say, many people choose to buy either a slightly more expensive but more powerful and vastly more expandable desktop (often a Wintel product) rather than pay for too little performance in a closed design.
I suspect that if Apple wants to incorporate a G5 processor in any new iMac model, it may in fact require a new form factor to accommodate the hotter G5 processor.
Birthday greetings to my brothers John and Eric, who may or may not be reading this. They share the same birthday, if not the same birth date. John's up in Syracuse while Eric lives in Alabama. We don't see each other very often, though I have seen both of them relatively recently, courtesy of iSight and iChat AV. They're both great guys and I'm lucky to have them as brothers.
I have the day off today, as it is a federal holiday, and I'm being extremely lazy. Chris went to a concert last night, the Dropkick Murphys were in town, and I picked him up about midnight. I was up at 0500 to make sure Maria was up to head back to Melbourne, then Chris at 0600, then Caitlin at 0700. Once everyone was out of the house, I read some news and crawled back into bed. I must have been pretty tired because I fell right back to sleep and stayed down for 90 minutes.
It's been kind of gray and rainy all weekend, and there's more of the same going on right now. It feels alright to be lazy today. I'll probably work on the kitchen and do a few other chores, but I have no big goals for the day. Right now, I'm just enjoying the quiet. In a couple of hours, Chris will be home and he'll be playing his music again and the house will have the steady thump-thump-thump of his subwoofer reverberating through the walls.
Of the three Deadly Vipers we meet in Kill Bill Vol. 1, Lucy Liu's O-Ren Ishii (Cottonmouth) is the most fully realized character (which, unfortunately, isn't saying a great deal). I like Lucy Liu, and while I didn't care for KB, she was more entertaining and interesting than The Bride, Uma Thurman.
Derrick Story from the wonderful folks at O'Reilly comes up with lots of great tips for digital photographers. Some time ago I mentioned that I used Image Capture to move pictures from my compact flash card to the Mac, and Preview to look at the images and decide which ones to keep. Preview was great because it resized and rotated images, and I could open a whole series of shots in just one window. The only thing I didn't like about Preview was that I couldn't delete shots from within the application, but had to remember the file name and switch back to Finder.
Well last week Derrick Story wrote about a (free) contextual menu item called QuickImage CM (scroll down), that pretty much takes the place of Preview for looking at pictures I've just downloaded. Not only can you view the images and rotate them, you can also apply various filters and other editing functions, and you can delete images from within the CM window. Very cool! For posting a quick snapshot to Time's Shadow, I use a combination of QuickImage CM and
