« July 2004 | Main | September 2004 »
August 30, 2004
Launch the Beta Battle!
Smart, "trainable", launching apps are becoming a mainstay in personal computing. These would be programs that allow you to do any number of tasks - launch a program, open a document, go to a website, send an email - by just typing a couple keys. For example, to start ecto (my blog-posting app), I press command-space then type "ec". Ecto matches, and off we go.
LaunchBar is the old man in this category on the Mac, and LaunchBar 4 has been in beta for quite a while. The up-and-comer is QuickSilver, which is still in a rather-stable pre-1.0 beta.
Yesterday, LaunchBar 4.0b8 "expired". That means it don't work no more. The LB betas had been free for use, whether or not you owned a LB3 license (I do). LB 4.0b9, immediately available, instates registration. If you don't own a LB4 license (even tho LB4 is still in beta), LB4 only runs in crippleware mode.
I don't pay for betas. (And this is from the man who upgraded to BBEdit 8.0 sight unseen today). Yesterday, I downloaded QuickSilver - which is quite functional and awfully pretty - as a LB replacement.
Apparently, as everyone got into work this Monday, they had the same epiphany I did - screw paying for a beta, I'll use the other app. By 9am Pacific, the QuickSilver site was offline - its daily bandwidth limit exceeded.
Now, I might still pay the reasonable $10 upgrade fee from LaunchBar 3 to 4. But I admit to being irked at a) being asked to pay an upgrade for the privilege of beta-testing and b) the complete lack of warning that we were going to paid-only beta status. Apparently, due to the load on the QuickSilver site, I'm not alone.
Posted by jim at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)
August 28, 2004
Tolbert Cultural Index
Jeremy Tolbert's Cultural Index
1. USB 2.0 or Firewire
Firewire all the way.
2. The Smurfs or the Snorks
Smurfs. Especially Garglesmell, as my kid sister and I called him.
3. Fraggle Rock or the Muppet Show
The Muppet Show!
4. Kerouac or Ginsberg
Kerouac.
5. Kansas or Boston
Boston.
6. Sally Mann or Diane Arbus
Aroo?
7. Soul Coughing or Weezer
Soul Coughing.
8. Penny Arcade or PvP
Penny Arcade! Tycho and Gabe are local, I've had beer and talked non-game stuff with Tycho, and Scott Kurtz is... gyah. Annoying as all hell. He makes a good comic, yes, but he's way too full of himself.
9. Orbital or Fatboy Slim
Fatboy Slim is my weapon of choice.
10. Unreal Tournament or some WII crap
Halo, actually - but UT will do.
(40 more after the cut)
11. BoingBoing or Metafilter
BoingBoing, once you get past Cory's ego.
12. Pirate or Ninja
Ninjas are overdone, but I still prefer 'em.
13. Beethoven or Bach
Ah, Bach.
14. Asimov's or Analog
Analog.
15. Slacks or jeans
Jeans.
16. Dandelions or carnations
Dandelions, because you get the puffballs.
17. catfish or salmon
Salmon.
18. Discordian or SubGenius
SubGenius.
19. D20 or GURPS
D20. Steve Jackson, like Scott Kurtz, is a little too full of himself.
20. BitTorrent or Kazaa
BitTorrent. Open Source, rather the source of innumerable virii and spyware infections.
21. Suicide Girls or Playboy
Voyeurweb, but SG over PB.
22. Slashdot or Kuro5hin
Slashdot.
23. Tick animated or Tick live action
Animated, oh yes. Comic's even better, especially when you know Eli.
24. Family Guy or King of the Hill
Ugh. Neither.
25. Firefly or Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Buffy... pre-UPN.
26. Highway or city (driving)
Highway.
27. Saturn or Kia
Saturn (I own a '94 SL1)
28. Donnie Darko or The Matrix
DD vs the 1st Matric movie by itself - Matrix. DD versus all three Matrix movies - DD.
29. NTFS or FAT32
HFS+
30. drive-in theatre or cineplex
Cineplex with stadium seating
31. Greek gods or Roman gods
Greek gods. The Roman ones were just copies, anyways.
32. Painful death by fire ants or 7th grade
Erm, things didn't start to get really crappy until 9th grade.
33. Warren Ellis or Grant Morrison
Warren Ellis.
34. Jugglers or clowns
I juggle.
35. Train or bus
I ride the bus to work, but trains are cooler.
36. Movable Type or LiveJournal
MT.
37. PHP or Perl
PHP.
38. School House Rocks or After School Special
School House Rock!
39. Transformers or Go-Bots
More than meets the eye! Transformers!
40. Roger Zelazny or Neil Gaiman
Gaiman.
41. E.O. Wilson or Stephen Jay Gould
Gould.
42. Lake Monsters or Bigfoot
Bigfoot.
43. Pajamas with feet or pajamas without feet
Feet!
44. The Iron Giant or Toy Story
Toy Story.
45. The Legend of Zelda or Super Mario Brothers
Super Mario Brothers
46. Saturday morning cartoons or after school cartoons
Saturday Morning
47. VH1 or MTV
VH1 now - they actually play music on occasion.
48. BiPolar Disorder or Schitzophrenia
BiPolar.
49. Credit unions or banks
Banks.
50. Ecology or molecular biology.
Ecology.
Posted by jim at 09:52 AM | Comments (0)
August 09, 2004
Windows SP2 vs MacOS X 10.3.5
Just got ahold of Windows XP SP2 via developer accounts here at work. Tried to install it on my recently-rebuilt, nothing-fancy-about it Compaq desktop PC. A little less than halfway through, it choked - system locked up completely. No motion on the install bar, no response to keyboard or mouse (which are indeed plugged in - the optical mouse is lit up).
Reboot, restore to previous config, remove SP2. System decides to stop recognizing my USB keyboard and mouse when it prompts to Click Finish to Continue - have to plug and unplug devices to get those back. Reboot again. VGA mode on my screen. Niiiice. Rediscover all my devices. Reboot again.
During this time I've installed, without a hitch, MacOS X 10.3.5 and a recent security patch on my laptop, desktop, and a G4 Cube running OS X Server. And I'm writing this post. And my Windows box just finally came back up in the old config, ready to try installing SP2 again...
Posted by jim at 04:20 PM | Comments (0)
August 08, 2004
Spinning my wheels
Niherlas.com comes up for renewal in October - I've had the domain for 4 years.
I've been trying to think of a new domain to replace it with, even though I'll renew niherlas.com one year longer for transition purposes. As any veteran of the dot.com boom will tell you, coming up with a new domain name that is easy to remember, spells like it sounds, and relevant... well, it's a challenge.
What's more depressing, however, was a realization that hit me the other night...
The last time I redesigned my personal website - head to toe, all content formatted and consistent and no shoestring default format templates or the like - was in 1999.
That's bad. I have work to do.
Posted by jim at 05:40 PM | Comments (0)
August 02, 2004
The Cancer Diet
Steve Jobs, CEO of both Apple and Pixar, recently underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer.
Steve, who is a vegan, had been working on a mild middle-aged paunch over the past couple years - and he looked notably slimmer when presenting this year's WWDC Keynote. It was mentioned more than a couple times during the conference, with most folks making note of how many times Steve had to hitch up his jeans. The general commentary had been along the lines of "good for him" that he'd lost some weight, with some obligatory joking that it would be hard for a vegan to do the trendy Atkins diet.
Well, looks like that weight loss was for an entirely different reason. Yoiks.
Posted by jim at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)