tyler

Parallels starting to fail me

Mon Nov 26th 23:12:22 2007 *

Every once in a while I boot up my ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon VM and the xserver has completely lost its brains. I then have to retreat to the deep corners and utter the mystical superuser command of sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg. Which of course nukes my parallel tools installation forcing me to start using the ctrl+alt incantation to escape the "parallel" realm in which Ubuntu operates.

VMWare Fusion is looking better and better all the times especially with the holiday rebate which brings the price to $59.99. Hopefully I can ship this project and upgrade to the latest beta build and find myself in greener pastures.

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Memory Lane

Mon Nov 26th 22:21:07 2007 *

Most of you know I'm a big fan of all music from the Sex Pistols (late 70's) through the mid 90's or the Grunge era. Those are my favorite genres by far.

When I started cutting my teeth at WordPerfect back in the day, we'd occasionally have some late nighters trying to get some products out the door. I remember bringing in my CDs and playing them through the PC speaker on my Compaq Deskpro 486/25. The CD rom had a headphone jack on it. Man, am I showing my age.

Anyway, tonight I've got some stuff I'm trying to crank out and as such I've started up the tunes. Tonights selection started off with Prefab Sprout. As Faron started playing I was instantly transported back... omg... 15 years... where as a goofy teen I would peruse as much of the WordPerfect source code tree as I could. I lived in Borland products in those days.

Would you know I was also drooling over the release of the PowerPCs???

We've come full circle.

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Killer Server Deal

Sun Nov 11th 16:46:22 2007 *

Been wanting to test out Ubuntu 6.10 on a server grade box? Uncle Mike is making your dreams come true.

This weekend only you can pick up a PowerEdge SC440 Dell Server for as low as $249.

Here's what I did to mine.

Bumped the proc to the 3.2 GHz Pentium D. Then I headed over to Crucial.com and picked up 2 1GBx2 Kits.

So what good is 4GB of RAM going to do?

This will be my testing server ground. I plan on running 2 or 3 VMs on this thing at all times to handle mail and django servers.

Should arrive late this week!

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Radiohead covers New Order's Ceremony

Sat Nov 10th 09:29:09 2007 *

The 32 year old me's favorite band covering a song by the 16 year old me's favorite band.

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AppleMacOSX: Create iChat backgrounds with Animated .GIFs

Wed Oct 31st 14:42:53 2007 *

So you just upgraded to Leopard (OS X 10.5) and you're having fun with the backgrounds in iChat... but you're getting a little sick of the rollercoaster. Let me help you move on!

First, grab iSquint (It's free!) Ignore the mumbo jumbo about VisualHub, atleast for this. Install it after it downloads.

Second, find a great animated GIF file. I chose this one...



Third, drag and drop the file into iSquint and click the start button. Ignore the errors you get. (I clicked ok, then acceptance) I checked the log and it looks like it's barking because there is no audio. Go figure.



Fourth, open iChat, and on the menubar select Video | show video effects. When that dialog opens hit the left arrow... or atleast find pane 4 of 4. You'll see something like this... (give or take the backgrounds :-)



Finally, find your converted mp4 video and drag it to one of the "User Backdrop" spots. It will automatically loop.

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Wii!!

Sat Oct 20th 14:09:34 2007 *

Quick post from my new Wii! Love this thing.

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iPhoneLifestyle: Practicing Zero Inbox

Sat Oct 20th 11:13:10 2007 *

I'll have to link to the video presentation that Merlin Mann gave about Zero Inbox, but essentially it's the practice of keeping your inbox clear.

This would be completely futile for me to do without my iPhone. I can read, answer and in the case of a couple of my inboxes, dispose of the crud all from this handy communicator.

I'm hoping that future software revs of the email client will make this task even easier.

Posted from my iPhone.

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iPhoneLifestyle: Daily Usage and Leopard Feature Speculation

Sat Oct 20th 01:59:27 2007 *

An extremely wise person told me... shortly after I bought my first Palm Pilot (unfortunately) that if you don't already do it on paper you won't do it with an electronic device. I have a stack of beautiful Franklin Planners that attest to the fact that I didn't do it on paper. No address books. No calendars. No todo lists. And guess what... an empty Palm Pilot too.

And then it was an empty Visor Deluxe from Handspring.

And after a few years of avoiding them... yet another empty device, this time a Dell Axim x50v... wifi, bluetooth, crap.

Well I traded the Axim to a buddy for the BlackJack... and folks will attest, that I do love that phone. In fact my wife now uses it and she loves it too. It's great because I still have a 3G phone I can tether off of when we're out and about.

I ended up buying the Missing Sync for use with the BlackJack and my Macbook Pro. Wouldn't you know it... I started using it.

Enter the iPhone.

It's the first device I've ever used that actually compels me to use each and every feature it has. Sure I hacked the phone... but recently upgraded to 1.1.1, and you know... I'm still using it all of the time. I drain the battery all the time when I'm using it. Calendar and email are fabulous. Sure nothing is perfect... but the web on the iPhone vs. the web on a Windows Mobile Device??? You might as well ask me, "Would you like a Mountain Dew Amp Energy, or would you rather I spit down your throat?" (How's that for a visual?)

Rumor has it with Leopard (OS X 10.5) and specifically Mail.app 3 we'll see true notes and todo syncing. They're both built into the new 10.5 mail client.

I'm excited to see all the goodies that Leopard will bring to the platform. Dare I speculate. Indeed I do.

#5 With Leopard we'll see Dashboard widgets come to the iPhone. Sure we won't see the native app integration stuff till February, but web based stuff will end up on the phone.

#4 Bluetooth syncing of the iPhone with OS X via iSync.

#3 Bluetooth Stereo headset support... meaning you can pair your Logitech FreePulse phones with the phone itself.

#2 Bluetooth dialing from AddressBook. Why this wasn't in there baffles me.

#1 Disc mode will be enabled, and you'll be able to access it docked/cabled or when paired over Bluetooth.

#Bonues Automagically all iPhones turn into 3G devices... a guy can dream.

Okay, so those are just my wild and crazy ideas. Feel free to start crazy rumors, set your heart on any of these features, and prepare to be massively dissappointed.

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Desktop^3 Snapshot

Fri Oct 19th 10:44:11 2007 *

Parallels has been treating me great. I'm hearing cool things about VMWare Fusion though as well. Maybe I'll pick up a copy when I get Leopard all installed.

Here's a quick look at what you can typically see on my desktop at any given time. Gutsy fired up... CentOS5 coming up (we typically deploy on RHEL 4 or 5... hence the devs using CentOS... atleast for testing. I'd rather use Ubu all day.)

Uploaded with Skitch!

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Third Party Applications on the iPhone

Thu Oct 18th 09:36:14 2007 *

We're ecstatic over this news! If there was a direct link... I'd have provided it. In lieu, I've provided the full text.

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Steve

P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch.

[Oct 17, 2007]


Can't wait to get my grubbies on this thing.

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