Category: computing

Presentation Remote Solved

Instead of forking over over \$30 for a new remote to use for presentations, I found mira a little System Preference pane that lets me map the buttons on my brand new MacBook Pro’s remote to other applications. It took about 45 seconds of fiddling to get forward/back mapped to the up and down arrows and voila, I have a presentation remote.\
I love Mac developers. If I’ve got a problem, there’s usually a beautifully designed easy to use solution already out there.

Published
Categorized as os x

AIM Pages and Safari

I’ve seen this now a couple places, and figured I’d comment on it (not in an official way, but in a “I feel your pain” way). The current falderal is about AIM Pages and Safari and how it doesn’t work yet. We tried, honest we did. But, Safari has certain “issues” with its DOM support (it’s a standard, ya know) and other javascript features. We did our best to work around them and get things working, but when it came down to crunch time, we had to concentrate on the big two (Firefox and IE). We will support Safari. We’re actually very close, just have a few annoying things to work around and it’ll be done. We love Safari. All us Mac users on the team were really sad that we had to drop it for the first release. But, we had to.\
It actually has very little to do with standards compliance. No modern browser is fully DOM 2 compliant. No modern browser is fully CSS 2.1 compliant. They all have quirks. We’ve found more one-line crash-causing javascript commands working on this project than I can count. We’ve found things to hate in all the browsers.\
I used to think that browsers were in a pretty good place, especially Firefox and Safari. I was wrong. They’re all too slow, too quirky and aren’t reliable enough. They all crash too easily, take too much work to do things the “right” way, and in most cases, it’s actually better to do things the wrong way because that’s the way the browsers “like” it. For example, it’s way faster, takes less code and uses less CPU to use innerHTML than creating DOM nodes and appending them. If the right way’s not the right way, it’s the wrong way. Until the browsers actually reward using the standard, there isn’t much point. The rewards for using semantic and valid markup, and good CSS are well known. There aren’t a lot of rewards right now for using the DOM.\
But, where was I? Oh yeah, Safari… we’re working on it.

About The Headphones

Thanks to everyone who gave me advice on headphones. I realized that since I have a little time before my flight tomorrow morning, and that the west coast has Fry’s Electronics, I’m gonna go see what I can try out there. Why are there no Fry’s on the east coast? We’re stuck with Circuit City or Best Buy, which is why I buy almost everything electronic or computer-related online.\
Update: I ended up buying a little pair of over-the-ear JVC’s at Fry’s last night (Roger had to catch a plane, so we left a little early and went to Fry’s before dinner – Sylvia’s in Mountain View – awesome Indian food). They were cheap, but they’re not ear buds, and they’re small. I’ll let you know how it goes. I maybe I just need a bigger backpack…

Most-Used Apps Of 2005

Molly did it, so will I. Plus, I need a break from writing about CSS. Why am I writing about CSS? You will know soon enough, my children, soon enough.\
I’m a Mac person. I think everyone who knows me knows this by now. So, it’s not going to surprise anyone that this list is full of Mac applications (and a web app or two).

  • Mail – It’s not sexy, but I get a ton of e-mail. Other than some quirks with the AOL IMAP servers, Apple’s mail app is awesome.
  • Thunderbird – HA! Yes, another e-mail client! I use Thunderbird for all my personal mail (all umpty-billion accounts too). It’s a trooper and handles multiple accounts and the hundred or so filters I have with aplomb.
  • iTunes – It’s on all day, every day I’m at work. I think I might use it even more than e-mail.
  • Safari – I love how snappy it is (most of the time), and how intuitive and slick the tabs are. It’s my browser of choice for actually browsing the web.
  • NetNewsWire – I read a lot of stuff that comes in through feeds, and there’s no better app on any platform for digesting a lot of feeds (442 at last count) quickly. It also does a fine job of grabbing podcasts.
  • Adium – Yes, I work for AOL and I don’t use our own IM client. Adium just kicks too much ass, and our Mac AIM client is too damn old. Adium does everything, and like NetNewsWire, is the best IM client on any platform, hands down.
  • Firefox – Yes, like my e-mail, I’m a two browser guy. For developing, there’s nothing better than Firefox. Between the javascript console and the web developer toolbar, it’s the best way to get my job done.
  • A tie between Oxygen and BBEdit – I use BBedit for quick and dirty hacking, and editing non-markup code like CSS, PHP, Tcl, JSP or Ruby. I’ve switched to using Oxygen almost exclusively for writing markup. It has just amazing tools for writing markup, from in-place validation to code completion to attribute auto-complete, which is really nice. BBEdit was definitely the winner early in the year, but Oxygen has come on strong late.
  • Transmit – Best FTP client ever, even better than WS_FTP Pro.
  • Movable Type – Yeah, I use my blog a lot, even though you don’t see it all the time. I prototype a lot of stuff in MT that I would normally write from scratch. I just love the template tags.
  • Instiki – I use it almost exclusively for presentations (with my s5 hack, but considering I’ve given over forty of those this year, I think it deserves a spot on the list.\
    There you go. That’s pretty much in usage order. I consume a lot of media…

iPod Virgin

I’ve come into some “free money” and I’ve decided to blow it on a sexy black video iPod. Oh, dear internet, what accessories should I get? How should I protect my new toy? What should I definitely NOT get?\
Thank you and good night.\
UPDATE: My iPod shipped this morning less than 18 hours after I ordered it! Come on, you sexy beast, come on!!

Published
Categorized as music, os x

Ubuntu Is Snazzy

Since I don’t have the mental capacity at the moment to concentrate on anything for more than fifteen minutes, I decided to try out Ubuntu, a “linux for the rest of us” distro that actually lives up to the hype. Install was insanely easy, even though it did take too much of the hard drive for itself (which was easily fixed with Partition Magic). The install was quick as OS installs go, the bootloader found everything it was supposed to and the usually problematic things weren’t. You know, the usual:

  • wireless
  • video adapter/monitor/refresh settings
  • mouse
  • sound\
    Nope, none of those were a problem at all. It’s been awhile since I’ve used a linux distro for more than command line stuff (X on my Fedora box doesn’t even work anymore – stupid NVIDIA card) and running webservers. I’ve missed a lot of new stuff!\
    For example, I’m posting this using Drivel, a journal client for GNOME. It’s simple, but it works (so far).\
    I tried using Blam!, but it exploded with the 330 feeds in my blogroll. maybe I should have started smaller.\
    Overall, Ubuntu feels like the perfect linux distro for folks who’ve always wanted to try linux but were too afraid to try. So far everything just works, and the install couldn’t be easier. So, don’t chicken out, get up with Ubuntu right now. Really.
Published
Categorized as linux

Tips For The Couch-Bound

Stuck on the couch with a laptop? Tired of your trackpad? ‘\
I have a little Kensington optical mouse I bought for travelling. It’s tiny (and so cute!), but it works really well on the couch cushion! So, I’m no longer bound by my clumsy fat fingers. I have true computing mobility again!!\
It’s the little things… like mice.

New Laptops

Work just gave me a brand new Dell laptop to replace my ancient Windows machine. What’s the first thing I do – even before installing Firefox on it? Put my MY MACINTOSH RULES sticker on it. Gotta declare your allegiances, man.\
It’s funny, but I’ve been a full-time OS X user for about three years now, and I don’t miss Windows at all. I don’t live in a Start-button world anymore. I don’t think in Windows. I think in OS X first. I know it’s weird to say that, but it’s true. My instincts have been honed. This is true of web stuff too. I had someone ask me to troubleshoot a page that was build in quirks mode, and I couldn’t do it at first. I don’t think in quirks mode anymore. I think in standards mode. My box model’s been fixed.\
I apologize to my family and non-geeky friends for the above paragraph.

Dear Internet

You are upsetting me. Please stop using crappy old browsers. There is absolutely no excuse for using Netscape 6, Netscape 4.x, Safari 1.0, IE 5.5 or IE 5.0. They are all old, insecure, out-of-date, feature poor and tired. They are so so tired. Please retire them and get yourself a new browser. You know, one that renders pages correctly, that won’t crash on you, that’s actually supported by the company that released it, etc…\
We should have a national holiday: Upgrade Your Browser Day. It could be a national day of nerd service where nerds go door-to-door offering to help people upgrade to the latest version of that person’s browser of choice. You want to use Netscape? Great! Let’s dump that ancient bug-filled copy of 6.0 and put you on 7.2 or 8.0! Opera lover? Please, let’s install 8.5! IE? No more 5.0’s or 5.5. Let’s get you a fresh (but still old, IE 7 can’t get here fast enough) copy of IE 6.\
Yeah, I think this could work. We need browser missionaries. I could see the door approach now:\
knock, knock\
“Hello, ma’am, we’re the neighborhood browser missionaries. Do you have any web browsers in the house?”\
“Yes, I think we do…”\
“Do you know what version you have? Have you checked recently for updates?”\
“Well, no, I just use it.”\
“Can we come in? We’d love to help you upgrade that old thing, and we’ll do it for free!”\
I think it would work.