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I love me some Jott

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Jott is simply too cool and useful. I’ve been using it for over a year as it’s gained more and better features. Consider it a combination of a voice recorder, a text-to-speech dictation system, and a reminder system. Jott can be used to make lists and even as a GTD “trusted system,” but I find it most useful as a sort of “inbox” and reminder system for things I think of while away from other note taking tools.

Filed in GTD, Software, Technology | | Comments (0)

Saving Tabs in Safari 3.1

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Turns out I was wrong about Safari 3.1 still not being able to save tabs between runs. Indeed it can, though the UI is very different than that of Camino or other browsers that do so. Rather than simply restoring the open tabs from the previous sessions automatically, Safari always opens to the default page. However, by clicking History—> Reopen All Windows From Last Session, all the previously open tabs will be restored.

Safari 3.1 and later can also be made to open all windows in tabs. First, select Preferences—> Open links from applications and chose “in a tab in the current window.” Close Preferences, and in a terminal type ‘defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true’.

With these new behaviors, Safari 3.1 and later act a lot more like Camino or Firefox, but is better integrated with OS X. I’m still waffling among the three, but find myself using Safari more and more.

Filed in Apple, OS X, Software, Stuff I Use | | Comments (0)

Three Macs

Sunday, April 13, 2008

I consider that I use three different Apple computers – an iPhone , a MacBook Air, and a 17” MacBook Pro. Interestingly, it seems that the smallest two are the most useful to me, despite being less capable in terms of graphics, storage, and processor performance. I think that suggests something interesting about the hardware capabilities versus need these days.

Filed in Apple, Hardware, computing | | Comments (1)

Entourage

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Back on 10/2/07 I twittered: “Why can’t my work email and calendar be as good as Gmail and GCal?” At the time I was using Lotus Notes, which I’ve come to believe is simply one of the worst options you can be stuck with for email and calendaring in a corporate environment. Sure, you can run the server on Linux which is cool and stable, but the clients just suck.

Since coming to Innovative I’ve been on an Exchange server, which sounds like it ought to be a nightmare for a dedicated Mac/*nix head like me—but it turns out it isn’t. The reality is that Exchange 2007 is a pretty decent mail and calendar server, and is completely capable of speaking open protocols like IMAP and WebDav. More importantly, the Mac client for Exchange, Entourage 2008, is actually very, very good. In fact, I’d have to say it’s the best Mac email and calendaring client I’ve yet used.

Aside from good mail filing and search functionality, and calendaring that not only works via Exchange to easily share calendars with my colleagues and our CRM system, it also syncs calendars easily with my iPhone via iCal. By iPhone 2.0 I should actually have over-the-air syncing with both my calendar and mail on the iPhone, the only thing from my Notes-and-Blackberry days that I miss.

Maybe the coolest thing about Entourage is something not even its sibling Outlook has – Project Center. I’m just starting to use this, but it allows you to easily group appointments, tasks, email, contacts, and files pertaining to a project in a single place. Having a single locations to see all of this at a glance is powerful – GTD level powerful, in that it enables focus on the topic at hand replacing the way we typically work with all of our content scattered in different locations and difficult to track.

I actually enjoy using Entourage, something I haven’t been able to say about any other email and calendaring solution outside of Google’s offerings for quite some time. I don’t know that I would be nearly as enthusiastic about Outlook (though it would still be better than Lotus Notes). Microsoft and their Mac Business Unit have done a good job here.

Filed in Microsoft, OS X, Software, Stuff I Use | | Comments (0)

On Safari 3.1

Saturday, March 22, 2008

How can it be that by version 3.1 of this browser, that Safari still doesn’t support saving tabs between sessions? Sure, you can do it with various SIMBL hacks—but I have a strict policy these days of not running hacks or haxies on my systems.

Saving tabs between sessions is simply a default and necessary behavior of a modern browser. When I close and reopen a browser (voluntarily or not) it should at least give me the option of returning to the same state as when I closed it. Safari still can’t do this. Safari still can’t set the focus in Gmail appropriately. It might be that there are a number of great features in 3.1, but I’m not going to end up seeing them, because Safari still can’t get basic stuff right. Until it does, I’ll stick with Camino.

Filed in Apple, Open Source, Software, Stuff I Use, Sysadmin | | Comments (1)

Chinese Cyber-warfare versus the World

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Anyone who doesn’t believe that this sort of thing isn’t a major component of warfare and covert operations just hasn’t been paying attention. The Chinese are getting very good at it, the US and Europe seem to have finally recognized the necessity but seem behind the Chinese in their efforts.

American capabilities also seem primarily defensively oriented thus far, in keeping with our paranoia about “homeland security.” It doesn’t seem like American military planners have yet realized the importance of offensive cyberwarfare and how it is going to be used, much like air power was against Serbia, to impact both governments and NGOs without having to put boots on the ground or drop bombs.

Update 3/25/08: And more possible Chinese or Chinese-backed attacks on the Save Darfur NGO.

Filed in In the news, World, computing, cyberwar | | Comments (0)

One of…

Saturday, March 8, 2008

...the joys of no longer having to use Lotus Notes is no longer having to be concerned about using a web browser that’s compatible. It’s sad to say, but I have better luck reliably using Outlook Web Access on OS X than I did with Domino Web Access.

Neither one of them is nearly as well designed or useful as Gmail and Google Calendar, though.

Filed in OS X, Software, Work | | Comments (0)

So slooooowwww…

Saturday, March 8, 2008

I logged on to Second Life today to pay my parcel rent, and was prompted to download a new client. I understand why, but after getting used to the responsiveness of World of Warcraft, SL just seems so painfully slow. It’s always going to be slower since it can’t load textures and the like from disk the first time you encounter them, but I sure wish there could be some more significant optimization done.

The fact that the new client broke my (expensive) animated horse doesn’t help either.

Filed in Second Life | | Comments (0)

Switching…or not…

Friday, March 7, 2008

I’m giving some consideration to switching weblog engines, due to the continual parade of security issues with WordPress. I’ve given thought to both blosxom and Tinderbox because of their simplicity and static HTML rendering, and the fact that by default neither deals with comments and trackbacks (generally nothing but a source of irritation and spam).

Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any easy means for extracting the few thousand posts I have here as plain text for easy import into one of these other systems. Unless something becomes obvious, I’m probably stuck, which sucks.

Filed in Blogging, WordPress | | Comments (0)

Xcode Tools

Saturday, February 9, 2008

I just tried to install something via MacPorts, only to have it fail because it couldn’t find a useable compiler. The reason for the error is that I have an old (read: pre-Leopard) version of Xcode Tools installed.

That suggests I haven’t tried to compile anything since I installed Leopard a few months ago.

That’s sad and disturbing.

Filed in Apple, Linux/Unix, OS X, Open Source, Personal, Software, programming | | Comments (0)

Waving Goodbye to Hegemony

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Waving Goodbye to Hegemony. A must-read article by someone wise enough to see the way the world is actually becoming, versus the fantasies being presented to us by the dumb ass neocons for the last eight years. I desperately hope whoever wins the next presidential election is wise enough to see things in this light, and adopt these recommendations.

Khanna is correct that the US can again display “American Exceptionalism,” address our growing economic problems and remain relevant on the world stage – not as the sole hyper-power but relevant nonetheless – but only if we abandon the madness of the past decade in how we relate to the world. If we don’t, I’m convinced the best we can hope for is to become irrelevant, and the worst is quite a bit worse.

(Via MeFi.)

Filed in Economics, Government, Iraq War, Politics, World | | Comments (0)

Comments Closed

Monday, January 21, 2008

Folks, I just couldn’t take it anymore. Following this advice, I’ve turned off commenting completely. I never received very many (legitimate) comments, but in the last few months have been receiving a steady stream of spam comments. If you ever feel like commenting on something I write, please write something on your own blog and link back here.

Update 1/27/08 – I’ve done some Akismet tweaking and added some term blacklisting that seems to have really curbed the problem, so I’m allowing comments again on posts going forward. I don’t think I’ll be reopening the old posts, however.

Filed in Blogging, WordPress | | Comments (0)

Writing and WriteRoom

Monday, January 7, 2008

I’m giving WriteRoom a try as a writing environment. I don’t write as much as I used to, but I will have more writing to do in my new job than I have in the past couple of years. I’ve always preferred more minimalist writing tools anyway; it’s been years since I’ve used Word to do any writing in, generally preferring text documents. A friend of mine remarks that I seem to reject nearly everything a computer is supposed to do for me. I prefer to think that I use tools that have the right feature set for what I’m doing at the time, and reject those that tempt me to with attractive but distracting features. When I need font and layout tools I’m perfectly happy to use software that provides those tools – but those tools are non-essential distractions when the task at hand is writing.

I’m writing this in WriteRoom, and I can honestly tell a difference. I was skeptical about all of the hype about how it can improve your writing by providing a distraction-free environment, but I’m beginning to see the point. I haven’t written as much this effortlessly, this enjoyably, in a few years. There’s nothing in front of me except my prose, nothing tugging my attention elsewhere. The ability to focus is impressive; I find myself thinking about what and how I’m writing at a level I didn’t really realize I’d abandoned. I can understand how this can become addictive for people. This is the same sort of phenomenon that made the Tandy TRS-80 Model 100 portable and WordPerfect 5.1 such wonderful writing environments, responsible for so much well-crafted writing before the advent of feature-laden word processors.

If I genuinely thought I had the creativity and discipline to write longer works I’d be very tempted to investigate Scrivener. It too can do full-screen editing but provides a wealth of tools for the writer of longer works. Alas, I suspect the short stories and novels I once thought I might write will never see the light of day. It may be that more and longer blog posts may make it though, thanks to WriteRoom.

Filed in Blogging, Stuff I Use | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

WordPress › Blog » WordPress 2.3.2

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Upgraded to WordPress 2.3.2 this morning. I’m hoping with the new job I’ll have a bit more time to actually blog. In the meantime, you can find my daily link blogging at demiller.invisiblerepublic.net.

Filed in Blogging, WordPress | | Comments (0)

Bernstein’s NeoVictorians

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Mark has two excellent posts discussing his thoughts on NeoVictorian Computing. His central premise is: The Arts & Crafts movement failed in consumer goods, but it could succeed in software.

While Mark and I might quibble over a few particulars of his argument, I most emphatically agree with the points he’s making. When I hire new developers, I express a philosophy to them very similar to what Mark is discussing. I view developers as craftspeople, and I strive to create an environment conducive to writing software as a craft, rather than code monkey drudgery.

Right now Mark is laying out the basis for his argument, and it’s a good one. I don’t know if he’s going to wax prescriptive in future posts and talk about the specifics of how he thinks NeoVictorian Computing should work (I hope he does), but I’m going to riff off of his posts and present a series of posts about how we’re doing software development where I work. I’m very interested to see how what we’re doing intersects with Mark’s thinking.

Mark defines NeoVictorian Computing systems as:


  • Built for people

  • Built by people

  • Crafted in workshops

  • Irregular

  • Inspired

I agree with all of these. In fact, our shop is configured (admittedly somewhat unconsciously) around these principles. We aren’t a shop designed to build and maintain the sort of large enterprise software Mark discusses – we could never compete with the money and resources a McKesson or SAP or Oracle bring to the table, and aren’t particularly interested in doing so. Rather, our typical project is designed to meet the needs of one to maybe a dozen people. These are people who have a unique problem that no off-the-shelf software handles well. Solving that problem requires the assistance someone who has a deep understanding of the environment the eventual users of the software exist within and how to craft a piece of software that works within that environment.

I’m drawn to Mark’s NeoVictorian, Arts and Crafts movement analogy because of a personal affinity for these periods and movements. Even stripping away the analogy, though, he’s making a powerful point – Henry Ford might have figured out a great way to make inexpensive cars, but the factory isn’t the best environment for the far more creative work of writing software. Development is craft work.

Filed in Software, Work, art and architecture, computing, programming | | Comments (0)