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[13 May 2009|08:28pm] |
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I just finished Foucault's Pendulum. It was at times thought provoking, and often entertaining, but if I had to sum it up in a word it would be "pointless."
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| os x 10.5 cron == FAIL |
[02 Apr 2009|10:31pm] |
Apple is a UNIX right? So it has cron.
Well, sort of. They've witten their own terrible replacement, and the support for "legacy", ie. UNIX cron is busted out of the box.
( Read more... )
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| launchd sucks |
[15 Feb 2009|07:44pm] |
launchd replaces a bunch of crufty but documented and transparent process management tools.
Failings: launchd's configuration format is horrific and unreadable, its documentation is unacceptably insufficient.
UNIX is old but transparent. OS X is new but opaque. It has not learned the lessons of why it's UNIX based in the first place. There's a reason for that, you know. Opaque has costs that rise and rise over time.
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| Throwaway post |
[07 Dec 2008|05:25pm] |
Debian, I love you, but you need to speed up your release process a bit.
I've been actively bitten by around 10 or so bugs that are fixed upstream in STABLE releases of their code. The most galling was how the autosave functionality in inkscape is completely broken in the version ship, AND the crashes are more frequent. Patches have existed for a long long time, and the bug was fixed in a stable release nearly a year ago.
In your quest to "fix all the bugs" you avoid shipping bugfixes to your users.
Speed it up.
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[17 Nov 2008|10:50pm] |
I was reading an article about the state of the SF Bay area housing market.
It seemed like solano county was the worst hit by the downturn, with nearly 40% of the homes "underwater", ie. worth less than the mortgages owed on them, and over 62% of sales on houses being for less than their prior sale.
I wondered, where is solano county. Of course the official site is useless, so I went to google maps. Apparently it's up around Vacaville and friends, on the way to Sacramento.
Google maps offers images, and related searches these days. Here's the related searches for Solano County:
- new homes
- outlet mall
- fairfield
- state prison
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| I got another evite |
[12 Nov 2008|09:54pm] |
First, this isn't about anyone in particular. I get lots of evites.
I don't like evites. I dont' like evite.
- Evite messages don't say where or when the event is.
- Tracking whether I read the actual invitation is creepy.
- The way evite sometimes hides who sent the message obnoxious
- I've gotten spam on addresses only evite knew about. Conclusion, using evite supports spam.
- Once you've given evite my address, you can't ungive it.
World: Dont' use evite please, or if you must, please don't give my real email address to them.
In general, handing someone else's email address over to advertising-driven agencies is not OK. Most people would not consider doing this in the general case. Evite is not a special case.
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[05 Nov 2008|06:37am] |
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Sometimes, I forget that I'm a second class citizen. Thanks for the reminder, california.
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| It's official: mormonism is unethical |
[28 Oct 2008|09:59pm] |
Mormonism stands for bigotry, hatred, the removal of civil rights, and against the concept of brotherhood and equality for all. They stood against racial equality for many years, and now they have asked their members to damage their own financial well being to spread hatred and damage into the lives of their fellow countrymen.
The only ethical thing to do for current mormons is to leave the church.
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| XP 64 install, anyone? |
[15 Oct 2008|12:50pm] |
I'd like access (remote or local) to an xp 64 box somewhere, with IE7 insatalled.
I will need about 2 minutes of its time.
Alternatively if you want to do the legwork, you'll need to hit a url or two, maybe
copy and paste some text or take a screenshot.
Anyone got it? (I don't!)
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| Performance |
[13 Oct 2008|09:29pm] |
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I wish to attend a musical performance, which would probably consist of a number of live musicians, who perform a 90 minute set consisting of a single extended verion of Pick Up by Bonobo, especially as interpreted by Four tet.
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| Three Federal Work-Transportation Subsidies |
[08 Oct 2008|06:35am] |
So there are three different work-transportation subsidies, that I'm aware of. Or there will be, starting next year.
One of them is brand new, and affects bicycle commuters. You are eligible if you bicycle a significant portion of your commute, which I assume means like over a third or something, but haven't checked. It's meant to cover fees such as bicycle purchasing, repairs, and equipment. It's implemented as a tax-free payment from your employer to you, and has a cap.
Bicycling: up to 20 dollars a month, which amortized across the life of a commuter bicycle is large portion of the cost, say around 50-70%. If you live in nastier weather (spike tires or downpours) or choose to ride a nicer bike to work, then it covers even less.
Here are the established programs:
Commuter Check (public transit): up to 110 a month
ParkChek (parking your car): up to 215 and change a month
http://www.commutercheck.com/Employee/Faqs.aspx
So, apparently, we should be most encouraging people to drive to work, somewhat encouraging them to ride transit, and least encouraging them to use the most efficient option and get themselves there improving their health along the way, and saving us all money.
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| Copy and Paste from X11 apps |
[07 Oct 2008|07:01pm] |
So I try out remote X11 display on OSX. It seems to work okay. Then I'm trying to do real work and realize swapping back and forth from Cmd-V to Ctrl-V for paste is really a problem. So I look for the setting to forward Cmd-V to Ctrl-V in X11 apps, since that's the obvious solution—a bit clunky, but effective. It doesn't exist.
From the Apple X11 FAQ:
Q: How do I copy and paste using X11 for Mac OS X?
A: X11 for Mac OS X allows cut and paste between X11 and native applications using PRIMARY and PASTEBOARD selections.
You can cut text from X11 applications by selecting the text, performing a cmd-c or copy operation. You can paste in native Mac OS X applications as usual using Cmd-V.
Because there is no standard for pasting in X11 applications (some use middle mouse button, some use control-v, etc.), cmd-v doesn't work for pasting in X11 applications by design. As a result, the "Paste" menu item will be grayed out when X11 applications are in focus. Y
So first, I've bolded the text that is a flat lie. There is a standard, it is ctrl-v. It is true that not every application (notably terminals) support this. It is warty and problematic. What you observe here, however, is Apple refusing to support the standard. Deliberately.
Usability failure rating: 8 bombs, and a raspberry
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| Hot corners |
[07 Oct 2008|11:46am] |
I sit down at my desk. I unlock the screensaver with my password, and... the desktop briefly flashes, to be replaced with black, and a re-request for my password.
( Why )
Usability failure rating: 2 bombs
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| Dialogs and spaces |
[06 Oct 2008|07:34am] |
Today, I put a CD in the mac, and it said:
Okay, this sort of thing is common to most CD ripping programs, though the text "Please choose the correct one" brings a sort of Kafkaesque air to the situation.
The fun part is this dialog box is not on the same virtual destkop ("Space") with ITunes, and I wanted to review the responsible application. So I grabbed the window, dragged it to the edge of the display, and waited. And waited. And tried again, and waited.
No feedback on failure.
Also, why can't I move a dialog box? Why does the system care?
Usability failure rating: 2 bombs
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| Hardware detection and management |
[03 Oct 2008|04:47pm] |
Today's usability problem is simple. When coming out of sleep, the macbook pro does not reliably detect its own screen.
That's right, it finds the external monitor attached via DVI, but fails to activate its own display. Sometimes System Preferences -> Display -> (Detect Displays) works. Sometimes it doesn't. Today, putting it to sleep and waking it up again 6 times in a row made it work, eventually.
That's some great attention to detail.
Usability failure rating: 3 bombs.
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| Spotlight |
[01 Oct 2008|03:44pm] |
In a continuing series entitled "The Emperor's Shiny New Brushed Metal Clothes" or alternatively "How the Mac Fails at Usability" we have spotlight, a search tool that usually finds what you don't want, and not what you want.
( the gory details )
Usability failure rating: 5 bombs
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| MacOS X Spaces |
[29 Sep 2008|02:47pm] |
Dear Lazyweb,
Mac OS X has a dizzying lack of documentation on its useful functionality. Where can I get reference docs on all the hidden Dock preferences to make it act in less stupid ways?
Specifically, where is the setting to let me choose the ordering of the Spaces? Currently they are upside-down as compared to the number keys on all keyboards that have ever been made.
To be more clear, spaces are ordered like this:
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
Sensible enough, left to right, down the page, like text. The problem is that one of it's 3 twiddlable options is to enable jumping to spaces by number. Well, the way you enter numbers on a computer is by pressing number keys, which are arranged like this:
7 8 9
4 5 6
1 2 3
Apple, you did it wrong.
Usability failure rating: 2 bombs
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| Gas |
[29 Sep 2008|06:11am] |
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I'm waiting, and have been waiting for several years now, for the political dialogue to shift. All that I've seen in the political discussion is a treatment of high gas prices as an undue burden plagueing our middle and lower classes. When are we going to get to the point where we can discuss it as a fact, and accept that the problem is our too-heavy dependence/use thereof?
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