WWDC, Work, Pasta, Dreams, and Life

Well, last night was a lot of fun, and a little disturbing.

And the work never stops…

I had a meeting with all of my authors to talk about their books and how we’re going to have to update them for Panther. Life is going to get even more stressful over the next few weeks/months to make all this happen. It should be possible, but I’m not sure if it will come off seamlessly, but I have to try.

After our meeting, we walked an author to a train station because it was a hike through a rough part of town. Felt bad for the guy, I did, but we got him there safely, and with any luck, he made his train and got home before it was too late. Then another one of the authors bailed and left to catch the rest of the Giants/Dodgers game.

And then there were five.

There’s nothing better than pasta with clams…

We walked back toward Moscone and found a small Italian place near Moscone that was most excellent. Of course, it always helps to have a good friend/author be your guide. He lives in SF (for now) and knows all the good spots in town to eat some grub.

After dinner, we parted ways, going back to our respective homes or hotels for the night. One had to drive back up North to Santa Rosa; I feel bad for him because we parted ways around 10:30pm, and that’s at least an hours’ drive at that time of the night. Could be worse, but still…hope you got home safely, Scott.

Ah, the subconscious mind…

I had a bit of a health scare[1] a couple weeks ago that only a few people know about, and I’ve been on some meds to help calm things down a bit. Welcome to the wonderful chemically-induced dream state that was mine.

My odd dream last night involved the Space Shuttle; how appropriate. For some reason, I was down at the Cape watching a launch. The Shuttle took off from the pad nicely, but within seconds, it was obvious that things went awry. The Shuttle started going into an odd spin. At first, I thought it was a normal orbital roll, but then the nose went over, and the Shuttle — external fuel tank and SRBs and all — went into an uncontrolled spin. From my perspective (yes, in the dream), it looked like the Shuttle lost its gyros and would most likely split apart due to the G-forces. Then there was an explosion, but not a full explosion like the Challenger. The crew cabin blew off, ejecting it sideways at a high rate of speed away from the rest of the craft. Considering how the Shuttle was pitching and rolling, the cabin eject could have gone off anywhere, but this was pretty much perpendicular with the waterline.

Then came the self-destruct. Maybe Shuttle Launch Control popped the vehicle once they knew the crew cabin was far enough away, or maybe it popped because it was doomed, but the explosion was huge.

The next thing I know, I’m sitting at my Uncle Gary and Aunt Barb’s place in Orlando (which I think I’ve only been to once about 20 years ago), and we were all watching CNN. There was a press conference with the Shuttle crew, who seemed a little shook up (rightfully so), slightly bruised and a couple injured, but safe nonetheless. The eject worked, and there was no LOL (loss of life).

I’m not quite sure what brought about the odd dream, but I guess it probably has something to do with eating pasta late at night and taking the meds that are to calm me down.

I woke this morning, shaking my head wondering if this was just a dream or some awful premonition. God — or the meds — only know.

The last time we lost a Shuttle — Columbia — I was in Vancouver, BC preparing for my brother-in-law’s (Jeff) funeral.[2] So now of course, all I can think about is Shuttle explosions and life without Jeff, whom I considered a fourth brother.

WWDC…

Man, I can’t wait to get back into the WWDC sessions this morning to take my mind off things.

Here’s wishing you a peaceful day and a restful night.

Chuck

Notes:

1. Thought I was having a heart attack, but it just turned out to be a panic attack. Scared the crap out of me, but I’m okay.
   [back]
2. Jeff died in January from complications of surgery to treat his Crohn’s Disease. If you don’t know what Crohn’s is, you should check out the CHILD Foundation’s web site.
   [back]

Feel like interpreting my dream? Go for it.

Earlier this week (June 24) Sony-Ericsson announced it would stop making CDMA phones for the North American market (Sprint PCS and Verizon Wireless provide CDMA/CMDA1xRT for a large part of the U.S.).

In April, Sprint PCS announced that it would soon sell the first Bluetooth-enabled phone for the CDMA/CDMA1xRT market: The Sony-Ericsson T608. So, what happens now? If no other CDMA phone manufacturer steps up to the plate to produce a Bluetooth enabled phone for the North American market, it means that a large number of customers will not be able to take advantage of using their Bluetooth-enabled PDA (Palm OS or Pocket PC based) with two of the largest carriers in this part of the world.

Verizon Wireless already sells the Samsung i700 Pocket PC Phone Edition (2002 based device). So, their customers at least have an option of purchasing an all-in-one voice/data product. However, as a Pocket PC Phone Edition user myself (GSM/GPRS variety), I still want and appreciate having the option of switching back to two separate devices (Bluetooth-enabled phone and Bluetooth-enabled Pocket PC 2003) for a best of breed combination.

So, at least for now, it looks like GSM/GPRS is the way to go in the U.S. if you want to have a Bluetooth-enabled phone provide wireless data service to a Bluetooth-enabled PDA.

What do you think about this?

The minute I saw the iSight, I knew I was going to have a ball with Apple’s latest hardware goodie. And indeed I have.

When combined with iChat AV, this little FireWire input device streams good looking VGA video up to 30 fps, and even better sounding audio via the dual-element microphone with noise suppression. Just make sure you have lots of bandwidth and no lettuce between your teeth.

But the fun doesn’t stop with iChat AV. This is a legitimate camera that you can use for other things too, and I want to introduce you to one variation right now — EvoCam 3.1.

I’ve been using this software since Evological first introduced CoolCam in the early days of Mac OS X. They’ve continued to refine this application since then, taking it well beyond standard webcam software. Take a look at just a few of the features listed on their site:

• Includes built-in web server with Java-based streaming video support.
• Supports Rendezvous for publishing your webcam on your local network. (Rendezvous-enabled Safari browsers can auto detect your iSight web images and display them.)
• Uploads images via FTP to remote web servers.
• Emails images as MIME attachments to your email account.
• Saves images locally for use with Web Sharing or other web server software.
• Includes a Java webcam applet to display your webcam image on your web page.
• Unlimited motion sensors for automatic image capture when motion occurs.
• AppleScript support for control and customization.
• And more, believe it or not.

I’ve been using this software with my Canon DV camcorder, and quite honestly, it’s been a pain in the port. The battery runs out, camera goes to sleep, it’s clunky to lug around, etc, etc, etc. So the second thing I did with my iSight after setting up iChat AV, was to fire up EvoCam to see if it recognized my new toy.

Not only does EvoCam recognize iSight, it even calls it by name. And unlike using it with iChat, you can do lots of stuff without having to connect to someone on the other end of the line. Plus, the Rendezvous functionality in EvoCam is very, very cool.

EvoCam 3.1 is shareware for Mac OS X only. You can buy a license for $20 US. It’s worth a look.

My development partner and I get email now and then from people who see the slide presentation I made at OSCON 2002 about the Intranet Portal we built using Zope, CMF, and Plone or see the 5 minute video (scroll down to the bottom of the page) we created to explain the Portal and the use of Open Source tools like Zope to various internal management groups. One of the most common comments that accompany the questions about the portal is: Do all Zope/Plone developed sites have to look the same?

My partner and I had only few months of Zope exposure with no mentors or training by the time we were scheduled to go to beta (April 2002) and then freeze the design at release candidate stage (July 2002). So, we didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about the look of the site and went with the then-default Plone look. So, our site has a Plone-ish look to it.

But, this doesn’t mean that every site has to have either a Zope, CMF, or Plone default look to it.

Plone.org’s list of Plone using web sites provides a much better idea of what can be done with Zope and Plone that our Intranet Portal (done early in our learning phase) does.

In fact, my development partner was the project lead for one of the sites on that list (State of Hawaii Governor’s public site). And, you probably wouldn’t know what content management system was behind it if it wasn’t listed in the Plone.org list. Note: My partner was responsbile for designing the content management piece. We were not responsible for the layout and graphics.

So, do all Zope sites have to look Zope-ish, or CMF-ish, or Plone-ish? Not at all. But, in my opinion those default looks are ok and provide a good start for those times when you just need to get the job done on a tight deadline and with few resources.

Have you used Zope, Zope/CMF, or Zope/CMF/Plone to build a content managed web site? What was your experience?

I blogged last week about why I’m glad Microsoft didn’t provide Pocket PC versions of their Access database and PowerPoint presentation applications(The “Missing” Pocket PC apps: Access & PowerPoint). So, what do you do if you need a database for the Pocket PC?

I noticed that Wei-Meng Lee has two articles on O’Reilly’s OnDotNet site about Microsoft’s high-end Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Windows? CE Edition (Developing Pocket PC Apps with SQL Server CE and Using Remote Data Access with SQL Server CE 2.0). But, SQL Server can be a bit daunting to non-programmers. Fortunately, there are a range 3rd party Pocket PC database applications that can fit the needs of everyone from non-programmers to expert programmers. Here’s the list of Pocket PC database applications that I know about:

BioHazard Software Data-on-the-Run

DDH Software HanDBase

KaioneSoft SprintDB

Pocket Innovations Pocket Database

PocketSoft abcDB

Software 4 CE HandyDB

Syware Visual CE

I’ve used HanDBase quite a bit since it is simple to use it to create a database applet right on the Pocket PC with no programming required (even when using features like populated drop-down menus). However, it is not a fully relational database (as far as the version 2.75 I use goes. I have not tried version 3 yet). So, while it fits my needs for building small fast personal databases, it may not fit everyone’s requirements.

Unforunately, I do not know of any free or Open Source Pocket PC database applications.

Note: Although all of these third party applications can deal with a database created using Microsoft Access on the desktop, none of them (to my knowledge) can bring over the existing relational links or macros/VBA-scripts. And, the ActiveSync MDB to CDB translation has a 65,000 record limit.

Am I missing any Pocket PC databases (commercial or Open Source)? Got a favorite Pocket PC database app? Let me know!

One of the improvements that the iPod has brought to my life is listening to my music and interesting audio books while commuting to work and appointments. My 1999 Saturn SL2 has a modest stereo system with a cassette deck and four-speaker sound. I’ve been using a Radio Shack cassette adapter to connect the iPod into the system, but became curious about the Griffin iTrip for wireless connectivity as an alternative. I’ve been testing it for a few days, and I thought you might be interested to read how it’s performing.

Sound Quality

The iTrip broadcasts on the FM band, and you have nearly every channel on your radio available to receive the iTrip’s signal. I really like this feature — you’re not limited to one or two preset stations for connectivity. Plus, you can change them on the fly so if you lose your “open” station, you can find another.

I mention this because sound quality depends heavily on finding a channel setting with no interference. The cleaner the setting, the better the sound from your iPod. Once I found a clean channel, I added it to my preset stations so I can switch to iPod streaming with just the push of a button.

On the whole, I found the iTrip sound quality to be equal to average FM stations, but not as good as the hard-wire cassette adapter. I tested this by going back and forth between the two connections in the car with the engine turned off.

In actual use, the sound is good enough for rocking down the highway as long as you can find a channel with no interference. The key to success in my Saturn is to have the iPod volume at about 40 percent, and turn up the volume on the car stereo to about 60 percent. I endure the least amount of distortion that way.

Convenience

The first thing I did was take a hack saw to the iTrip to cut off that annoying prong that inserts itself into my FireWire port on the 10GB (previous model) iPod. The prong forced my to pull the FireWire port cover all the way back stressing the hinge and ruining the iTrip/iPod’s otherwise good looks. Plus, I couldn’t access the “hold” switch with the iTrip “locked” in place, which is an important control for me. So I simply hacked it off, and now the iTrip can swing freely.

Wonder what Griffin will think when I return the test unit? (Just kidding. My iTrip was a gift!)

I really like having iPod music as just another channel preset on the car radio. I can switch between stations without fooling with the cassette adapter, and I no longer have an ugly wire hanging from my radio.

The iTrip is very easy to use. You do have to load the channel presets that are included on a CD that comes with the unit, but that’s a one shot deal, then you’re set. I like the cool blue LED that stays on during play. And I haven’t notice any substantial battery drain while transmitting music, although I’m sure there’s some impact. You don’t get something for nothing in physics. But the iTrip does stop transmitting within 60 seconds of idle time on the iPod.

Overall, it’s fine. I’m hanging on the the hard-wire cassette adapter for the times I want the best sound quality possible. But for the most part, I can leave the iTrip seated in the iPod for convenient music playback while on the go… as long as I’m not too picky about the fidelity.

BTW: My two favorite songs this morning were Two Lane Highway and Amie by Pure Prairie League.

With everyone blogging about Java from JavaOne, I thought I’d say a few words about my current favorite programming language: Python.

I spend a lot of time with feet in both the Linux (workstations & servers) and Microsoft Windows (workstations, servers, and Pocket PCs) worlds. And, Python is the software glue that keeps my sanity together while leaping between them. Yet, until tonight I never thought to search Microsoft.com itself for information about Python. If you haven’t done so either, you might want to. The results are interesting [ Search for Python on Microsoft.com ]

Sidenote: An interesting sequence of events led me to this search. I was running a low-grade fever after I got home this evening and plopped down in front of the TV instead of the computer. The Turner Classic Movie channel was showing the Indian film Dil Chahta Hai. This brought to mind that I had seen an article about Microsoft India looking for people to staff the Microsoft Next Generation Shell project who are described as… Candidates should have Windows NT or Windows 2000 system programming experience, development experience with object-oriented languages and design methodologies as well as with scripting and shell languages like PERL, Python and Bash… Then, I recalled that Mark Hammond’s experimental Python for .NET compiler was funded by Microsoft. Then… well… my curiousity got to me and I hoisted myself off of the couch to search around Microsoft.com.

And, by the way, searching msdn.microsoft.com results in a slightly different search result set including the Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 276494: Using Python Scripts with IIS.

So, if you are a Python fan who has an interest in Microsoft Windows, search around Microsoft’s various web sites. You might find some items that interests you as I did tonight.

Thoughts, comments, opinions on using Python in a Windows world?

Those of us of a certain age (Jurassic Coders) remember when dial-up analog modem services charged by the hour for online access. And, there was a surcharge for using a faster 9600bps (not Kbps or Mbps) modem. It forced us to limit our online usage and constrained the kind of services that could be used on a budget.

Wireless data access (CDMA/CDMA 1XRT and GSM/GPRS) in the US forced those same constraints on wireless users until today. Until today, I paid $19.99/month for 10 megabytes of data access using T-Mobile’s GPRS service. Then, I read a note on PocketPCThoughts.com that said T-Mobile changed their GPRS plans today to a single plan that charges $29.99/month for unlimited data-only service or $19.99/month if you have a $29.99[or more] voice plan.

It took a couple of phone call attempts to T-Mobile’s customer service to find a representative who knew about the new plan and could help me. But, once I found that person, it was confirmed that I could switch from my old plan to the new one and that the change would take effect in two hours.

This completely changes the way I will use my Pocket PC Phone Edition to access data using GPRS. I’m already thinking of how I can benefit from increasing my on-the-go web and email access.

What kind of changes will you make in your T-Mobile GPRS data usage now?

The nice people at AN Entertainment recently released an entire episode of their upcoming anime comedy series Risky Safety in QuickTime format.

The show, about an angel and a death-spirit (a shinigami) sharing the same tiny body and competing to help/hurt a sad girl, looks very funny and very cute.

But, and this is not meant to slam, you can make your QuickTime movies much nicer for end-users than this. In fact, this is a really good example of several things not to do:

Don’t zip QuickTime

Most video files are going to employ heavy compression already; such is the nature of modern video codecs. That’s why they work. So trying to apply lossless compression like zip to a QuickTime movie is usually a waste of time. In this case, the 26.8 MB QuickTime file is still 26.2 MB when zipped… about a 2% savings. Why make users unzip for that?

Offer multiple sizes

26.2 MB for a 10-minute movie is fine by me, but I have DSL. A dial-up user wouldn’t stand a chance. With QuickTime Pro, exporting to a smaller size, appropriate for modem users, is easy to do with the QuickTime Player’s “Export” menu item - when you choose to export “Movie to QuickTime Movie”, one of the “Settings” presets is “Modem”. Easy!

Another option would be to stream the video in multiple sizes, rather than offer downloads. Granted, this involves getting set up with a streaming server, so it’s a lot more work.

Download or plug-in

Why break up the browser experience? The QuickTime plug-in lets you embed QT content in web pages

Sub? Dub? Whatever!

The US anime companies have embraced the DVD because it saved them from having to release two tapes of every title - one dubbed into English, the other with original Japanese audio and English subtitles. With DVD, both can be accomodated with one DVD, allowing users to select the audio and captioning they want.

But the Risky Safety downloads offer you one or the other… it’s like being back in VHS!

It doesn’t have to be. QuickTime has had multiple audio tracks since long before most people had heard of DVD’s. In fact, if you download both the dubbed and subtitled movies, you can combine them into one movie with QT Player:

1. Open the dubbed movie
2. Open the subtitled movie
3. Do an “extract track” on the subtitled movie, choose “sound track”. It opens in a new movie window
4. Select-all from this new movie and copy
5. Back in the dubbed movie, do an “add” (not paste!). Your movie now has two audio tracks. Hit play and you’ll hear English and Japanese simultaneously.
6. Use “enable tracks…” to turn off one or the other
7. With “view properties”, you can change the names of the sound tracks to “english track” and “japanese track”

Now the user can just enable whichever audio track they like - and if the movie is embeded in a web page, the audio track enable/disable can be handled with JavaScript and LiveConnect on browsers that support it.

Putting both soundtracks in the same movie pushes the size up to about 30MB… not bad considering we’re eliminating a whole second download.

Consider client-side captioning

What about the captions? Again, this is something that on the DVD would be turned on or off as an overlay by the user. With the download, they’ve turned on the captions and then compressed the video. Because most video codecs are lossy, the captions are somewhat distorted in the process:

This could be averted by adding a text track, and letting QuickTime handle the captioning.

Here’s a text file to caption the first 10 seconds of the show… which are a curious warning to watch TV with the lights on (apparently a boiler-plate warning on many anime shows ever since the whole Pokemon seizure incident). These use a Text Descriptor format that QuickTime supports:

{QTtext} {font:Geneva} {bold} {size:12} {anti-alias: true}
{timeScale:30} {width:320} {height:40} {timeStamps:absolute}
{language:0} {textColor:65535, 65535, 0} {backcolor: 0, 0, 0}
[00:00:00.01]
I have a warning for all
you viewers out there
[00:00:03.00]
When watching television it's
best to leave the lights on
[00:00:06.00]
Ah ha!  Tokyo Tower!
[00:00:07.25]
[00:09:55.18]

This allows QuickTime to render the captions on top of the video, no compression artifacts involved:

And instead of doing the captions by hand like this, you might consider using a tool like WGBH’s Magpie to do them for you (thanks to Andrew Kirkpatrick for the tip!)

BTW, getting the overlay nice and transparent took a few steps in the properties dialog… ask in the talkback if you can’t figure it out.

Think about your choice of codecs

The Risky Safety movies are in QuickTime format, with Sorenson Video 3 and MPEG-4 audio. This is a somewhat dubious choice because it can only be played by QuickTime 6. Earlier versions of QuickTime won’t be able to handle the MPEG-4 audio (QDesign Music would be more compatible with earlier QuickTime versions), and other players that can handle the QT file format, especially those on non-Mac/Win platforms, may not be able to handle the proprietary Sorenson video codec. Granted, Sorenson is a really nice video codec, and QuickTime’s MPEG-4 video encoder isn’t the best (compressionist Ben Waggoner actually says it’s the worst), but great MPEG-4 video could be had with encoders from Sorenson or Envivo.

Think about your choice of formats

If the goal is to be seen, maybe it would be better to make a full-blown, standards-compliant MPEG-4 file, which could be played not only by QuickTime, but also by DivX, vlc, IBM’s all-Java MPEG-4 toolkit, and other applications on various platforms. An MPEG-1 would be another valid choice - though the video and sound wouldn’t be as good (at least not at the same bitrate), there are lots of apps that can play MPEG-1. Granted, both of these choices may sacrifice some of the niceties described above - when I exported my multi-lingual, captioned movie to MPEG-4, the captions apparently got burned into the video and the soundtracks got mixed into one audio track.

But really, chill

Really, I don’t mean to hassle. It’s great that AN has put an entire epsiode on the web for fans to check out (and it’ll be greater still if they don’t send me a cease-and-desist for using small crops of two frames of the video in this weblog). My point is just that if you take a little time to learn the vast expanse of QuickTime’s toolset, you can either make more clever movies for your QuickTime users, or make movies that an even larger user community can enjoy.

Does this make the QuickTime experience better for users, or am I just being mean?

The Microsoft Pocket PC platform provides scaled down versions of Outlook (Inbox, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks) and Office (Word, Excel) components for vendors to bundle in their Pocket PC models. They also provide Pocket PC versions of Microsoft Reader and Windows Media Player. Pocket counterparts of Microsoft Money and Microsoft Streets & Trips (also MapPoint) are also available as either part of the basic system or available as part of the purchased product (e.g., Pocket Money). There are enough Pocket counterparts to lead the new user to assume that every major Microsoft productivity product has a Pocket PC version.

This leads to confusion when a new Pocket PC user notices that Microsoft doesn’t have a counterpart for Microsoft Access or Microsoft PowerPoint. “Where is Pocket Access and Pocket PowerPoint for the Pocket PC?” they ask. The answer is they don’t exist and we Pocket PC users should be glad.

The lack of Microsoft produced counterparts to Access and PowerPoint encouraged third party developers to develop excellent add-on components. They are unhindered by the the Microsoft burn-to-ROM development cycle and produce continual innovation instead of producing new versions only for each new Pocket PC development cycle (Pocket PC 2000, Pocket PC 2002, etc.). So, we now have a couple of excellent third party produced Access-compatible database and PowerPoint-compatible presentation products available for the Pocket PC.

In contrast, there is only one alternative word processor (SoftMaker’s TextMaker) and one alternative spreadsheet (Bye Design’s SpreadCE) that I know of. And, I suspect neither yet enjoy the kind of sales probably seen by third party database and presentation software for the Pocket PC despite the additional word processing and spreadsheet features offered by these alternatives. In the meantime, Pocket Word and Pocket Excel provided by Microsoft hasn’t really changed since the Pocket PC 2000 was released.

I had an opportunity to express this opinion to the Microsoft Pocket Office developer team when my fellow Microsoft MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals) and I were able to meet with them in Redmond during the February MVP Summit. So, here’s hoping we don’t see Pocket Access and Pocket PowerPoint emerge from the Redmond campus. And, cheers to the hard working third party developers who have provided me with rich tools sets through their continual innovation.

Note: Microsoft actually did create a Pocket Access and Pocket PowerPoint that were part of the older Handheld PC product line. I don’t recall either product getting much use by Handheld PC users. There is Microsoft SQL Server CE 2.0 for high-end database application development for the Pocket PC.

What do you think? Are the 3rd party add-ons sufficient for your Pocket PC?

Related link: https://today.java.net

This morning we launched Java.net. The website is a collaboration among O’Reilly, Sun Microsystems, and CollabNet. As described in the vision article, a goal is to provide a place where developers can gather to “work on things, find things, ask questions, and participate.” The site will feature articles and soon less traditional content, blogs, a wiki, and projects being worked on by various communities. We’ll have to settle in a bit and find our place in the Java community. Come visit Java Today on Java.net and help us find our spot.

The nature of publishing is such that you can’t really experiment in private. Have an idea for a “Hacks” book series? You have to just put it out there with the O’Reilly name on it and see how it does. A couple of years ago, moving into the Macintosh space was risky. O’Reilly introduced books, launched the MacDevcenter website, and added a conference for Mac Developers to their offerings.

I’m sure that there are people who see the Missing Manuals or the Head First books and say “that’s not O’Reilly.” Some people will look at Java.net with the same reservations. What is O’Reilly doing for a Sun owned and Sun branded website? We’re managing the content for the site. We hope to have articles written by a diverse set of developers on any topic of interest to Java developers. Like the sites in the O’Reilly network, blogs are featured on the front page. Now that Java.net has debuted and we’re allowed to talk about the site more widely we will try to recruit a more diverse group of bloggers — but we think we are starting with a great group.

O’Reilly was also brought in because of their long experience with quality web publishing. I’ve written for various O’Reilly websites for a couple of years and have enjoyed working with these people but I never appreciated all that they do. In these last two months of preparing for the launch they have done so much work and most of it won’t be noticed. It’s like the lighting in a stage play. If you notice the lighting, something was probably wrong with it. Bruce Stewart and Derrick Story have provided much help and guidance. Sarah Breen and Terrie Miller have been great producers who have helped transform the specifications to the site you’ll see. They certainly have people that support them in the same ways that they support me. Once the site launches, Sarah will be producing it day to day. Terrie helped make the mountain of last minute requirements go away. Kimmy the wonderwife has heard Nancy Abila and Dale Dougherty’s names often enough and my daughters recognize Nancy and Dale’s icons on iChat and try not to interrupt me when they see that I’m in an online meeting. I listen very carefully when either Nancy or Dale has something to say about the site.

I hope you enjoy our new venture. If you think it’s “not really O’Reilly” drop me an email at daniel@oreilly.com . If there’s something you’d like us to cover or consider adding, email me. We’re viewing this as a beta release of a site that we will be tuning for the foreseeable future.

Related link: https://www.advogato.org/article/544.html

I’m far behind on my URL reading list, but the following three articles received my attention today, two related to the recently completed OSCOM conference: Interop in the Bazaar, Against the Grain: Getting Projects To Work Together, and Computerworld’s The True Costs of Software.

Related link: https://www.gentoo.org

Back in April I wrote an entry about Mac OS X Unix Package Management that discussed Fink and DarwinPorts. Toward the end of the article I’d mentioned that I’m not satisfied with either of these tools. I’ve tasted better and it’s called Portage. Portage is Gentoo Linux’s package management tool. It’s like a hybrid of Fink and DarwinPorts.

I wished and wished, but alas Portage was nowhere to be found. Until now. Yesterday, the Gentoo group announced that they will be bringing Portage to Mac OS X. I’m looking forward to the release and hope I’ll have an opportunity to help debug some of the packages. I encourage others to try it out as well.

Also, upon its release I plan to do a follow up entry to my previous review of Fink and DarwinPorts. This new entry will focus on Portage for Mac OS X and GNU-Darwin, the latter not getting its due last time around. Hopefully between the two entries I’ll be able to inform the masses to help them decide on the right tool for their uses.

Used Gentoo? What do you like? What don’t you like?

The Apple Music Store is a popular lunch table topic these days. Almost every discussion begins with a confession: “Well, I’ve downloaded about 30 songs in the last month,” or “Sure, I’ve grabbed a couple tunes,” or “Yeah, I downloaded an album for my wife.”

(This was probably the same guy who downloaded a power drill for her birthday too.)

I like these confessions though. They remind me of when a bunch of us were quitting smoking, and we confessed to how many cigarettes we used to light up a day. Smokers always fudge about how much they smoke. I suppose music lovers do the same.

I’ve been one and still am the other. And as a music lover, one of my unexpected joys lately was discovering a song that sings to me, yet I didn’t know existed two weeks ago.

I remembered this tonight during my walk when Neil Young’s Are You Passionate? started playing on my iPod. This tune has been my unexpected joy of late.

I like to listen to it through the ear buds letting the music roll right through me. And after the song is over, I’ve regained just a little perspective that I lost during the day.

So since we don’t hang out at the same lunch table, I was wondering what’s been your unexpected joy in the Music Store? What song did you find, that when it flows through your ear buds, suddenly makes all the effort to get here somehow worth it?

Really, I’d like to know. I found a dollar the other day in a pair of work jeans, and I want to put it to good use.

PS: Thanks Neil for writing that song.

Related link: https://www.apple.com/isync

Yes yes, I know, I haven’t written in a while. Sosumi. I’m feeling overwhelmingly compelled to write about the new release of iSync that came out today. So here I am :)

The new iSync bumps the version to 1.1 and more than doubles device support. Most noteworthy is support for many, many different cellphones on a variety of carriers. Personally, I’ve had Sprint PCS for somewhere around four or five years. One of my biggest gripes these days is the fact that they don’t have a Bluetooth capable phone. A lot of that angst came from the fact that I really, really want to sync my phone’s address book and calendar with my PowerBook.

My phone still isn’t supported, but at least some from Sprint are. I only need to change phones and not carriers. Good deal! Also added to iSync 1.1 is the ability to sync Safari bookmarks between Macs using .Mac. I have somewhat mixed feelings about this. It’s a cool feature, don’t get me wrong, but I want to sync _more_ than just my bookmarks. I want to be able to sync my choice of files, something along the lines of how Backup works.

But, while the new iSync might lack the ability to sync files, it does (finally) include some conflict resolving features. If entries on your various devices conflict, you are presented with a small window describing the conflict and allowing you to choose how you want to resolve it (i.e. which device takes precedence). You can also check a box to have all conflicts with the same devices involved be resolved in the same manner.

Overall, iSync 1.1 brings some nice features that I’ll definitely be putting to use in the near future. Okay, I confess. I synced my iPod, PowerBook, and Visor Edge about four times already. I wanted to see how well the conflict features worked. Good job Apple!

What kind of devices are you syncing?

I installed the QT6.3 update on a PowerMac G4 tower (500 MHz), rebooted like a good little boy, and after logging in, the Finder kept crashing. I couldn’t even use the Apple menu to restart or shut down.

In looking at the Console.log file, it looked like there was a problem with the com.apple.finder.plist file.

If you run into this problem, the solution is to:

1. Force shutdown your Mac by holding down Shift-Option-Command and pressing on the PowerOn button, holding that down until the system shuts down completely.
2. Next, hit the PowerOn button and hold down Command-S during startup. This will boot you into Single-User mode (text display only, non-graphical).
3. At the prompt, change directories to your Preferences folder:

   cd /Users/username/Library/Preferences

4. Delete the com.apple.finder.plist file using:

   rm com.apple.finder.plist

5. After deleting the file, type in reboot and hit Return to reboot your Mac.

When you restart your Mac, the com.apple.finder.plist file is regenerated.

That should do the trick.

Another option, if you have two Macs, is to ssh into the downed Mac, login as an admin user, then go off on your way to remove the troublesome plist file.

Having similar problems? Did this work?

For the last week I’ve been thinking about how I feel about Apple’s mishandling of iTunes 4. Clearly they made a mistake, and the mistake was enabling wholesale Internet streaming of music when the intention all along was to limit it to subnets. Talk about leaving the back door open.

I don’t know about you, but I had an odd feeling in the gut of my stomach when I discovered this functionality in iTunes 4.0. I mean, we know what’s going on in the world. We understand the political ramifications of certain technologies. Didn’t you get even a little twinge when you first fired-up streaming in iTunes 4?

Twinge or not, Apple knew they had to fix the situation. Their communication skills could use a little polishing, however. And from this point forward, I will always be suspicious of the phrase network enhancement.

But to be honest, I’m more concerned about the big picture here. We actually have a little momentum in changing the online music world. I think we need to get more musicians and business people with fresh perspectives involved in evolving this industry, and Apple has an important role to play. I want them to remain credible so they can advocate for the really big things.

Sure, I wish Apple didn’t have to limit the streaming of music. But even more, I hated how things were before April 28, and I don’t want to go back. Ever.