You’re welcome!

I love getting e-mails like this:

I just wanted to thank you from the depth of my soul for your “Mac OS X, Windows Mobile, Bluetooth modem” article. I have been trying to get my T-Mobile iPAQ h6315 phone to work with my powerbook for the better part of 9 hours, including 2 hours and 9 transfers with t-mobile’s technical support. I had originally tried the method you described with various modem scripts, all without avail,..until I saw in your post “T-Mobile users aren’t required to put in a specific username or password, but apparently it breaks if you don’t put something in both fields.” I put in some random garbage and tada! it now works perfectly. My sincerest gratitude.

For the time being, photos will remain here

I’d been toying with the idea of a full-fledged photoblog for a while, but kept putting it off because I wasn’t sure I wanted to run another site completely separate from this one. After weighing all the options I’ve decided to continue posting the photos here as regular weblog entries and will likely open up comments on them in the future (unlike my other posts), in addition to those I already allow on Flickr.

I’ve also decided to stop advertising my Flickr RSS feed and will now handle that in-house. The new feed for my photos will simply contain those weblog entries that are in the “photos” category. If you are subscribed to the main weblog feed you don’t need to change anything (the pictures will still be included in that feed), but if you only want the posts with pictures, then subscribe to the photos feed.

Adobe Photoshop CS2 for Photographers

A couple of months ago I picked up a book by Martin Evening titled, Adobe Photoshop CS2 for Photographers — “A professional image editor’s guide to the creative use of Photoshop.” I heard about the book through a Daily Shooter interview with my favorite photoblogger, David Nightingale (take one look at his pics and you’ll immediately see why I say that if this book is good enough for him, it’s good enough for me — no one inspires me more).

If you are serious about digital photography I think you kind of have to buy this book. I’ve been using Photoshop in various capacities for 10+ years, but never really needed to draw on all of its power until I started getting into photography. This book really leaves no stone unturned and offers a lot of practical, real-life solutions to problems we all face when post-processing our images. I highly recommend it.

Go Gators!

Final Four baby!

PSP vs. DS Lite

UPDATE: I purchased a DS Lite.

Am I the only person thinking very seriously about getting rid of his Sony PSP and getting a Nintendo DS Lite? Alright, so I probably won’t get rid of the PSP, but I don’t think I’ll be able to stop myself from getting the DS Lite.¹

While the PSP is revolutionary as a platform and infinitely “hackable,” there’s no question that it’s missing what really counts: good games. Sure, there are a few (I own most of them), but there’s nothing on the horizon that I care too much about and I’m getting a bit tired of the games that I do have.

On the other hand, the DS Lite is, well, made by Nintendo, which effectively guarantees that there will be great games for it; quite a few already exist (the original DS has been around for a while and it and the DS Lite can play GBA games).

I’ll be honest, I’m going to buy the system for New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Kart. Yes, I’ll buy other games, but without these titles I probably would not even consider the DS Lite. Give me one week with Mario Kart and I’ll bet anyone in Silicon Valley dinner on best three out of five. Bring. it.

Bloglines is still the best

I’m still using Bloglines after almost two years. If that doesn’t seem like a long time then you either don’t know me or don’t understand how the web works (or both). From my initial post about Bloglines:

After using it for the past two weeks I have to say that it gets just about everything right; my problems with it are both mild and easily curable. The next few paragraphs outline some of the changes I’d like to see, but even if none of these come to fruition, Bloglines is my aggregator of choice until something better comes along.

Not only have they fixed everything I mentioned in that post (save the name change :), they’ve added quite a few new things as well, including a really great mobile implementation that I use every day. I can’t believe how little real competition there has been in this space; I’ve tried every online reader that has come across the pipe and none of them even comes close to Bloglines’ feature-set. It’s sad really.

Mac keyboard redux

Wow, I can’t believe the amount of feedback I got from the previous keyboard post. The funny thing is, no one recommended a keyboard outside of the three I mentioned, which tells me two things: I was right when I said that there were very few good made-for-Mac keyboards out there and I’m not the only person who cares about his typing tool.

A few of the e-mails sounded awfully like the Windows/Mac and Vi/Emacs debates — everyone was pretty passionate about their weapon of choice and why it was the best one available. Given that some of us are in front of a computer 10+ hours/day (hell, who isn’t these days?), it makes sense that we would care so deeply about what we use to interact with it (don’t even get me started on mice and tracking surfaces).

I ended up buying both the Matias Tactile Pro and the macally iceKey over the weekend. I probably would have bought the Happy Hacking Keyboard Lite 2 as well, but I couldn’t find anyone selling it locally.

Matias Tactile Pro

After giving both keyboards a good workout, I decided to go with the iceKey and returned the Tactile Pro. While I liked the action on the Tactile Pro much more than on the iceKey, the Matias was so damn loud that I couldn’t hear myself think. It was a bit unnerving if I’m being honest. It could not have felt better, but I couldn’t stand the fact that I thought someone was tap-dancing inside my head as I typed. I had half a mind to keep it for my Olympic neighbors.

I was a bit unimpressed with its build quality in light of the fact that the website professes it to be “built like a tank.” Within the first minute of playing around with it, I thought I had broken the back legs because they made this awful popping sound as I put them back in place. They didn’t crack, but I was scared to move them again. Also, the legs had a little too much “give” when in position. For $150, I was a little disappointed. Like I said though, it felt great, and if you have this model in mind you better move fast as one of my readers told me that Alps is no longer making the switches used by the Tactile Pro — when they’re gone, they’re gone.

macally iceKey

I’m not going to sit here and say that the iceKey is the greatest keyboard I’ve ever used, because it’s not, but it is a good keyboard and one that I plan on using for a while. It’s relatively cheap (~$50), really well-built, and a joy to type on. It reminds me a lot of my aluminum PowerBook’s keyboard, with its low-profile, short-travel “scissor” switches. I highly recommend it, especially if you like typing on a PowerBook. Hopefully they’ll come out with a black model sometime soon.

Slate, I hardly knew you

As much as I like reading Slate, I’ve just unsubscribed from their feed because they can’t seem to figure out that it isn’t supposed to represent previous articles as new or updated each and every time my aggregator pulls it down. I’m not sure what they’re changing on their end every 15 minutes, but it’s not the content. Whatever the cause (and reason behind it), it’s completely ridiculous that an organization that large can’t figure it out (or chooses not to fix it).

Perhaps there is some sort of disconnect between Bloglines and Slate (I highly doubt that because this problem has persisted for a while now), but either way, it’s broken for me and they’ve just lost a reader.  :\

I need a new Mac keyboard

I need recommendations for a good Mac keyboard. I’ve about had it with the standard-issue Apple model I purchased along with the new monitor. Anyone who thinks this is a good keyboard has never typed on a good keyboard. Period. Every time I use this thing for more than 5-10 minutes my fingers start to hurt. I constantly feel like I’m pressing the keys harder than I should have to — they’re much too “mushy.” It’s very tiring. The only thing I can say I really like about it are the USB slots on the back, but a lot of keyboards come with these now.

My favorite keyboard of all time would have to be the black Keytronic “Lifetime Series” model I bought ~10 years ago. My dad is still using that very keyboard, and, somewhat suprisingly, the company still sells it (search the page for “lt_designer”). If I wasn’t looking for a Mac-centric keyboard, I would buy another Keytronic this very second.

Of the very limited number of made-for-Mac keyboards available, I’ve currently got my eye on the Matias Tactile Pro ($150!), the macally iceKey, and the Happy Hacking Keyboard Lite 2 (you can’t beat its [non-]footprint). I’m leaning toward the Matias model because I’m partial to mechanical key switches and I know that that one has a nice “clickety-clack” feel to it.

If you’ve used any of these before and have an opinion, please let me know.

Smart Archives v1.5

I’ve just pulled the covers off of Smart Archives v1.5; changes to the plugin are outlined below.

Category exclusion

As mentioned here, insinuating circumstances led me to have to develop category exclusion for Smart Archives, which proved to be a bit harder to implement than I thought it would (or should) be, because, as it turns out, WordPress doesn’t store category information in the wp_post table, but instead uses a separate table called post2cat.

I initially had the code setup such that it would only check the first element of the category array, which meant that the category you were trying to exclude had to be the only category attached to a particular post (in which case it would be the first and only element of the array). While this worked for my situation (and truthfully, I still do it that way because it’s faster), I knew that others would likely have multiple categories assigned to individual posts. Because of this fact, I ended up having to cycle through the array looking for any instance of the excluded category, no matter where it fell. If anyone knows of a faster, better way of doing this, please let me know.

Options

Smart Archives now accepts two arguments. The first tells the plugin what to display: “block” of years/months, list of years, months, and posts, or both. The second allows you to specify a category to be excluded from the list (see above).

As ever, the project page has been updated to comport with all of these changes. Enjoy.

Send me a voice message

As you guys are no doubt aware, I don’t allow comments on this site, but, I’ve just signed up for an Odeo account and encourage all of you to leave me an audio message. You don’t need to sign up for the service — all you need is a microphone (most notebooks have them built-in) and something to say — it couldn’t be easier. Feel free to comment on whatever you’d like, though I’d prefer that you stick to jb.com-related topics (certain posts or pictures you liked, the site itself, etc.); it will be neat to get some verbal feedback.

I don’t quite know how to explain it, but I’m really excited to hear from everyone, so please, if you’ve got a minute, say hello. :)

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who participated (if you haven’t yet left a message, please don’t hesitate as it’s been a lot of fun receiving these). It’s been suggested by a few people that I add this link under each post, which, to be honest, is something I’ve thought about doing all along. However, I’m somewhat reticent to take that step because it seems to me a bit selfish in that none of the other readers get to hear the comment, though I suppose it’s similar to e-mail-only interaction. We’ll see.

Untitled (1)

This painting was located right next to the one in the previous shot. I really liked the colors and the way her skin seemed to reflect them.

Unfortunately, the lines on the side of the building were not parallel (not by a long shot) and so it was impossible for me to straighten all of them when I post-processed this image; I tried to find a balance that would keep your attention on the shot and not the slight technical hangups (though, by writing this very sentence, I’m sure to do the opposite).

Ya never know when you’re gonna go

Just a few minutes ago while I was taking a shower, I started to hear a lot of noise outside my apartment (which is normal, but this was different). I cut my shower short so that I could look outside to see what was going on. My apartment complex is right at the intersection of two streets, both of which are fairly busy. All I could make out from my window were a couple of police cars and could see that one of the streets was cordoned off at the intersection by a row of lights laid down by the cops.

As I stepped outside I quickly realized that something crazy was going on because there were 11 police cars, two ambulances, and a fire truck. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen that many people on the scene of a car accident. I’m not going to lie, I immediately thought I was moments away from certain death brought on by the inhalation of some kind of terrorist nerve agent (damn you 24!).

I was way off, but the situation turned out to be pretty horrible besides. As I walked up the street I could see a stretcher being loaded into the ambulance and began asking questions of all the other lookers-on. It was a hit-and-run, the guy died, and they’ve got nothing on the perpetrator. It was an incredibly somber scene.

Needless to say, from now on I’m going to be a bit more cautious when crossing that street, which I do on a daily basis to get my sugar fix from the convenience store.

Transparently moving RSS feed addresses

Why is it that I still can’t change my feed address without having to tell everyone subscribed that I’ve moved to a new address? Yes, I realize this can be accomplished through .htacccess redirects and mod_rewrite (both of which I use plenty of on this site as most of you know), but I think there should be a simple flag at the top of the XML file that tells your aggregator that the feed address has changed and what that address is. This flag would be set for, say, a week, and can (and should) be completely transparent to the subscriber. This would allow the author to change his feed address as many times as he’d like without losing any readers (e.g., those that don’t manually update the address when told the old one no longer exists).

I wonder why this hasn’t been built into any of the RSS/Atom specifications.

I’m sorry

Not too much to say about this shot other than that I really liked the emotion and the colors. I found it on the side of a building in downtown San Jose; I’ll probably put up another shot from this same building sometime soon.