Welcome to the tour!

The purpose of this page is to give first-time visitors a quick understanding of who I am and what this site is all about. While impossible to do through an entire site, much less a single page, I figured I'd try. Below you'll find 'exemplary' posts (and bits — the pink text) that I've picked out to kind of show off the eclectic nature of what I write about here. While I do tend to focus on the technical, I try to balance that with anecdotal posts about my life. To the right you'll find short descriptions of (and links to) the various pages that make up this site.

Comcast, you never cease to amaze me

To Comcast’s credit, everything was working within an hour of the technician leaving my place, and both the tech and his supervisor were very nice, but this story had to be told.

A couple of weeks ago I received my new TiVo HD, but I haven’t been able to actually use it until today because I’ve been waiting on Comcast to install the cablecards. I was under the impression that I could just go to my local Comcast store, pick up the cards and install them myself; I figured my computer engineering degree meant I was qualified to slide what amounts to a PCMCIA card into a slot, but apparently not.

Today was the first day they could pencil me in, two weeks after I received the TiVo. In addition to the half-month the new DVR sat useless on my floor, there was a $16 fee for doing what a monkey would dismiss as boring.

Anyway, here’s the play-by-play as it went down today. I actually wrote most of this while the tech was “configuring” the TiVo.

• My appointment was from 8-12; they won’t give you a smaller window.
• At 11:50, because I was still waiting for someone to arrive, I called Comcast, and was now told someone would be here by 1. On the upside, I was also told that I would be credited $20 for the delay. Fair enough.
• Someone arrived at 1:30.
• He walked in and asked me if I was getting cablecards for a TiVo, to which I responded, “Yeah, that’s the plan.”
• I asked how long this should take; he bent over and pulled 10-15 minutes out of you know where.
• He said he needed to go back to his truck.
• 15 minutes later he returned (was it already working?!?) and walked into my apartment without knocking. I mentioned that he should probably knock in the future.
• He then called someone to ask for help (before he had done anything), which didn’t go very well.
• He spent 10 minutes writing numbers down and reading a one-page manual.
• He attempted to insert one of the cablecards into the TiVo, but it just wouldn’t fit; I told him that it may work better if he took the cablecard out of its clear, hard, plastic shell (I had a hunch that for this thing to work metal was going to have to come into contact with metal). Could I make this stuff up?
• At this point he said, “This is my first time installing cablecards,” to which I feigned shock and resisted the overwhelming urge to ask about the rigorous training he must have gone through before getting the title of “technician.”
• After finally getting one of the cablecards installed, I explained to him the difference between single-stream and multi-stream cards (you know, something he should probably know if he’s going to be installing these things in the future).
• He called someone again, asked me what that “multi-thing” was I mentioned earlier, and told me that everything would be setup soon.
• The screen on the TiVo changed (because it was tired of waiting for these guys to actually do something), and I said, “Is it supposed to do that?,” to which he responded, “Yeah, Comcast’s computer systems are pretty advanced now.” WHAT? I nodded affirmatively.
• He tried to make a call in my apartment, but “couldn’t.” He went outside for about five minutes and then let himself back in without knocking, again.
• He went in and out of my place two more times and then finally stayed outside for about 20 minutes.
• He laid on my floor for a while and talked to the guy on “dispatch,” who apparently had no idea what he was doing either. According to my boy, “Dispatch is very busy today” and will call us back. Did I mention that we are installing two of these cards today? Fun!
• He used my bathroom.
• He talked to some guy on the phone and walked through every single menu option on the TiVo; he kept returning to Tivo Suggestions for answers (which was empty by the way). I didn’t have the heart to tell him that that screen holds suggestions, from TiVo.
• At this point, I’m kind of, uhh, upset.
• He got off the phone and called someone else, his “supervisor.”
• He told me that his supervisor told him that it can take up to two hours for the card to “hit” (presumably, that means for it to be activated). They’re backed up today, which happens “every two months or so.” I’m sure he meant to say “every day,” but I didn’t correct him.
• I asked my boy to let me talk to his supervisor. I explained to the supervisor that no one knows what’s going on or what they’re doing. He told me that they’re just backed up, and that there’s nothing more his technician can do. I wanted to tell him that there were probably a couple of options on the TiVo the tech hadn’t looked at yet (you know, like Amazon Unbox or something), but I refrained. Truthfully, the technician had three more people to see today and needed to get moving.
• I told the supervisor that the tech couldn’t leave just yet because we still needed to install the second card. I guess my boy had told him that he did that already, and for all I know, he probably thought he had, but the card on the floor (still in its plastic case) belied his assessment.
• He asked some guy on the phone if he is supposed to leave the first cablecard in there while installing the second. It took all of me to keep my mouth shut.
• He inserted the second card, called someone, rattled off some serial numbers and told me everything would be working in a couple of hours.
• I knew he was lying, or rather had no idea what he was talking about, but I was cordial nonetheless.

And that folks, is how you eat up seven hours of your day messing with something you could have done yourself in five minutes, and for free. It’s a good thing I’m not a busy person or the whole ordeal just might have upset me.

Uncrustables are god’s handiwork

I’ve been told by at least a few people (surely more if they knew me better) that I’m at once the laziest person and the most productive person they’ve ever met.¹ Enter Uncrustables, the pre-packaged, no-crust, frozen peanut-butter and jelly sandwich.² That’s right, I’m too lazy to make my own sandwiches and if this little wonder-in-plastic doesn’t count as the perfect snack then I don’t know what does. Once you convince yourself that whatever makes them dry and fluffy (instead of wet and soggy) after they’ve been “thawing” for an hour isn’t going to kill you, you’re left to enjoy a painless, simple, get-in-get-out snack.

I swear, every time I tear open one of these bad-boys I can hear the guy from the Guinness commercials yell, “Brillyunt!”

Skating always takes me back

To this day nothing really feels as good as skateboarding when I get extremely stressed. Sure, I can’t ollie over a grocery cart anymore, and if I were to break my arm again I probably wouldn’t be doing pop shove-its over a friend’s brother¹ with my cast on this time around, but it still feels really good to get out there and be a kid again sometimes.

Seagull (1)

I’m finally putting up a seagull shot from the recent Santa Cruz trip, and to give you an idea of how close I was to this bird, the picture was taken with a 50mm lens.

I’ve probably got at least two more seagull shots to put up, but I think I’m going to hold off on post-processing those for the time being.

Which one is the ham?

Believe it or not, this was uttered by my Subway “sandwich artist” last night moments after I told him what I wanted.¹ What’s more is that he was asking another employee, whom, on a prior occasion, I overheard requesting confirmation that 60 minus 3 was 57.

The owner puts people like this in charge of his money?

I am a workaholic

That’s the first step, right? Now what? It’s no doubt getting worse with age, and, well, it kind of scares me.

From iPhoto to iView MediaPro

ADDENDUM: A few days ago, Apple announed Aperture, a professional-grade photo editing and management tool, which, after watching the demo videos, I’m incredibly impressed with; something tells me I’m going to be doing this whole “migrating” thing all over again with Aperture pretty soon. It’s obvious that Aperture is currently meant to complement Photoshop, not obviate it, but I’m sure Apple isn’t ruling out the possibility years down the road.

A couple of weeks ago I decided I was going to stop using iPhoto and move to something, umm, what’s the word, oh yah, USABLE. iPhoto had been giving me all kinds of trouble, much more than I want to get into here (and that you likely want to hear about), but the problems are by no means specific to me and I’m sure most of the people reading this post know exactly what I’m talking about. Indeed, in the last month I’ve seen a considerable spike of I’m-sick-of-iPhoto rants across the blogosphere.

The biggest problem for me was always speed — use iPhoto to organize a substantial amount of photos and you’ll quickly realize that it’s incredibly slow, to the point that for all intents and purposes it’s quite unusable. This annoyance quickly became unbearable when I started using iPhoto with the larger files produced by my Canon 20D and I knew that something was going to have to change.

Let the OS do the work?

There really aren’t too many alternatives on the Mac when it comes to image organization. Given the lack of options, I, at one point, thought that I would just use hierarchical folders (year/month, etc) and navigate the pictures using a combination of the Finder, Spotlight, and smart folders. As ever, I thought long and hard about the possible long-term implications of such a move and ultimately decided that that was probably not the best approach right now (though I might very well decide otherwise in the future).

After dismissing the “filesystem” option, it didn’t take me long to stumble upon iView MediaPro. I’d heard of it before and even read some reviews, but never really considered it until now. I knew that a lot of “serious” photographers swore by it and so I decided to give it a shot.

Post-move Details

I knew the transition was not going to be easy and I put it off as long as I could. I was aware of the iPhoto import feature (truth be told, I doubt I would have attempted the move without it), but I was scared that the amount of pictures I had would make the importer shit on itself (especially in light of the fact that all of the pictures were tagged with at least one descriptor, if not many). Imagine my delight when the move was completely error-free. That’s not to say that there wasn’t some post-move work to be done, but the catalog and thumbnails built themselves without a hitch; this included both the albums I created (called “Catalog Sets” in MediaPro) and keywords.

The only real hang-up regarding the transition was manually moving the image files to another directory. iPhoto stores its photos in a particular year/month/day structure located in ~/Pictures/iPhoto Library and when you “import” these pictures into MediaPro the disk location is maintained. Obviously, I didn’t want my pictures to reside in the iPhoto directory anymore and I also didn’t want the directory structure to be so granular (i.e., I wanted just year/month).

Surprisingly, this wasn’t too hard to do in MediaPro.¹ I first created a directory off my home directory called “images” and then created subfolders for the years and months. I added the images folder to the “Catalog Folders” pane in MediaPro, which already contained the iPhoto directories because of the initial import. Finally, using the Catalog Folders pane I selected each of the “day” subfolders within the iPhoto directory, highlighted all of the resulting thumbnails, and dragged them to the corresponding year/month folder under the images directory. Using this method, MediaPro physically moved the files to the new directories and kept all of the meta information (keywords, sets, etc) intact.

Likes / Dislikes

A few things I really like about the program:

• Very, very, very fast. I’m running it on a 1.25GHz PowerBook G4 with 1GB of RAM and am loving it; it’s such a departure from the spinning beach-ball that was iPhoto.
• Good configuration options (not great, but certainly very powerful).
• Very nice interface. There’s no real clutter and everything feels like it has a purpose — the entire application is very navigable.
• Excellent metadata options.

A few things I don’t like:

• When browsing through thumbnails you can’t select multiple pictures using the mouse (i.e., you can’t click and drag over multiple pictures) — if you want to pick more than one picture you have to CMD-click each of them.
• Can’t select multiple keywords at once (i.e., there’s no way to see pictures tagged with both “justin” and “friends”).
• Can’t change the size of the thumbnails — they’re stuck at 128 pixels wide.

Backing it all up

I’m a huge fan of rsync and have been using it for years to backup various important documents and so it was the logical choice for backing up my photos remotely now that my webhost gives me enough space for this sort of thing.² The following is the rsync call that I use to backup my photos (once a day using cron). The first instance of this obviously required all of the pictures to be moved to the webserver, which took forever given my upload cap.³

cd /Users/justin;rsync -e ssh -rtR --delete --stats --progress
images/ jblanton@justinblanton.com:/home/jblanton/

Keep in mind that to run this particular command you will need to have setup passwordless SSH access on your webserver. Also, you might want to delete the “delete” argument, lest you run the risk of deleting all of your remote files if syncing from an empty disk.

Footnotes and Textpander

I’ve contemplated using footnotes here for years and have fleshed out all kinds of variations, but I always seem to abandon them rather quickly, opting instead to use long parentheticals because implementing footnotes in HTML is a bit of chore.

Technically, it’s pretty mindless. All you’re really doing is using anchors to specify a spot (i.e., the footnote) to move to within the HTML document — HTML 101. The thing is, to make everything look nice and function well, a bit more effort is required, and this effort, over time, can become quite burdensome.

That’s where Textpander swoops in to save the day. “Textpander listens to what you type and inserts predefined text snippets on the fly whenever you enter their corresponding abbreviations.” While there have been other programs that do this very thing, I’ve yet to find one that does it as well as Textpander; it’s fun to use and lends itself well to all kinds of applications, including hypertext footnotes, which I describe below.

I’ve ‘mapped’ both the footnote reference and the footnote itself. Whenever I type “rf” (in any application) the following automagically appears:

<sup id="r1-%m%d%y"><a href="#f1-%m%d%y">1</a></sup>

And when when I type “fn,” out pops:

<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="f1-%m%d%y">
<p>FOOTNOTE TEXT<a href="#r1-%m%d%y">&uarr</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>

As you can see, these little snippets of text are nothing more than footnote ‘templates’ that I created and all I’m required to do after they’ve been ‘called’ and inserted is add the footnote text; I went ahead and ‘mapped’ the 2nd and 3rd footnotes as well so that I don’t have to manually change the number at the beginning of the anchors that corresponds to the current footnote (see above examples).

Unique anchors

Obviously when you’re using anchors you need them to be unique, else, when visitors are on a large archive page (such as that for 2004), a footnote reference might bring them to a footnote meant for a post other than the one they’re currently reading. See the “%m%d%y” text in the examples above? I use these to produce the date in the form of “082905″ (for August 29, 2005), which, as it turns out, are perfectly suited to uniquely identify a particular point in the text.¹

You’ll also notice a little arrow at the end of each footnote. The links used for these arrows need to be unique as well because they bring the reader back to the footnote reference that brought them down to the footnote in the first place (hat tip Gruber).

Too serious?

I realize that some of you might think that by using footnotes I’m taking myself (and this site) a bit too seriously, and you might be right, but if at the end of the day the footnotes make the posts easier to read, then I don’t really care.

Largest Mail.app mailbox size?

I mentioned a couple of months ago that my “personal” inbox had crossed the 20,000 e-mail mark; I’ve now just passed 22,000.¹ I’m fairly certain that the app itself doesn’t have an upper limit, and so I’m curious to know, what’s the largest usable Mail.app mailbox out there (and by “usable” I mean a mailbox that’s being hammered on a daily basis)?

I’ll keep updating this post with the largest number I receive.

Currently, the largest number is 283,686 (I required screenshot proof of this one).

Revolution In The Valley

I’ve been sitting on this post for a while now and figured it was time to get it out there given that I don’t have time to actually write anything new at the moment because of law school finals (in case there was ever any doubt, law school finals suck).

A couple of months ago I started to read Revolution in the Valley - The Insanely Great Story of How The Mac Was Made, and it’s just that, insanely great. I picked it up one very exciting Friday night when a friend and I were at the local Borders “studying.” I couldn’t stop reading it, but I was informed that I had to part with it because the store was closing and the guy was all like, “You can’t take that out of the store without paying for it.” I thanked him for the heads-up and put the book down.

Between the often personal stories (as told by a lot of different members of the initial Mac team), pictures, drawings, and diagrams, the book really sucks you into the mindset and environment of those so passionate about the Mac at its inception, and oddly, makes me somewhat proud to be a small part of that today.

I was informed by Richard (who has some similar anecdotes of his own) that I could essentially read the entire book online, but I opted instead to pick it up every now and again when I was in the library at school (you know, to put some small portion of my $30,000/year tuition to good use).

If you don’t get a chance to check it out in the flesh (highly recommended), you should at least read over a few of my favorite stories:

Reality Distortion Field

Bud defines Steve’s unique talent

Saving Lives

Steve wants us to make the Macintosh boot faster

I’ll Be Your Best Friend

Burrell Smith was creative in more than just engineering

Quick, Hide In This Closet!

Steve forbid us to work with Sony

And Then He Discovered Loops!

Bob has written many lines of code

I Invented Burrell

Burrell imitates Jef

What’s A Megaflop?

We visit my alma mater to try to sell them Macs

-2000 Lines Of Code

It’s hard to measure progress by lines of code

Shut Up!

The first time we demoed the Macintosh to Microsoft

Mea Culpa

Here are some of our worst mistakes

Use Gmail as a spam filter (three ways)

UPDATE: I’ve just been made aware that someone else posted a similar, though more detailed, description of the first method I talk about below.

This is something I meant to write about months ago, but just never got around to it. I don’t think the idea is new (perhaps it was when I thought to write this), but that shouldn’t deter me from sharing it with everyone.

I guess the title begs the question, “Why would I want to use Gmail to filter my spam?” Well, if you’re currently relying only on client-side filtering, the question is answered. If however, you have both a client and server-side solution, the answer isn’t so clear; perhaps you aren’t satisfied with the server-side filter or you just want to try something new.

Notwithstanding your current setup (and requirements), Gmail does a decent job of siphoning out the good e-mails from the bad, and while it’s certainly far from perfect, I’m sure that over time, partly because it can set filter rules based on the aggregate “report spam” actions of its users, it will become an excellent filter. I’ve come up with three different ways for you to take advantage of Gmail’s spam-filtering capabilities, all of which allow you to keep your current e-mail address.

Method One

You can only use this method if you have the ability to set server-side e-mail filter rules. It’s based on the fact that Gmail adds some extra information to the header of the e-mail before forwarding it along. There are a number of things you can predicate your rule upon and I’ll place a few of them at the end of this section. The method is outlined below.

1. Forward the e-mail from your current account to Gmail.
2. Forward your Gmail e-mail back to your current account.
3. Gmail will filter your e-mail before forwarding it along.
4. Setup a server-side filter rule to check for the existence of certain data in the header (see below) and forward it to Gmail if the header lacks this data; let it pass through to the inbox of your current account if it contains this data.

Like I said above, there are quite a few things that you can check for in the header and use as the basis of your forwarding rule. Three of the most obvious are:

• X-Forwarded-For: user@gmail.com forwarded@to.com
• X-Gmail-Received: some-random-number
• Delivered-To: user@gmail.com

Method Two

This method is best for those that can’t edit server-side filters, but can create multiple mail accounts. The method is outlined below.

1. Create a new mail account (the username doesn’t matter; no one will see it).
2. Forward the e-mail from your current account to Gmail.
3. Forward your Gmail e-mail to the account you just created.
4. Gmail will filter your e-mail before forwarding it along.
5. Use your new mail account (you’ll obviously want to set the “reply-to” and “from” fields to your current address and not the one you just created).

Method Three

This is the simplest method and the one you should use if you can’t setup server-side rules or create extra e-mail addresses. The first thing you’ll need to do is setup your current account to forward to Gmail. The next and final step is to setup your local mail client to access Gmail through POP.

Archiving and Privacy

All of the methods shown above (forwarding and POP) allow you to keep your Gmail messages in your inbox, archive them (i.e., keep a backup of your local mail), or trash them. All e-mail in the trash “folder” will be automatically deleted after 30 days. Keep in mind though that just because you delete a message doesn’t mean that it’s entirely gone. From Gmail’s Privacy Policy:

Because we keep back-up copies of data for the purposes of recovery from errors or system failure, residual copies of email may remain on our systems for some time, even after you have deleted messages from your mailbox or after the termination of your account.

Introducing Smart Archives for WordPress

Smart Archives is my very first WordPress plugin and provides functionality similar to, but above and beyond, the nested archives I developed for Movable Type.

If you’re interested, a better description can be found on the project page, along with the source and installation instructions.

Maintaining URIs between Movable Type and WordPress

When I moved to WordPress I made the decision to change the layout of my archived URIs. To be honest, I was going to make this move under Movable Type as well, but just hadn’t got around to it. This modification amounts to nothing more than changing a uri_that_looks_like_this/ to a uri-that-looks-like-this (dashes and no trailing slash). The reasons for this aren’t worth going into right now, but if you’re interested, feel free to e-mail me.

If you initially followed my steps for future-proofing your site in Movable Type and are moving to WordPress and want to keep a similar archive structure, then follow the steps below. Even if you didn’t use my future-proofing method for MT, but are still thinking about moving to WordPress, you can probably figure out what changes would be needed to the following code to make it work for your particular setup (assuming the archive structure you used under both CMSs is based, at least in part, on the titles of the posts).

Step One

The first thing you are going to want to do is to create a new MT template which contains the following code (perhaps modified for your particular situation).

<MTEntries lastn="10000">
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} <$MTArchiveDate
format="%Y/%m/%d"$>/<$MTEntryTitle dirify="1"$>/$
RewriteRule .* archives/<$MTArchiveDate
format="%Y/%m/%d"$>/<$MTEntryTitle dirifyplus="pld"$> [R,L]
</MTEntries>

Realize that the rewrite lines above should each be one long line (i.e., no line breaks).

The above code will traverse all of your Movable Type entries and create the appropriate conditions and rules for each of them, the idea being that each individual entry will get a separate RewriteRule that will direct it to the new [slightly altered] URI.

Step Two

Build this template.

Step Three

Copy the contents of the resultant file into your root .htaccess file or the one in the root of your archives directory — shouldn’t really matter. Either way, be sure to include these rules before the htaccess rules that WordPress creates (and needs to work), else the server will act on those earlier rules and never get to these.

That’s it — now all of your old MT archives should forward to the new URIs.

Beware

I noticed that Movable Type’s “dirify” function and the “dirifyplus” plugin remove dashes within a title and so if you used either of these to make your directory structure (which this little guide assumes), you’ll need to go through your entries, find those that have a dash in the title, and then reinsert that dash in the RewriteRule portion of that particular address (else, the link will be unreachable).

Arrested Development

OK, I have to get this off my chest: Arrested Development might be the funniest sitcom I’ve ever seen. While I do have a TiVo, I still abstain from watching sitcoms, not necessarily as a rule, but more because I just got so bored with them and the ones I did enjoy I fell out of sync with once law school started. That said, Arrested Development is a complete break from the tired, predictable crap that was Seinfeld, Friends, etc, none of which I ever got into (and yes, I realize everyone and their brother loves those shows).

Like most non-reality shows, I only watch them anymore when I’m back home on break — friends throw the DVD sets at me and I can’t resist. I’m so glad I got to watch this one on DVD because just one a week would have made me crazy — it’s that funny. Every single character is a riot and my favorite seemed to change from show to show. I never thought such humor could be derived from such narcissism, but the “mockumentary” way in which it is shot coupled with the depth of the writing makes you want to “rescue” all of the characters while laughing at the absurdity of their situations. It’s brilliant.

BlogAid

From Andy Budd’s BlogAid:

You can help the victims of this terrible natural disaster by pledging the proceeds of any advertising or affiliate schemes you have on your site for the month of January to your country’s Tsunami Earthquake appeal.

What a great idea. This is a no-brainer for me and I’m pretty sure most webloggers feel the same; this project has the potential to raise a lot of money. Good luck Andy.

Top five (individual) weblogs

I’m occassionaly asked whose sites I read and which I most enjoy. My response usually involves a pointer back to my links page and/or my OPML file, which contains the addresses for all of the feeds I read each day. For those that don’t want to work your way though my admittedly long and somewhat eclectic list, I present to you my top five personal websites:

John Gruber

If you have a Mac and a single nerd bone in your body then there is a good chance you’ve read this site. John has a wonderful way with words and consistently writes interesting and compelling articles pertaining to “Mac nerdery.” His writing sometimes walks a fine line between flowery description and superfluous overkill, but he always seems to pull it around and make clear his point.

Jason Kottke

Let’s face it, when it comes to weblogging, Jason is the man. He’s been doing this for a very long time and is constantly bringing something new to his site and the medium. What is more is that I’m not sure I’ve ever felt someone was as “like” me as Jason seems to be — it’s absolutely uncanny how his posts sometimes read how I think.

Russell Beattie

Russ is me, squared — he takes my gadget passion to a whole new level (at least as far as mobile phones go; just wait until I have money Russ  :P). I think what I like most about him is the fact that he absolutely holds no punches — he’s going to tell you exactly how he feels whether he’s talking about the latest Symbian OS or the dingbat we currently call president.

Rui Carmo

There is no question that Rui is the most prolific writer of the bunch and I sometimes wonder how he has time work on his “day job.” One needs to look no further than his index to feel compelled to write about something, anything. He has a great grasp of “tech,” and like Russ above, has no problem telling you exactly what’s on his mind.

Dunstan Orchard

As I’ve said to many people (and probably even to Dunstan at some point), this is one of the best looking sites I’ve ever seen — his attention to detail is truly inspiring. Beyond the dynamic cartoon weather headers, the site is rich with content, not the least of which are his gorgeous photos (which he seems to be posting more frequently).

The True Story of Audion

After reading this story and posting it to my Bits section, I came across John Gruber’s take on it, and instead of typing up something similar I figured I’d just steal from him.

Ordinarily, this is the sort of thing I’d post to the Linked List, but it’s simply too good — extraordinarily, wonderfully good — and thus deserves your full attention.

Get yourself a lovely beverage, disconnect the phone, quit your IM client, and enjoy The True Story of Audion, by Cabel Sasser of Panic Software. One of the greatest Mac stories I’ve ever read. Joyous, exciting, heartbreaking. Note: most of the links are pop-up footnotes; don’t skip them.

Seriously, read this. You’ll thank me. Plus, there will be a quiz next week.

You might live in Silicon Valley if…

…you’re waiting in line at the Nordstrom ebar in the mall and the guy in front of you is on a Segway. This you-might-live thing seems to be turning into a series.

(picture taken with phone)

Battle in Beslan

The siege of a school here in southern Russia ended today in panic, violence and death 52 hours after it began. At least [340] people — most of them students, teachers and parents — died, according to official reports and witnesses, after two large explosions sparked pitched battles between the heavily armed hostage-takers and Russian forces.

Does anyone know why we haven’t heard more about this massacre on mainstream TV news? I’ve been following it some online for the past few days but don’t recall ever hearing about it on TV. Now that the seige is over, I see that it is getting quite a bit of coverage, but I didn’t notice any while the standoff was taking place (granted, I’ve been incredibly busy this week and haven’t watched much TV, but still, it seems odd).

“Taking advantage of the panic, hostages began to escape,” Lev Dzugayev, a spokesman for North Ossetia’s president, said in an interview, referring to the initial blasts. “The bandits began shooting them in the back. The special forces on our side had to cover the fleeing hostages. This is unfortunately how it happened.”

Scores of hostages survived, staggering from the school even as intense gunfire sputtered and grenades exploded around them. Many were barely dressed, their faces strained with fear and exhaustion, their bodies bloodied by shrapnel and gunshots. Many others never got out. Their bodies lay in the charred wreckage of Middle School No. 1’s gymnasium, the roof of which had collapsed and burned, a police officer said.

Men and women filed through lifting the sheets that covered the dead, which included children and Russian soldiers or security officers. Recognition brought wrenching, piercing wails. A mother in a red-and-white blouse knelt on the ground, weeping as she kissed her dead daughter’s face.

What a horrible, horrible scene. At least 155 children dead. I don’t know what took over, but when I saw the picture on the front page of this article, where the mother is looking down at her dead child, I just wept.

It reminded me of when I was watching the Colombine incident take place. I was sitting in my room in my first college apartment with my back to the TV. I was working on my computer when I heard the channel switch to someone commentating on the events unfolding at the school. I sat there watching and wondering what the hell these kids could be thinking and how their problems could manifest themselves in such an ugly, final way. This marked the first time that I had actually cried while watching some real event on TV. It just struck me like a brick, the sadness and curiosity of it all. In my personal relationships I empathize with others as naturally as I breathe, but never before had some remote, intangible event caught my attention or my heart in such a way. I don’t know, this incident in Russia worked pretty well to evoke the same reaction from me.

Get iTunes songs for 99 cents each!

Being from a rival school, I’m compelled to rag on FSU whenever the opportunity presents itself. How then, after reading this article in their school newspaper, could I not talk about it here? Some choice excerpts follow below.

In an effort to prevent illegal file sharing on campus, Florida State University is on the verge of finalizing a deal with Apple Computer, Inc. — a deal that would provide free iTunes software to students and allow them to download music for 99 cents per song.

I hate to rain on the parade, but, uhh, iTunes software is already free to everyone. Moreover, 99 cents per song is what it currently charges everyone. Let’s see if FSU’s man-with-a-plan can clear up some of this confusion.

Baker, the director of university computer systems at the FSU Academic Computing and Network Services Department, was appointed chair of a committee charged with finding a way to stop illegal file sharing on campus.

Baker said the idea originated from a concern for students who live on campus and download music illegally.

Good thinking Baker, I think you’re really onto something. The students were probably holding out for the iTunes stamp-of-approval from the university, and now that they have it, watch out ‘illegal’ file sharing, these kids are ready to pay.

Baker said that students can expect to see the project go into effect sometime in the next month. The license agreement is currently under legal review by FSU officials and will close soon, Baker said.

*Psst* students… *pssst* You don’t have to wait for the plan to “go into effect” to buy music through iTunes — Apple will take your money now! No questions asked. Tell them that FSU sent you and you’ll be able to get your songs for just 99 cents each.

The guy on the Apple end of this deal was a genius.

Sony, put the gun down

There is no doubt that Sony’s new Network Walkman Digital Music Player is a wonderful little device. It looks great, has an insane battery life, ships with a decent-sized HDD (20GB), and weighs just 3.8oz. The problem though is that it doesn’t play MP3 files. The user is left to use Sony’s proprietary ATRAC3 or ATRAC3Plus formats, which means that any MP3 file you want to put on the player must first be converted — a very time-consuming process — I’m sure Joe User’s just chomping at the bit.

By restricting the player to just its format, Sony has also severely restricted its prospective userbase, which will now be limited to clueless end-users and those few willing (and patient enough) to convert their entire collections. I’d guess that a good number of iPod users, whom I’m sure Sony would like to steal away from Apple, are not iTunes users at all (or only in a very limited capacity), which means that Sony had a chance to move them away from the iPod (hell, I looked at the device myself), but because they locked it down I can’t think of anyone who would even consider it. Sony is offering no compelling reason to switch and is likely dissuading most people by requiring them to take the unprecedented step of converting their MP3s. As for those who’ve actually used iTunes to build up their collections, it seems that Sony is too late to the game and will probably miss that group altogether — I just can’t see Joe User cracking the iTunes’ AAC files (FairPlay DRM) and then converting these unprotected files to either MP3 or WMV and then finally converting these to ATRAC3.

Advice for Sony and Others

Well, Sony, your first move should probably be to take care of the foot you just shot. Next, and this goes for all of you digital music device manufacturers, make sure your device can play the most ubiquitous and unprotected format available. If it can’t, it’s a good bet that it’s dead in the water and is going to fail, or at least not going to do nearly as well as it would otherwise. I don’t think it’s too terrible to limit the device to only one proprietary format (after all, the intention is to get people to purchase music from your online store), but don’t then deny users the ability to play other open formats, especially the format that’s not only the most familiar to consumers but that also spawned all of this digital music madness in the first place.

This point is likely obvious to anyone reading this, which begs an obvious question: why did no one at Sony see the flaw in their logic? Can someone please explain to me what they were trying to accomplish by locking out MP3? I’m serious, if you know (or think you know), I’d like to hear it.

Advice for End-users

If you actually pay for music (I’ve read that people still do this  :P) and can’t find somewhere online that sells what you want as an unprotected MP3 file, then don’t buy it online. Buy the CD, rip the album yourself, and keep the CD so that if and when a newer, better format is available and you feel the need to make the transition, it won’t cost you anything but time. Oh how I want to discuss on this site the way in which I gather and store music, but, umm, I can’t really shouldn’t.

I’ll be curious to see what happens when the iTunes format (or any of the other online stores’ DRM formats) dies out or is improved and all the people who have spent a decent amount of money on their collections want their music in the newer, better format, no doubt arguing that it costs the music provider nothing but bandwidth (as opposed to vinyl → 8-track → cassette → CD → dvd-audio → etc).

To steal a line from Goodfellas:

• “My new device won’t play format X, can I re-download my songs in format Y?” “Fuck you, pay me.” - iTunes Music Store
• “You guys just came out with format X². I’d like to upgrade my collection from format X to format X².” “Fuck you, pay me.” - Sony Connect
• “My hard drive died and I need to re-download all of my music.” “Fuck you, pay me.” - Walmart Music Downloads

I’m not saying that the music provider is right or wrong in these cases, but I’m pretty sure that the above responses will be (or are?) what one can expect.

The Killers

The Killers’ debut album, Hot Fuss, is shaping up to be my favorite record of the year (and, umm, as most of you are well aware, I listen to a shitload of music). Get it. Love it. You won’t be disappointed.

Sony Ericsson K700i

I didn’t intend for this review to be as long as it is, but it seems I got a little trigger-happy and couldn’t stop typing.

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Sony Ericsson mobile phones (I’ve had the T68i, P800, and T616) and the K700i is certainly no exception. Though there are a couple of disappointments, I have to say that overall, I’m pretty impressed. That said, let’s take a look at this phone.

Design

Though it’s a slight departure from previous designs, I think that the K700i looks great. I don’t quite understand the whole “dual face” thing that SE is trying to push (the idea that it “looks” like a camera on one side, and a phone on the other), but whatever.

What I do miss from the T61x is the identation up the sides of the phone. As I wrote in the T616 review, this made the phone feel secure in your hand, something that is difficult to do with such a small device. That’s not to say that the K700i doesn’t feel good in the hands, quite the oppposite actually, but the automatic comfort of the T61x is notably absent.

The phone feels very solid, almost like you could throw it against a wall and expect it to make a hole. Like most mobile phones, the only movable part is the battery cover, which fits very snuggly (no doubt due to the long “tracks” that run along the cover) and produces no rocking (unlike the T68i) when typing on the keypad and no creaking noises when squeezing the phone.

Keypad

The keypad buttons feel very solid and have a great tactile feedback to them. The keys are rectangular, transparent (kind of look and feel like glass), elevated above the phone, and layed out in a square matrix (as they should be). The function keys aren’t as ‘glassy,’ but have a more ‘milky’ look to them. The illumination on the keypad is excellent.

Joystick

I’m glad to see that SE has moved away from the square shape of the T61x joystick and gone to a completely round design similar to the one found on the T68i, though a little larger. It actually makes the control feel a bit more analog (it’s not), especially when playing games. Another good change is that the joystick can no longer “wake up” the phone — you have to either press the menu buttons or the keypad to bring the phone back to life (yes, you could lock the keys, but I hate extra steps  :P).

All of the joystick directions can be assigned shortcuts.

Data Port and Charger

My second biggest gripe with the phone (behind battery life; see below) has to do with the black rubber cover that “protects” the data port and charger. SE has never offered this on a phone before and I’m unsure why they decided to go with it now; it’s not needed and only makes it more difficult to charge the phone. Morever, it feels hyperextended when you have the charger connected to the phone. I have half a mind to remove it, but because I’ll probably sell the phone at some point, I’m compelled to leave it fully intact.

The charger connects the same as all (?) SE phones — there are two little prongs that snap into the connector. I’d much more prefer a single “plug” as is found on most Nokia phones.

Rock-switch

Under the camera button on the left side of the phone is the obligatory rock-switch. During calls it controls volume; incoming calls can be given a busy tone; in standby mode, information about the phone is displayed, including date, profile, model name, your mobile number, and free memory (sadly missing here is information about remaining battery life); and in camera mode it’s used to set the exposure compensation.

“Online” button

The right side of the phone has an “online” button that takes you straight to the WAP browser. I’ve never used this button in past phones, so I doubt I’ll start now. I don’ t think it can be assigned another function, which is unfortunate.

Camera Button

The camera button on the side now has a delay on it so you have to hold it down for a couple of seconds before it activates the camera.

Display

The display is amazing and really stands out from almost all other mobile phones. The screen is a very bright TFT capable of 16-bit color and features one of the best resolutions available today: 176×220. Text is very smooth and pictures are simply gorgeous — you have to look pretty hard to make out individual pixels.

There are no options to adjust the brightness or contrast, but I haven’t come across a need to do that yet. The screen looks great in direct sunlight and is very readable, perhaps moreso than any other mobile phone display I’ve ever seen.

Games

I was blown away by games on this thing. They look absolutely incredible. The Mascot Capsule Java 3D gaming engine is really impressive — this is one of the very first phones to ship with MIDP 2.0/CLDC 1.1 and J2ME 3D. Combine that with the resolution and brightness of the screen and the superb sensitivity of the joystick and you are left with a pretty decent gaming platform (the best I’ve seen yet on a mobile phone).

Memory

The phone ships with 41MB of available memory (you can get a couple more megs by deleting some of the installed applications/themes/games/etc). All of this memory is available to just about everything on the system, including image, audio, and video files. While there is no memory-expansion slot, I’m not sure that one is really needed given the fact that you would be fairly hard-pressed to fill this thing up with just games, applications, and audio/video/image files (obviously MP3s and MP4 video are a different story).

Syncing with iSync

This was not as easy as I had hoped, but given that there is no official support in the latest version of iSync for the K700i (which makes sense; the phone isn’t even available in the US yet), I was a little surprised to find that, after a little finagling, I could get it working out of the box. The trick is that you have to initiate the Bluetooth pairing from both your computer and the phone, one right after the other. After this is done you should see a K700i icon inside iSync.

I’m positive the next iSync update will have native support for the K700i.

Transferring files with Bluetooh

As expected, I had absolutely no trouble transferring files back and forth between the PowerBook and K700i, be them themes, pictures, videos, games, whatever. There is support for the new HID profile which includes both the ‘object push’ and ‘file transfer’ options of moving files between devices.

Files transferred to the phone through Bluetooth (or by other means) are placed in the appropriate folder in the “File Manager” (see below) based on file extension. If the extension is unrecognized, the file will be placed in the “other” folder.

Using Bluetooth to Browse the Phone

No trouble here either. I actually think the browsing is quite a bit faster than with the T61x. I experienced no problems moving in and out of directories and moving files back and forth.

Digital Camera

The K700i takes decent pictures, but nothing mindblowing. As usual, I really couldn’t care less whether it came with a camera or not. Until they’re 3MP and above, I just don’t care (it won’t be long). The pictures have a native resolution of 640×480 and can be interpolated to 1280×960 (but, um, why?). In addition to these sizes, you can also take pictures at 320×240 and 160×120 and the camera is capable of 4x digital zoom.

The design of the phone is such that when you take pictures and hold the phone horizontally, you’ll find the “snap” button on top of the phone along with the rock-switch that controls exposure compensation (of course you’re taking portrait-mode pics when you do it like this; the option to rotate pics is offered after taking them). You can take landscape pictures by simply keeping the phone vertical. The lens can be snapped by either pressing the joystick down, hitting the camera button, or pushing the bottom-left function key.

As expected there are all kinds of picture options, including black and white, sepia, solar effects, and negative. There’s also a “night” option. Somewhat surprisingly, there’s a panoramic option that is quite functional and something I wouldn’t expect in a camera phone like this. It takes three pictures and stitches them together to form a larger, [hopefully] seamless 1664×416 picture — it actually works pretty well. You line up your pictures by aligning a semi-transparent image of the previous shot that is overlayed onto the viewfinder.

The built-in image editor allows you to add all sorts of things to the images including text and freehand drawings.

One of the neatest additions to this phone is the “flash,” which isn’t a flash at all, but rather a very bright LED light. My limited use has shown that this actually does a decent job when taking close-up camera shots and video clips in low-light settings. It also works very well as a flashlight of sorts and is especially useful for finding the right key and getting it in the door at night. I only wish that you could assign the light a shortcut key, but instead you have to be in camera mode to invoke it (hitting keypad #5 turns it on while in camera mode).

The viewfinder looks great and the refresh rate is excellent.

There is a small mirror on the back just under the lens for self-shots.

Digital Video

Yes, this phone will shoot video as well (with sound!). You can choose between one of two resolutions, 176×144 or 128×96 (both weak for sure, but this is a phone). Again, I couldn’t care one way or the other if I could take video, but because I can, I’m finding that it’s something I play around with quite a bit. Further adding to the enjoyment of taking videos is the fact that you’re limited only by the available memory in the phone (as I mention above, 41MB, which makes for A LOT of video at these resolutions). You can limit the video to a length of 10 seconds if you want to shoot short clips for MMSs. All of the features and effects described above for the digital camera are also available for the video.

Like most other phones that are capable of shooting video, the format is 3GP (H.263), which can be played back on the phone or a computer (yes, you get sound when playing back video on the phone).

File Manager

The file manager built into the phone is pretty nice. It’s broken down into seven folders: pictures, sounds, videos, themes, games, applications, and other. You can move, rename, copy, and delete files from within the file manager. One neat (and long-needed) option available here is the ability to mark several files at a time for deletion (among other things). The photos in the pictures folder are shown as small thumbnails (four per screen) and you can even have it run a slideshow of the pics.

You can also view information for each folder such as the number of files within the folder and their total size.

All of the regular options are here for transferring files: Bluetooth, IR, MMS, or e-mail.

User Interface

I love the interface. It’s very similar to that of the T61x, but with a few changes. The most notable is the sharpness of the icons in the main menu (which is due more to the increased resolution than anything else). They are layed out the same way as the T61x: four rows with three icons each. As you cycle through the icons they ‘magnify’ quickly and then shrink to a size that is slightly larger than the unselected icons, changing looks in the process. A nice touch is this circle ‘cursor’ that follows your joystick moves and jumps from the sides or top/bottom of the screen as you “wrap around” the menu. It looks great.

This phone also makes use of tabs, which I think is a first for a phone-only device, and certainly makes for a better user experience.

Themes

The K700i uses graphic themes and is capable of displaying animated wallpapers. Currently, I’m using a theme called “Nemo” that mimics the virtual aquariums available on the Finding Nemo DVD. The background wallpaper to this theme is gorgeous and little bubbles rise up from the coral at the bottom. It’s pretty neat.

I’ve run through most of the themes currently available, and have seen some pretty impressive collections, though not too many that I would consider using. The number of available themes will grow rapidly as this phone starts to take hold around the world.

[I got an e-mail from someone pointing me to a movie he made that shows off the animated wallpapers — take a look]

Phonebook

I can’t say that I have any complaints with the layout of the phonebook. The menu has been redone a little bit so that more information can fit on the screen. When viewing your list of contacts all you see is their name, but as you highlight each name, the view expands around the name to expose the main contact number for that particular contact; you can then scroll to the right to reveal other numbers and e-mail addresses attached to that contact. Depending on what is selected (number or e-mail address), pressing down on the joystick either engages a phone call or presents a compose window for an e-mail. Pretty slick.

Obviously, you can also attach a photo to a particular contact for photo caller-ID and can have custom ringtones as well. Voice-dialing is also supported.

Messaging

You’ll find all the usual suspects here: SMS, EMS, MMS, and e-mail (IMAP4/POP3/SMTP).

One of the complaints of the T61x was the number of steps one had to go through to get to an SMS compose window. That has been taken care of with the K700i by allowing you to assign this to a shortcut (when I want to send a text message, I simply tap the joystick left). Another really nice touch is a ‘recently sent’ list; this pops up after you’ve composed the message and displays a list of the 10 people you’ve most recently sent an SMS to, while also offering the option to search your phonebook for a number. Overall, the messaging options and associated menus are done very well.

E-mail

Nothing too groundbreaking here except for the fact that you can now send attachments of any file type (even if not understood by the phone), which is a very neat feature.

Multimedia

The K700i comes with a lot of multimedia options, including the ability to listen to MP3s, an FM radio, and some “DJ” software that you can use to create music to be used for whatever (e.g., ringtones, etc).

Media Player

The “media player” can handle the following file types: MP3, AAC, WAV, AMR, MIDI, and MPEG-4 video. It can be put into the background so that you can do other things on the phone while using it.

While 41MB is a shit-ton of storage for a mobile phone, it obviously doesn’t go very far in the way of MP3s or other storage-intensive media (where are the half-terabyte phones?  :P), which is why the media player will rarely, if ever, be used by me, but I thought I would mention it. For the sake of this review I loaded up a few MP3 files to test it out. The sound out of the loudspeaker was excellent and there is an equalizer so that you can adjust the sound to your liking. You can also listen to the music through the supplied headphones.

FM Radio

This is an SE first. It’s been a while since I’ve had an FM radio in my phone (not since the Nokia 7210 and 7250), but I doubt I’ll use it any more now than I did then, though it will be good to listen to Stern in the morning again. Like the MP3 player, you can either play the sound through the headphones or the loudspeaker, with the only caveat being that heaphones must be plugged in because the antenna is contained within the cord. You can save up to 20 presets by frequency number.

Ringtones

As is expected, ringtones can be either MIDI (40-chord polyphonic), MP3s (and other supported formats), or anything that you record. Unfortunately, your options aren’t so great when it comes to message alerts as you are limited to one of six pre-defined sounds.

Organizer

The functionality here is very similar to that of the T61x models. Included are a calendar (viewable by week or month), tasks, notes (all of which can sync with your computer), timer, stopwatch, calculator, and alarms (both single and recurrent).

One neat thing about the notes is that you can have one displayed on the main screen to remind you of something; it’s displayed on top of a transparent window, which looks really nice.

The calculator works the same as the one on the T61x, which is still the best I’ve seen on a non-’PDA’ mobile phone.

Internet

Instead of searching the net for Internet settings and putting them in manually, I used the Wap Set-Up found on the SE site. An SMS message is sent to the phone that automatically loads up the settings for my particular provider. I must admit that I’ve become quite fond of this after having used it on the past few phones that I’ve had.

The built-in WAP 2.0 browser (which is quite capable of displaying pages built with XHTML and CSS) is one of the best that I’ve seen — I can’t say that I’m blown away by anything, but I don’t have too much to complain about either.

I think this phone is the first SE device to support GPRS Class 10 speeds in addition to both CSD and GSM Data.

Speakerphone

Unlike the T68i or T61x, this model comes with a speakerphone. Both the loudness of the speaker and the sound quality from the microphone are excellent — friends can’t tell when I’m on speakerphone. The only complaint I have is that there is no easy way to turn on the speakerphone. You first have to be in a call and then you have to hit the joystick and scroll down to the option, which means that most of the time you will have to tell the person on the other end to hold on. I’d like to see a way to turn this on before making or receiving a call.

Battery Life

The biggest disappointment of this phone is the battery life. It doesn’t make sense that SE would use a battery that is smaller than the one found in the T61x (700 mAh as compared to 770 mAh), knowing full well that the more demanding screen, Bluetooth, loudspeaker, and camera would suck up power like crazy. I’m having to recharge the phone almost daily with regular use, even though I have the screen set to turn completely off when I’m not using it. The specifications claim a talk time of 7 hours and a standby time of 300 hours — not even close.

Miscellaneous

Remote Screen and Remote Display

The “remote screen” option allows you to shoot media over to a Bluetooth Media Viewer (MMV-100) device such as a TV, which means that you can view images or sounds from the phone through the TV.

The “remote display” program lets you use the phone as a remote control for your PC (much like the the third-party Salling Clicker has allowed Mac users to do for a while now).

Has it really been five years?

I got an e-mail from a friend this morning congratulating me on the 5th-year anniversary of this site (how I didn’t notice this is beyond me). It was five years ago to the day that I registered this domain. Damn. This was the last in a long line of domains that I purchased and was initially going to be used only for e-mail — I wanted an address-for-life. It has since become much more than that and now somewhat serves as a repository for my life (well, the geekier side of my life anyways).

For years I was really reluctant to put any content on the site (I didn’t start writing here until 2002) because I was scared that I would become obsessive with it — good thing that hasn’t happened *cough*. It’s turned into a labor of love, and while it does eat up a lot of my time (more than I’ll ever admit), I’ve never regretted working on it.

As long as I continue to receive positive feedback from random strangers and real-life friends about what I’m writing/doing here, I’ll continue to produce.

Here’s to another five years.

A Short History of Nearly Everything

I put Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything on my Amazon wish list nearly a year ago, but never got a copy of it. A few weeks back I came across the audiobook version and can’t stop listening to it (despite the annoying accent of the reader).

This is a great book for those who simply love to learn. While “nearly everything” might be a little too ambitious a title for a book that doesn’t reach too far beyond the natural sciences, I still think it’s fitting. From the Big-Bang to the present, he looks at how our universe and planet evolved (and are still evolving) and how we came to know and understand our world (or not).

…how we went from there being nothing at all to there being something, and then how a little of that something turned into us, and also what happened in between and since.

The book is incredibly engaging and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Getting more out of Gmail

UPDATE: Also see Google Hacks (Second Edition) and Hacking Gmail — I was the technical editor on both books.

The large number of Gmail invites that I’ve given out in the last few days has spawned a lot of dialogue between friends and I on how to do certain things with the service. There are all kinds of neat things popping up for Gmail. Given that I don’t use Gmail for anything more than sending invites, my experience and knowledge with these things is somewhat limited, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have to answer my friends’ (and strangers’) questions, right? I had half a mind to send all inquiries to Fucking Google It, but I digress.  :)

That said, the following is a collection of programs, sites, and information that will allow you to get more out of Gmail.

Easily Move All of Your Contacts to Gmail

I received quite a few questions from friends wondering if they could import their contacts into Gmail. Unfortunately Gmail doesn’t yet offer the option to do this (they will in the future) unless you’re running Mac OS X or *nix (see next section), but I’ve come up with a very simple solution that you can use in the interim.

1. Send out a single e-mail (preferably one that announces your intention) to all of your contacts from whatever program/site you used before Gmail and make sure you also send it to your Gmail account (or to an account that you forward to Gmail).
2. After you receive the e-mail through Gmail, open it and choose “Reply to all.”
3. Write something in the e-mail explaining its purpose and send it off.

Gmail automatically adds to your contact list the names and e-mail addresses of the people you e-mail from Gmail, therefore the e-mail you sent in Step 3 should add all of those people to your contact list.

Import Contacts Directly With Mac OS X (and *nix)

Apparently Gmail already offers the option to import contacts directly, but it seems that this is hidden to all browsers except Camino (v0.7 only) on Mac OS X.

Instructions for how to do this on Mac OS X.

I’ve heard that this method also works for Gecko-based browsers running on *nix (though I’m not sure which versions of which browsers can see the import option).

Helpful/Interesting Sites

• Gmail Gems — a weblog devoted to Gmail tips and tricks.
• Gmail for the Troops — a site that looks to give Gmail invites to the troops in Iraq.
• Gmail 4 Troops - same as above.
• Gmail Swap — a site where you can trade your invites for almost anything. It should be noted that in the last couple of weeks Google has been tossing out invites left and right and subsequently the ‘value’ of the invites has effectively been reduced to zero (this goes for selling them on eBay as well). After all, it is (or rather will be) a free service.
• Gmail Machine — a site that gives away Gmail invites (you have to keep refreshing the page and hope that the “magic” number pops up).
• GmailForums - as the name implies, a forum to discuss all things Gmail.
• Most Wanted Gmail Features - a site that allows you to vote on which features you’d most like to see in Gmail (including those that we know Google is already working on but hasn’t yet released). If there is a feature you’d like to see that isn’t already on the list of things you can vote for, let him know.

Helpful Programs

• Gmail API - There are two distinct components here: an open source Gmail API written for the .NET framework, and a proof of concept Windows application built on top of that API that provides basic remote Gmail functions.
• Mbox & Maildir to Gmail Loader (GML) — allows you to import your mbox or Maildir files into Gmail. The only problem I see with this is that it doesn’t get the timestamp right — messages will be timestamped with the time that they are received by Gmail (there is presently no way around this). If you’re thinking about using this program I would suggest waiting for Google to add this functionality (and it will) so that the timestamps are correct. I don’t plan on making this move any time soon, but if I were, I would definitely wait for Google to offer a solution — the idea of e-mailing 13,000+ e-mails, one every two seconds, does not sound very appealing to me. While this program automates the entire process, the practicality of this method has to break down once you go beyond a certain mailbox size. Also, there is still no way to import your sent messages, which, at least for me, are often as important as those that I’ve received. You can now specify where you want your e-mails sent (i.e., “Inbox” or “Sent Mail”).
• gExodus - a graphical Gmail import utility written in Python.
• Import Mail from Mac OS X into Gmail — uses the source from the above program along with some AppleScript to allow you to migrate e-mail from your Mail.app mailboxes to Gmail.
• Export your Gmail inbox with Python — allows you to export e-mails from your Gmail inbox. Again, this is something that I’d wait for Google to do on their own, but by all accounts it works fine. Like the importers there is still no way to deal with your sent messages.
• gCount (Mac OS X) — displays the number of unread Gmail messages in the Mac OS X menubar.
• G-Mailto (Mac OS X) — allows you to associate mailto links with Gmail (instead of a local client).
• G-Mailto (Windows) — allows you to associate mailto links with Gmail (instead of a local client).
• Pop Goes the Gmail (Windows) — allows you to retrieve your Gmail e-mail through POP3 clients.
• GTray (Windows) — an icon in the systray shows the number of unread messages in your Gmail account.
• GetMail (Windows) — forward your Hotmail e-mail to any address.
• Transfer files to and from Gmail - a tiny PHP script that allows you to send files to and from Gmail accounts. Very very cool. This is actually something I’ve been talking about with some of my friends for a while now. It’s not going to take too long for more robust and powerful scripts to surface. When Gmail is made available to the public I don’t see why one couldn’t sign up for an unlimited number of accounts; the accounts could be entered into a script similar to this one, and provide, theoretically, unlimited storage.
• GmailCompose (Firefox/Mozilla) - browser extension that adds a context-menu link for opening a GMail compose window when clicking on mailto links or when selecting a text e-mail address.
• Gmail Bookmarklets - all of these are for composing messages in Gmail. Some claim that they are browser-specific, but these usually work across the board.
  
  Bookmarklet One
  Bookmarklet Two
  Bookmarklet Three
  
• libgmail - pure Python binding to provide access to the Gmail service.

$3.2 billion

According to a recent NYT article, consumers spent $3.2 billion on custom ringtones in 2003. What the hell is wrong with people? I remember when predictions of this sort of thing started surfacing a few years ago; I just brushed them off as nonsense, but apparently I was wrong. I just don’t get it — who’s buying these things? First of all, ringtones should only be used when absolutely necessary. Second of all, if your phone is in your pocket (which I’m assuming it is 99% of the time), it should be on vibrate. Period. That way, you never disturb others with the ring and never have to worry about switching it to vibrate when required. For those who haven’t yet received the memo: no one needs to know that you’ve received a phone call except you.

Ring tone sales are expected to continue to expand as more sophisticated cellphones and advanced technologies become available, which will make the rings sound less like they are being played with one finger on a tiny calliope.

I hate to break it to those out there who think this cash cow is going to last, but this little bubble is going to burst as soon as the majority of mobile phones allow the user to use his own audio files for ringtones (i.e., an MP3 of their favorite song), which is not too far off (I’m referring to the average user’s mobile phone, not high-end models that have allowed this sort of functionalilty in one form or another for years). Even then, the argument for having it on vibrate still applies, perhaps more so given society’s affinity for bad music these days; the last thing I want to hear when Suzy gets a phone call is “My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.”  :)

Among Cingular’s newest offerings are name ringers that seemingly speak to the cellphone owner, as in “Mike. Mike. Answer the phone, Mike.”

Again, this is going to be moot when end-user phones support the ability to use personal files (i.e., you could create your own, “hey, dumbass, answer the phone… what? you can’t hear this because the phone is in your pocket and you should have it on vibrate?”). I could do this on my old P800 , but the point was lost on me.

At the end of the day, to each his own; if you want to pay for ringtones, so be it. I’ll never understand. $3,200,000,000 in one year!

And so it began

Sheets of empty canvas, untouched sheets of clay,
Were laid spread out before me as her body once did.
All five horizons revolved around her soul,
As the earth to the sun.
Now the air I tasted and breathed has taken a turn.
And all I taught her was everything…
I know she gave me all that she wore…

And now my bitter hands shake beneath the clouds,
Of what was everything.
All the pictures have all been washed in black…
…tattooed everything.

I take a walk outside,
I’m surrounded by some kids at play.
I can feel their laughter,
so why do I sear?
And twisted thoughts that spin around my head…
I’m spinnin’…I’m spinnin’…
How quick the sun can drop away.

And now my bitter hands cradle broken glass,
Of what was everything.
All the pictures have all been washed in black…
…tattooed everything.
All the love gone bad turned my world to black…
…tattooed all I see… all that I am… all I’ll be.

I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life,
I know you’ll be a star…
…in somebody else’s sky,
But why, why, why can’t it be, can’t it be mine?

From Pearl Jam’s Black

In 1993 I bought my very first album, Pearl Jam’s Ten. I was 13 years old. I tagged along with my father to a Peaches music store in Orlando where he let me get Ten and Nirvana’s In Utero. So began what can only be described as an obsession with all things music. How fitting that my first album ever remains one of the most powerful, potent, and personally relevant records in my entire 4000+ album collection. While every song on Ten is a classic, Black has always been my favorite.

Managing mobile phone purchases

To maintain my gadget problem I’ve had to come up with various ways of getting the “latest and greatest” without having to spend too much money. The first method that I mention below has worked well for the past few years, but there is another way (which dawned on me a few days ago), that, when the conditions are just right, can make even more economic sense.

The Old Way

I buy the newest/best thing available, keep it in mint condition (the product of my anal-retentiveness and the knowledge that I will be trying to sell it rather soon), buy the next best thing available, sell the previous gadget on eBay (though I now try Craigslist first), and then begin the process anew. Most of the time I don’t lose too much money, and sometimes I actually turn a profit, all while keeping up with the latest devices.

The New [better] Way

The newest way I’ve come up with for minimizing the cost that accompanies new gadgets is Amazon. You see, Amazon is giving away phones (with service plans). For example, my current phone (still one of the best phones available in the US, which I explain here) is available on Amazon for -$50 — they pay you $50 to take the phone if you sign up for a service plan with T-Mobile (some phones actually offer $100 back; this might be the route I take this time around given that all I want is a new/better plan — I can just swap the SIM card out of the new phone and put it into my current phone and then sell/trash the new phone). Now, I understand that all providers hit you with a heavy fee when you break the contract. Believe me. The thing is, you now have $50 (or $100) that you can put toward breaking the plan you had with your previous provider. There is a good chance that this amount will be less than $150 with the $50 (or more) payout. Couple that with the fact that you can now keep your number (instructions if getting phone through Amazon) when you move between carriers and you’ve got a fairly cheap way of getting new [smart]phones and/or service plans.

Possible Problems With The New Way

The biggest problem that you run into with this method is that you are limited not only by the providers that Amazon works with, but also by the phones that they are willing to submit to this program (read: discount). Cingular and Verizon do not participate at all (they’re the two biggest providers in the country), but more to the point, the providers that are involved do not give all of their phones over to the program, and let’s face it, a lot of times the providers themselves (I’m speaking directly to GSM providers here) don’t offer the best phones anyway and so you are left to order them from overseas or through eBay. So, your choices with this method are severely limited, but, if it does turn out that a phone you actually want is available, it offers a relatively cheap way get it.

Another possible problem is the fact that the phones will be locked and will carry the carrier’s logo. It’s been my experience that those looking for phones on eBay/Craigslist generally want them to be unlocked and free of any logo (for obvious reasons on both counts). I’m one of those people. So, you are limited on the other end when you try to sell this phone and must restrict yourself to only those people who want a particular phone from a particular provider, substantially narrowing your market. You could obviously have your phone unlocked and might even be able to get the logo removed, but both of those remedies require time and money, two things I’m trying to avoid. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending how you look at it, there is really only one way to get around this: the first method I outlined above. But then we’re right back to the money dilemma, because unlocked, logoless phones carry a hefty premium, especially when we are talking about the newest models which are garnering the most attention on eBay/Craigslist.

At any particular time, it all boils down to what’s available through Amazon, what you are trying to sell, and how much you are willing to spend to move up to the ‘next level.’ If all of these factors militate in your favor (as they currently do for me), you can probably walk away with a great deal.

It used to be the case that you could get out of service plans rather easily with enough huffing and puffing on the phone, but those days are pretty much gone. I know. I remember thinking how ridiculous service plans were when they first started surfacing. I think Sprint is the only provider left who actually let’s you pay month-to-month, though it’s an extra $10/month for the “privilege!” How great would it be if we could just hop around from network to network without contracts?

Linear news

Over the course of the past week I’ve been monitoring the number of headlines that come through my news aggregator each day, if only to satisfy my own curiosity. While I ‘felt’ (over time) the linear trend that you see below, I didn’t think that it would be so indubitable. It would obviously be much more accurate if I did this over the course of a month or year, but I really didn’t feel like monitoring it for that long. The results (* == 25 headlines):

Monday

747 headlines ******************************

Tuesday

598 headlines ************************

Wednesday

512 headlines ********************

Thursday

457 headlines ******************

Friday

369 headlines **************

Saturday

185 headlines *******

Sunday

135 headlines *****

WEEKLY TOTAL: 3003
AVERAGE: 429

Unsurprisingly, the biggest fluctuations appear near the weekends: Friday/Saturday (-184) and Sunday/Monday (+612). The weekends are generally fairly slow, especially for blogs.

It should be noted that I’m currently subscribed to 111 feeds (76 personal blogs and 35 news sources). I’m curious (scared) to find out what these numbers will look like 10 years down the road.

Required OS X programs

I’ve been asked by quite a few people for a roundup of the Mac OS X applications that I find essential. The following is a brief list of those programs:

OmniWeb 5 (beta)

Without a doubt, the best web browser I’ve ever used on any platform (and I’ve used pretty much every browser available since ~1993). Expect a full, exhaustive review when this gets out of beta.

QuickSilver

Though I’ve only been using this for about two weeks, I’d hate to be without it. If you prefer to use the mouse as little as possible (like myself), then Quicksilver will probably completely obviate your need for the dock. I haven’t yet taken that step, but I’m not ruling it out. For a more in-depth look at this excellent program, check out Todd Dominey’s write-up or Rui Carmo’s evaluation.

NetNewsWire

The is the news aggregator for OS X. This is actually the first program I installed when I moved to OS X.

MenuMeters

This is the best utility I’ve found for keeping track of system resources (processor utilization, memory/disk allocation, bandwidth monitoring, etc.). It has a small resource footprint, is very configurable, and all of the statistics sit unobtrusively in the menubar.

Mail.appetizer

A great plugin for Mail.app — I wrote about this a while ago.

iTerm

Let’s face it, if you came to OS X because of Unix like I did, it probably didn’t take you long to figure out that Terminal.app just wasn’t going to cut it.

RBrowserLite

This is a fairly decent FTP program. Like most GUI Mac applications, it likes to use multiple windows for things that can and should be contained in one. Notwithstanding this annoyance, it’s a solid program. My only real gripe is that it tends to eat up a lot of CPU when you do multiple transfers. Truth be told, I still use NcFTP (command-line FTP client) for most of my file transfer needs, but when I’m doing large batch jobs I turn to RBrowserLite.

Xinema

QuickTime will not allow you to full-screen a movie unless you buy the Pro version, which, and I think this goes without saying, is completely ridiculous. Xinema not only lets you full-screen, but also offers better playback control (fast-forward/rewind using the arrow keys, etc.).

BBEdit

Easily the most powerful text-editing/coding package available.

SubEthaEdit

I find myself using this text-editing application more and more. In fact, I’ve used it to type up all of my posts for the past couple of months. Its big claim to fame is the ability for multiple users to edit the same document in real-time, but I’ve found that it’s actually a really great editor besides.

SideTrack

SideTrack is a replacement driver for the trackpad (touchpad) found on Apple PowerBooks and iBooks. Among other things, it allows you to do vertical and horizontal scrolling with the trackpad.

TinkerTool

TinkerTool is an application that gives you access to additional preference settings Apple has built into Mac OS X. This allows you to activate hidden features in the operating system and in some of the applications delivered with the system.

Laughable

Anyone else see this recent MS Knowledge Base article? “Steps that you can take to help identify and to help protect yourself from deceptive (spoofed) Web sites and malicious hyperlinks.” What the hell is Microsoft thinking — they can’t fix the problem with their browser and so their advice is that you should manually enter URLs? An excerpt from the article:

The most effective step that you can take to help protect yourself from malicious hyperlinks is not to click them. Rather, type the URL of your intended destination in the address bar yourself.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense; we’ve always known that those damn hyperlinks were a gaping security hole. Who in their right mind is going to look at a URL and say, “Man, that looks malicious, I better type it in manually.” Oh, it gets better. They go on to say that you can also copy/paste some JScript code into the toolbar to “identify the actual URL of the current web site.” The instructions say:

Use a JScript command in Internet Explorer. In the Address bar, type the following command, and then press ENTER…

…Compare the actual URL with the URL in the Address bar. If they do not match, the Web site is likely misrepresenting itself. In this case, you may want to close Internet Explorer.

The article goes on and on explaining different ways to determine whether the current URL is “malicious,” none of which is going to help the average Internet user, because 1.) they just don’t care and 2.) it’s too much work. Why would Joe Internet jump through such absurd hoops? The quick answer is that he won’t. I cannot imagine trying to walk my grandma through those steps, much less see her doing it of her own volition. How could I even explain to her the reasoning behind it? “Well grandma, you see, Microsoft worked long and hard trying to solve this problem with spoofed links, and because they couldn’t come up with an answer, they provide you with simple steps to help you use the Internet improperly.” I’ll never understand why people won’t stop using Internet Explorer, especially given the great alternatives available and the fact that a new exploit is reported almost daily.

Apple referral program

Apple should offer some sort of reward to those who convince others to “switch.” In the past two weeks alone, four people whom I have a close relationship with have either purchased a Mac or made it known that they plan to in the very near future. I propose that Apple give the ‘referrer,’ or ‘persuader’ as it were, some sort of monetary kickback, even if it can only be used toward Apple products. After all, they offer a referral program for .Mac, so why not extend that to notebooks and desktops as well? Of course, even if this idea never comes to fruition (which it won’t), I will continue to laud the greatness of Mac OS X (I can’t help but to talk about it — I think my friends buy Apples just to shut me up  :P), but it would be nice to get something in return. All it would take is a simple question to be answered when one registers their product: “Did any particular person influence your decision to purchase this product?” Granted, there is no real incentive for Apple to offer this type of program because those who do ‘advertise’ their products aren’t going to stop simply because they aren’t ‘rewarded.’ But then again, people would certainly try harder to ’sell’ Apple’s products if they got something above and beyond the “I told you so” line in return, which, quite frankly, is usually enough for me.  :P

Hell, this idea should be extended across all product lines (mobile phone carriers/manufacturers, PDAs, headphones, music, etc.) — I’d be fucking rich.

Rolling Stone for life

In what I hope will become the trend throughout the magazine industry, Rolling Stone is offering a lifetime subscription for $99! I’m assuming that this also includes a lifetime membership to their online site, though this isn’t discussed anywhere on the sign-up sheet. Either way, it’s an absolute steal — a one-year subscription alone is over $100. Given my affinity for all things music, Rolling Stone is one of my favorite magazines and one that I have been reading for as long as I can remember. If you are considering taking them up on this offer, you might be interested to know that the magazine is published every two weeks, not once a month.

Future-proof your URIs

I’ve taken some steps to future-proof the archives of this site. The idea is that even as the underlying technology changes, the URI of the entries should not — links should work indefinitely. Out of the box, Movable Type does a bad job of future-proofing your archives as it simply puts the entry in a file (you give it the extension) named by the internal ID that MT uses (e.g., 000164.php). The problem with this is that it will break to all hell if and when you export/import your entries to a new MT setup on a different server — none of the links will point to the correct file as the internal ID of the file will have changed.

I wanted to setup a hierarchical structure for the archives that would include the title of the post and keep the filename out of the link. Now, instead of “/archives/000200.php” for this entry, I have “/archives/2003/09/15/futureproof_your_uris/.” You’ll notice that the filename has been removed and the URI now points to a directory. Under this directory resides an index.php file for that entry. In the future, if the technology changes (say I start using .xml instead of .php), I can make the needed modifications without breaking the link. If this interests you at all (it should!) and