brett's logjam

Thunderclouds tower in the last light of the sun.

Charlotte is a nice airport, but I’m ready to go home.

I ended up watching a lot of movies on my iPhone on my recent trip out to California. Holding it gets pretty old, though, especially when you’re getting ready to sleep.

The solution is pretty obvious when you have all those nice, heavy pieces of cardstock lying about.

Holy moly, is it hot. This is actually worse than Houston.

I never thought I’d say those words.

Ugh. It got hotter. Heat index of 120?

I give up.

• N.E.R.D.: How to turn Spotlight OFF (and ON Again).…
  Change /etc/hostconfig SPOTLIGHT value from ON… to OFF. Easy peasy.
  (tags: Mac spotlight)
• Subtraction: An Important Message for .Mac Customers
  Comments section contains some good ideas for what .Mac should be. I’m waffling… will have to see how iLife ‘08 is when it arrives.
  (tags: .Mac apple web hosting iLife)
• iMovie ‘08 trepidations
  iMovie ‘08 will not run on my G4 Powerbook, so I will continue to use ‘05 instead. Of course, I don’t actually use iMovie ‘05 right now…
  (tags: iMovie iLife Mac Apple)

Holy crap, they’re even scarier up close.

Unfortunately, the eggs that are on the caterpillar are wasps who will hatch and kill it.

Nature sure can be gross.

• Ninjawords - a really fast dictionary
  It’s really fast… like a ninja.
  (tags: ninja dictionary)

My struggles with photo galleries are well documented on this site. I’d settled on Flickr, despite some reservations, and there are some things that Flickr does really well.

• Being able to post iPhone pictures to this site while flying across the country, or to Trip’s website on a daily basis, admittedly rocks.

• Some photos that get posted here deserve comments, but you know my position on comments on this blog.

• The hundreds of pictures I post don’t count towards my somewhat limited space on my webhost.

Unfortunately, and I can say this because I know nearly all the readers of this blog, Flickr is not well-liked among my friends and family. And I can see why:

• It has a confusing interface for browsing many pictures.

• Multiple people had login problems.

• Organization is a) confusing to a casual browser and b) requires another step in organizing photos. (Sorry, but tagging doesn’t immediately make sense to a lot of people.)

I do most of my work in iPhoto; while I’d started bumping into the performance limits of iPhoto 5, I knew that I could always upgrade to iPhoto 6 to fix that problem, but I also knew that a new version was coming any day now. So that wasn’t a huge issue (but it was certainly making me grumpy.)

More importantly, there was no way to eliminate that second step of having to organize photos on the website as well as within iPhoto. There are good export plugins to Flickr, but that’s all they are — exporters. Once the photo is up, there’s no way to sync information.

Eventually, and you can probably go back in my photostream to find the exact date, I just gave up on organizing my photos on Flickr. Too much time was spent tagging, writing captions, assigning to sets. It was a step that I didn’t need, and no one commented on it when it went away, and it didn’t have any impact on my negligible social presence in Flickr… so it was gone.

Earlier this week Apple released their .Mac Web Gallery, which is seriously all kinds of awesome if you already use iPhoto and .Mac. Even if you don’t, it’s still all kinds of awesome as a photo gallery. Slick? Yes. But its also easy to use, with download and upload tools that make sense. Its interface is easy for visitors to change.

Or, at least, that’s my impression of it.

I was giddy when I saw how it integrated with iPhoto in the demos. (I was also giddy at how it integrated with the iPhone, but that’s another story.) You make a change in iPhoto and it appears on the web. If a visitor uploads a photo to the gallery, it goes back down to iPhoto. Hooray!

It’s shiny, it’s glossy, and it certainly holds a lot of promise for making my life easier. It doesn’t do some of the things Flickr does well, like generic camera phone uploading, posting to blogs, and holding large-resolution versions at the ready. I can see both as tools that work, and that this isn’t an either/or proposition.

But some feedback to Flickr was so negative when I switched last time, I’d be a fool to not ask you what you think.

So: here’s my gallery. Please let me know what you think of it.

This was the site of several rousing games of poohsticks today.

Eight hours wasted on this?

• Stuff
  “I have too much stuff. Most people in America do. In fact, the poorer people are, the more stuff they seem to have. Hardly anyone is so poor that they can’t afford a front yard full of old cars. It wasn’t always this way.”
  (tags: essays stuff)
• Language Log: Baby videos and Google News comments
  Analysis of the news coverage re: the recent baby video/dvd study.
  (tags: psychology science teaching language)
• mandolux«
  Destop wallpaper goodness.
  (tags: desktop wallpaper photos)
• Lawnbott Evolution Review: The Most Sophisticated Robotic Lawn Mower Available
  After losing 7 hours to my lawn this weekend, yeah, I’m considering a robot.
  (tags: lawn care automation robot skynet)
• Completely disable Spotlight in OSX
  In /etc/hostconfig: SPOTLIGHT=-NO-, then mdutil -i off / ; mdutil -E /.
  (tags: apple computer hack macosx osx spotlight)

I hadn’t realized it, but comparing this —

to this —

Shows what part of my problem with my backyard is: it’s featureless. Just a big plain of plants to be maintained at a 2-3 inch cut, with 35 feet of conservation area in the back. There’s nothing to focus on, nothing of interest. Just… green. Lots of green.

This would be desirable if I were playing football on a regular basis back there… but I’m not. (Even then, then I’d have to exterminate all the voles and regrade the soil. They’ve made it bumpy back there.)

Paths, and gardens, and slopes, and benches, would go a long way. We’ve already planted trees. More will follow. But maybe the problem isn’t just that I need a robot to do my lawn mowing; perhaps the backyard just needs to be more interesting.

‘Simple’ should never equal ‘boring.’

• Leopard Dock Redesign
  Nice. Prefer it over the new, Human-Interface-Guidelines-noncompliant official one.
  (tags: apple dock macosx HIG)
• xkcd » Blog Archive » Mirrorboard: A one-handed keyboard layout for the lazy
  Because typing like a mad scientist in front of your huge displays is much cooler if you do it with only one hand.
  (tags: keyboard layouts)
• Chris Glass: iPhone Wallpapers
  Some really nice ones in here.
  (tags: iPhone wallpaper)

I haven’t written about Mozilla or Firefox in some time, and I’m okay with that. Ultimately, I don’t find writing about browsers satisfying anymore, and ones that I don’t use even less so. (If you haven’t been keeping track, I use Apple’s Safari now for personal use, and IE on my work computer. I even ditched Camino a while ago.)

But I’ll make an exception for Why Firefox is Blocked, a site that’s making the rounds that some people love. And I can’t figure it out. Total Whisky Tango Foxtrot over here.

See, the Mozilla Foundation supports ad-blocking plugins that let you filter out web advertisements. Why Firefox is Blocked picks specifically on Ad Block Plus, but there have been at least a half dozen of those in the last few years. Some block only Flash ads, some images of a certain size… but they all block ads.

Generally speaking, the web is a nicer place to browse without them — just like the real world. (No, really — take a look at what the world looks like without advertising. This isn’t a theoretical concept, but it’s a difficult one to get your head around when you’re used to a certain level of omni-present advertising.)

The idea behind Why Firefox is Blocked is that some web sites — and let’s be honest, they’re web businesses — support themselves solely on advertising revenue. Ad-blocking for them equals lost revenue, so since there is no way to stop Firefox users from blocking ads, they’ll block all Firefox users from visiting their sites.

Not only that, they’ll redirect them to a snarky website that treats incoming readers — potential customers, in this model — as criminals. By using a browser that supports ad-blocking, they’re 1) thieves, 2) aiding and abetting theft, and 3) really cheap.

No, really. Read the site. If you use Firefox, you’re a really cheap thief.

All of this wrapped in the smarmy language of, “it’s our content, if we say you must see the ads, you must see the ads, because that is our right.” It’s actually really offensive from a business standpoint; why would you say this to a potential customer?

Oh, that’s right, because the TV and movie industries have already said this to them, so it must be okay.

(But if you have to block ad-blockers, you’re no different than the TV stations fighting Tivo… and look how that’s turned out.)

If we were to accept these arguments, shouldn’t we:

• Block any browser capable of blocking ads, like Safari, Internet Explorer, and Opera?
• Block any browser capable of not displaying images from the non-originating site, like Mozilla or Netscape?
• Block any browser not capable of displaying images at all, like Lynx?
• Refuse to publish any RSS feed?
• Block any RSS reader who doesn’t display your ads?

Where will it stop? Where do you draw the line with this reasoning?

Furthermore, why pick on Firefox and not other browsers? Is it because it’s open source? Is it because it’s popular? I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’ve been hounded by enough Firefox zealots to turn me away from the browser entirely. (Where were you damn kids when it was Mozilla 0.6 and barely compiled, let alone worked? Posers. Get off my lawn.) The latest iterations are slower, less elegant the the first versions. And the 1.5 to 2.0 upgrade was rocky for many of my machines.

But something smells fishy here. This site has a grudge against Firefox personally, but doesn’t explain why. Firefox is a cult, a religion, and therefore bad. There’s not much to say to that, since it’s not a real argument.

So, if you’re considering deploying this on your ad-supported web business, let me offer two suggestions.

1. Don’t forget that your visitors are potential customers for your advertisers, so consider their experience.
2. Consider alternate business models. Ads plastered on your pages aren’t the only way to pay the bills.

They may not be your customers, but they’re someone’s else’s customers — and that business pays your salary.

Treat their customers the way you’d want to be treated.

"There are no items to show in this view."

Sweeeeeet. It’s quittin’ time.

Trip was in his playroom today when suddenly he got up and walked out.

“Trip, where are you going?” his mother asked.

“To get dada’s phone,” came the answer from our bedroom. A few moments later, he returned with my phone in hand.

“Who are you going to call?” I asked. (Keep in mind that he called Manila before his first birthday.)

“TT taking pictures,” he said, swiping at the phone to unlock it.

He had some problems aiming it, and ended up taking a lot of pictures of his feet, but he knew what he was doing with it.

I remain constantly amazed by this little person in our midst.

• What’s blooming in Colonial Williamsburg gardens
  August edition of the gardening newsletter.
  (tags: Colonial Williamsburg gardens)

• MoodSwing — Circle Six Blog
  Quicksilver script that updates about everything. Neat.
  (tags: quicksilver OSX twitter adium)
• 5-step process for putting third-party applications on your iPhone (from a Mac) – iPhone Atlas
  Dear lord. Am I really considering this? I really am. Please, lord, guide me out of this wilderness.
  (tags: iPhone ssh hacking applications)

Holy crap, that’s a big storm on the way. Dispatching Merrystar on rescue pickup of the inlaws.

This practically cries out for a caption contest.

I did it. I succumbed to the dark side.

It’s called “jailbreaking,” and it’s the process by which you can add third-party applications to your iPhone.

I feel dirty, but I’ll get over it.

• Install third-party iPhone applications — directly from your iPhone — iPhone Atlas
  New installer.app automates the process of putting third-party apps on the iPhone.
  (tags: iphone Applications)

• MILK DESK
  Oh my. This is how to build a desk.
  (tags: workspaces desks)

• AT&T drops “Fewest Dropped Calls” slogan
  Apparently, it was not true. I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you.
  (tags: Wireless service)

• World’s Largest Theater Chain Pressured Prosecutor to Charge Teen for Filming 20 Seconds of Transformers --UPDATE
  Add it to the (increasingly long) list of reasons I don’t watch movies in the theater.
  (tags: movie legal rent seekers)
• Old Williamsburg Hospital to be Demolished
  September 4th. You better believe Trip will be there.
  (tags: construction williamsburg jamescitycounty)

This Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) butterfly alit for a moment on the ground before taking off in a frenetic flight around me. He was terribly difficult to shoot, even in rapid-fire mode.

The Tiger Swallowtail is the state insect of Virginia.

• When is Manual Focus Better than Auto Focus?
  Now if I could just focus quicker in Manual mode…
  (tags: digital photography)
• “Perfect” iTunes equalizer setting | 43 Folders
  Pretty darn good, too.
  (tags: iTunes equalizer)
• jwz - paper spam
  How to eliminate it.
  (tags: paper spam)
• Speed Freaks: The 10 Fastest Green Cars on the Planet
  (tags: efficient speed racers)
• Apple Kilt on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
  Black, with logo. iKilt?
  (tags: iKilt)
• patient design – smackfoo.com
  “If you start with nothing, you’re forced to think about everything.”
  (tags: web design tabula rasa)
• Army JAG issues Operational Law Handbook
  The Handbook, intended for the use of judge advocates, describes tactics and techniques for the practice of operational law. Along the way, it provides a useful survey of the laws of war, human rights law, prisoner detainment policy, the use of contracto
  (tags: law)
• TinkerTool
  Changes hidden preferences on the Mac. (Many of these I’ve already changed via Terminal commands.)
  (tags: Macintosh tweaks preferences)

• A List Apart: Articles: Put Your Content in My Pocket
  Dirty title, good article.
  (tags: iPhone web development)

Over the past five years I have grown to grudgingly respect Outlook as a mail client. The way that it integrates schedules, tasks, and email together is really well done, when done properly.

(In particular, Ctrl-Shift-V is totally slick for clearing one’s inbox.)

And while I have a long list of gripes (contact and email searching are laughable, .pst archive size limits are a total hassle, and why must you hog all my bandwidth for mail?) I’ve never really thought that the flaws were malicious. Quirky, reflective of a bias towards all-things-Exchange, but never downright mean.

That is, until I tried to set my father up with an IMAP mail account today. Outlook’s support for IMAP is worse than you’ve heard. And you’ve probably heard how bad it is.

My father had set up his personal email account on his iPhone without a problem. I’m not a huge fan of IMAP, but the iPhone got me to switch from POP3 because that’s what the iPhone does. It does IMAP mail really well.

But after setting Dad’s Outlook up to use IMAP in addition to his Exchange account, any goodwill I felt towards Outlook is gone.

• Want to connect to the server? Restart your client.
• Want to store Sent mail on the server, and not locally? Create a custom rule. (You want a simple preference to do that? Dream on.)
• Want to delete your messages? Better expose a control buried several layers deep. (Instead of moving deleted messages to a separate folder and hiding messages marked for deletion, Outlook helpfully crosses them out… and leaves them there. This is actually representative of the actual server behavior, but not terribly useful.)
• Want to use SSL on your SMTP connection? Hope you remember that it’s port 465, because the port won’t change.
• Want to stay connected? Hope you like the IMAP timeout dialog popping up every few minutes, because it’s better to notify the user than it would be to simply reconnect when they need to use it again. Obviously.

Listen. I know that Outlook/Exchange helped Microsoft get where it is, and totally killed Lotus Notes. I don’t fault companies for making their products work really well together. Outlook is a good mail client, especially with Exchange.

But it sure looks like Microsoft went out of their way to make a really good mail client work really poorly with an open, competing mail standard, at the expense of their users.

And that turns what could have been a great thing into something really sad.

By the way, iPhoto 7 was totally worth the wait.

• Language Log: Syntax under pressure
  On talking under the lights.
  (tags: language maps take it easy, people.)
• blog.pmarca.com: The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 8: Hiring, managing, promoting, and firing executives
  Another excellent one from Marc.
  (tags: startups hiring)
• Owl Project | MIT Media Lab
  Owls like talking on cell phones. Who knew?
  (tags: owls wireless tracking)
• Macenstein Review: Speck’s Holster-Pro for iPhone
  Nicely done.
  (tags: iphone holsters)
• Going inbox-zero on your paper mail - (37signals)
  A fast scanner, a fast shredder, and an email account to bind them.
  (tags: paper spam)
• Alpine Information Center
  Glad to see that while PINE has stopped, it lives on as Alpine. Watch this page for new releases.
  (tags: PINE mail clients)
• MarsEdit - Powerful Blog Authoring Made Simple
  Okay, I finally get it. This is some good software here.
  (tags: mac software)
• Operation Eden: Two Years On And Counting
  Reflecting on the photography from Hurricane Katrina.
  (tags: photography katrina gulf)
• The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: A stunning post from a Microsoftie
  Following up on my own rant…
  (tags: FSJ Microsoft)
• Rory - Neopoleon : Apple - MacBook Pro - Windows - Nerdly Issues
  OUTER. SPACE. NEAT.
  (tags: Windows OSX)
• Nokia’s iPhone — no, seriously - Engadget
  Oh, come on.
  (tags: iPhone KNOCKOFFS)
• CRS on “The Protect America Act”
  Report from the congressional research service.
  (tags: CRS)
• Art of Office
  For the Mac Office suite.
  (tags: macbu Office)
• stevenf.com: Social Networking License Agreement
  Ooo. This is really good.
  (tags: social networking TNSTAAFL)
• Playing with the iPhone’s accelerometer - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
  Nifty. Goes beyond recognizing when the iPhone recognizes a flip, and gets right to the raw numbers.
  (tags: accelerometer iphone)
• Army of Dude: Dude!
  “Do not wage war unless it is absolutely, positively the last ditch effort for survival.”
  (tags: Iraq)
• Slashdot | Ubuntu Hardy Heron Announced
  This is the next LTS release, but there will probably need to be one or two more before Tsiolkovsky gets upgraded…
  (tags: tsiolkovsky linux Ubuntu toughbook)

• Tutter - Muppet Wiki
  When Tutter is annoyed or upset about something, he will sometimes start shouting names of cheeses as if they were epithets. Another favorite saying of Tutter’s is “Oh, hickory dickory!”
  (tags: muppets blue bear)
• jwz - The Uninvited Fuzzball
  Edward Gorey does Star Trek.
  (tags: Star Trek Gorey)
• Textures
  Zoom in, and in, and in, and in..
  (tags: photography textures)