computer log.

I’ve been a big fan of Dan Pollock’s replacement /etc/hosts file for blocking bad things on the internet, but for one reason or another never got around to automating the update process.

I don’t know why, it’s pretty straightforward to pull together a shell script:


#! /bin/sh
tdy=`date +%Y%m%d%H%M`

sudo curl http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts -o /etc/hosts.$tdy.tmp
sudo cp /etc/hosts /etc/hosts.$tdy
sudo mv /etc/hosts.$tdy.tmp /etc/hosts


… and then add it to crontab to run every few days. This will create a backup of the previous /etc/hosts file in case anything goes wrong.

You can also switch ads back on by keeping your original /etc/hosts file around with:


#! /bin/sh
sudo cp /etc/hosts /etc/hosts.tmp
sudo cp /etc/hosts.original /etc/hosts


I keep these in ~/bin/hosts, because I’m like that.

(Some days, UNIX actually works for me. Hallelujah!)

This is a somewhat obscure technical problem, but several ISPs have recently begun hijacking mistyped domains and directing them to ads.

This is bad on several levels. Wired has a story about how it’s even worse than you thought: it lets hackers (the bad kind) hijack any site on the web.

The hole was made possible by ISPs subverting the Domain Name System or DNS, which translates website names into numeric addresses. Instead of simply returning an error message to a user’s browser when a user typed the name of a website that doesn’t exist, Earthlink and others instead substitute a page of Yahoo ads and suggest alternate spellings for the non-existent site.

The ads are served up by a British company called Barefruit, which pretends to actually to be the non-existent domain when delivering the ads.

Due to unforeseen consequences and Barefruit’s failure to screen for rogue JavaScript code, that forgery allowed a hacker to create perfect fraud site imitating eBay that looked in the browser address bar to actually be legitimately hosted on ebay.com.

…

“The entire security of the internet is now dependent on some random ad server run by some British company,” Kaminsky said, adding that he’d talked this week to many internet companies who were pissed, though not at him.

“I can’t secure the web as long as ISPs are injecting other content into web pages.”

Known ISPs who are doing this: Earthlink, Comcast. Verisign did this a few years ago, but doesn’t anymore. (Instead they steal domains when you search for them, which is a different level of evil.)

The best solution is to not use affected DNS servers. If you are on Comcast or Earthlink, use OpenDNS instead. It’s reliable, very fast, and free.

Several folks contacted me this morning to let me know about more MacBook Air users who have discovered that underclocking their CPUs keeps the processors cool enough to avoid the core shutdown.

The author suggests an application called ‘Coolbook’ which purports to underclock the laptops CPU by lowering the voltage supplied to the processor and by more agressively throttling the speed of the CPU.

Knowing what the Santa Rosa platform is up to, this now makes a certain amount of sense: Rob underclockspowers the CPU by 20%, and further limits the CPU to 75% of max speed (1.2GHZ) while on battery, which in turn has a dramatic cooling effect while only minimally affecting performance. The cooler CPU avoids the shutdown threshold and therefore the UI is more stable.

It appears to be better to suffer 25% degradation all the time on battery, instead of 50% (or more) some of the time. The OS requires a certain minimum processing threshold, but it’s really the CPU threshold that’s of concern. Underclocking appears to keep the load and temperatures under that threshold.

At least one person who emailed me asked if I thought underclocking is a good idea. I honestly have no clue; I’d like to say no, always stick with the manufacturer’s specs. But in this case those specs suck, and if you can do something about it (and undo the underclocking if anything goes wrong), it may very well be worth it.

For more on the core shutdown issue, please see my MacBook Air Log. I’ll continue to post more information there as it comes in.

I’m tickled pink about all the visitors around this site. Thank you for coming! I’m really happy you’re here; please feel free to drop me a line or twitter me and let me know how it’s going.

I started writing about the computers under my care really for just one reason: so that I would have some record of what I’d done, so I could stop making the same mistakes over and over again.

I don’t know if I’ve accomplished that, exactly, but at least it’s been entertaining watching me try.

Since many of you are new around here, and this is an admittedly quirky personal site, let me point you towards some other computer logs that may interest you:

Commissioned

The following computers are currently in service.

• Eöl, my new Black MacBook running OS X 10.5.2 (Leopard).

  Eöl replaced Vinyamar.

• Tsiolkovsky, my wife’s Toughbook W2, continues to crunch numbers and hang in there, despite losing the “B” key to a toddler-related accident a few weeks ago. The lower left hand side keyboard is also starting to have some problems, but there are no new issues to report with Ubuntu Dapper Drake.

  Tsiolkovsky is slated for replacement in the next few weeks.

• Hithlum, my 17” PowerBook G4, is as lovely and elegant as ever, even if her PPC chip is getting a little long in the tooth. She still does great work, however, and is running Mac OS X 10.4.11 (Tiger).
• An unnamed Thinkpad T43, my work computer, runs Windows XP and is completely uninteresting to me as a computer. My company gave it to me to work with, I work with it. End of story.
• Tigana, a Sony Vaio 505-TR running Red Hat 7.2, has a busted power supply and no battery power. I will need to wipe the hard drive before I can consider her decommissioned.

Speaking of which…

Decommissioned

These computers have left the building:

• Vinyamar, my Macbook Air, went through two revisions before being sent back to Apple.
• Al-Rassan / Ithilien, a Thinkpad 1400 running SuSE 9.x.
• Arbonne (I) / Sarantium / Atlantis / Lórien, a beige 750MHz Pentium III tower I picked up from CompUSA which ran Windows 98, Windows 2000, and more Linux distributions than I really care to remember.
• Arbonne (II) and Gorhaut, two identical Linux towers who ran Red Hat 9.

You will no doubt notice certain themes in the names.

Each computer has its own category, some with more information than others. Hopefully you’ll find something you like.

Thanks again for visiting!

Cheers,
Brett

A month ago, I made a fateful early-morning decision to forego the MacBook Pro and get the MacBook Air.

This led to interesting times.

While waiting for the interesting times to end, I reconsidered my original decision and took a long look at the MacBook. I think it was a mistake to not seriously consider the MacBook before. After some consideration, I found it a good compromise between weight, size, performance, and value.

It is therefore a pleasant surprise to announce the arrival of my black MacBook named Eöl.

Eöl is named after the Dark Elf of Tolkien’s First Age, Thingol’s kinsman who traded the sanctuary of Doriath for the freedom of Nan Elmoth. Eöl had a rare friendship with the Dwarves of the Ered Luin, and his craft was well-respected.

Eöl (the computer, not the character):

• Entered service on April 4th, 2008.
• Has the 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo (Penryn) CPU, which totally screams.
• Is equipped with a 250 GB hard drive, which suddenly lets me put everything on one machine again.
• Has been upgraded to 4GB RAM, because I can.
• Is running Mac OS X 10.5.2 (Leopard).

I am suitably impressed by the speed and performance of the MacBook, especially compared to the Air. The dual core 2.4GHz CPU is like a Camaro … who ran over your neighbor.

Long-time readers will no doubt point out that Eöl, as a person’s name, falls outside my established nomenclature of using regions or cities. This is completely true.

My only response is that I was going to name it Khazad-dûm or Moria, but Merrystar said it was named Eöl.

I thought about it for a while, and decided that even with Eöl’s less than sunny story: yup, that sounds just about right.

(I’m supposed to be learning from my mistakes, after all. Not repeating them.)

The MacBook Air core shutdown issue is a result of the Intel Santa Rosa platform’s aggressive thermal throttling of the MacBook Air’s Merom chips:

The Santa Rosa platform comes with dynamic acceleration technology. It allows single threaded applications to execute faster. When a single threaded application is running the CPU can turn off one of the CPU cores and overclock the active core. In this way the CPU maintains the same Thermal Profile as it would when both cores are active.

So, by design, the Santa Rosa platform will throttle itself to keep the heat down.

I kicked myself for missing this while researching the problem. I should have looked at the CPU specs once I knew the core shutdown was responsible for the performance degradation, but I didn’t. Mea culpa. I was thinking as a consumer, not as an IT professional.

Please note: I do not think this excuses the problem. The UI freezes, stuttering, and slowdowns remain unacceptable. The CPU ruins the user experience, which is a bug. A feature that acts like a bug is a bug.

But it does explain it, and therefore allows us — consumers and Apple alike — to address it.

If the Santa Rosa platform is the problem, which I now believe it is, there are very few options available for MacBook Air owners. Either you live with the performance hits, and hope that it is fixed at a later date, or you don’t.

It boggles the mind when you consider the anecdotal return rate that units who don’t exhibit this problem may actually be defective! There are plenty of MBA users who are gambling that they’ll get one of those in the replacement cycle. But not me.

If anything, finding out that this problem is a design feature/flaw strengthened my decision to get off the Air platform (and increased my nostalgia for the PowerPC chipset, but that’s another story.) I am frustrated that it took so long to identify the root cause, but relieved to know that gambling on another unit isn’t worth it.

Since my case dragged on for several weeks at AppleCare, and therefore attracted a bit of attention from management, I used the opportunity to make a few suggestions to them.

1. Educate Support: Product specialists need to know about this behavior and be able to explain why it happens, and what benefits it brings (if any). First-tier troubleshooting should be revised to better diagnose real mobo problems.
2. Educate Consumers: Apple needs to address this issue publicly with a technote to stem the tide of replacements.
3. Fix it in the OS: You can’t change the chipset, but serious efforts can and should be made to reduce the effects of the core shutdown within the OS and better manage single core mode invocation.

The first two suggestions can reduce agent support costs and reverse logistics expenses, as well as improve customer loyalty. I’ve run customer service organizations before, and I know the band-aids you can apply to make support more effective.

The solution lies in #3, though: fix the damn problem.

Sadly, that’s beyond AppleCare’s ken.

Special thanks to Artifex and Mike Rose for publicizing this problem, Josh Kagan for his insight into the Santa Rosa platform, and everyone on Twitter who’s listened to me gripe about this for the past three weeks.

I spoke with AppleCare this evening to initiate the return of my MacBook Air Vinyamar. As a bonus I received the results of Apple Engineering’s analysis of my core shutdown crash data: the system is behaving as designed.

These past few weeks troubleshooting, reinstalling (twice, over Remote Disk, no less, which I can assure you is not speedy), waiting for replacements, talking with technical support — and dropping a core under load is expected system behavior.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Dropping a core under load is a feature, not a bug.

Therefore, since I’ve gotten so good at it, here’s my guide to shutting down one of your MacBook Air’s cores.

The Unfair Version

1. Begin with a clean, fresh MacBook Air.
2. Place it on your bed, a pillow, or lap.
3. Sign on to your network, and start downloading a nice big movie file from your NAS.
4. Open Activity Monitor, and make sure the CPU monitor is visible.
5. Open Safari. Watch a movie trailer or two, and then browse YouTube while waiting for the movie to download.
6. Play the movie with Quicktime or iTunes. Keep opening tabs in Safari. You won’t need more than 10, especially if they’re AJAX-heavy sites.
7. Turn on Time Machine and start a backup.
8. When the video starts stuttering or your UI getting sluggish, check Activity Monitor.

Voila! One of your cores has dropped. You’ve halved your processing speed.

Now, the activities described seem harsh, but they’re really relatively normal for someone futzing about on the internet. File transfers in addition to video seem to speed up a core drop, which presents a problem for anyone using Time Machine.

But there are those who will cry foul entirely because of #2. The Air requires some ventilation, and if you place it on a soft surface (even with the vents unblocked) the computer will heat up quickly.

Okay, fair. Try this one on, then:

The Fair Version

1. Begin with a clean, fresh MacBook Air.
2. Place it on a flat desk or marble floor.
3. Sign on to your network and open Activity Monitor.
4. Fire up a feature-length movie or two, either over the net or from the local disk.
5. If you’re feeling adventurous, open XCode and do a little hacking.
6. Read some documentation on Safari or Preview.
7. Work for about an hour or so.
8. Wait for the stuttering video and UI lockups. They’ll come.

Heat speeds up the process, but if you keep the CPU under a certain amount of load (doesn’t need to be pegged) it will eventually shut down one of the cores. After an hour or two of a big H.264 file playing in Quicktime, I could get the Air to drop its core under theoretically ideal conditions — on the marble floor of a cool bathroom.

Now, there are users on the Apple support forums who never experience the core dropping. I’m really happy that they don’t. I don’t know what to say to them, other than that whatever their MacBook Airs have, I wish mine would have caught it.

For me, this just hasn’t been worth it. It doesn’t matter how nice the Air is.

This will likely be the last post in my MacBook Air Log. I will ship the computer back to Apple tomorrow to return it classified not as a defective unit, but instead as buyer’s remorse. So shipping’s on my dime, naturally.

My only remorse is that I wasted so much time with it, wanting it to work one way, with those fancy dual cores, when all the while?

Behaving as designed.

Moving on now.

Immediately after posting yesterday’s decision to abandon the MacBook Air, I let the good folks on Twitter know about it. And, no more than a minute after tweeting, AppleCare called to talk. At 8:30 PM on a Sunday!

What the?

I must ascribe this to awesome coincidence, as at no time did either of us mention Twitter on the call. I’m not as fortunate as Michael Arrington to have attracted the attention of a Comcast VP in Philadelphia from his twittering in San Francisco.

Yet, the response was immediate, and at an awfully odd time. Wouldn’t it be great if companies monitored twitter like they do blogs, and resolve customer problems before they spiral out of control? It’s a nice thought.

But I have no proof, so I must assume coincidence.

Anyway, I had written an email on Friday that was the stated reason for the call, and I talked to the rep briefly about returning the Air, which required another call on Monday to coordinate with the Sales team. I set up a time and went back to my computer.

Where, in turn, I received an invitation to join the TUAW Sunday Night Talkcast to talk about my MacBook Air issues.

Wow, The Twitter is really something!

I accepted, and had an engaging time with the TUAW panel. You can hear the results on TUAW or in iTunes, whenever episode #37 comes out. I’ll be in at about the 10 minute mark.

Hopefully, I don’t sound like too much of a dork. We’ll find out in a few days, I guess!

I wanted to make this point last night, and I’ll make it again here: this is not an issue with Apple’s customer service. Having experience managing customer service teams, I found little fault with the behavior of the AppleCare reps. Most of them strived for resolution on the first call, and were willing to work extremely hard to help me diagnose and resolve the problem. My suspicions that this is a problem beyond their ability to solve would sadly be borne out today, which I’ll describe in the next (and hopefully last) post on this matter.

The point of this post is that you never know what a new technology will bring. If you ask me why I use Twitter, it’s an easy response: so my (non-twittering) friends around the country can see what and how I’m doing.

But the side effects are pretty cool, too.

“Thus Turgon lived long in bliss; but Nevrast was desolate, and remained empty of living folk until the ruin of Beleriand.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

Like Turgon, my time with Vinyamar has come to an end.

Friday I received a replacement MacBook Air which suffered the same problem as the original. It’s now been nearly a month since I chose the Air to start developing applications again, and for all but a short period of time I’ve been frustrated by it. I want so very much to have repeated the delight of my experiences with my iPod, PowerBook, and iPhone.

But the MacBook Air has simply not lived up to that standard.

The physical machine is very nice. It is beautiful, compact, and a joy to handle. The failures of the internals should not be taken as a condemnation of the class design — far from it. The case is a tremendous success. The computer is a tremendous success.

If only the CPU could keep up with it.

I want, so very much, for the Air to be great. I want to enjoy using it. But I don’t. I work on it for a little while, do a few things with it, and then the machine locks up.

I am sure that future revisions will improve. By the time this machine hits its third generation, the core shutdown problem will be a distant memory. But the flaw in my Vinyamar is here, now, and I need a tool that works now. I can’t wait for them to fix it in six months.

So… I guess I’ll go get a MacBook or a MacBook Pro, instead.

Damnit. I so wanted this one to have a happy ending.

Vinyamar’s replacement arrived today. I unpacked it and didn’t even bother setting it up past logging into the wireless network and downloading a movie from the NAS. Five minutes later, I’d reproduced the core shutdown issue.

I updated the software, rebooted, and reproduced the issue again. It took a little longer under 10.5.2 than 10.5, but it still happened.

So now I really don’t know what to do.

I called AppleCare, and they had me capture data to send to the engineers. I should hear back early next week, but don’t know what they’re going to say that will actually resolve the issue.

I also spoke with one of the AppleCare managers who talked to me earlier, and he wanted to know what he could do to help. I felt bad, because I know that the key to getting good customer service is to know what you want, and ask for it. But aside from a Macbook Air that works right now, I don’t know what else I want that satisfies me. The MacBook is probably small enough, but lacks the three-finger scroll and incredible design of the Air. The MacBook Pro has the power, but with power comes size.

In my short time with the Air, I came to really like the way it was like a folio I could take with me and tuck into a chair next to me. I didn’t even get to travel with it, but I could see it becoming a constant companion. I would RDC into my windows laptop, and Share Screens with Hithlum, and still have two Spaces left over for working, without any problems.

Well, no problems except, of course, for the random freezes. Those admittedly sucked.

Part of me says: just accept it. It’s not that bad.

But the rest of me says: it is that bad, and don’t settle for something that doesn’t make you happy.

So I put Vinyamar II back into the box this afternoon, and left it alone. I don’t think I even renamed it from the default; it’s probably still “Brett Peters’s MacBook Air,” which always makes me wonder what the correct rule is for possessives for proper names ending in sibilants.

And so I wait. Maybe tomorrow will bring something new.

I packed up Vinyamar to send her on her long journey back home, in anticipation of the replacement Macbook Air arriving later this week. It’s with some relief that I returned to Hithlum.

I really should stop naming my computers. It makes me irrationally attached to what is essentially a highly advanced screwdriver.

Well, my plans for maintaining Vinyamar as a secondary machine lasted all of about an hour.

In my defense, I’m basically an idiot.

I’ve discovered the magic of Screen Sharing, which allows me to easily control Hithlum and manage all the music and movies stored over there. It’s really cool.

However, there are two flaws which I need to discuss with AppleCare tomorrow:

• Overheating: When the cores are under any sort of moderate load, one of them will eventually shut down. This appears to be a defect with the heat sink.

• N-Wireless: I got the Time Capsule set up today broadcasting an N network (instead of as a client on a G.) Vinyamar detects it fine, but drops the network a little while later and then can’t see anything without turning wireless on and off. This, too, is a known bug in the Apple Support forums, and a potential return issue.

There are plenty of other Air owners who aren’t experiencing this problem. Before I get too caught up in configuring this model, though, let’s make sure that we have a good unit.

I am happy to announce the arrival of my Macbook Air named Vinyamar.

Vinyamar is named after the capital city of Nevrast in Tolkien’s Middle Earth. “Vinyamar” is Quenya for “New Dwelling.” Built on the western peninsula beneath Mount Taras, Vinyamar was the seat of Turgon’s power before he moved to the Hidden City of Gondolin.

The nomenclature of Vinyamar’s primary network is based upon regions of fantasy novels. Macintoshes are named after lands in J.R.R. Tolkien’s works. Linux machines are named after countries in Guy Gavriel Kay’s novels.

(I have, admittedly, bent the rules slightly here by using the name of a city instead of the name of a region. But it’s my network, I’ll use whichever names I like.)

Vinyamar:

• Entered service on March 18th, 2008.
• Has the 80GB hard drive option, not the SSD.
• 1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo processor.
• Running Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).

Purpose

Vinyamar’s intended purpose is as a coding and work laptop, so Xcode and the iPhone SDK will be required. Graphics work will be light to support application development. It will be used as a business laptop, so some internet and encryption utilities will also be required.

My stated reason for choosing the Macbook Air over the Macbook Pro is that the platform embraces constraints and forces me to focus on certain tasks. Only time will tell if this is the right decision.

System Configuration

OS X is preloaded with nearly every tool that I need, so doesn’t require a lot of configuration to be useful. After working with OS X 10.4 (Tiger) for nearly three years on Hithlum, I’ve picked up a lot of modifications and applications that I “can’t live without,” even though I really can. I addressed the UNIX issues first:

• Update Hosts File: Replace /etc/hosts with Dan Pollock’s excellent replacement hosts file to block bad sites. I’ve considered automating this download, but have some reservations with messing around with root-owned files without looking at them first. (I should get over it, but I haven’t.)

  This replacement /etc/hosts file blacks out bad parts of the internet — malware sites, aggressive advertisers, data collection companies, clicktrackers — by telling your computer to direct all requests for those hosts to itself, instead of out to the internet. It makes for a much more pleasant computing experience, and I highly recommend it, no matter what platform you’re running.

• Disable SSH-1 and Force SSH-2: SSH-1 should only be used if you want to get cracked. I have no idea why it’s enabled at all in any default, but there it is in Tiger. I was happy to see that Leopard has SSH-1 off by default.

  (In /etc/sshd_config, change #Protocol 2,1 to Protocol 2 and restart sshd.)

• Change Default Shell: I’m generally happy with Apple’s Terminal, but there’s one default that I refuse to accept Apple’s guidance on: the default shell. Once you learn a shell, switching between them becomes a real hassle… and I learned on tcsh, not bash. This is changed in Terminal’s preferences.

  Also, pin the Terminal to the Dock while it’s open, and chose the white-on-black background for new windows.

• Configure Passwordless SSH: I do a lot of work with remote servers. To automate SSH connections to these machines, I set up passwordless SSH.

Those are the primary UNIX changes that I felt were absolutely essential. Next, I installed the development environment.

• Install Xcode 3: Xcode 3 is the development environment that comes standard with Leopard, though it is not installed as a default. This was remedied by a quick introduction to Remote Disk and installing Xcode from the Leopard disks.

• Install iPhone SDK: The iPhone SDK is available via a free download from the ADC site and is an easy install.

While that was installing, I took care of some remaining OS X preferences.

• Remap Caps Lock to Control: In the Keyboard and Mouse System Preferences panel, change the Caps Lock Modifier Key to trigger Control, instead. I don’t use Caps Lock, but I do use Control quite a bit.

• .Mac Syncing: I copied over a few key files from Hithlum’s home directory, and configured .Mac Syncing to take care of the rest of the data.

• Backups: I spent more time than was ever necessary backing up Hithlum. I resolved that Vinyamar would be different, so I bought a Time Capsule and pointed Time Machine at it. Done.

• Secret Preferences: Try as I might, there are still a few hidden preferences I seem to always tick off when getting on a new machine. I started off fully intending to switch from TinkerTool to Secrets to manage these preferences, with an assist from SmartSleep to handle the sleep and hibernation behavior, but then I got to thinking.

  I’m supposed to be embracing constraints, right? Part of that is living with the defaults. Changing hidden preferences isn’t really doing that. Do I really need any of these behaviors set:

  • Disable Dashboard
  • Turn off .DS_Stores on the network
  • Pin Dock to bottom right hand side (to keep the trash in the same location)
  • Turn off glassy Dock
  • Enable Twooshsound on 140 character Tweet

  No, no, I guess I don’t. So I didn’t.

After the development environment was established, I (cautiously) installed several applications. I debated going entirely stock configuration here, but decided there are some things that are worth it.

• Quicksilver: I seriously don’t think I can work without Quicksilver anymore. Buggy? Yes. But very, very useful.

• Instant Messaging/VoIP: In addition to iChat, I installed Skype. Merrystar only recently started using IM, and only with Skype, so it makes the cut. (The requirement of “Must be able to communicate with spouse” is implied, and trumps just about every other one.)

• Encrypted Email: Even if the rest of the internet seems to get by without it, I still need encryption, so MacGPG and GPGMail are essential add-ons, in addition to the X.509 Thwate Freemail certificates that should be in my Keychain.

• Multiple Email Accounts: All of my email accounts have migrated over to IMAP, so I won’t have to move local mail files. Signature Profiler is very helpful at managing signature files between the accounts, however, so it will likely stay.

• Password Management: In addition to the Keychain (which is already very useful), I’ve come to rely upon 1Password’s autofill mechanism. (Not to mention how it will have native iPhone password syncing…)

• Writing: MarsEdit is my weblog editor of choice, and everyone should have a weblog. It makes the cut.

  For writing local files, emacs is already installed. If I need full screen editing I’ll use it and GLTerminal.

• Graphics: I’ve come to like Pixelmator quite a bit in the short time I’ve used it. OS X lacks a decent default image manipulator, so I’ll keep this.

• Screensaver: I use just one: GLMatrix from the xscreensaver package. You’ll pry it out of my cold, dead hands.

Interestingly, there are some great applications that didn’t make the initialcut:

• Instant Messaging: In a complete about-face from my last ten years of using IM, I ditched Adium X (with its wonderful multi-protocol support) and went with iChat instead. I don’t need as many IM protocols as I used to and iChat’s iSight integration is very appealing. Between Adium and Trillian I’ve managed 10+ accounts over the years; I’m looking forward to cutting that to 3.

  At the same time, I’ve been trying out iChat on Hithlum, and it’s going to be a big change from what I’m used to.

• Twitter is both a great time suck and a great way to interact with Mac developers. Twitterific is the client of choice here, but I decided to skip it for now, and shifting everything over to iChat/GTalk instead. This will also allow me to mute specific chatty people I follow. (You know who you are.)

• RSS Feed Reader: I am seriously conflicted here. NetNewsWire is fantastic and allows me to keep up with hundreds of feeds.

  The problem is that I keep up with hundreds of feeds. I’m leaving it off for now, and will revisit it as the RSS withdrawal symptoms kick in.

• Full Screen Focus: I use Think on Hithlum to focus my attention on specific apps. By blanking out the background, it is surprisingly effective at doing this. My hope is that if I’ve done the rest of my job well, I won’t need Think. But if I do, then I can always go get it.

• Screencaps: I really, really like Snapz Pro X, but it’s a bit of a CPU hog on the Powerbook. I will leave it there for now and see how things go. (I suspect that Snapz Pro X will find its way on to Vinyamar soon enough; it’s too good.)

• Performance Monitoring: I admit that I like knowing what’s going on under the hood. iStat provides great visibility there. I’m concerned about getting too distracted by monitoring the hardware instead of working.

• Office Software: For now, I’m leaving iWork and NeoOffice off. I’ll reconsider this decision when the time comes.

Updates

If you are interested to see how Vinyamar performs, I invite you to follow along in her weblog, as future updates will be posted there. (There’s even a separate RSS feed.)

In a strange display of synchronicity, Merrystar and I both ordered new laptops in the last 24 hours.

• Merrystar’s beloved Panasonic Toughbook W2 Tsiolkovsky will soon be joined by, of all things, a Dell XPS M1330. The Panasonic rep really blew the sale and couldn’t get her either a W or Y series within her department’s budget, so she opted for a screamin’ fast dual 2.6GHz instead. After years of making ugly laptops, Dell seems to have finally gotten this one right.

  We’ll see how it looks in person when the Alpine White version (with pink hard drive and mouse, naturally) arrives later this week.

  I’m actually really excited to see how Ubuntu runs on it.

• I wasn’t planning on upgrading my Powerbook G4 Hithlum until its AppleCare expired in November, but the recent release of the iPhone SDK (which requires an Intel chip and Leopard to use) accelerated my timetable. The 1.67GHz Powerbook is the fastest G4 chip out there, but it’s now the punchline in recent Mac benchmarks.

  Let’s call it like it is: the G4 is dog slow running Leopard, and it’s not that much faster running Tiger.

  So, after convincing myself to get the 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro, I then did an about-face when I got to the ordering page, decided to embrace constraints, and bought what meets my needs now: the Macbook Air. Yes, the one I was waffling about.

  And you know what? I don’t regret it for a minute. $1000 less, featherweight, and fewer distractions? Done.

  It arrives next week.

While I’ll let you know initial impressions and put up new computer pages next week, Merrystar and I have important decisions to make while we wait.

Namely, what are we going to name them? A quick nomenclature refresher:

• Merrystar has two possible conventions to follow: laptop or dual-core. Laptops are named after science vessels in Star Trek: Oberth-class or Nova-class. (I think Nebula-class vessels are also allowed.) Dual-core machines are Excelsior-class. There’s a lot of options available.

• My convention is to use lands from science-fiction and fantasy: Macs use the lands of J.R.R. Tolkien. I’ve been going through a Beleriand phase, but might shift east over the Misty Mountains if the names are right. The areas of Númenor are also options, but not very melodic ones.

Hmmm. Lots of thinking to do here.

That can’t be good.

(This is for both my Tiger and Leopard external backups. Looks like “Ignore ownership on this volume” somehow got checked.)

Update 11:11pm: Found the bug that caused it in the first place. That’s the good news.

The other good news is that I can restore permissions to the Tiger backup with the next backup, which is currently running.

Bad news is that I’ll probably have to reinstall my test Leopard system on the external drive to fix it, but that’s less critical than having a bootable backup right now. (After I fix this one, I’ll retrieve the offsite one to see if that fixes it.)

Also, I don’t want to talk about the Green Bay game. That’s the last time I ever root for a team because of expediency. It backfired with Texas, and now it’s backfired with the Giants.

Having resisted the Office 2007 upgrade at work as long as possible, I have finally been dragged — kicking, screaming, cursing — into the latest circle of frustration.

Oh. My. God. Is it awful!

In my googling to relieve the pain, I’ve come across some great articles on other people’s experiences. Like,
why you should avoid Outlook 2007’s HTML email and switch back to plain text.

I’m going to give Office 2007 a chance, but only because I have to to get my paycheck. This is not something I’d choose to use otherwise.

Doesn’t this worry Microsoft a wee bit? I guess not.

I find it funny that in all the polarizing posts about the MacBook Air, the reasons why I didn’t recommend it to Merrystar are conspicuously absent.

Those reasons? Compared to her current laptop, the MacBook Air:

1. is heavier,
2. has a bigger footprint,
3. has a shorter battery life, and
4. is more expensive.

And for her, these are critical requirements. So the MBA is a no-go.

The MacBook Air looks to be a great, small Mac. It may be the best little Mac ever, although I think the iPhone is strong competition for that title.

It is not, however, the best subcompact notebook available right now. The MacBook Air needs to shed some weight and stretch some battery life before it can claim that. And since I’m talking about an Ubuntu to OS X switch, yes, this matters quite a bit.

I am confident that the MacBook Air will improve. Solid state drives will get cheaper, faster, and bigger, components will improve, etc. — but it’s just not there yet. But once you remove the necessity of running OS X, the field opens up… and there are honestly better options out there right now.

If you want the lightest, smallest Mac laptop you can get, then obviously the Air is a great machine. The protests about sealed batteries and non-expandable drives are pretty silly and you should ignore them as such. You want the SSD? Don’t worry about the cost, just go and get it (and please provide benchmarks for the rest of us!)

But if you want something even smaller, and aren’t committed to OS X, then you should probably keep looking.

I turned to Merrystar tonight and told her about the latest entry in the Mac laptop line, the MacBook Air.

Her: How is it?

Me: Meh, skip it.

Her: <raises eyebrow>

Me: Get the new Toughbook instead, and travel with your iPhone.

Aside from the ability to run OSX, the MBAir is just not as good as the Panasonic W7, let alone the R8.. For pity’s sake, it’s a full pound heavier than the R8! Solid-state drive or not, that’s ludicrous!

I fully recognize that four years next to a Toughbook W2 has spoiled me. It is a fantastic computer. It is the polar opposite of my airplane wing; light, discrete, but not fragile.

(In other words, perfectly suited to its user.)

I also recognize that I could be falling into the feature comparison trap, so often seen with the iPhone. Simply comparing features often misses so much of the user experience that makes a device better to use. Maybe I’m missing that part of the MacBook Air’s appeal, where the multi-touch trackpad, combined with OS X, improves the laptop experience so much that it blows away other laptops, much like the iPhone blew away other phones. But I don’t think I am.

The Toughbook W series is seriously well designed. It’s sexy, it’s light, it’s tough as nails, it has all the normal ports, it has an optical drive… and it comes with three years of service, standard. The AirBook is sexier, skinny, and.. er, runs OSX. That’s it.

I had hoped that I’d be able to welcome the coming of the Apple subnotebook with something close to the excitement of the iPhone. And maybe this is a device that you have to see in person to truly appreciate — I hope that it is.

But for a personal purchase, I’ll skip the MacBook Air and move to a plain old MacBook when the time comes to retire my current rig.

Meh.

Update 1/19/2008: I wrote a follow up to this piece, particularly on why the MacBook Air is decidedly not the right computer for Merrystar. After watching the videos on Apple’s site, however, I’m not as certain that it’s not the right computer for me.

I should probably avoid seeing one of these in person for a few months, eh?

If you’re a fan of the command line on OS X, I suggest you take a look at Visor, originally from the good folks at Blacktree. It’s a quake-style terminal window that instantly appears; I’m finding it even more useful than Quicksilver while working on shell scripting.

(So much for ‘sticking with the defaults.’)

Considering upgrading your Powerbook G4 to Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard)? After running with Leopard since its release, let me give you some unsolicited advice:

Skip it.

No, really. Just wait, and get it on a MacBook instead.

It comes down entirely to performance vis-a-vis Tiger. Here are Hithlum’s Geekbench scores:

• Leopard with updates (10.5.1) and Spotlight indexing complete: 804
• Clean Tiger install (10.4): 813
• Tiger with updates (10.4.11): 917
• Tiger (10.4.11) with Spotlight indexing complete: 942

While Spotlight performance in Tiger may be slower than in Leopard, overall chip performance is 17% better. I knew that 10.5 was optimized for the Intel chips, but that’s crazy to think that that sort of degradation is acceptable.

By way of comparison, machines with Intel chips running Leopard do significantly better than PowerPC chips. Most of the MacBooks are around 2500-3000, with some of the Mac Pros clocking in over 8200. Leopard seems to be a pretty good investment for Intel-based Macs.

But combined with the Disk Utility problems, random crashes, and overall sluggishness I’ve experienced with Leopard, the upgrade isn’t worth it on my older PPC machine. I’m certainly not going to upgrade my mother-in-law’s G5 iMac to it after this.

So, it’s back to Tiger for me on my Mac. Experiment over, back to work.

Anyone want to buy a Family Pack Leopard DVD set? I’ll trade you for Tiger DVDs…

I don’t know how I missed Primate Lab’s article on Leopard Performance, but it provides numbers that corroborate my own experience on my Powerbook G4 — Leopard is slower than Tiger.

Mostly, it just leaves me grumpy that I purchased the family pack. I’m not going to upgrade any of my family’s G4s or G5s at this point, and may very well go back to Tiger on Hithlum until it’s time for a new laptop in a year or two.

I borked another two hard drives today. Lost around 600GB of files.

Why?

Because Leopard’s Disk Utility is a piece of crap, that’s why.

I, for one, am seriously tired of reformatting hard drives on a Windows computer.

I recently added a HP Media Vault into my networking setup, with mixed results.

The Media Vault is a Network-Attached Storage device (NAS) that provides an always-on place to store data, supporting NFS, SMB, FTP, and even HTTP connections. In theory, every laptop on my network can use it for wireless storage, allowing each laptop to offload non-essential files, like our huge iTunes library. Given that I have Mac, Linux, and Windows machines to deal with, cross-platform compatibility is somewhat necessary.

My main goal was to point iTunes to use the Media Vault as the primary library location, which would let me reclaim 45 GB of disk space on my laptop.

In practice, this doesn’t work. Not. At. All.

It’s not that it can’t work. The setup to stream media over wireless is fairly easy. The drives can be automounted so the iTunes Library files always point to the right location. And the Media Vault works quite well as network storage for archives and nightly backups, a serious point in its favor.

But if you aren’t using Windows Media Center (which I’m not), then the streaming functions of the Media Vault don’t apply, and you’re left with the restrictions around transferring large files over wireless to watch movies. Video is the real trouble spot; audio is actually fine. Playback isn’t initially compromised by wireless network speeds, but it eventually fails. Badly.

Unfortunately, video is kinda important in this scenario. So you’re left with the previous options of splitting apart your iTunes Library, or continuously culling and managing your disk space. Which, in turn, is totally counterproductive.

See, one of the things I like about applications like the iLife suite is that they abstract filenames and location away from you. I just wish they could take it a step further, and abstract the physical filesystems used (like ZFS) so that you don’t have to worry about where the file is, it just goes and gets it for you. Local caching of frequently-accessed content, intelligent offloading onto network resources…

(Just think of what .Mac could be as part of a Apple ZFS strategy in this case. Yowza.)

The problem here is really one of expectations; I wanted one thing, but the Media Vault is something different. It looks to do what it does pretty well. Unfortunately, that wasn’t what I really wanted, so I have mixed feelings about it.

So, to sum up: I got a NAS. It’s cool. I thought I was going to use it for live media storage, but it turns out it’s only really good for backups and archives, so that’s what I use it for.

The end.

Ain’t broke? Don’t fix it.

Now, if only I could heed my own advice.

1. I was seriously considering upgrading the software that runs a few of my sites to Movable Type 4.x to allow the use of the the iPhone/MT interface plugin. Yes, you read that right: I’m considering installing an entire CMS to get an interface for my phone. This plugin makes posting from the iPhone very, very easy. And a clean install of MT 4.x is actually quite easy as such things go.

   But upgrading from an old version, with an extremely custom template and unsupported database? Very, very difficult.

   So difficult, in fact, that I gave up trying to upgrade the existing installation and instead evaluated how much effort it would be recode several sites on the clean install.

   And the answer? Way more effort than it’s worth.

2. I’m of a similar feeling of my second recent upgrade, of that to Apple’s Leopard on my G4 Powerbook, Hithlum.

   My first upgrade attempt resulted in an unbearably slow system. This was not the desired outcome.

   So, after several hours debugging processes, killing off all sorts of little performance-stealing problems, I opted for a clean Tiger (10.4) install and trusted my backups. Tiger was great in all the areas I remember, and weak in all the other areas I remembered (cough cough Spotlight cough).

   After a few days of that, I thought that since there were enough other people having success with a clean install, that I would give it a try with a clean upgrade back to Leopard. In other words, I lost my marbles.

   You know what? I have not been entirely happy with Hithlum since I started meddling. And really, there’s no turning back.

   Leopard may be faster than Tiger, but it doesn’t feel faster. The 10.5.1 update helped stabilize some of the applications, and I’m sure that on a newer machine that I would be happy as a clam with Leopard. But instead I ask, was this really worth the time, effort, and money I spent?

   I suspect that the answer is no.

So: Future Brett! Listen up! I will make this simple for you. NEVER UPGRADE! Okay? Never.

(I don’t know why I bother. Future Brett never listens.)

Yep, it’s time to inventory the Mac OS X apps I have running on Hithlum again. (Parts I, II.) I’ve added a few new programs to the mix.

• I’ve used Chicken of the VNC a bit to control some Windows boxes, but generally find Remote Desktop Connection or Fog Creek’s Copilot to be superior for desktop support.

• I tried out EtherPEG and think it’s an eye-opener. Literally.

• I’ve started using iMediaBrowser to find things quickly, but suspect this will go in the Utilities folder soon enough.

• NetNewsWire Lite has replaced Google Reader as my RSS feed reader of choice. Google Reader was just so slow.

• I’d already changed many of these system preferences via the Terminal, but TinkerTool provides a nice interface.

• I occasionally have Twitterific up and running, though I honestly don’t use Twitter enough to make it an essential app. (Usually I post through a Quicksilver+Applescript hack.)

• I’ve started using WriteRoom as a composing tool instead of JDarkRoom, and am generally happier with it.

• Visor is a quick half-screen Terminal window that I’m trying out. It’s faster on the command line than invoking through Quicksilver, but may require some adjustments.

• I’ve tried out the excellent DEFCON Globe Screensaver from Ambrosia Software, and it’s a keeper.

Still in use:

• Quicksilver
• MacGPG and GPGMail
• SignatureProfiler
• jUploader
• xscreensaver
• Backlight
• Adium X
• Mac The Ripper / HandBrake
• DynDNS Updater
• Excel
• X11 + The Gimp
• GLTerminal
• iTunes XHTML Playlist
• MarsEdit — I liked this one enough to buy the license.
• OTR Proxy

Rarely used, but still useful:

• Audacity and the LAME codec
• Colloquy
• Crack Attack
• Facebook Exporter for iPhoto
• ImageWell
• iStat
• MonoLingual
• Nocturne
• Stuffit
• Telekinesis

The following were installed, but have recently been ploinked:

• Apple Backup
• Camino
• Cocoalicious
• Entourage
• Firefox
• Flip4Mac
• Google Earth
• JDarkRoom
• Keyword Assistant (which I really liked, but was replaced by iPhoto 7.)
• Mail Stamps
• MailFollowup
• Mail Tags
• MacSaber
• pearLyrics
• Stellarium
• Think
• VLC

Jackson Bohlender asked me for an interview earlier this week about my thoughts on the iPhone, the iPod Touch, and my computing background.

(I admit, it was a little startling to realize that I got my first computer 25 years ago.)

The interview is now up at his site.

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

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.

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.

The iPhone may be my first phone in years I don’t hate. And it might be the first one you don’t hate, too.

Custom 404 page seen on the twitter site, which is almost always under heavy load these days:

Nice, funny, and to the point.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve had roughly the exact same conversation with about five different people. Paraphrased, it goes like this:

Me: I’m glad drive prices are dropping. I just got another hard drive for my laptop.

Them: Oh, you’re upgrading?

Me: No, backing up. This will make it three total.

Them: Why not just burn everything to CD or DVD?

Me: Er, because they fail and take your data with them?

Them: What?

Me: Gesundheit.

I then follow up with my tragic story of how I archived my entire digital life to CD/DVD, but when I got my Mac and started loading everything back, I discovered the sad truth: CDs and DVDs will degrade over time, and you don’t know it’s unusable until it actually goes. About half of the disks I made within the last five years were gone, so I resolved to go with a strategy with visibility, redundancy, and easy access: everything on a hard drive. CD/DVDs are only throwaway backups or installation disks in my house. The conversation would usually end with me talking again about the cost of hard drives coming down, me realizing I’d just spent 5 minutes ranting about the failure rates of optical media, and then a polite change of subject.

Now, I admit, I haven’t handled this conversation particularly well. I feel particularly guilty for having had it with my Mom and not immediately following it with concrete, practical, written advice as to what you should do to prevent data loss. It’s complicated by my running on a Mac, and nearly everyone else I’ve talked to using Windows. It’s further complicated because I think of my Mac as a UNIX box, so I can’t just say “go download X program and set it up.”

Instead, I have to say something stupid, like, “I have a series of interlocking scripts that automatically archive critical files and rsync incremental backups between external and offsite drives to ensure that the data lives in as many protected places as is practically possible.”

In other words, I’m part of the Command Line Ninja Brigade of Mac users, which appears to exist in a different online world than the Sweet Delicious GUI Army of Mac users. I don’t understand why this divide exists in the online Apple community, but it seems like you’re either for the Terminal, or against the Terminal, and never the twain shall meet. The opinions each hold are strikingly different, yet the crossover between the two is so easy. That’s why it’s a Mac!

I honestly don’t understand it. But there it is, Horatio: yet another undreamt of thing.

So.

Here’s my concrete, practical, written advice for backing up stuff, no matter what you run, or how you personally feel about the command line.

• If you run Windows, I recommend Gina Trapani’s excellent Lifehacker article Automatically back up your hard drive for advice in both software selection and how to set up a schedule of backups that will save your butt when Murphy’s Law strikes.

• If you run a Mac and don’t want to mess around with the Terminal, there are a lot of programs out there like Carbon Cloner or SuperDuper that you can use. I’ve not used any of them, but there’s a Mac Observer tutorial on backups that covers them in some detail.

• If you run UNIX, or are a member of the Mac CLNB, perhaps you’ll find my backup strategy useful inspiration for polishing your own data archiving obsession.

I even wrote the backup script in haiku. Just for you.

Since I seem to always be forgetting them:

• ⌘ = Command Key
• ⌥ = Option Key
• ⇧ = Shift Key
• ^ = Ctrl Key
• ⎋ = Esc Key
• ⏏ = Eject
• ⌫ = Delete

As you were.

I was recently updating my about page when I realized that I’d really not kept up with the good things on Hithlum, only the bad.

And that’s unfortunate, because my Mac really rocks. I’m glad that I left the switching-distros-solves-problems world of Linux behind, even though I look at Tsiolkovsky with an admittedly covetous eye.

(But if Apple put out a ruggedized subcompact MacBook Pro with an optical drive? I am so there.)

So I thought I’d start by revisiting my original list of software that I’d posted a year ago and see what I’m actually using, versus what didn’t work out for me. A lot of these applications have been good to me. Maybe you’ll find them useful, too.

Here are my standards, the applications that make Hithlum a joy to use:

• Quicksilver remains the only application I run all the time. Every week I learn something new about how to use it. I remapped my Caps Lock key to Control just so I could trigger Quicksilver even faster. Oh, and there’s command line interaction, so I don’t even need to keep Terminal open!

At the time, I said: “Holy holy holy. Quicksilver changes everything.” I stand by that and can only add more emphasis.

• Safari and Camino are currently vying for my affections as web browsers. Safari had speed problems when I used it as a RSS news reader, but the font rendering is incredible. (I’ve since switched to Google Reader for news.) Camino feels snappier and doesn’t bog down after its been open a while, but it doesn’t do as good a job with text. We’ll see who winds up on top.

• Mail continues to be my main mail client. Hawk Wings has been a great resource, pointing me towards all sorts of useful (and not so useful) add ons. I use MacGPG and GPGMail in conjuction with the built-in x.509 certificate support, Mail Stamps, SignatureProfiler, and MailFollowup. That’s actually about it — I don’t use Mail Tags as often as I used to, but I keep it around. I end up using the ⌥⌘T command to file mail quickly and let Spotlight sort it all out later.

• iPhoto. I spend a sizeable part of every night working in iPhoto, processing pictures and whatnot. I’m still on the iLife ‘05 package but will happily upgrade to ‘07… whenever it actually comes out. I have gripes about the ‘05 version that I know are fixed in ‘06, so now it’s just a waiting game.

• I upload photos to Flickr and Zooomr with jUploader. The various plugins and dedicated uploaders just haven’t done it for me. I keep hoping, though…

• Preview. You know what? This simple application is fantastic and is the unsung hero of OS X 10.4. How do people get by without it?

• Emacs is my primary text editor, but I use neither the Cocoa nor the Carbon versions. I, uh, use the default terminal one. Do I lose points for that?

• xscreensaver. What can I say? I love me some GLMatrix action combined with Backlight. Mmmm, green and black desktop goodness.

There are a few other programs I use on a regular basis, just not every day, which I consider essential.

• Address Book. Does what it’s supposed to do. Syncing problems with Entourage, though, led me to resort to manual imports and a lot of backups.

• Adium X is still in the Dock, used fairly often but not every day. iChat didn’t have a chance.

• I wish iCal integrated better with either Google Calendar or Exchange. I love the interface, but not the syncing.

• The Mac The Ripper / HandBrake combo sees a lot of use, as I rip movies to watch on iTunes. I watch a lot of movies in iTunes these days — much more than I listen to music.

Then there’s a large group of specialized programs that are useful in one way or another, but not part of my normal mundane computing existence. Or, I haven’t grokked them yet.

• Audacity for audio processing. I use it to rip old cassette tapes to MP3. (Don’t forget the LAME codec.)

• I’ve only recently downloaded Cocoalicious, a del.icio.us bookmarks manager. Still figuring out if I need it or not.

• Colloquy. IRC client. I’ve used it twice, works.

• Crack Attack, one of Merrystar’s favorites.

• DynDNS Updater, to keep my dynamic hostname associated with my Mac. I haven’t looked at it since I installed it, which is how it’s supposed to be.

• Entourage does all sorts of bad things when I try to sync it with both Exchange (for work) and iCal (to publish my calendar for my family.) Don’t like the mail interface at all, ditched it very soon after I tried it out. There was also an incident that reinforced the importance of keeping work and play separate, so I don’t do anything work-related on the Mac anymore. Entourage’s days are numbered.

• Excel, on the other hand, continues to blow OpenOffice’s Spreadsheet out of the water. Sorry, but until you can do pivot tables, you’re not in the game. Possibly the best part of MS Office.

• Firefox is only installed for those rare occasions where I’ve needed to get into a site that didn’t work with Safari and didn’t recognize Camino. I may discard this one soon.

• Flip4Mac, plays windows media files.

• I finally installed X11 so I can run The Gimp for image manipulation. Works just like I remember, maybe a little better.

• GLTerminal, a full screen terminal. Cool but clunky.

• Google Earth remains very cool, but its utility is debatable. (It was helpful when looking for a house, but that’s over now.) Bandwidth hog.

• I use iTunes XHTML Playlist 4.2.3 to now publish my iPod playlists, although I’ve got an AppleScript that can do it too. Looks like version 5.0 has been a while in coming.

• Every time I try iWork, I like it. But I so rarely use it, it’s not worth buying. (Yet.)

• I like JDarkRoom, a full-screen simple text editor. The fonts are great, it’s easy to write in… but I don’t use it very often anymore. It is a great creative writing tool, something to really focus you down on what you’re doing. It’s also readable from across the room. (Perhaps I’m just shy? I bet that comes as a surprise.) GLTerminal has more old-skool cred with the flicker and arc, but JDarkRoom is a clean, straightforward app.

• I have a PowerBook with a motion sensor. I therefore have MacSaber. It’s inevitable. (It’s also been used exactly once.)

• MarsEdit, tool for offline posts to weblogs. I haven’t decided about this one - I haven’t even really tried out the trial version.

• OggDrop X, for converting OGG music files. I, uh, don’t use OGG anymore. Everything’s MP3 or AAC.

• OTR Proxy might see some use, if I ever IMed with someone who used it too.

• pearLyrics is still around, but I haven’t used it in ages.

• Stellarium, planetarium software. Sweet.

• Think is another one that I’m trying out that I’m not sure if I’m going to keep. It blacks out everything but what you’re working on, which is nice. A separate app to do it, though… I’m not sure about this one yet.

• VLC for those media files that Quicktime can’t hack. Haven’t had many of those.

Finally, we have the discard pile. These just weren’t for me, thank you, come again.

• Growl may come as a surprise for the die-hard Mac readers, because it’s an honestly good program and wildly popular. I’ve simplified my routine, though, and when I’m on my Mac I don’t need notifications about every little event. Mail arrives? I’ll get to it. New song plays? Okay, I’ll listen to it. This is definitely a “good, but not for me” program. <ploink>

• Seamonkey, Shiira, and SunriseBrowser were all deleted a while ago. <ploink ploink ploink>

• I tried out Flock and liked it well enough (Camino + Flickr + del.icio.us is a good combo) but got a little wigged out by the unknown TCP/IP traffic I saw going out of it. So: <ploink>

• Armagetron and Armagetron Advanced, Tron Cycle games. <ploink>

• Battle of Wesnoth, still great, I’m still not playing. <ploink>

• Browsejour. Why did I think I needed this? <ploink>

• Disk Inventory X. It was useful when I was searching my old drives. Done now. <ploink>

• Flickr Uploadr, er, uploads files to Flickr. Replaced with jUploader. <ploink>

• iPodDisk. I have a 512 MB first generation shuffle. I don’t need this app yet. <ploink>

• IPScanner. Never used it. <ploink>

• MyTunesRSS. Great idea, not for me. <ploink>

• NeoOffice, the OpenOffice.org port to OS X. A 350+ MB app is not a utility. No need, so: <ploink ploink>

• Yahoo Widgets, too much memory required. I’ll use them on my Windows machine, but not on my Mac. <ploink>

• XJournal, offline posting for LiveJournal. Don’t use LJ, so no need for this one. <ploink>

• XNmap. Never used it. <ploink>

Next up, I’ll have to document my love affair with the command line.

Here’s a question: what goes chirp, chirp, CRUNK, chrip chrip, crunk chirp?

If you guessed Tsiolkovsky’s hard drive, you’d be sadly correct.

First, the Ubuntu side gave us this wonderful message:

I think this is really quite an excellent way to put it: “…and this disk drive is probably not expensive enough for you to risk your time and data upon it.” Good advice for a bad situation.

Then, tonight, the Windows side gave us this gem:

Less informative, but just as ominous.

(Fortunately, Tsiolkovsky is still under Panasonic’s excellent warranty. But only for six more weeks.)

Last night I stumbled upon BackLight, a free program for the Mac that allows you to pipe any screensaver into your desktop. While it’s not perfect (it’s a GL layer on top of the existing desktop, so there are issues with Exposé, for instance), it allows for some great effects. Want to run Matrix-style effects in the background while you work?

No problem. (GLMatrix is part of the xscreensaver package, now available for Macs, too.)

Don’t get me wrong; this is totally useless. Screensavers aren’t the most practical things. (When was the last monitor you owned seriously susceptible to burn-in? 1986?) But this is very cool eye-candy. This one goes in the ‘keep’ pile for now.

Updated: Found another way that doesn’t require an additional application:

/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background &

Will try it out and see how it works.

Merrystar’s finished restoring Tsiolkovsky to operating condition, having installed obscure dependencies required for 30-year-old astronomical software and restored data from the ill-fated HissyDrive backup fiasco.

And because of Ubuntu, it’s turned out much better than before. No, honest.

• The Windows XP side of Tsiolkovsky suffered chronic driver crashes from the on-board Centrino wireless card; only disabling the card and using a Netgear pc card stopped the computer from crashing. The drawback was, of course, that the power consumption was huge and battery life was cut in half, if not more. Ubuntu natively recognized and supported the Centrino A/B card, so we’re back up to the 6-8 hour battery life we were used to. (Yes, you read that right.)

• Speaking of power management, Ubuntu fully supports ACPI; hibernate and suspend work like they’re supposed to. Amazing!

• While some of the package managment is confusing (especially the contents of the devel packages, and what’s up with not including make?) apt-get is vastly superior to SuSE’s yast. Sorry, but it’s true.

• Gnome seems to be trying to integrate the best UI elements of Mac OS X and Windows XP (albeit without all the chrome of Tiger/Vista), and succeeds. How well? Good enough to convince a long-time KDE user to switch.

• System stability, good UI, and unix commands at the ready? You better believe that Merrystar never boots into Windows anymore. While there are a few reasons to keep the partition (Adobe Illustrator, for one, and some web-based tools that require IE), it sees little to no system time. Quite a change, actually.

So, I confess. I’ve grown a little bit jealous. I want a brown system! I want to see the OS that Just Works! I want to use it!

Oh, wait. I run Mac OS X and have all of that, minus the brown part. Okay, I really just want to tinker around with Linux again… but know better than to mess up Merrystar’s system this close to Valentine’s day. So I downloaded Xubuntu for PowerPC and ran it on Hithlum, instead. (I’ve long been interested in the XFCE window manager.)

It was nice: fast, UNIX-y, snappy. Not as nice as OS X, but I can now say I’ve gotten Linux to boot on my Mac without frying the system. I could get used to it. But then I remembered that I really didn’t need to do any of this. I have a perfectly good OS now, and I don’t need to go re-learn Linux ‘just because.’ Ubuntu is pretty simple and looks to be low-maintenance, so my technical support duties will likely be light now. Aside from helping to clean up the Windows partition — a reinstall may be in order, because, you know, the Registry doesn’t scale — I’m out of a job on that computer.

Bravo, Ubuntu. It Just Works, like it’s supposed to. Nicely done.

Merrystar upgraded Tsiolkovsky to Ubuntu today from SuSE 10.0. Normally, I wouldn’t phrase a distro change as an upgrade, but this one qualified. Even though my first experience with SuSE was positive, the honeymoon was soon over, and recent events have been less than satisfactory. (Then there’s that whole Novell-Microsoft deal that still makes me go Whaaaa?)

Initial impressions of Ubuntu are very, very good. Wireless works out of the box, power management is great, and “Gnome doesn’t suck,” to quote the primary user. More details once we resolve the hissing backup disk drive issues (note to self: why did I not get out my noise cancelling headphones today?) and AIPS is functioning again; Tsiolkovsky’s Linux writeup could use some refreshing, especially considering how many hits it receives every day.

Did I forget to mention that Hithlum is back from Apple? I guess I did. Well, she’s back, but can’t read any data from the hissy drive, and if you think I’m letting Tsiolkovsky anywhere near that thing? Steve Jobs is more likely to use a stylus.

I know enough to not tempt computer karma: copy the data off the hissy drive as fast as the network will carry it, but don’t mess with the settings.

One small victory today is enough.

I knew I was a fool to hope that I’d get Hithlum back by tomorrow, no matter what Frank From Austin, TX told me.

Tonight I received the following email from Apple:

…Thank you for your email.

We are sorry for the delay in servicing your PowerBook G4 and apologize for the inconvenience it may cause.

Your PowerBook G4 is currently at our repair facility. We are waiting on a part to complete the repair. This part (17” Display) is scheduled to arrive on Jan 4, 2007. We expect the repair to be completed in the coming days. Once the repair is completed, your product will be going through a series of final tests, and should these tests be successful, the computer will be
shipped back to you.

Your patience is greatly appreciated.

What I find most frustrating is that, in all the time my PowerBook was awaiting a part, no one could tell me what that part was. Knowing that the problem requires a new LCD screen actually eases my mind, because it validates the original AppleCare purchase. $350 for AppleCare or $800 (or more) for a new screen? Easy math. I may not be happy about the delay, but at least I don’t feel like I’m getting no value out of the extended warranty.

But it took over two weeks for Apple (and 3 escalations from me) to tell me which part they were waiting on to get to this point.

Perhaps my next laptop really will be a Panasonic Toughbook. (Pity I can’t run OS X on it.)