hithlum log.

My PowerBook G4 is for sale.

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

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.

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.

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.)

Well, there goes my plans for a productive weekend.

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

Trip was playing with his dvdvdvdeees tonight when he saw that Merrystar was on her computer. He walked over, climbed up on the couch, and looked over her shoulder.

Her: “That’s Noah, and that’s his mommy.”

Him: “Dats Noah, and dats his mommy.”

Her: “Would you like to see pictures of Trip?”

Him: Makes agreeing noises. Merrystar calls up his site.

Him: “Backhoeses!”

And then he reached out and tried to swipe the page on Merrystar’s Toughbook, just like it was an iPhone.

Me: “You’re going the wrong way.”

Her: “You hush.”

Him: “Boats! T-t on the boat!” more swiping motions, more of the page not going the right way.

I find it both wonderful and a little scary that my son knows that much about using my iPhone already.

Epilogue

After Trip had gone to sleep, we had the following exchange:

Me: “Finally, I found something your computer can’t do.”

Her: Swipes at my laptop screen. “Doesn’t look like yours can, either.”

Have I ever come out ahead in these?

Don’t answer that.

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

It’s not more memory, or a bigger hard drive, or a snazzy case, or laser-engraving.

It’s an icepack. Boy, do these laptops get hot!

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.

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.

I’d like to apologize for the automated links for 2007-02-28 post that will show up sometime later today. Tonight was a banner night for web surfing, as I tried to both catch up on my feeds and try out Camino’s speediness with some traditionally slow sites in Safari. Like, cough, Google Reader, which bogs down in Safari under the weight of the hundreds of posts I’m trying to process. For weeks I’ve wondered about the users who raved about its snappy response; the UI is well done — tap tap tap goes the spacebar with no clicky-clicky required — but after the first 20 articles I spend more time waiting for a response than actually reading.

(Most everyone reading this already knows that I can read really fast: really, really fast when the occasion calls for it. Scanning news is one of those things.)

Camino handled the load far better than Safari did, letting me page through posts quickly, if not as fast as I might like. There’s only so much one can do to cut through all the AJAXy overhead. I grow less fond of AJAX with each passing day. I may soon find myself using AJAX in the same way Merrystar uses Flash — avoid, disable, and enable only when absolutely required.

The only drawback with the Safari → Camino switch is an aesthetic one: small Helvetica type isn’t weighted as nicely in Gecko browsers as it is in Safari, particularly at the lighter weights and smaller sizes. (Sub-10pt italic seems particularly affected.) Also, the line height seems to be crowded in text blocks, so that words seem crowded in a paragraph. It’s very subtle, but I’m known to be picky about my fonts.

(The partial solution is a simple ⌘+ to increase the font size, which makes the web a nicer place to browse anyway. The line height is still awkward, but less distracting than before. It’s still not as good as Safari.)

I’m happy to say that Camino really is chugging along well, and I may keep Safari off the dock and in reserve for specialized tasks. But it’s probably too early to see if there’s a significant difference.

But, back to the apology. The downside of this web browsing is that I’ve been hitting my del.icio.us links pretty hard, and the next post is likely to be pretty big.

Hopefully, you’ll find something interesting in amidst it all.

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.)

Well, isn’t that interesting?

This morning I emailed Apple to let them know that they hadn’t called me back as promised in their support email.

I just got off the phone with Frank at Apple in Austin, TX, who let me know they’d escalated the problem and expected repairs to be complete by tomorrow (as long as the unit passed QA, of course.)

Dare I hope that I’ll have Hithlum back by Thursday?

It’s now been 19 days since my PowerBook G4 Hithlum’s LCD failed. Let’s recap.

• Times I have called Apple: 8
• Times I have spoken to an Apple rep over the phone: 3
• Times I have emailed Apple: 1
• Emails I have received from Apple: 1
• Times I have visited an Apple store, 160 miles away: 1
• Status updates received from Apple via website: 1
• Hours spent waiting for Genius Bar Appointment: 1
• Escalations through customer service: 3
• ETA: still pending.

• Approximate time spent dealing with support-related issues: 20 hours
• Days primary personal computer unavailable: 19

Let’s compare and contrast with Merrystar’s experience with Panasonic and her Toughbook Tsiolkovsky, shall we?

• Total calls to support: 1
• Total calls to Fedex: 1
• Total emails: 2, both status updates from Panasonic’s logistics company
• Total website visits: 2 (1 to look up phone number for inital call, 1 to FedEx to confirm delivery)

• Approximate time spent dealing with support-related issues: 1.5 hours, including packaging (excludes backup time.)
• Days primary personal computer unavailable: 2.5

The Panasonic support rep was knowledgable, efficient, and thorough. The Apple reps — with the execption at the Genius Bar, to be fair — have not.

What’s worse is that I’m paying $350 to Apple for this service for 3 years. Panasonic’s cost? $0 for the same period of time. I’ve used it three times and each time has been this easy.

This is seriously leading me to question my next laptop purchase. Perhaps it’ll be time to switch back to Linux?

Merrystar’s Toughbook W2 Tsiolkovsky is back from the shop today. She sent it in on Tuesday. In the afternoon. Got it back today. 3 days from door to door.

Panasonic’s support continues to impress.

Apple’s? Not so much. (15 days and counting. I called their support again today, and they have no idea what part is needed or when it will be in. Sigh.)

ext3 can still bite me.

And the part for Hithlum? Backordered. No ETA.

Man, I miss my PowerBook.

Finally! Time for me to experience Apple’s Customer Service first hand. Up to now it’s all been ordering and whatnot. But now I’m having video problems on my 17” Powerbook G4. Joy!

Last night, Hithum’s screen wouldn’t light up upon waking from sleep. I opened the lid, and … nothing. She was obviously on, but I couldn’t see anything. Huh.

This has happened a few times before, but closing the lid and reopening it usually fixed the problem. So that’s what I did. Still nothing.

Maybe a restart? Well, I was in the middle of a backup, so I just let that run all night. I could SSH in and shut down lots of processes, monitor things, make sure that the backup went as scheduled.

But after the backup completed, I rebooted… and got the black screen. I can see — very faintly — the details of what’s on the screen, but there are no lights. The apple on the back also doesn’t light up. Everything else is good.

Okay, so off to the internet I go. Zap the PRAM? Check. Reset the video card? Check. Nuke the PMU? Check.

Turn it on… and black screen. Argh!

Fortunately, I got the extended AppleCare protection plan, and I’m one of the <10% who have automated backups, so I’m just irritated at the inconvenience, not freaking out. So I called Apple this afternoon.

Oi.

They asked me what I wanted to do. Well, I’ll be in The City on Monday, so I can drop it off at the Tyson’s Corner store. But only on Monday. Otherwise, I’ll ship it in and have you ship it back.

“Well,” the helpful agent said, “I can book you for 3pm, 4pm, 7pm or 8pm tonight, would that work?”

“No,” I replied, “Monday is the only day I can do it. I’m on the other side of the state from that store.”

“Oh, okay. Let me put you on hold for a minute.” I’m on hold for 4 minutes. Dum dee dum.

“Are you an ProCare member,” he asked upon his return?

“Nope.”

“I’m sorry, sir, then I can’t make appointments for you on Monday then. I can only make same-day appointments for you,” he said.

“Whaaa?” I said. I think I actually said that, too, with my voice going up and all.

“I’m sorry, sir. But you can call the day of and make an appointment then.”

“Okay. You’re 24×7, right? No problem. I’m up early.”

“Actually, sir, you can only make a reservation starting at 9.”

“For a store that opens at 10?”

“Yes sir.”

(You can see we were getting along brilliantly. At least he called me sir.)

So: Off to a wonderful start, as you can see. I will call from the road on Monday morning, set up an appointment, and drop off Hithlum at the store to get fixed. I expect that I will have a short temper by the time I am all done.

But still.

At least I have backups.

It’s been a while since I switched from Linux to Mac OS X, and a week ago I got a new Windows laptop at work which needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. So: it’s time to review some software.

Mac OS X

I confess: I use a lot of the default Apple software. I started out fresh last November and gave the prepackaged software a try before switching back to my Open Source standbys.

• For Mac alchemy, only Quicksilver will do. Holy holy holy. Quicksilver changes everything.

• Biggest surprise, next to Quicksilver? Safari. I was surprised by how much I liked Safari’s RSS news reader, and how seamlessly it integrated into my workflow. It’s snappy (with some exceptions, of course) and the UI is slightly easier to use than Firefox. Firefox is my current third-string browser, edged out by Camino — both Gecko browsers, but Camino is noticiably faster than Firefox. I tried out a few other browsers along the way: Seamonkey (the old Mozilla suite), Shiira, SunriseBrowser. None of them stood out enough to dislodge Safari or Camino.

• Mail, aka Mail.app. It was good enough to get me to switch from Pine, but its IMAP problems caused me to switch to POP3, which made me become a religious reader of jwz’s Mail.app posts. I like the interface (especially how I can color-code messages) but would like some tighter integration with iCal for tasks. This AppleScript baloney is … baloney.

• I plunked down the cash and got Mac Office, so I use Entourage for my work mail. It works well enough, but the UI? Not so much. Still on the fence with this one. (Mail and calendaring will probably be another separate post.)

• Emacs is here, in both Cocoa and Carbon versions. I’m using the Carbon one more and more, but still waiting for XEmacs to make the leap.

• I am really impressed by Mac The Ripper and HandBrake, the ultimate Mac DVD backup combination. MtR copies your DVDs onto your hard drive (*excellent* for watching while travelling, save your batteries!) and HandBrake compresses them from 7GB to < 1GB.

• Adium X is an instant messaging client that blows iChat out of the water. To be fair, if iChat supported more than 3 protocols, I might be more willing to give it a chance. But it doesn’t. Adium does, and does it better than Trillian.

• For audio processing, I use Audacity. It’s as good as you get outside of an Amiga. (Don’t forget the LAME codec if you want MP3 support.)

Utilities:

• Browsejour, a handy app to spot other items using Bonjour in the area.
• Disk Inventory X gives you a visual representation of a directory. Eh. It was useful when I was searching my old drives.
• DynDNS Updater, to keep my dynamic hostname associated with my Mac.
• Flickr Uploadr, er, uploads files to Flickr.
• Flip4Mac, plays windows media files.
• GLTerminal, a full screen terminal.
• Growl notifies you of events. I haven’t decided if this is a good thing or not. It adds key functionality to applications that miss it, but sometimes it’s too intrusive. I’m on the fence here.
• NeoOffice, the OpenOffice.org port to OS X. With MS Office installed on this machine, I only use it to read OpenDoc format files. Hard to think of a 350+MB app as a utility…
• OggDrop X, for converting OGG music files.
• pearLyrics, a handy app that scans the web and adds lyrics to your iTunes songs. Unfortunately, Warner/Chappell Music sent a cease and desist, and you can read the rest.
• VLC for those media files that Quicktime can’t hack.
• Yahoo Widgets, for traffic and weather. I was using it for stocks too, but that just got too depressing. (There’s a reason I go with index funds.)

Encryption and Security:

• MacGPG and GPGMail, for encryption.
• OTR Proxy, for off-the-record encryption.
• XNmap, a front-end to nmap. Just because.
• IPScanner. No reason.

Amusements:

• Armagetron and Armagetron Advanced, Tron Cycle games.
• Battle of Wesnoth, which I have deleted off my machine so I can remain a productive member of society.
• Crack Attack, one of Merrystar’s favorites.
• Google Earth. Google Maps on steroids.
• Stellarium, planetarium software. Sweet.

Windows

Yah. I still use Windows at work. Here’s what I’m using these days.

• PuTTy for SSH and SSH tunnels.
• 7-Zip for file compression (removing WinZip along the way. WinZip is not free, people!)
• PDFCreator” for making PDFs.
• Irfanview for image manipulation.
• Firefox, though I don’t really use it at work anymore. (I visit reporting sites and control panels that require IE… that’s about it. How sad has my life become?)
• Trillian for instant messaging. I tried out Gaim again and still didn’t like it on Windows. Slow, clunky, UI is odd.… just couldn’t warm to it. So, back to Trillian I go, despite its lack of address book integration. (Adium X is definitely ahead of Trillian here.)
• Eraser, for secure file deletion.
• Yahoo Widgets, for weather and traffic.
• Skype hasn’t been put back on my machine, for obvious reasons
• AppRocket is close to Quicksilver, but can’t manage the tight integration with the filesystem. (This is the filesystem’s fault, not AppRocket’s.) Makes the Thinkpad almost bearable now.

Okay, lazyweb: let me know what else I’m missing!

Hmmmm.

Restarting Safari doesn’t fix it.

Neither does restarting the Mac.

Hmmmm.

(Maybe this is a good chance to try out the other browsers on this machine?)

Dear Fellow Mac Users,

Anyone else having problems with Safari not loading pages? I certainly am.

This started yesterday: Safari goes along for a while, merrily loading tabs, until some sort of threshold is reached and it decrees no more pages for you. I then have to restart it. Usually I end up launching Camino and copying the open tabs over there.

Anyone?

Merrystar has taken over Hithlum (my 17” PowerBook) for a project she is working on. It’s always amusing to watch her using it, because it is wider than she is. The proportions are all wrong.

Some of this is due to her own choice in laptops; her 12” Panasonic W2 (Tsiolkovsky) is very small, very light, and very well suited to her size. (Very pretty, too! she will no doubt add, when she reads this.) Merrystar has an excellent sense of proportion.

Which is why, as I’m now using Tsiolkovsky, I am left wondering two things:

1. How can she put up with these god-awful jaggedy non-anti-aliased fonts?
2. How do I put up with them every day at work and not notice them?

Don’t believe that they’re a problem? Let’s review.

Exhibit A:

Here is how this site looks on Hithlum using Safari. The font is different (Lucida Grande), but even with the default Trebuchet MS, the anti-aliasing and smoothing is really apparent.

Exhibit B:

Now, the same site, but on Tsiolkovsky using Firefox. Notice the jagged fonts.

Can you see the difference? Does it bother you?

In Merrystar’s case, and I’m completely speculating here, it’s that she spends most of her day using Linux, so Window’s font display is on par with the environment she’s comfortable with. Or, and this may be more likely, Windows is so alien that it just fades into the background of strangeness. It is very odd living with someone who doesn’t equate CTRL-X/C/V instinctively with the Cut/Copy/Paste sequence. (When I asked her how to paste just now, she couldn’t answer until I specified the program and OS.)

In my case, I think it’s because there’s such a division between my work and personal computer use. Everything is different between the environments; not just the OS and hardware, but the sites I go to, the applications I use, everything is different. I assume that the sites I read at night just look better.

Isn’t that odd?

I’ve tried changing some of the display settings on Tsiolkovsky to make it better. Changing smoothing in the Display Control Panel from Standard to ClearType helps, but turns all the type fuzzy. I can see why it’s not the default.

Were properly-proportioned fonts part of my decision to switch to a Mac? Not at all. Is it one of the small things that turns me into a passionate user of my glorified screwdriver?

You betcha.

(Merrystar, are you done yet? I miss my fonts.)

The binge continues.

(I should probably just point people at the directory and be done with it. But I get such nice email about my music choices!)

Once I switched, it was only a matter of time.

First official waste of freakin’ time on OS X! Bluetooth no longer works to connect my Mac to my phone. And after an hour, I still don’t know if the problem’s with the phone or the computer. Argh. Grrrr.

The more things change…

Today was one of those tough, fast, hard days at work: everything seems okay until it really, really isn’t. And then? Shit → Fan. Not pretty.

So, in response, after losing myself in my family when I came home, it’s now time to kvetch about computers. It’s either that or move furniture around, and there’s a sleeping baby to consider there.

I got a lot of responses to my switch to a Mac, mostly positive. I think it’s worth making the point that once you’ve switched off Windows for Linux, you’ve already gone through the cognitive gauntlet of a foreign OS. That Windows → Linux transition is missing all the nice pretty shiny parts that OS X brings to the table. Aqua is definitely a step up from KDE or Gnome.

That said, I still have some issues with the Mac. (Why are you not surprised, dear reader?)

• My only hardware-related complaint is that the trackpad on the G4 Powerbook isn’t 100% reliable. Occasionally it decides to take a break. Following a tip on the net, placing your palm across the pad surface resets it and gets it going again. Unfortunately, the wrist angle is all wrong on that move for it to ever be comfortable.

• I’m having a damnable time getting the OAR/Address Book sync to work, so I can share contacts between work (Exchange) and home (Address Book). I suspect there may be something disabled on our server.

• I don’t even want to talk about the iCal/Exchange integration woes. iCal looks beautiful and easy to use. But without Outlook syncing, ploink.

• Passwordless ssh. I’ve spent hours trying to set up passwordless ssh between the Powerbook and my Linux server. I can go to my webhost without a problem, but for some reason the SuSE 10.0 box won’t allow it in that direction. (The other direction - server to laptop - is perfectly fine, so I just need to switch backups from push to pull.)

• iPhoto. Okay, I’m seduced by the square footage and photobooks, but not only is iPhoto doing bad things to my photo organization, it’s slow. That may be its death knell. I think my previous folder-based organization was actually better than trusting some big scary database. I’m not ready for Photoshop CS2 - yet - but I wouldn’t mind giving it a test drive.

• Adium wins the chat battle hands down after Trillian hosed my carefully-annotated contact list. The best part? Address Book integration. Rename once, apply the alias everywhere. Now when I work from home I leave Adium running and don’t bother with IM on the Windows boxes. That said, it still sucks when trying to actually remove people from your list. I just want to get my contact list below 500 people, people! Is it so much to ask that I not have multiple accounts on a single provider just so I can see who’s online?

And now for the heresy:

• I like Safari and Mail.app better than Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird. Much better, in fact. The RSS features in Safari have changed how I read online, and I no longer read all my email in pine. Perhaps it’s the punk rock reaction to popularity (I knew those apps when they were cool and outside the mainstream and buggier than a bayou, and now you young whippersnappers get all your fancy extensions and a million downloads!), but it’s more that I just don’t care anymore. Mozilla used to be miles ahead of the pack, but it’s lost ground again, and on the Mac it’s not quite the same experience, and hey! I have other things to think about these days.

See? Much better than talking about work.

New Flotsam: switch.

I’m going to close up the Daily Photo site. The daily format has its strengths (see Jim Brandenburg’s Chased By The Light for the idea in print, and Dean Allen’s Daily Oliver for a great online version), but it takes a lot of time and effort. The textpattern engine made it possible to put the site together quickly, but there are a lot of steps to process each picture. Each batch of photos took several hours every month — hours I could be taking more pictures!

I need something easier than that. That’s why I switched to a Mac — if I’m going to run UNIX, I may as well have it tightly-coupled with the hardware I get instead of spending days trying to get Linux working on a laptop. I’d much rather play with my son than play with an OS.

So, since the Daily Photo isn’t delivering what I want, I’m taking it down. Sorry.

I’m trying out the gallery software for solving the whole picture issue. Again, there are good things about it, and some things I don’t like one bit. So, the jury’s still out on it.

(You can take a peek at it if you’re interested. New Trip pictures!)

I suspect that when this is all said and done I will go and handroll something to create static pages on my home server and just call it done. Unless there’s a package that can automatically:

• pull the photos off the CF card,
• back them up my home server,
• copy them into a folder for editing,
• display them on the web,
• (rotating as appropriate),
• (and display EXIM data about the picture),
• allow some comments or captioning,
• not run me over my webhost’s limit,
• offer a RSS / Atom feed for updates,

and all while displaying the pictures in my own picky, idiosyncratic style.

Perhaps I ask too much. Any suggestions?

I finally had had enough of trying to get Linux to work on 6-year old equipment. The problems I’d been having with Arbonne were the last straw. So, last weekend I went out (with Merrystar’s encouragement) and got a Powerbook (17-inch) and couldn’t be happier with it.

Of course, my network decided to retaliate against the interloper:

• My POS replacement wireless router (D-Link DI-524, which I do not recommend) stopped talking to the cable modem. Hours wasted with hard resets and reprogramming and more hard resets finally resulted in a working internet connection.

• I rebooted Arbonne to restore her wireless connection - yes, I know that you shouldn’t have to reboot a Linux box, but this is the only thing that worked to solve whatever Netgear MA301 - DI-524 wierdness was going on - and she lost her boot loader on the reboot. Four days later, with numerous attempts at installing from the same CDs that would work on Tsiolkovsky, I dragged her upstairs and did a network install of SuSE 10.0.

• Tsiolkovsky’s upgrade? Not so good. Installer barfed in the middle and the computer was down for a frantic 24 hours as I tried to restore the bootloader so Merrystar could use the Windows partition.

• While playing around with the bluetooth on the Powerbook, I wiped my phone’s address book clean. Oops.

That was last weekend, which I am never doing again. I MEAN IT THIS TIME.

Anyhow:

• Tsiolkovsky has been upgraded from RHEL 3.0 to SuSE 10.0 OSS. USB now works, though the wireless and automounter are still flaky. The Windows partition is now readable in Linux, which is a huge improvement.

• Arbonne has been converted into a headless server (no monitor, no desktop manager, no graphical environment) and has been renamed Lórien accordingly. Lórien is running SuSE 10.0 OSS, and her network problems continue - I couldn’t get the D-Link G card working at all, and the MA301 continues to fight with the wireless router. Also, I misbought a second 250GB drive, so I’m still running the 40GB drive for /. and the 250GB for /data. Oh, and I can’t access the internet from her for more than 10 seconds after boot with the wireless card. Grumble.

• Hithlum is my new Powerbook. She’s purty. I had originally named her Hísilómë, but all the accents didn’t translate well in the scripts and shells.

• My phone address updated flawlessly once I imported my contacts from Outlook to Address Book.app.

• Tigana remains as she ever has, running Windows 2000 and Red Hat 7.3. She slept through the whole debacle.