Global Reset

Finally got around to upgrading this blog to the 4.0 series of Typo. I did have a couple of problems with it, but nothing major. I started by trying to use the new Typo gem, doing a local install into my own gem folder. This failed because one of the dependencies for Typo requires Ruby 1.8.4, but I only have 1.8.2 available to me on Dreamhost. I almost went down the path of building my own ruby binary (I’d done this before when Dreamhost was slow to catch up) but decided I’d try installing Typo the old fashioned way:

svn co http://typosphere.org/trunk typo

I copied my old database.yml file into the config folder. Then I edited config/environment.rb to force rails into production mode. When I ran ‘rake migrate’ I got an error:

== FixCanonicalServerUrl: migrating ==============
rake aborted!
You have a nil object when you didn't expect it!
The error occured while evaluating nil.gsub

A quick google search showed other people with the same problem, but no solution. I made a quick patch to db/migrate/051_fix_canonical_server_url.rb that let me get past the problem. After the variable ‘b’ is initialized, I added:

b.settings['canonical_server_url'] ||= 'http://blog.globalreset.org'

I really like the changes they made to the admin interface. It’s much easier to handle deleting spam comments now. I have yet to see how the Akismet interaction works though. I did have a problem with comment deletion that I haven’t solved. If I create a new comment which is unclassified (neither ‘ham’ nor ‘spam’, whatever that means), I can’t delete it. I see an error in the production log that you can’t delete a ‘frozen hash’. I also had to modify the way my theme invokes the sidebar. They simplified it down to just ‘render_sidebars’ instead of the complicated invocation of a particular action on the sidebar controller. I’d expect fancier themes than mine to have a few more problems. But, I think the management interface upgrades are enough reason to go through the effort.

I followed, with some interest, the series of post by David Heinemeier Hansson (from 37Signals, creator of Rails) where he took an Enterprise Architect to task for some really uneducated comments about Ruby. Reading through the post by this guy (Jimmy McSomething, don’t want to give him anymore pagerank love than he’s already getting) it seems that he might be just a little bit retarded (and I mean that medically, not in the mean-spirited sense). There are some people in the comments who’ve posted that some of his observations are so wrong that it must be a joke. I was kind of wandering if his blog was written by a random Enterprise Architect Blog generator. Off his Blogger page, he has a couple of other blogs which follow much the same format. The big key is the random pictures that he inserts in the middle of the post (some of Rumsfeld, or other politico’s) which are neither funny nor related to the context of the post.

Today I stumbled across some new evidence. I found a trackback on one of my posts to his article. Could it be that his blog-bot is trying to increase his pagerank by trackback-spamming his article to blogs which have discussed Ruby? Even though I’ve mentioned Ruby quite a bit on this blog, the aforementioned post was not at all Ruby related… The author of the trackback is the same as his blog title. I tried to see if I could tie the IP address (72.9.234.70) back to him in some way, but gave up on that rather soon.

That just struck me as odd. Seems that successfully pissing off the Ruby crowd (or any group which is fanatical) is a good way to get yourself to the top of the google list for the keyword of your choice. For example, what if I called myself a “First-Rank Knowledge Engineer” and decided that, based on my expertise in the field, Wikipedia was absolutely the worst source of actual “facts” or “knowledge” that I could possibly imagine (worse than what a train full of brain-dead monkeys could generate)… Do you think I could rise to the top of the Knowledge Engineering index?

I found out about this patent via Miguel de Icaza (who found this discussion with Dave Winer). I really don’t have the patience to read the whole thing, but while scanning it I couldn’t find anything like a highlight reel (e.g. “Our patentable idea is unique because it differentiates from the way everyone else is doing it like xxxxxx”). The pieces I did read thoroughly sound no different than the way a typical news viewer (of which there are dozens of examples) does it. I found the following quote, the last section of the patent, disturbing:

[0127] It will be understood by those skilled in the relevant art that the above-described implementations are merely exemplary, and many changes can be made without departing from the true spirit and scope of the present invention. Therefore, it is intended by the appended claims to cover all such changes and modifications that come within the true spirit and scope of this invention.

So, even if we didn’t explicitly phrase the patent to cover your application, we obviously meant it and we think it should still apply. If you can’t tell that we meant it, you must not know what the hell you’re talking about..

via GeekPress:

This company will install hidden passageways in your own home, ala Batman. Be sure to check out the videos.

You have to see the videos on that site. I really like the hidden gun rack and I definitely wouldn’t mind one of those lazy-boys that opens up to a slide… That’d be a fun way to get down into your garage quickly! Prices start at $10,000 for full installation and $1,500 for do-it-yourselfers (though, they don’t hint at what you’ll get for that price).

Documentation for the MacBookPro’s audio line-in/line-out say that it’s a combined stereo and optical digital plug. If you look down in it, it looks deeper than your standard stereo plug, so I believe them that there is something fiber-optic waiting for me at the end of that tunnel… The problem is: how am I supposed to get to it? If you take a look at the end of your standard optical digital cable, it’s immediately obvious that there is no way that it will plug into the same hole as a headphone jack. I’ve already purchased the DVI-to-S-Video adapter so that I can hook it up to my TV. But I don’t have a good way to get audio out without that plug. Granted, I could just use a stereo-to-RCA adapter, but my home theater setup isn’t easily wired that way. I have all my stuff switched through optical digital boxes, with no connection on the RCA plugs.

Anyone have any guesses about how I’m supposed to access that? I’m hoping someone will tell me that it’s a common enough port and that there are adapters readily available for other brands.

Update Well, thanks to the commenters, I now know that Monster sells exactly what I need.

<typo:flickr img=”103647252” style=”border: 1px solid #8ab3d1;

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Finally got my MacBook Pro 2.0 GHz…. And it is fast, fast, fast. It blows the piddly G4 in my Mac Mini completely out of the water.

I had a little bit of a fright when I first powered it on. I had read a review on TUAW that said there was a high-pitched hiss coming out of the back hinge area. I’m kind of sensitive to those sorts of hisses (my doctor tells me I’m a ferrari, high performance and very sensitive to improper care) and I tend to get headaches pretty easily. Well, as soon as I powered up the MacBook Pro, it was unmistakable. I could feel the whine in my teeth. For a second, I completely sank… But I figured once I cleared my desk and found a good place to dock it, I might not notice it anymore. Well, I’ve been using it for a couple of hours straight and I haven’t heard the whine come back since the first few minutes after startup.

The new iPhoto is crazy fast… Quicksilver is so fast that I think it’s reading my mind. I’ve had a little bit of fun playing around with Photo Booth (see pic above, click image to see a few more). Not much else to report so far… It took over an hour and a half to move my music, photos, and movies over. I do like the 2-finger scrolling on the trackpad. I do not like the fact that the bottom of this thing gets pretty damn hot… Kind of makes it a “laptop” in the loosest sense of the word “lap”. Won’t be in my lap during a Texas summer.

The very day before the day that my MacBook Pro is set to ship, Apple announces that the palsy 1.83GHz machine that I ordered is no longer the top of the line laptop… Now you can upgrade that machine to 2.16GHz!!

The day before the day mine ships, it is suddenly obsolete. Soon, machines will be obsolete before you can order them. Then we’ll have conversations like, “Yeah, the new Intel Kismet processors are supposed to be out in 3 years, but they are already obsolete”.

Update
Wait a minute, there is no 1.67GHz option anymore (formerly $1,999) and the 1.83GHz option has changed prices (was $2,499, now $1,999). Does that mean apple is going to ship me the 1.83GHz I ordered, but charge me the lower price? Or charge me the price I paid and ship me the new model which sells at that price (2GHz)??? I think I need to get on the phone.

Update
Apparently, my 1.83GHz order will be automatically bumped up to the 2.0GHz model. I guess I’ll ignore the $300 upgrade to the 2.16GHz proc, that way Erik will have a little window room to one-up me. I one-upped him on the Mac Mini purchase, so it’s his turn.

Here’s the official announcement from Apple about the new models:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/feb/14macbookpro.html

Update
Just got the email from Apple:

Better still, prior to shipment we’ve improved the entire MacBook Pro family with configurations starting at 1.83Ghz up to 2.16GHz. We have upgraded your MacBook Pro from a 1.83GHz processor to a 2.0GHz processor at no additional cost! We anticipate shipping your upgraded order by February 28, 2006.

Those bastards! I’m all ready for my new arrival, then I found out she’s going to be better than I anticipated… Then they hit me with the shipping delay! AAARRRGGGHHHH!!!!

I found out about this amazing browser plugin via Chris Pirillo. His pitch for it completely sold me on it:

I don’t care who you are - you need this free plugin. In FireFox or IE, you’ll finally know what you’re walking into. For example, if you did a search for ”gnome” on your favorite search engine with SiteAdvisor installed, you’d see a set of results with colored checkmark images next to ‘em. These things will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about an unknown site. Hover over a spidered site, and it’ll tell you how many pop-ups it serves, how many links to other “green” (good) sites, how many emails per week it sends, how many “green” downloads it points to, etc. Click the image for even more information.

It makes googling a lot easier… Now when I construct a poor search phrase and get garbage results, I can visually filter out the sites I don’t want to even check immediately.

I just couldn’t resist its siren call… I’ve been looking for a good reason to upgrade and Steve Jobs finally announced it at the last MacWorld. An Intel-based Apple laptop, with a 4-5x power increase over the previous generation of PowerBooks. I’d been looking to upgrade the Mac Mini to something beefier, but the stats on the PowerBooks didn’t have me convinced that I would’ve noticed too much of a performance increase. I thought I was going to be stuck with one of the desktop G5’s, but I was really hoping that I could finally find a high-performance laptop as my next desktop replacement.

<typo:flickr img=”86396352” style=”border: 1px solid #8ab3d1;

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I went with the $2499 model: * 1.83Ghz Intel Core Duo * 1GB PC2-5300 DDR2 * 15.4” Widescreen Display * 100GB 7200 RPM HDD (upgraded from the 5400 RPM drive) * 802.11g, Bluetooh 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, iSight, USB 2.0, Firewire 400

It’s an expensive machine, considering that I usually self-build my machines for well under $1000. I did get a slight discount on it, which basically equated to the retail price without tax. It’s my first real laptop machine (omitting a retired clunker or two that someone’s given me), though it will spend most of it’s time docked on my 20” lcd monitor at home. I am looking forward to the ability to undock it and bring some work with me.

The Mac Mini will likely become my HTPC (Home Theater PC). I’m not sure how that’ll work out, but now that you can install Apple’s Front Row on any Mac, I just need to find some way to remote control it.

Update:

<typo:flickr img=”89504182” style=”border: 1px solid #8ab3d1; float: left;

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   margin: 5px;" size="small" alt="MacBook Pro: Order Ship Date"/>

I can’t wait for this thing to ship. Apple is torturing me with the mid-February ship date. Some folks are reporting that they are getting their units the week prior.

I guess the demand is pretty high. Hopefully that translates into making the demand for all the apps that I want to run on an Intel Mac equally as high, so I’ll see Universal Binaries without much delay.

BTW, this obsessing over ship date contrasts nicely with my wife’s treatment of her Nano. She got it in before she received the screen protectors, so she just left it in the box and waited patiently for two weeks. I guess that makes us a good pair, technology obsessive vs. technology calm and accepting.

I’ve been drooling at the dual- or quad-core G5’s for a while now, trying to decide whether or not I want to spend that kind of money on a new computer. I’m really very happy with the Mac Mini; you certainly can’t complain about its price. But I do still have some speed concerns. Specifically, application startup time can be horrendous. Applications which hog a lot of memory (like Firefox) can be unbearable to restart. The current solution has been to never shut anything down. Sometimes switching between applications becomes cumbersome, but never as slow as a fresh startup. Before I traded up to the big Macs, which have way more power than I’ll really need, I want to see if it’s possible to give the Mini just a little more juice.