|
||
 |
||
|
Donate via PayPal
Check here for information about where to send your donation.
- Politics 2005
- November - October - August - July - June - May - April - March - February - January
2004
- December - November - October - August - July - June - May - April - March - February - January
2003
- December - November - October - August - July - June - May - April - March - February - January
2002
- December - November - TidBITS - Apple - Macintouch laptop battery report - Apple - WhatIsMyIP - Wherever you are, there you are... - TinyURL - Turn big ugly URLs into cute little ones... - rob at whiterabbits.com - rmchuff - Fire - Camino - iTunes - BBEdit - Transmit
MNJ RSS
MNJ Politics RSS
Here is a collection of link to sites maintained by people who have mentioned that they read MNJ:
- Dan Hon - An imaginary place in a reactionary time - dws
|
|
A worthwhile review of the LifeDrive Mobile Manager Ars.Technica has an interesting review of the LifeDrive Mobile Manager - the same PDA on steroids that I have been using for the last couple of months.
I admit it...I still haven't installed the security update I had work to get done when I finally got home last night, so I didn't get around to installing the security update. As usual, there are a few reports of people who had problems with the update - a good reminder to always do a full backup of your machine before updating any system software. Macintouch has some follow up on the update this morning, as does MacFixIt. If I have the time tonight, I will do a full backup and then try installing the update. How is it working for you? |
Apple fixes Safari, other issues in new security update MacCentral has the scoop on a new security update that has been issued today by Apple. The update deals with a number of issues with Safari and WebKit. I will be installing this later tonight, when I get home after picking up my organic vegetables share from a local farmer, and after Natalie and I have some dinner at a local wine bar. First things first... As usual, the security update is available through the Software Update panel under Mac OS X.
An intriguing look at the 'quiet eruption' of Mt. St. Helens Tomorrow's edition of the New York Times has an intriguing article about the ongoing dome-building eruption at Mt. St. Helens here in Washington state. It is amazing that the volcano that grabbed headlines around the world after its May 18, 1980 eruption is still offering such new insights into how volcanoes work. I have a special interest in this story - especially the mention in the article of the glacier that has been split in half and disappeared inside the crater during this latest eruption. I spent the better part of four days during four different trips into the crater in the 1990s exploring the ice fields and growing glaciers inside the steaming crater of Mt. St. Helens. In short succession, the crater went from being the place where some of the newest rocks on the planet were created during the dome building eruptions of the 1980s to being the site of one of the world's newest glaciers that formed in the shaded hollow between the steep crater walls and the still steaming old lava dome. Now it is once again the site of new rocks being created on a huge magnitude, at the rate of roughly one cubic yard per second. Amazing! One of the chapters I still have to write for our Washington Disasters and Heroic Rescues book is about the explosive 1980 eruption.
Getting things done with Entourage I have never really used Entourage, but Brendon Connelly at Slacker Manager is a fan of the program. He writes today about using Entourage to do the Getting Things Done method of working and staying organized: GTD projects with Entourage.
Low End Mac on using regular Mac OS X to set up a server Low End Mac has a good basic article about using the regular version of Mac OS X to set up a home server.
Backup early and often Derrick Story has a short piece on the MacDevCenter today that offers links to good tips for setting up a solid backup routine - something I am still not doing as well as I should. It's worth reading and revisting: The best insurance - backup.
Assorted Geekery offers a take on three e-mail clients Christopher Biagini offers his take on three Mac OS X e-mail clients, along with the reasons that he is sticking with Mail over Mailsmith, Thunderbird and GyazMail. Too bad he ignored PowerMail and Eudora, which would have made the article an even more useful survey of e-mail choices under Mac OS X. I am still using PowerMail, because it is the fastest client I have found. But I admit that other than toying with Thunderbird a couple of months ago, I haven't touched other e-mail clients in quite a while. PowerMail works and it continues to be developed and improved. And despite its reliance on a database to hold all of my mail, it has been a reliable tool for me for a number of years. Why mess with success?
Waiting on fickle weather to see if snow is coming For the first time this winter forecasters are mentioning the possibility of snow in the lowlands in Puget Sound country. But given the fickle nature of weather in Western Washington, no one is commiting to where the one to four inches of snow will fall. My fingers are crossed for some hometown snow!
CNET on ad dollars tainting bloggers' independence CNET: Ad dollars threaten bloggers' rebel reputations The reality behind this story is that the vast majority of blogs are not making much money through tools like Adsense. I once made enough using Adsense to offset the costs of hosting Mac Net Journal, but as my off line work took more of my time and my posts on MNJ dwindled, the income from advertising and direct donations has plummeted. Now MNJ does not support itself - something I hope to remedy with better content and hopefully more readers and more ad revenue in the coming year.
Debating final upgrades for my aging 12-inch PowerBook My trusty 867MHz 12-inch PowerBook is starting to feel a little long in the tooth, so I am at a crossroads and trying to decide whether to put some money into upgrading the machine so that it will carry me through 2006. Here is the dilemma: I am using the original battery on this machine, and according to the utilities I have run on it, the battery capacity is now hanging in there around 65% - which means that the three-hours or so per charge that I could expect three years ago has dropped to roughly 1.5 hours in real-world use. A new battery is an easy upgrade - just $139 for a higher capacity battery from Other World Computing. The machine is also feeling a bit sluggish - thanks to the fact that the 60 GB hard drive is hovering around 5 GB of free space. I simply need to archive some old data and get at least 10 GB free to help in those times when I need to use virtual memory. The other option is to upgrade the memory. When I bought this machine in 2003 I maxxed out the RAM, which at the time of purchase meant that I could only have 640 MB of RAM. Now I could pick up a 1 GB RAM chip from OWC for another $149 and have a slightly snappier machine with 1.2 GB of RAM. The total cost for these upgrades is less than $300, and the end result is a machine that may hold me over until late 2006 or early 2007, when Apple's new Intel-based PowerBooks should be out of their infancy and have the kinks worked out. It sounds like a plan to me. But are there flaws in the logic? Offer your advice... |
Lots of people moving to new blogging tools It seems like there is a rush to try out different blogging tools on the blogs I read through NetNewsWire. David Davies talks today about using Ecto with WordPress, and Doug Miller recently moved to WordPress as well, after years of using Tinderbox for blogging. Meanwhile, A-list blogger Dave Winer has been playing around with WordPress as well. This reminds me of the way that everyone moved to TypePad a few years ago, or how after starting on Blogger a number of folks moved over to Radio Userland before moving yet again to other tools. I am sticking with Tinderbox. I have a system set up that works for me, so why mess with success?
Toying with a new alpha version of NeoOffice I have downloaded and installed the new version of NeoOffice, and so far it seems a little more speedy. It's too early to tell, but maybe it can help me fend off the temptation to finally break down and buy Office. On the other hand, maybe I should just get over it and buy Office...
More Tinderboxing I'm back home after a couple of holiday days spent in Southwestern Washington - capped with the sighting of two Snowy Owls at the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, seen from Luhr Beach on our way home tonight. As I start catching up on my reading in NetNewsWire, I am also catching up on the posts that came out of last weekend's Tinderbox Weekend in San Francisco. Here is a short list:
Energy hogs driving up your bills CNET has a story today about the energy hogs that are driving up electricity bills in nearly every living room in the U.S. The main culprits: plasma TVs and TVRs. But other lesser offenders include power adapters used for everything from PowerBooks to mobile phones. This is all the motivation I need to remember to unplug adapters when they are not being used...
Intel starts an Apple group It looks like Apple and its move to switch to Intel processors is on the radar at Intel. An eWeek article from yesterday indicates that a working group has been formed to work with Apple. This shouldn't be a shocker to anyone, but it does show that despite the small market share that Apple has right now in the personal computer market, the company is still a high profile player.
iTunes outsells Borders and Tower? Wow! CNET has the story about iTunes moving into the role as one of the top-10 music retailers in the U.S. And considering that all of this music carries digital rights management (DRM) hooks and limitations, this should be seen as good news for the music companies. I am sure they won't be seeing things that way...
Slides from Merlin's Tinderbox presentation posted Posted on 43folders: Tinderbox Weekend talk: Slides and links posted - Tinderbox Weekend 2005
iTunes security hazard may be Windows only According to a short article on MacCentral today, the iTunes security hole that many have been writing about today may only affect the Windows versions of iTunes and QuickTime. That still isn't good news for Apple, but it offers a ray of hope for Mac users. Windows user should be used to their computers being as vulnerable as a dike in Louisiana.
Potential security issue with iTunes I am not sure if I will be able to keep on top of this story today on MNJ, but I want to pass along the buzz about a potential security issue with iTunes:
Thanks to Mark! Testing a new RSS feed As I suspected, Mark Bernstein wrote back himself and he knew exactly what file I needed to unleash my RSS feed. The file in question is simply a small text file called newsitem.rss. For those sitting on the fence about whether to give Tinderbox a try or not, here is another reason to check it out. Not many software developers are going to offer this kind of support.
Mark follows up on Tinderbox Day in Seattle Mark Bernstein writes more about Tinderbox and yesterday's session in Seattle, including information about the new power of rules and agents in Tinderbox 3.0. One small tidbit we discussed yesterday dealt with RSS feeds generated by Tinderbox, and Mark has some examples on the CDs that are part of the West Coast Tinderbox road tour. I wish I had jotted down one example that Mark had on screen, and I am curious what kinds of code others are using to generate RSS from a Tinderbox blog? The code I use is old and pretty limited - it won't allow any HTML in the feed and it doesn't include the full feed. Both of those would make MNJ feeds more useful, but I don't have the background to roll my own code. Anyone willing to share? If so, e-mail me: rob@whiterabbits.com.
Tinderbox Day Seattle notes Here are my ongoing notes from today's Tinderbox Day in Seattle: Introduction - - It pays to get the notes down and start an external dialog with yourself - Get it down, get it done Those around the table: - Agents and rules are difficult to grasp in Tinderbox, but the value they offer make it worth the effort Ryan Holcomb on GTD with Tinderbox: - Agents collect actions in the proper context - He uses Virtual Desktop from Codetech - He uses Expose to work with multiple windows in Tinderbox Building a weblog with Tinderbox: - An interesting step-by-step walk through creating a weblog with Tinderbox, CSS, etc. - Also a simple way to export from Tinderbox to into Word using the templates. - Take small steps and have good backups - the key to learning and excelling with Tinderbox. - Coming in 2-3 weeks or so, a weblog creation assistant add-on for Tinderbox called Flint. What's coming: - TinderWin - the next release for Mac OS X will probably be the last standalone version. The next release will be in conjunction with Tinderbox for Windows. I will definitely be adding more about Tinderbox over the next few days as I assimilate what we went through in our full day of exposure to the program and what it can do. It was great to meet Mark after so many years using his tools, and also good to meet Ryan, Charles and Robert. Ryan demostrated his Getting Things Done system in Tinderbox. Now that I understand its underpinnings more, I may have to give it a try! While we were digging Tinderbox in Seattle, the folks over at 43folders were talking about Tinderbox today as well. I will definitely be staying tuned to hear about what happens with the full Tinderbox Weekend this week in San Francisco. Hopefully there will be some interesting ideas that will be written about on the Net following the weekend.
Tinderblogging I am in Seattle today, attending Tinderbox Day at the Watertown Hotel near the University of Washington. Expect ongoing notes throughout the day as I get rolling on the conference - power availability willing. The WiFi works great in this hotel!
Adam Engst on the annoyances of Apple's DRM Audio File Concatenation: Driven To Distraction By DRM - FairPlay didn't stop me from making my iPod easier to use with content I purchased from the iTunes Music Store, but it sure wasted a lot of my time. By Adam C. Engst, TidBITS [myapplemenu]
Earthquake crazy in Puget Sound - a side effect of writing I have earthquakes on my mind this weekend, as I continue the work on our Washington Disasters book. I just finished writing about a 7.1 magnitude quake that was centered in the Nisqually area in 1949, and now I am writing about a 6.5 shaker from 1965 that was centered just a few miles from where I am sitting. Next up tonight is a chapter about the 6.8 earthquake from Feb. 28, 2001, which was centered back down in the Nisqually River delta. So excuse me if I have earthquakes on my mind on this weekend. It really isn't an obsession. It's just part of the writing process, and a reminder that the ground that seems solid and secure today could lurch underfoot without warning and throw life as I know it into complete disarray. Here are the opening paragraphs to the two chapters I have written so far: Olympia earthquake rattles Puget Sound with 7.1 temblor The 7.1 earthquake — the third large quake during the 1940s and the largest since the arrival of European settlers in the Puget Sound region — awakened the rapidly growing urban core of Western Washington to the possibility of shifting ground below their feet. Prior to 1949, the popular belief was that earthquakes could shake the region, but they were not likely to do significant damage. That all changed with sixty seconds of violent shaking on April 13. Magnitude 6.5 earthquake shakes Puget Sound in 1965
A nice part of a day off at home - IMing with friends One of the things I rarely get to do anymore is to touch base with my friends online through chat. It just isn't appropriate for me to be chatting during the workdays when I am working at the City of Tacoma, and most folks on my IM buddies list are not online late at night, West Coast time. So one of the nice things about being home on a holiday like today is being able to touch base with friends that I seldom communicate with other than though IMs. Instant messaging was my connection to co-workers and the world in general when I was freelancing and working from home. What am I using to chat? The newest version of Fire, of course. This multi-protocol chat program has been my IM tool of choice since the arrival of Mac OS X, and it continues to work very well. And yes, it is still freeware!
Some of the most intriguing bird science writing on the Web If, like me, your interests bridge the gap between Macs and bird watching, I have an interesting blog to point out: Living the Scientific Life. The blog is written by an onithologist who I first encountered through the active Tweeters e-mail list here in Washington state. GrrlScientist is now a New York birder and ornithologist, and her weekly writing on birds and birding and science are some of the best I have read. Well worth checking out, if your interests point that way...
Is e-mail going the way of snail mail? Is E-Mail Becoming the New Snail Mail? - AOL survey shows how the 13-to-21 crowd will make IM the favorite Internet communique. [Steve Gillmor's Blogosphere]
To write or chase a rare bird? There is a very rare bird visiting the Washington coast this week called a Temminck's Stint. If the local experts are correct, this is the first sighting of this species in the Lower 48. And I really shouldn't drive the 90 minutes to Ocean Shores on my day off from work tomorrow to see it. I have a book to finish and a lot of work ahead all of this weekend. It's a good thing I am not a real twitcher - someone who sets off running at the mention of a rare bird. But despite not being a twitcher, this bird is tempting. Dang it...
Tinderbox 3.0 arrives - just in time for Seattle Tinderbox 3.0 was released today - perfect timing for those of us who will be at Tinderbox events next week. Among the goodies in this release, according to the information posted by Mark Bernstein, are new power in rules and agents and a new map-drawing system. Sounds like it is download time! I will be at Tinderbox Day in Seattle on Nov. 16. Will you? If so, drop me a comment... |
Macworld chats with the creators of Myst Macworld: A chat with the brains behind Myst...
On the value of PowerBook battery chargers As the user of an older PowerBook with a battery that just isn't as svelte as it used to be, I appreciated reading this short piece from ZDNet: Battery chargers vs. in-PowerBook charging.
House backs down on oil drilling in ANWR, coastlines CNN and the New York Times have articles up now about House Republicans backing down from their push to open the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and the U.S. coastlines to oil drilling. Interesting... This makes today a tough one for oil companies, since a number of executives were grilled about the price of gas and the subsequent record profits for the oil industry. I suppose I should feel sorry for them. Oddly, I don't...
Traveling without a laptop Walt Mossberg writes on the Wall Street Journal site about how he made it through a recent vacation with just a video iPod and his new Blackberry phone/PDA. I can definitely see the temptation to travel without a laptop. But when so much of my life is wrapped up with really being able to see and process digital photos on the road, or listening to music or even accessing the Web, I have a hard time imagining traveling for any amount of time without my PowerBook. The problem with most tiny digital gadgets is that they don't work well for content creation. I think that is why I opted to buy my Palm Lifedrive a couple of months ago. It allows me to at least write, take notes and record audio while on the road. And if I sit down where there is a WiFi connection then I can go online and check e-mail. I haven't investigated tools that I could use to actually blog from the Lifedrive, but I am sure it could be done. And when I get back to my PowerBook, all I have to do is sync it over the Bluetooth connection or put the Lifedrive in hard drive mode and move files back and forth like the machine is just a 4GB hard drive. It's simple and it works!
Add to my list of apps to update - Wings Macintouch notes the release of an update of the excellent Mac bird watching record keeping application, Wings: Update: Wings 4.1 - The record management software for birders adds improved Tiger compatibility, a Nests module, simplified navigation and Sightings forms, data entry improvements, and other changes. [MacInTouch] I'll be adding this to the list of programs to upgrade when I get finished with our book...
The definition of motivation - a book listing on Amazon I discovered this weekend that there is more than a deadline looming to motivate me to get the Washington Disasters book finished. How about a listing for the book on Amazon? That is weird - to see the listing before the book is even finished...
What do you have running on you Mac right now? I am curious how many apps you keep running on your Mac all of the time? In my case, here is my list of what is running right now: Tinderbox, PowerMail, NetNewsWire, OmniWeb, OmniOutliner, Nisus Writer Express, NeoOfficeJ, CopyPaste, iView MediaPro, GraphicConverter, Transmit, Quicksilver, SpamSieve. Other apps that are not running, but are often running: Palm Desktop, iTunes, TextEdit, URL Manager Pro The other app that lives on my Dock but is seldom used: iChat That last one is the biggest leftover from when I used to work from home - when instant messaging was my lifeline to communicate with long distance co-workers. Now the only time I turn on an IM application is when Natalie is traveling... What do you have running on your Mac all of the time? |
Ominous sounds from the hinge of my PowerBook I may be in for some trouble with my mostly trouble-free so far 12-inch PowerBook G4, if the sounds the hinge made this morning when I opened the machine are any indication. Over the last few weeks the hinges have seemed to tighten and were making a faint grinding sound. But since my life is on this PowerBook, and I am in the heat of a big project to finish our Washington Disasters book, I haven't been eager to ship the machine to Apple for repairs. This morning when I opened the PowerBook I heard a cracking sound - like the hinge had suddenly let loose. Now the screen will still stay in its normal position, but the hinge is much looser. I wonder if I am in for trouble soon? Anyone have a similar experience? My 12-inch PowerBook G4 is about 2.5 years old - getting a little long in the tooth - but it keeps on serving my needs. So long as the hinge hangs in there, that is. The machine is still under its AppleCare contract until February... | |
|
|
Copyright 1998-2005 White Rabbit Publishing. |