Geek Stuff
So excited and Proud
This just went up to Apple’s Website today… I couldn’t be more thrilled and proud right now
October 24, 2008
Apple is publicly opposing Proposition 8 and making a donation of $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.
Twitter updates
So i’ve got twitter tools up and connected to my blog.. Right now its configured to post in both directions - each time I post on my blog it updates on twitter and once a day it posts to my blog a summary of all of my tweets.. I don’t think I like the daily summary though - the tweets seem kind of random on the blog… THere is a tweet summary on the right hand side of the blog that I think is going to have to do…
anyway - thats what those random posts were… if ya wanna follow my tweets just go directly to twitter… (www.twitter.com/swimfinssf)
Do your homework
*sigh*… After quite a few hours of poking around and trying to figure out why I can’t get my Mac or Windoze in Bootcamp to talk to my new spiffy Series 3 TiVo I FINALLY figured it out… Seems the new Series 3 TiVos don’t support TiVoToGo so I can’t pull programs off of it… Grrr… Wish I’d read the forums before spending all of this time debugging (or, frankly before I’d bought it)… Its a pretty big drag that the latest greatest TiVo doesn’t support some of the coolest features and it didn’t really occur to me that it wouldn’t.. According to the TiVo forums its in process and should be coming soon but that was some time ago.. Ah well - this one is still much cooler than my old tivo which didn’t do any of this stuff so I guess I shouldn’t bitch.. But still a drag..
*sigh*…
A new toy
I got my new toy today - all Apple Employees are getting ‘em… and DAMN They’re cute. Can’t wait to get it home and loaded up with my tunes!. Was just needing this at the gym this morning!
DAMN
I was futzing with templates on a private blog that I have up here and the changes I made to that blasted my template for my main blog… GRRRRRR… And I put that template together so long ago that I don’t really remember how I built it… I’ll do a little poking around to see if I can re-create it… But i’m betting this may be an excuse to move to WP and try something new..
So in the mean time forgive the stock template - don’t have much time to fix it right now…
DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN
Nuvi 360 Observations
Like I said earlier, I broke down and got myself a really cool toy last week.. After seeing Brian’s and talking to Randy about it I broke down and got myself a Garman Nuvi 360. My justification for getting it was the traffic integration feature as well as our upcoming trip to europe… But in reality its really just cuz its a cool toy and I’m a geek. Up until now I never wanted a Nav system because the fact is I don’t get lost driving around SF or going to work - I live here. But the other features seemed to make it make sense for home and its small enough that I can take it on trips.. So I figured what the hell..
So.. Now that i’ve been using it for a little while here are some observations for those considering it.. Since I couldn’t find good discussions on the thing online I figured I’d share! 
- Interface is very good.. It took me a little while to figure out how to get it to show me maps for a place that I wasn’t currently at because it is always trying to give you directions from your current location. But if you choose ‘Find Location’ and navigate to an address you can then select ’show map’ at the bottom of the screen.. Thats very cool when you’re trying to look at maps in other states or countries cuz otherwise it’ll try and drive you there which is rough for points across an ocean.. (strangely it couldn’t find a route from SF to berlin..
- Dashboard Mount: This has been giving me grief. First, when I put the power cord into the mount I couldn’t get it out.. still can’t.. which is frustrating since I HATE cords all around my car.. I only want it plugged in when it needs juice. It has also started loosing suction on the window lately - probably just needs cleaning but still.. This is particularly a problem living in a big city where you can’t really leave a cool gadget in sight when parked - taking it on and off is a little troublesome..
- Traffic integration: This is REALLY cool.. shows you both incidents on the freeway as well as red, green, and red on roads to indicate traffic flow.. WAY cool.. Confusing part here is they have a bunch of different models (10,11,and 12) and I had a hard time figuring out which one to buy.. I finally just picked the 12 cuz it looked the least conspicuous and it seems to work.. Only issue I have with it is that it needs the nuvi to be connected to power which means it needs to be in the cradle (kind of a bummer when I got the thing at work and the cradle was at home..)
- European Maps: So this one was wierd.. They have two versions - one that comes on a DVD and one that comes pre loaded onto an SD card.. The one on the SD card, in retrospect is what I should have gotten but I couldn’t tell and got the DVD version. This version requires that you run the maps on a PC and then send them to the Nuvi.. great if you don’t want all the maps but a hassle otherwise (and thank GOD for Bootcamp - otherwise i’d be screwed).. Its also kind of counter-intuitive how to get the right things sent across.. It turns out you have to go into the application and select the segments of the maps in the map browser and hilite them and then click transfer to get the maps over.. There really shoudl be a ’send all the damn maps’ option or more clear directions..
- Phone integration: This is also cool and everyone I talked to says they can hear me fine.. I do wish the volume went up louder on the thing though - road noise makes it a little hard to hear some times.. I also wish there was a ‘answer with phone’ option for the situations where I don’t want to talk on speaker.. Its probably there but I couldn’t find it..
Overall this thing is REALLY damn cool and I HIGHLY recommend it.. just a little nits that I wish worked differently.. but thats OK.. I’ll live.. still love my gadget.. can’t wait to try it in europe!
(Oh yea.. and I need to post a link to Technorati Profile so I can claim my blog.. so here it is..)
My Software Plugs for the week
Gotta take a second to plug my to current favorite things… First is kind of biased since a good friend of mine created the product - but even still its VERY COOL… PumpOne is this REALLY cool workout guides for your iPod. Its basically workouts that you can download to your ipod so you have workout guides at hand while you’re listening to your music at the gym. They have a bunch of different types of workouts for both men and women and all of them have the same clear easy to follow steps to walk you through what ya need to do… Check it out either directly or over at Apple’s site..
The other is just my favorite new time sync… They’ve FINALLY started supporting Plaxo on Mac OS X. as a result i’ve killed WAY too much time pestering my friends to update their contact information and cleaning out my address book. But seriously - the idea is VERY cool and its about f-ing time they made a mac version.. For those of you that don’t know, Plaxo is a web integrated service that helps you keep your address book up to date by allowing your contacts to update your address book for you. You can send email requests to your contacts which sends them to a web page where they can update their information and the next time you sync your address book with Plaxo you get the updates. But, even cooler, it also allows you to connect your address book with other Plaxo users so if any of your contacts are also plaxo members you automatically get their updates whenever they make changes without having to send a request. They definitely have some things to work out (especially when it comes to iSync) but its still very cool…
ok… enough plugging… Happy saturday..
Captcha
Ever wonder what the deal is with these things are called or whats behind them. Had a friend of mine ping me asking how to get information on them. I know what they’re for - they allow computers to detect whether input is from a human or a computer - humans can read these but computers generally can’t. They deter spammers and other software based attacks from doing things like automatically posting blog comments or applying for email accounts. But I didn’t know what they were called or where they came from and, being the curious fuck that I am, I had to find out… So after some clever dissection of a site that used them (in this case, blogger) I found a term that looked odd to me in the right spot.. A quick google search of that term landed me right where I wanted to be…
So here are the fruits of my labor. From Wikipedia:
A captcha (an acronym for “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart”) is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human
And from the Captcha site:
Telling Humans and Computers Apart
(Automatically)A CAPTCHATM is a program that can generate and grade tests that most humans can pass, but current computer programs can’t pass. For example, humans can read distorted text as the one shown below, but current computer programs can’t:
So there it is.. more than you ever wanted to know… 
On Confidentialiity
I’ve got a buddy of mine who I met years ago and is a HUGE Apple fan. Big Mac guy and seems to buy at least one of nearly everything we do (I’m exaggerating but only kinda). As long as I’ve known him he’s been DYING to get the secret scoop on whats the next big thing and I have never told him anything that wasn’t already public information - and it FUCKIN KILLS HIM. Its almost sport at this point cuz every time I just shrug to one of his questions he looks like wants to smack me. Its kinda funny..
So anyway. We’re out for drinks last night with his business partner and he asks another one of his questions and I do my usual shrug to which he has his usual response and then the conversation moves on. Later, while he’s off doin whatever, his business partner asks what that was all about. I explained our little rapport and the history behind it - then explain that there is more to it than that. And here’s the scoop.
I actually believe personally in the need for Apple to keep shit confidential until launch - and its for two important reasons. First is the obvious financial reasons. The fact of the matter is we make money by selling products. We make enough product to cover demand. When new products get leaked before we’re ready to sell them people stop buying the existing products, inventory builds up, and it has a real impact on the company’s bottom line. The thing that I always tell friends is that worrying about what’s coming next is like worrying about whether the sun will rise. It always will rise and we’ll always come out with new products. Make your buying decisions based on your needs now and just deal with the fact that at some point your machine won’t be the newest and thats OK - it does what you want it to do… The only people that conceptually get hurt by buying a machine the day before a new one are the size queens who want the latest toy - and frankly, they should be buying when the previous product is announced rather than late in the cycle…
The other reason, which is actually more important to me than the financial reason, is personal. We BUST OUR BALLS trying to make great products and part of the satisfaction of doing that is the ‘Wow factor’ when the product is finally launched. It is SUCH a great feeling to work one of these shows and have people just giddy to get the product that you’ve ruined your life to deliver. When the launch is truly a surprise and has accurate information it is more gratifying than you can believe to see and read user’s responses to the product - it really makes the pain worth while. However when the fuckers at Think Secret and other rumor sites pre announce this stuff it blows a lot of that surprise. And, what is worse, is their information is 9 times out of 10 is WRONG, either completely or partially. The result is the reaction is more along the lines “Oh.. Well thats cool.. but I thought it was gonna do X.. When will it do that?”. People frequently over look all the cool things it does that the rumor sites don’t even notice and fixate on the thing that it was ’supposed’ to do. Its really frustrating. This last MacWorld was no exception - the rumor sites spent a lot of energy hyping bad information and, as a result, many people didn’t really get how cool what we DID launch was. New Intel Macs that scream, a bunch of great new software, great financials, and others. Thats COOL - its not our fault the rumor sites fucked up.
The Engineers on my team and around Apple BUST THEIR BALLS to get great products out on the market, often sacrificing sleep, a personal life, and their health. These folks deserve their day in spotlight without it being tainted by misconceptions by rumor mongers. So just sit tight - we’ll continue to announce cool stuff.
(sorry - that was more soap-box-ey than I intended… I just feel strongly about it after 14 some years at apple.)
Happy Friday
Nother Cool App: Google Earth
Ok.. So I know for you windows folks I’m behind the time but Google just released a Macintosh version of Google Earth and its FRICKIN COOL… Its this really cool graphical google maps browser with all sorts of cool bells and whistles like overlaying all sorts of points of interest and other interesting information on the map, 3-D Building representations and the ability to change your point of view so you can see mountains and panoramas… SO DAMN COOL…
I know.. i’m behind the times.. but still cool so I had to share..
Apple’s Stock
Is outta control… It went up like 5 points during the MacWorld announcements. I’d say it was iWeb or the MacBook Pro or the new Intel iMac… But I’m guessing it was really the financials. 14 Million iPods and $5.7 Billion in sales is just NUTS… Crazy cool. Its all the buzz in the halls around here today.
Cingular and Web Browsing on a RAZR V3
For a month or two now i’ve been having problems using my slick little black RAZR to browse web sites. I was able to click on the little ‘Web’ button on the phone and get to Cingular’s little home page with all of their stuff on it however any time I tried to ‘Go to URL’ from there I would get a ‘Page cannot be displayed’ error. This started happening a little while ago and happened and would happen for every web site I tried to go too off of Cingular’s site - everything from Google and Next bus to some.. er.. um.. others! ;)..
Finally this morning I decided to call Cingular and get them to fix it. After the requisite inane walk through of all the obvious stuff (which I did dutifully out of politeness even though I KNEW that wasn’t the problem) they proceeded to tell me me that it wasn’t their problem and that I should contact the sites I was having trouble with.. Thats where steam started coming out of my ears but I managed to keep my cool and pressed the issue. I somewhat calmly explained to them that, while I could belive that many sites might have problems on phones and the sites would have to change, I could not accept that EVERY site would have a problem and it would be my duty to contact each individually. I explained that I was paying for web service, not cingular ‘portal’ access, and that if she could point me to a single non-cingular site that would work I would go away quietly and leave her alone - however if she couldn’t then we would have a problem to deal with. I think thats the point that she realized that a) I knew what I was talking about, b) I wasn’t going to just go away without a fight, and c) that their service wasn’t functioning as advertised. She put me on hold
When she came back she directed me down a different obscure path to take the phone directly to a URL without going to cingular’s portal first. When I did this I was finally able to get to other sites. So, as it turns out, Cingular’s portal puts the phone in a state where it can’t escape to other sites. The only way to get to other sites is to enter the browser without going there… I mentioned that that might be a bug that they should fix, she didn’t even know what I was talking about. So, while I think they’ve got something that they need to fix (or they’ve got some fascist policy in place), I can now do what I need to do..
To her credit, she was very polite and did her best to help, she and her tech support folks seemed to be trying hard to make calls go away by convincing users their issues aren’t things for cingular to solve rather than sincerely trying to solve the problem.. This is pretty in line with the crappy customer support I’ve gotten from singular for years and it irritates the shit out of me. Guess its another own side of corporate consolidation - when you become a big guy you stop giving a fuck about how you treat your customer and it shows.. The little guys try harder and seem to sincerely care - the big guys don’t seem to give a fuck..
Anyway.. Just wanted to post this should someone else hit this problem - googling and finding descriptions like this has helped me twice in as many days..
The scoop for the record
I figured i’d log what was going on with my blog should someone else hit the problem… The basic problem was a few weeks or a month ago I started getting failures when using ecto to post to my blog. The failures showed up in an ecto error dialog as this:
Parsing Failure!
Could not parse response for “metaWeblog.editPost”. Please check the console log for more information.
Upon inspecting the log I saw this in the console:
500 Internal Server Error
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or
misconfiguration and was unable to complete
your request.Please contact the server administrator,
xxx@swimfinssf.com and inform them of the time the error occurred,
and anything you might have done that may have
caused the error.
This stimyed me as the message basically told me nothing about what actually failed… I found a few posts indicating that it might be a file permissions problem on the server so I fixed permissions on every file I could find but that did nothing… I searched and searched and searched and finally thought to look in the server log itself… Server log contained this error
Out of memory!
Callback called exit at mt.cgi line 11.
BEGIN failed–compilation aborted at mt.cgi line 11.
[Fri Jan 6 08:04:04 2006] [error] [client 71.139.13.81] Premature end of script headers: /home/swimfins/swimfinssf.com/mt/mt.cgi
Looking at mt.cgi didn’t tell me anything - that line in the source is the ‘run the blog’ line (i.e. all of MT was run in that line so it didn’t help at all… So then I started googling again. This time I came upon a lone sparse article which indicated that this was caused by the server process running out of memory when trying to access the Berkeley DB databases I was using to store entries. The article indicated that I should switch to MySQL which I did.. and BINGO.. worked like a charm and increased the speed of MT at the same time…
Anyway.. not super interesting but I wanted to post it should some one else start googling after seeing the same errors. Hope it helps someone.
Happy hacking
Lets give this a test
i think I may have FINALLY worked out the server error 500s I was getting every flippin time I tried to post… If this post goes without a hitch then it means that I did. And it means that the server was running out of memory trying to access my entries stored in a berkeley DB database. the solution was to cut it over to a MySQL database. I’ll fill in the rest later (need to go to bed) but it took a lot of poking around to finally figure out what the hell was going on.. uggg.. my kingdom for intuitive error reporting.. jeesh…
A worm
By the way, this bad boy seems to be floating around the net the last few days and its making me crazy… Its a windows worm so it doesn’t really do any damage to me but the mails that are carying it are really distracting cuz they’re the kind of thing someone not paying attention might trigger… So figured i’d send out a quick reminder to NEVER open an attachment from a source you don’t know… Should be obvious to people these days but based on the number of fucking messages i’ve gotten over the past two days with the worm attached it seems someone didn’t get the memo…
Surf safe.. wear a condom!
Tap tap tap
Is this thing on… testing 1 2 3
Guess so… Haven’t been on here in a while so figured I’d say hey… usual excuse (work and a zillion other things)… But this week Apple’s shut down so i’m being a complete lazy bum and hangin out doing not much… In fact today I’m headed over to Nickel Spa for a massage then I may head over to see Harry Potter on the IMAX… Hope so at least…
So anyway.. whats been keeping me busy?… Well Matt’s surprise birthday party was last weekend - that helped keep me occupied for one of the days last weekend (the previous day I was down in LA for the last day of a work trip…
Lets see.. what else… Oh yea.. I got a new toy at home…. one of these:
Ya know… a QUAD Processor G5 Macintosh with a 30″ display.. Oh my GOD… It is CRAZY cool.. I recommend them to everyone… REALLY FUCKING Fast and this Display is just absurdly big.. I love it… I hadn’t upgraded my mac at home in many years and it was time… And since I was so out dated I decided to go a little nuts…
Anyway… I’m off to my massage now.. but figured I’d check in quickly! Have a great day!
We share your Pain
Ok.. now this is pretty damn funny… Seems Microsoft has taken crash / error reporting to the next level… Look here for more details…
Another Cool Geek Tool
In doing my usual blog browsing over lunch I found another cool tool out there thanks to web graphics. Xyle scope is a pretty nifty tool for examining and understanding how Style Sheets fit together on blogs. It allows you to view a site and its associated style sheets and understand what styles apply to what elements. You simply point it at a site and it displays the site on the left side and the styles on the right side. It gives you a bunch of different views into the whole style sheet as well as, when in selection mode, understand what styles are being used to display a given element. MAN I could have used this a few weekends ago when I was dorking around with my styles…
