Not Impressed With Jaguar
Continuing where I left off with the Jaguar Mac OS X upgrade on Wednesday night...

"Referred to by its code name, Jaguar, Mac OS X v10.2 is a different breed of operating system. Jaguar combines the rock-solid reliability of UNIX with the ease of use of Macintosh. " - Apple web site

Marketing malarkey. Maybe the UNIX 'under the covers' is reliable, but certainly not the goofy GUI they slapped on top.

I decided to do this upgrade just as any novice would. Apple claims this is the operating system "for the rest of us" so I try taking them at their word. Mistake. "The rest of us" are screwed.

This PowerBook has used a WaveLAN/Lucent/Orinoco/Agere and now Proxim wireless network card flawlessly for about 2 years. As mentioned earlier, I upgraded from OS 9.0 to 9.2 as required by Jaguar. Wireless card still works great. Upgrade to OS X. Card not recognized. Come on now... the Orinoco wireless card is just about the most popular and reliable wireless NIC on the planet. Apple does not support it under OS X. Tech support says they have no intention to do so. They claim you have to throw it away and go spend $100 on an Apple Airport card, which is.... a modified and re-branded Orinoco card. This is enough to make you switch right back to Windoze. Apple has gotten so arrogant they should be called Applesoft.

After I stopped sputtering (again, I'm trying to imagine myself as a typical novice user experiencing all of this) I realized that all the heavy-duty Apple Orinoco users would never stand for this crap, so off to Google I go. Thank God for the open source community. The driver at wirelessdriver.sourceforge.net is a beta, but claims to work.

But not for me. By now, it is 2:30 a.m. on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day. Time for bed.
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Two days pass. Thanksgiving with friends was fun. A separate short post will appear regarding the event.
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Now it is Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. I decide to use the PowerBook with CAT 5 cable for now, while I deal with other problems that started after the OS X upgrade.

The CD-ROM drive on this PowerBook, which has never been a problem before, would fail to respond at least once every half-hour while reading the 'Getting Started' CD in the web browser. If you assume the drive or CD media were suddenly bad, you would think the oh-so-powerful OS X would allow you to eject the media when it started acting up. Nooooo.

OK. Assume the bad drive or media has so pissed off the CD subsystem that it can't process an eject command. You should be able to at least shut down the system. Noooo. You get a message saying the system could not shut down because Internet Explorer refuses to terminate. Oh... the big bad browser is too much for the goofy GUI to close. The error dialog box suggests the user do a Force Quit on Explorer and then try to shut down the system.

Puhleeeze. You want me to go do that for you? I thought that was your job! Where is that vaunted "ease of use" that Apple talks about? Why doesn't the operating system do a Force Quit on a stalled application when I command the system to shut down? How easy is your GUI when *I* have to do the Force Quit for you before you can shut down?

OK. Take a deep breath. UNIX has been around a thousand years, so we know it can kill anything if you tell it to shut down. It's just the eye candy OS X Jaguar GUI acting stupid. I perform the Force Quit and Explorer finally closes. Now tell the system to shut down again. All icons disappear from desktop but desktop background is still there; system still running. Wait 5 minutes. Worthless colorful GUI still running. Lean on power switch. That it understands.

"Referred to by its code name, Jaguar, Mac OS X v10.2 is a different breed of operating system. Jaguar combines the rock-solid reliability of UNIX with the ease of use of Macintosh. " - Apple web site

OK. Maybe not fair to take potshots at OS X 10.2 GUI when 10.2.2 update available. Act like novice user and tell system to download updates. Six updates to download, will take over an hour using 125K ISDN line. Wander through the room about every 10 minutes to see how it is going. Sometimes have to flick the touchpad to unblank the screen. (Some of you already know what is coming. Don't shout out the answer and spoil it for the rest of the newbies.) After an hour, on another pass through the room, notice that power light is blinking. Odd. Figure that download must have finally finished and that system, after installing updates, and was waiting for me to reboot.

Nooooo. Wake up system and find that download manager is claiming fatal error. Looks like the system decided to go to sleep in the middle of downloading updates. A novice would not know to change the sleep settings to NEVER sleep, so I left them at their defaults.  OK. No harm done. Just tell system to go get remaining downloads, since I knew it already retrieved all updates except the last one. Start update process. Discover that none of the updates were kept. Did I hear someone say "ease of use"? Worthless stupid Jaguar OS X Applesoft GUI.

Set sleep setting to NEVER sleep. Why is this "easy to use" GUI too stupid to realize that the system is not idle while it is downloading. Start one-hour download again. Install all updates. Eye-candy GUI still unable to shut down system with stalled application when asked, requiring me to use power switch.

Yes, this is a supported model of PowerBook for running OS X. Yes, the expansion memory is Apple brand.

"Referred to by its code name, Jaguar, Mac OS X v10.2 is a different breed of operating system. Jaguar combines the rock-solid reliability of UNIX with the ease of use of Macintosh. " - Apple web site

Now it is Friday evening and my son Bryan comes to visit. He knows UNIX and was able to peek under Apple's skirt to see 'whazzup' with the wireless network card. UNIX sees data moving over the wireless link, but it claims it can't read the encryption.

Check the encryption key several times. Matches fine. Download a WEP encryption key generator and re-gen the hex key from our existing network passphrase. Enter the hex values instead of the passphrase. No dice. After other fruitless attempts, we turn off encryption. Bingo, instant packet passing. The open source driver is working fine. Re-enter the same encryption key again. Dead.

This encryption key has worked fine on all four wireless cards with several flavors of Windoze and Mac OS 9, but it refuses to work with the open source driver and OS X. It finally occurs to us to try a completely different encryption key. Poof! Problem gone! OS X now passes encrypted wireless traffic over the Orinoco card just fine. Reprogram the other three cards with the new key and they work fine, as they always did.

Watch the Muppet Special on TV. Play with Linux 8, also installed in last few days, and a post for another day. Edit this post and it is now after 2:00 a.m. Saturday morning. Time for sleep. 

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Jaguar Virgin
I just upgraded Maria's PowerBook G3 from OS 9.0 to OS 9.2 and am now loading Jaguar 10.2. No problems yet. Maybe it was not necessary to hold my breath for the last 1.5 hours. After all, this isn't a Microsoft upgrade... 

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Need More Software
I really need to try this, along with all the other evaluation software I've downloaded recently. There is never enough play time.

Cool ... Good "Buzz" on ActiveWords.

Cool ... Good "Buzz" on ActiveWords

I've mentioned ActiveWords before, a very cool and useful utility, which is available for Windows.  Now Paul Andrews has given it a thumbs up too.  Recommended.  [ Go ][The FuzzyBlog!]

 

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More Storm Work
More curb and driveway patching. That's all I could handle, being mostly too sore to move. Wimp. 

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Just Your Basic Kitchen Fire
No big deal, just a minor flare-up in the oven. Not as exciting as it sounds. Just add water, and then back to cooking. A bit hard to see through the billowing smoke, but gin and tonic tastes better with a hickory-smoked flavor. The dog was pretty upset. A Chihuahua shivering in fear is a pitiful sight. Funny, but pitiful. 

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New Rubber Delay
Ordered 4 new tires today, trying Costco for the first time. The 50-series rubber for a Celica GTS isn't a normal stock item. Placed order, for installation the day after Thanksgiving. Not cheap. The Toyota factory-original tires only lasted 30,000 miles. 

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Batten Down More Hatches
Spent about 5 hours preparing for the next storm. Cleaned debris off roof, emptied gutters, trimmed branches near house, removed debris from decks and driveway, cleaned scoop drain next to driveway again, inspected concrete. Maria worked at the college all day. This evening, we watched Star Wars Episode II, Attack Of The Clones on DVD. We never saw it in the theater originally. Nice fire in the fireplace. Too sore to move.

Tomorrow I need 4 new tires so I can drive to work instead of water slide to work during the next rain. 

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Probability and Statistics 102
There is a 100% probability that one pair of my regular visitors will read 'Probability and Statistics 101' below and cringe at the language. They don't use Microsoft software day-in and day-out, as I do. If they did, they would brush up on their profanity. 

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Probability and Statistics 101
Scenario: I'm using my computer. I suddenly utter the words 'worthless piece of shit' at a louder-than-conversational volume. Probability theory dictates that the word 'fucking' and the word 'Microsoft' will be among the next 6 words out of my mouth.

Specifics: Does it really matter? For years, they've claimed that the O/S has become more robust; isolating applications from O/S functions to prevent the system from crashing. Repeat after me, fellow campers. What do we find in the barn? Horse shit.

Yes, I'm using the latest updates. I applied the most recent set from Windows 2000 'automatic update' yesterday. 

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Waaaay Behind
I'm falling waaaaay behind with personal updates, taking shots from several quarters. 

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More Fun With Long-Range WiFi
You don't have to eat all the Pringles this time...

More on WiFi Antennas. Aaron Mefford sent me a couple of interesting links related to WiFi can antennas.  The first has a number of useful links, incluing places to buy N-type connectors, etc. along with instructions for building and using the antennas.  It even has a little javascript application that calculates key dimension for parts depening on the diameter of the can you use.  The second, called Cantenna is a commercial product that you can buy for $19.95.  Pretty good when you consider most commercial antennas with a 12dB gain cost around $150.  [Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]

 

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Does Your Writing Suck?
A nice list of tips to improve your writing.

Gar's Tips on Sucks-Less Writing. My pal Gareth Branwyn was and is a great mentor to me. When I started bOING bOING (the print zine) in the late 1980s, he helped me with my writing immensely. Now he has posted a wonderful tip sheet at Street Tech, called "Gar's Tips on Sucks-Less Writing." Thanks for sharing your secrets, Gar!

Throw out the First Waffle
One of the first things I noticed when I began getting my work published, was how often my introductory paragraphs were unceremoniously hacked into the trash by miserly editors. I once heard the phrase "throwing out the first waffle" used to describe divorce in a first marriage. I've come to think of these intro paragraphs as the first waffle(s) of writing. Writers, especially newbies, often waste this first graph (or two or three) setting up their subject, gobbling up precious column inches, awkwardly warming up to their subject. When you're done with your initial draft, take a hard, dispassionate look at the first few graphs. See if you can slice 'em off. Be harsh.

Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]

 

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A Quiet Evening
Our neighbor mounted our mailboxes on the new posts today. My wife drove from Santa Cruz to Sacramento and back today in order to attend a 5-hour meeting. After she went to bed, I stumbled across a small stash of MP3s I converted over 2 years ago. Spent over an hour listening to old Phil Ochs recordings. Hearing them again, it was hard to believe I graduated from college over 25 years ago. 

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Need a comic blog fix?

New Comics Journal Blog: Journalista. Dirk Deppey of Fantagraphics (the world's greatest comic book publisher) has started a blog about comic books. It's excellent. Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]

 

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Real World Klog Pilot

Klogging pilot recap.. Rick Klau masterfully wrote up his firm's pilot of Radio UserLand. Valuable lessons on plannng, deploying, and socializing a klogging tool. [a klog apart]

 

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The Retro-Meister
Something I never expected: as of this morning, Redwood Asylum is still #1 on Google results for 'retro pr0n'. Strange, but true. 

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The Right Advice, At The Right Time
I don't remember where I came across this pithy saying recently:
"If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging."

I do recall that it was about two weeks ago. Shortly after, I found myself in a hole due to "dropping the ball" with a powerful government attorney who needed my assistance with a criminal case, unrelated to the company where I work. I remembered this phrase, and immediately stopped digging. The details can't be discussed; this is just a reminder to the reader that the right advice, at the right time, can make life much simpler.

Stop digging. 

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Fun With The Mail Carrier
Our neighbor is relocating our mailboxes. Currently, the boxes are at the end of our street, over 150 feet from our homes. Our neighbor dug two postholes, poured concrete, and mounted the posts yesterday. His new post is located at the end of his driveway, ours is at the end of our front walkway. Today he trimmed both posts to proper height.

For the hopelessly anal among you... yes, this was cleared ahead of time with both the local postmaster and the mail carrier. 

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World Awaits Purchase Of Clue By Music Industry
Before they can make a positive change, the music industry must first recognize that they are the problem, not their customers. Many companies cling to failing business models, lacking the flexibility to improve their situation. This is obviously true in many industries, not just this one.

"industry has squandered the faith of its artists and its customers". Fox News|Views:  Music Fans Must Rebel Against Greedy Record Industry  [Rodent Regatta] [jenett.radio]

 

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Progress in MP3 Hardware
Interesting things happening in the field of handheld MP3 players/recorders.

The Nueros 20 Gb HD looks like the second act of the RIAA's nightmare scenario.

The Neuros can broadcast songs wirelessly to your stereo. It can record and identify songs from the FM radio. With automatic synchronization all your downloads, playlist changes, and requests from your PC library will be automatically executed.

The coup de gras for this is highspeed wireless sharing between handheld drives.  A simple user preference:  share or private.  Auto-recognition of shared drives within the wireless radius of the handheld.  The ability to select, connect, and download playlists, music, movies, etc at high speed. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

 

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Another Tidbit From Column Two

Guerrilla knowledge management. I've just become aware of a website created by Greg Searle devoted to Guerrilla Knowledge Management. This consists of a weblog, articles and other resources around growing the use of Communities of Practice. There's a fair bit of good stuff... [Column Two]

 

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Keep Your Hands Off My DVD

Fast-forwarding is not a crime!. Great LA Times editorial by Ernest "Lawmeme" Miller about the baseless ire expressed by movie directors over software that lets users circulate edit lists that insert or skip through material during playback, so that educators can produce virtual "highlight reels" with their own voice-over, or parents can generate and circulate kid-friendly versions of Hollywood movies.

When you buy a book you can highlight portions or rearrange pages. A friend can recommend that you rip out the boring chapters and read only the climax, and neither the author nor the publisher has a right to stop you. Why should movies on DVD be any different?

When a DVD is legitimately purchased or rented, consumers should have the right to play it with software that enhances their personal viewing experience. Parents should have the right to skip a second or two of gratuitous nudity in an otherwise family-friendly film. Film buffs should have the right to watch a film with an alternative audio commentary by an expert such as Roger Ebert, without permanently altering the disc.

Ultimately, the issue is one of control. Technology has given consumers the ability to control how they watch movies in their homes, and the DGA wants to take that control away by banning the technology. Even if you don't have kids, aren't much of a film buff or love graphic movies, do you really want Hollywood dictating how you view DVDs in your own home?

Link Discuss (Thanks, Ernest!) [Boing Boing Blog]

 

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More Preparation For Mountain Winter
Very heavy rain at times most of Thursday and Friday. No rain Saturday, allowing me to patch more driveway cracks. Big chore for the day was spreading 400 pounds of quick-setting concrete around two sections of the house foundation. Maria had to work all day Saturday, so I played concrete-man by myself. Due to steep slippery slope on one side of house, moved the bags one at a time in an old children's wagon. Tight quarters forced me to spread most of the first 250 pounds one small scoop at a time. Very sore today, but glad I did it, as it is now raining again. I may spread more concrete next weekend, after I see how things develop.

By the end of the day, Maria and I were both exhausted. During dinner, we watched the DVD of the 2002 movie Showtime with Robert De Niro, Eddie Murphy, and Rene Russo. The Internet Movie Database summary: "A spoof of buddy cop movies where two very different cops are forced to team up on a new reality based T.V. cop show."

Later in the evening we saw the 1996 movie Chain Reaction on the AMC channel, starring Keanu Reeves, Morgan Freeman, and Rachel Weisz. The IMDB summary: "Two researchers in a green alternative energy project are put on the run when they are framed for murder and treason." 

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Do You Want Fries With That?
Can these things get any cheaper?

Budget PC Roundup. CNET roundup of budget PCs. Even cheapo desktops are remarkably powerful these days when you think about it. Read... [Gizmodo]

 

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Fortune's Christmas Catalog

Fortune's Fall Technology Guide. Fortune's Fall Technology Guide, which has a good summary of what's hot in gadgets this season, is up. Read... [Gizmodo]

 

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Very Cool Photos. Pun Obviously Intended.
The photo hits just keep on coming...

Pix from the south pole. Amazing gallery of hundreds of photos from the US Antarctic Program. Link Discuss (Thanks, KerLone!)
[Boing Boing Blog]

 

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Say Cheese
Some of you will appreciate this, others will not. Life goes on...

Vintage cheesecake: Playboy centerfold time machine.. Vive la retro pr0n. This super-cool site offers a vast, searchable digital image archive of Playboy centerfolds dating as far back as 1954. Search by month/year. Above: the posterior portion of the centerfold for the month and year in which I was born.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Neil!)
[Boing Boing Blog]

 

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Got Cartoons?

Big Cartoon Database. The Big Cartoon Database is like an Internet Music Movie (Thanks, Jeffery!) Database for toons. Whee! Zonk! Blammo! Link Discuss (via Memepool) [Boing Boing Blog]

 

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Treasures From The Past

The good old days of radio....

Who knows the evil that lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows. Radio serials and dramas take me back to driving along with my grandfather, listening to tapes he made of his favorite programs growing up. It's still a nice way to wile away some time. [MetaFilter] [Ye Olde Phart]

 

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Batten Down The Hatches
Here we go again. Winter in the mountains ain't my favorite season. Some of you know why.

First big rain of the season expected tonight. Cleaned driveway and scoop drain last night. Covered both woodpiles with tarps. Patched driveway cracks tonight. Neighbor cleaned street to reduce debris flowing into our cul-de-sac storm drains. He also laid blacktop patch in several areas. Time to stockpile gasoline for the generator. 

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Got Search?

Finding the Perfect Search Results Page [The Virtual Acquisition Shelf and News Desk]

 

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Got Pringles?
Non-fat entertainment <grin>

Pringles Can Antennas for WiFi. John Patrick has a list of links to information on making a WiFi antenna from a Pringles can.  I've been meaning to do this for a while and see what kind of range you can really get.  I haven't made an antenna (stringing wire for my FM radio in the living room probably doesn't count) since I made a radio telescope in high school from plans I found in Popular Science Magazine.  [Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]

 

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Phrase Finder

Phrase finder.  Nice.  Interesting phrases:

In the offing.

Cold shoulder.

Dog days.

Make no bones about it.

Out of sorts. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

 

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One More For The Road

Copyright is no doubt crucial to innovation and growth, but it's a protection that can be taken too far. Let's end the copyright race, says Lawrence Lessig....

Financial Times [Ye Olde Phart]

 

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Another Nail?
Another nail in the coffin or continued hope for the future?

Freenet Project 0.5. Here is an interesting concept; a peer-to-peer publishing system, where anyone can publish anonymously and all of the content is hosted by everyone involved. Content is distributed and cached based on its popularity. However, the system is dynamic, so content that does not get called often enough eventually gets removed.... [Lockergnome's Bits and Bytes]

 

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An Uncertain Future
Intellectual property is a changing landscape, as always. Those who count on a static playing field have not been paying attention.

Digital property - more lawyers should read stuff like this, especially lawyers who deal with intellectual property.  I suppose it is arrogance to say that a Copernican revolution is taking place. Let's just leave it at "we don't know how it will turn out." It doesn't matter where we are, especially if things are changing?  Where are we going? That's the question to ask. But don't ask someone who has a vested interest in a map that might become obsolete.

[ernie/the/attorney]

 

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Cute blank CDs

Retro vinyl chic CD blanks. Verbatim's new CD-R blanks looks like old 45s. Link Discuss (Thanks, Chas!)
[Boing Boing Blog]

 

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Find: Not Ready
I disagree with John. I only needed to test Find for about 20 minutes to dislike it enough to quickly uninstall it. Bear in mind, this is a beta product, and should improve with age.

1. Like: Very fast. 10 points for Find.
2. Dislike: Like other search products that claim to index email, it does not do so in any useful way for laptop users. A useful product must index Outlook OST files, allowing you to search and access files off-line. A useful product must index and search multiple Outlook PST files simultaneously. Find does not. During installation, working off-line with all OST and PST files mounted, I asked Find to index my email. It claimed it could not open the storage file. 0 points for Find.
3. Dislike: After installing and testing the basic file search feature, I told Find to try indexing my mail again. It claimed it must restart itself in order to index again. It appeared to shut itself down, but would not restart, claiming it could not restart until a prior running copy ended. I even rebooted the system. No luck. Find would not index email, and kept starting up full-screen every time I rebooted the system, though the preferences had not been set for this. 2 points for Find basic file search feature.
4. Dislike: For file search, Find claims to sort the retrieved file list by clicking on the column headings. Doing a simple ascending sort by file date does not put the files in order. It lists the oldest file first, but all other files are not in date order. Switching to a descending order does not even put the newest file first and, again, the rest of the files are not in date order. 0 points for basic 'list sort' functionality.
5. Dislike: No sense making a huge laundry list here. This is, after all, just a beta release. Just one more item: getting rid of the beta product.
6. Dislike: The uninstall routine does a very poor job. After uninstalling, a dialog box says the remaining files will be uninstalled when you restart Windows. So... I restarted Windows. The Find directory is still there, with about 20 files. All the registry entries are still there. I don't consider that "uninstalled", do you? 1 point for at least deleting some files and shortcuts.

I want a search product that works with Outlook email. Something that really works, both on-line and off-line, with OST files and multiple PST files simultaneously. I've tried several; none were worth the effort.

Innovation in search.  I have been using Find search on my desktop (beta) for a couple of weeks.  Here is what I like about it:

1. It's extremely fast.  Subsecond performance for everything.
2. It provides you with a preview pane so you don't have to leave the search results to get to the result.  This speeds up my search workflow.
3. It combines external search (pick a search engine) with desktop search (all files, including e-mail).

Here is what I don't like about it:

1. It doesn't let me restrict my search to specific file types.
2. The interface is still a little rough (too busy). 
3. I would also like to be able to index sites that interest me. 

A little more on that last point.  I know that this feature would quickly get out of hand from a scalability standpoint, but it would enable me to compensate for the gaps in the indexes at the major search engines (for the site's that I like). [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

 

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The Call Of The Jaguar

Software aims to ease Mac switch. Apple Computer has a new weapon in its campaign to woo PC users: a $59 piece of software that makes the switch to Macintosh easier. [CNET News.com]

 

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