Supply Propaganda

« A rather eye catching window display in Katajanokka. I thought it might be the place to purchase the orbiting terraforming laser I've been wanting but, no, the Guerrilla Store looks like it's a fashion house for those wanting the "Che" look. »

There's a new timesink in town; Solarian II has been ported to OS X. I loved this game way back when. I've been wishing for a return of Lunatic Fringe and they even mention a desire to port LF on the Solarian page but are having a difficult time finding who owns the copyright these days. Surely someone must know who does as that game was more addictive than Maelstrom and deserves to be revived.

permalink Ω 29 September 2004, Helsinki

Taking the Y out of Wireless

« If God has gotten into the petroleum industry, it sure would explain a lot with current world news, now wouldn't it? No one seems to know what this place is as it's always deserted on the inside. »

Another perl person became the father of a daughter in the past few days [congratulations Ken :)] and this is another interesting and corroborating datapoint for a theory I have that I would like to see given some real research. My theory is this:

Men who use Apple iBooks/Powerbooks with wireless cards have a very high probability [>85%] of having female offspring that is far greater than the statistical average.

For the Americans who slept through basic biology classes in grade school, I should explain that the sperm determines the sex/gender, not the mother via excretions of hormones, nor are all embryos female at conception since as far as the genetics are concerned you are either XX or XY at the moment of fertilisation. I started half-jokingly suggesting this idea when a few perl guys had female babies but the trend has continued to the point where there may be something to it. One perl guy who uses an iBook without wireless has a male baby. One guy had a baby boy before he started using a wireless iBook and afterwards he had a baby girl. Coincidence? I'm really beginning to believe that it isn't.

Perhaps it's some sort of karma or divine revenge to give computer geeks who aren't entirely aware of what jerks, intentional or not, they are towards women, but science can't empirically prove that. It is entirely possible that the Y sperm are weaker [typically they are and this is partially why all the woman's eggs are X's, at least this was the theory back in the dark ages when I was in university] and more susceptible to the wireless card radiation which, when the laptop is on the lap, is sitting directly above the family jewels. Bullshit or an emerging pattern of plausible causation? Or maybe a secret conspiracy by women's organisations to breed more women? :) It would be a fascinating clinical study if a few medical people decided to take the theory and try to prove it right or wrong. I, of course, will continue to be very entertained by the baby girls ganging up on perl guys. :)

permalink Ω 1 September 2004, Helsinki

So many tiles, so little time

Ambrosia Software has released yet another beautifully crafted and utterly addictive game for OS X, Aki Mahjong. The design, background music and levels of difficulty are delightful. Hours upon hours of eye-crossing fun.

permalink Ω 26 March 2004, Helsinki

Photoshop CS(8.0)

Photoshop CS (8.0) is likely the best version upgrade in its history. There are many new tools and features but the ones I'm most happy with are those for the photographers. There is a new panorama stitch tool, a shadow/highlight tool to fix some exposure errors, a range of photographic filters you can apply, metadata tools(!), the RAW import filter, a web gallery export script that does a reasonable job, built-in automation scripts, a new colour replacement tool and likely a few I've not noticed yet. There is so much new stuff that I may just break down and take a look at the books and tutorials when they are published sometime in Janaury. It's well worth the upgrade price for PS8.

I have one minor complaint which is that ImageReady seems to desaturate the hell out of jpegs when saving them for the web and it also strips off the metadata. I've stopped using ImageReady for photos since saving them as regular jpegs preserves the metadata and doesn't desaturate them while still keeping most of the images under 100k. I don't know if this is a bug or a feature but when I compare the same photo saved with ImageReady in PS7 with one saved in PS8 the difference is very noticeable.

permalink Ω 10 December 2003, Helsinki

Think Blinky Lights

It's that time of year I usually fire up xsnow on my sparc console and stare at the swirling snow after drinking too much at the office holiday party. I don't have a sparc or office parties this year but xsnow is still around. I could run xsnow on OS X but I'd have to run X11 which I don't use for most things like Safari. There is Snow for OS X but these guys want $10 for it. I think they need to get some perspective as charging that much for a novelty utility that you use for one or two weeks a year on OS that only costs $120 is a bit sad in the shareware realm. If they changed santa into the grinch and the reindeer into the dog wearing antlers though I might reconsider.

Needing something festive I settled on a xmas lights which are lovely and inobtrusive with just the right amount of holiday flair. The author also has ThumbNailer which is a blazingly fast and simple app that will create thumbnails of a folder of images. And for the missing snow there is Snö which has both desktop snow and a snow screensaver. I may split the $10 the xsnow guys wanted and send each of these guys $5 for christmas. :)

permalink Ω 8 December 2003, Helsinki

Mac t-shirt

Somone needs to put this design on a black t-shirt with a luminescent ink so that it glows in the dark. Panic.com apparently made the blue/purple t-shirts for MacWorld earlier this year but the black/glow-in-the-dark combination would be cooler. It could work with the power button icon as well. I want one :)

permalink Ω 4 December 2003, Helsinki

The Best laptop bag

In a vast field of laptop bags I have finally found the perfect bag, Timbuk2's Commute 2.0. I've tried Tumi, Waterfield, Booq, Crumpler, TiBag, Brenthaven, Kensington, and a few others I can't remember at the moment as well as the Timbuk2 Commute 1.0 bag. The usual laptop bags are made for men so a reasonably tall and slender woman looks like little more than a pack animal when lugging one around which seems silly when your Powerbook is tiny and weighs 4 pounds.

The Timbuk2 Commute is the right size, has a detatchable and easy to adjust strap, a well padded sleeve for the laptop, plenty of pockets, rings and a strap for wearing it while riding a bike, a waterproof lining and other additional thoughtful improvements over the original design. It's lightweight, durable, practical and looks smart as well. You can also get an iPod case that attaches to the strap but it also has belt loops if you want to use it without the bag. :)

permalink Ω 27 November 2003, Helsinki

WireTap

I miss NPR, especially This American Life, quite a lot and I can enjoy listening to them via the web in realaudio format but the net gets chunky fairly often these days and I want a local copy to listen to when I wish. I bought a copy of David Sedaris' Santaland Diaries from Audible.com about a year ago and the only problem I have with it is that I have to give it my audible login information every time I want to listen to it which I didn't understand would be part of the deal at the outset. So, I figured I'd order a hard copy of it directly from NPR and it's almost comical to admit that they sent me a casette tape instead of a CD as I had expected. I don't even own a cheap-o walkman. *sigh*

I've been waiting for Griffin Technologies to hurry up and ship the Radioshark, a Tivo-like gadget for radio and system sound, so I could record it myself but I broke down and gave WireTap a try since I love Ambrosia's software and, best of all, it's free. It's a terrific no-frills audio recording application that will record any sound on your Mac and save it to .aiff format which can then be used in Quicktime or iTunes and converted to other formats. Thanks Ambrosia! :)

permalink Ω 19 November 2003, Helsinki

The Fool's Errand Returns!

A couple of years ago I got all sentimental about Clarus the Dogcow when I finally started switching over to OS X which made me think of 2 games of mine I adored way back in '87. I was really excited to find Dark Castle but heartbroken to not find anything at all about The Fool's Errand. Tonight, Pudge mentioned that not only is the original Fool's Errand available for free and will run on OS X in classic mode, but Cliff Johnson himself is writing a sequel, The Fool and His Money. I don't think many websites have ever gotten my money on a pre-order so quickly. The release date, sadly, appears to have been postponed until April Fool's Day, but I can spend the Winter playing the old puzzles a few times over for fun. They don't seem to make such fun, smart and clever games anymore so I'm really excited to see TFE back in action.

For nostalgia's sake, there are pictures of the original packaging, a hint book and solutions. There is also the original instruction manual [pdf]. Whee! :)

permalink Ω 20 October 2003, Helsinki

Swap!

There is a new successor to Tetris, Swap. It has instant classic written all over it as it is easy to play and maddeningly addictive. The best description I can come up with is that it is a combination of Connect Four from the 70s and Othello.

permalink Ω 30 September 2003, Helsinki

keyboard condom

The iSkin keyboard condom is one of the most functional accessories I've ever found for my laptop since my dog's hair always seems to find its way to my keyboard and this doodad not only keeps the hair off but also protects the screen from the usual markings. A good investment for the iBook/Powerbook owner.

permalink Ω 22 March 2003, Helsinki

Shake me

Geek Culture has created an amusement cum monitor pet for the apple geek in us all which even includes Moof in the icon garden; the angel snow globe.

permalink Ω 12 January 2003, Helsinki

Not actual size

It would appear that other companies are catching on to Apple's style mantra that technology doesn't have to be ugly and boring to be functional. I have no need for hubzilla but I want one anyway just because it looks so cool. It's a brilliant melding of form and function which gives me hope that other technology manufacturers will follow suit thus making the beige square box a thing of the past.

permalink Ω 18 September 2002, Helsinki

At Dot Mac Dot Com

After installing Jaguar on my iBook I went along with the suggestion to try using .Mac just to see what all the fuss about their charging for it was all about. It's not bad, really. I remembered that I had an old iTools account so I got a discount on the first year subscription which makes it even better. For $50 I get 100Mb on-line storage space, 15Mb mail queue which I can read from anywhere in the world via a web browser [ important since I may not have an internet connection at home for a few weeks when we arrive in Helsinki ], simple backup software and various other little things I doubt I'll use but...for $50 it's worth it to see if I'll use it enough to warrant resubscribing next year. GUI mail clients are just not my speed and it's a pity they can't embed mutt into the .mac mail web client :)

The web page creation tools are painful and I'll have to replace my experiment soon with something via BBEdit but I can see how someone who has no familiarity with the web might find them to be very useful getting started. The iCal features will also be very appealing.

Overall, Apple has done a very nice job with .Mac and I'm not really sure why people are making such a fuss about paying for the service especially since ISPs, what few are left after years of charging too little for their services, offer less for more money. For those who can make use of the services .Mac has to offer it's nearly a bargain.

permalink Ω 2 September 2002, Helsinki

Sie Wundermoosen

Font Checker is essential software for the OS X unicode hacker. It's all about the Dutch moose from Maine :)

permalink Ω 7 April 2002, Helsinki

Moof!

Yea, and if It will be done, even in spite,
Then lend Thine hand to the masses,
Lest It be done incorrectly or woefully worse
By those not versed in the ways of the Dogcow.

Now that I'm booting into OS X more often than OS 9 I've begun to notice little differences in getting around the system as well as noting that the 12.1" screen that was fine in OS 9 is a wee bit small in OS X.

I miss Clarus the Dogcow though. Designed by the legendary Susan Kare, whose work is on nearly every computer in the world, the dogcow has a loyal following and there are quite a few who just cannot abide the loss of Clarus in OS X. One guy hacked his iBook and there is a ClarusX hack. Moof! t-shirts are still available and you can add Cairo to your typeface collection too. Clarus makes me wistful for the days of my old SE/30, 2400 baud modem, Fool's Errand and Microphone pro but I have my own DogCow to moooofff! for me. :)

permalink Ω 18 March 2002, Helsinki

Ambrosia Arcade

I am part of the arcade game generation and now I am completely and utterly addicted to Maelstrom [ Asteroids ], Apeiron [ Centipede ] and Swoop [ Galaga ]. I am afraid to download Deimos Rising but my network connection is sucking today so I have been saved :). Ambrosia Software has been around for a long time and have created such indispensible utilities like SnapzPro for Macinstosh users. I love Ambrosia Software and I hope they will never release an Atari Tempest clone lest I be lost in a dark room for several months.

permalink Ω 13 January 2002, Helsinki

Get a hammer, pound your genitalia

Tomorrow is the big day when Steve Jobs will announce something that, in the wake of all the hype, will be horribly disappointing. At least a few people like the Joy of Tech and another are having a blast making fun of the inevitably retarded earth shattering event that Apple is about to announce. I'd like to see the return of the Newton but the rumours about iPhoto software and a new LCD version of the iMac are probably more realistic. Exciting? Maybe, but certainly not worthy of all this hype. Well, we will know in about 16 hours.

permalink Ω 6 January 2002, Helsinki

Network Music for xmas

I generally watch the daily uploads on CPAN with vague interest, occasionally noticing interesting ones like Net::Peep the 'network auralizer'. Well, I think the guy at stimpsoft is either a browser of CPAN or somehow it has become a meme as he just released skwonk [ probably a tribute to Squonk ] an application for the Mac that will take boring old network traffic packets and turn them into music. I'd hate to hear what it would do with an academic network backbone...hmm...I wonder what porn sounds like :)

permalink Ω 18 December 2001, Helsinki

Once you go Mac, you never go back

This afternoon I was reading the Mac section on the ORA website and noticed a column mentioning how the number of iBooks and Ti Books at ORA conferences has significantly increased in the past year. The author notes that while most users have OS X at the conferences that he, a long-time mac user, sees a much lower percentage using OS X among long-time users of MacOS...and I find this to be an astute observation and distinction. I have OS X on an iMac but for my iBook, I am still happy with OS 9 since I have it configured the way I want and am not eager to upgrade all of my software. Jarkko, on the other hand, has much less of an investment in the platform and is running OS X without much fuss. I'll probably migrate late next year or when I'm forced to, whichever comes first.

It's nice to see Apple really making a push for the PC market with more competitive prices, products and an OS that really is pretty to look at and easy to operate. I think anyone can appreciate having a laptop that just works reliably. In addition to the design the new lower prices are a big driving force in Apple's new popularity since any mac user from the last 15 years can tell you that we always paid far more than our PC couterparts.

I remember when Pudge and I and a few other people brought our Airports to YAPC and TPC to get wireless working at the conferences which seems to be SOP now days. Apple really is tops in the wireless arena. You plug it in. It works. No shit. So, lower prices, more software, awesome design and trivial wireless networking/media applications are making Apple very popular again. I'm not sure, since OS X is still so new, if the Aqua/Darwin OS is that much of a factor since, if you want a Unix OS on your iBook you could run NetBSD which is a lot more pragmatic though without the Mac apps.

Recently, I caved and bought an iPod after years of stubbornly refusing to use my mac as my stereo. The box it came in was a work of industrial art to behold let alone the iPod itself. I plugged it into the iBook and 5 minutes later I had a fist full of music. I don't know if any other mp3 players are this beautiful or this easy to use but I couldn't be happier. Now I just need to buy a 200+GB firewire disk so I can rip all the music to mp3s to have an on-line catalogue of music to listen to and tinker with a few of the mp3 perl modules. Just don't ask Jarkko about his CD jewel cases.....:)

permalink Ω 27 November 2001, Helsinki

Holy Cosmic Leonids, Batman!

I wanted to stay awake for the Leonid meteor shower early this morning but I just couldn't do it after mowing, mulching, a hoovering the leaves from the lawn yesterday. It was less spectacular than the predicted 4000 an hour but a few intrepid souls stayed up and took some nice photos of the event. I have Starry Night Pro for the Mac which is the neatest software if you are into astronomy at all. The same company also recently released Deep Space Explorer which looks just as interesting and as well done as Starry Night.

permalink Ω 18 November 2001, Helsinki

The Final Upgrade

Today during lunch I decided to clean the fishtank on my desk since I needed something mindless to do after a long trying week. I have 3 orange mickey mouse platysnamed sed, awk and cat. I find that the fish are good company as they are often peering out of the tank at me, especially when I'm eating my lunch or listening to music. I think we bonded when I found they liked The Style Council and Paul Weller unlike my top-40 coworkers.

The funny thing about the Mac Aquarium though is that it draws people into my cube as they ask about the fish, their names, what they eat, what kind are they, etc. Even today when I was cleaning the tank, people would stop and ask where the fish were, how often I have to clean the tank, and comment on how relaxing the fish must be.

A while back I bought an original Mac Plus keyboard from someone on eBay to add a more authentic touch and have successfully tricked a few people into thinking I had one heck of a realistic screensaver on the Mac :) I often miss the flying toasters, the fishtank and lunatic fringe game [ which continues to inspire even now ] screensavers of After Dark and even the original Pyro! It is a pity that the age of the screensaver is gone leaving nothing quite as exciting in its wake. I think the MacAquarium is a lovely tribute to such an underappreciated part of the history of personal computing. I think it would be cool to research the history and development of the screensaver and After Dark....

I was thinking, too, that maybe geek guys who are looking for a way to talk to women might consider getting a MacAquarium for their cube to have some late night company on maint windows/coding jags and to lure the female of the species into their cube. There is even an iMac model available now. :)

permalink Ω 10 November 2001, Helsinki

HTML, how do I despise thee?

I really despise HTML. Really, really, really despise it. HTML rarely, even when it is fully 'valid', looks the same in two different browsers unless all it has is a tagset for plain text. I become obsessive and cranky when dealing with making HTML valid and look the way it should. It's a good thing that I am not a 'webdev' as I'd never leave my office and start shouting things at my computer much to the dismay of others in the office.

So, I don't know what possessed me this week...perhaps it was the millionth complaint about sucky horrible icky HTML but armed with BBEdit and a wee bit of patience, I coerced the search.cpan.org HTML into 4.01 Transitional compliance. Now people will have to find something else to complain about. :)

BBEdit is the best thing since baked bread and they even have support for Perl. I bought a second copy this week for my iMac and they wrote me back saying that I already have a copy and didn't I just want an upgrade. I love these people as when was the last time any company did that for you?

permalink Ω 9 November 2001, Helsinki

Buy a piece of history....:)

Jarkko submitted to iBook envy and is now autioning his Powerbook on eBay. Most of Perl 5.8 development was done on this powerbook. You know you want it :)

permalink Ω 14 October 2001, Helsinki

Time to buy RAM

It seems outrageous and terribly self-indulgent to have a Gigabyte of RAM in an iMac but for just a little over $100 you could do the same. I remember when I bought a few megabytes for my SE/30 and thinking it cost almost as much as my car.

permalink Ω 8 October 2001, Helsinki

Cool software of the day

Stimpsoft has a number of freeware titles that I have started to use and fallen in love with. Son of Weather Grok is a utility I've used for a few years for my up-to-date weather obsession. Now, I've fallen in love with the carbonized smell-o-mints periodic table of the elements. Besides offering a very pretty and informative program, if you turn on the sound and then run your mouse over the tiles you can make your own funky kind of music :) I didn't need a t-shirt from his store but finally decided to send him a few bucks anyway just because I hope he keeps on making cool stuff. I even used his Bob Dobbs icon with iControl for my HD icon. I feel better now :)

permalink Ω 8 October 2001, Helsinki