Category: Uncategorized

On LugRadio they sometimes talk about the role of a vendor/organization in creating Linux distributions. There’s Debian, Fedora, Mandrake, and others, and what sets them apart (to some degree) is what they include in their distribution.

Now, when it comes to Windows, Microsoft determines what goes into it, as it should be, but I think that while Microsoft is still suffering from the Not Invented Here syndrome, it’s nice to see Apple leave the Not Invented Here stuff in their past.

I know, there are plenty of things Apple sticks into Mac OS X that are invented at Apple, but those are often the good bits (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie) that help define the “Mac experience.”

The most recent delightful (to me) outside thingy being added to Mac OS X is SQLite:

Another feature of Tiger is SQLite support, which incorporates the SQLite library into the system to provide an embeddable, zero-configuration SQL database engine for applications.

Developers who link their applications to this library can access SQL databases without running a separate relational database management system (RDBMS) process. The library can also be used to create local database files and manage the tables and records in that file.

Apple chose to incorporate a nice little application/framework that could potentially make some developers lives much easier. This seems to be something that keeps happening. While Apple is incrementally making small improvements, Microsoft continues to tout it’s master plan for a Brave New World of Windows codenamed Longhorn, that will completely revolutionize how you use a computer.

If you want to revolutionize how you use a computer, try some little bits of open-source here and there, and eventually, you’ll be all “revolutionized” and stuff.

Improvement can come in little steps, not just great leaps…

(I think we should start calling Longhorn “Copland ][” eh?)

I don’t have one of those fancy wireless wifi networks at home, but I do have a hub, and a router, and 4 (plugged in) computers in the basement, and 2 ethernet cables running through the house. So due to the fact that we had a small flood, and were forced to rebuild the office, we figured it was a good time to label each ethernet cable, just like the big guys do.

So now each cable has a sticker on each end, and on each side of the sticker is a number, so that we can easily trace the ethernet cable from the computer, to the hub (or router) and figure out what is or isn’t working…

Of course we really should have matched the numbers to the respective port numbers of the hub (or router) but for now some simple lookup chart taped to the wall should do. (It works for our DNS, I mean, host files…)

We also wrangled the power cords, USB cables, audio connections, and on and on…

If there’s another flood, we’re sure to be even more organized.

My contribution to the web today is to let people who do not have a copy of Adobe InDesign know that if someone is sending you an InDesign tagged text file, tell them to choose Unicode in the Tags Export Options dialog box when they do the export, and not ASCII, unless you can somehow guarantee that the text going back into InDesign will really be ASCII, which seems unlikely in many cases… (See every discussion on Unicode in the last year for background…)

Since I found myself trying to explain such concepts to someone who had a copy of InDesign, but no knowledge whatsoever of charatcer sets and the like, I’m just hoping this might help someone else… …And if not, at least it’s here for my own use! ;)

I have (almost) nothing useful to contribute today…

So I present uptime via Atom, which will tell you how long my Mac has been on.

It’s like, totally experimental, and may change, or go away. Or something. I dunno. I was just looking for an excuse to use Perl, DBI, SQLite, and `uptime 2>&1`, while experimenting with Atom.

Atom is harder than RSS, and that’s alright. It kind of forces you to do things right. That is, if you consider the way Atom does things as the “right way” of doing things…

Anyway, I’ve been cranking out code, not words, so that’s all I’ve got. Later!

"Out with the old, in with the new!" Isn’t that how the saying goes?

I’ve been thinking about this, and trying to apply it to many different things. For instance, everyone is quite concerned with making computers/linux/the web/etc simple enough for Aunt Tillie to use. (See Eric Raymond, Jon Udell, and I’m sure others…) I admit this is a noble thing. I would like to see these things easier for Aunt Tillie to use, but part of me doesn’t want to worry about it… because time will take care of the problem.

I don’t mean to be rude, but face it, Aunt Tillie is old, and she won’t be around forever, sure she’s got a few good years left, but will she be compiling her own kernel anytime soon? Doubtful…

On the other hand, young people (aka The Youth) seem quite comfortable with technology. They happily use cell phones everyday without a second thought. They even pay to have custom ring tones. Ring tones? Crazy! Well, crazy to me, someone no longer a youth, who didn’t have a cell phone as a youth, and wouldn’t think of paying for a special ring for a phone. And that VCR, who can program those things? As a kid I did, but my mom sure didn’t. Of course today you’ve got a TiVo and it’s pretty darn simple to operate, it’s not even a matter or programming it, it’s more just a matter of using it.

Think about how much easier computers have become in the last 20 years, the last 15 years… Or using the internet? Remember getting on the internet just 10 years ago? Progress is being made, that’s for sure.

Who will benefit from this progress? The youth. My kids will… My oldest daughter is in grade school, and last year she showed one of the teachers how to use the digital camera they had at school. The kids coming out of college now (and in the coming years) use Linux, and they like it. This is one of the reasons I think things like open-source and Linux on the desktop will eventually really take off, because in the future, they won’t be new ideas, they’ll just be “the way it is” to some degree. (Another old saying comes to mind: “Unix is very user friendly, it’s just picky about who its friends are.”)

Kids are accepting of new technology because to them it’s not new, it’s just there. Wasn’t it always there? My kids have never seen a TV without a remote control. There’s a thing in the living room that plays movies, audio CD‘s, and shows photos on the TV. Making your own CD for the truck with your favorite songs from a library of thousands is no big deal.

Maybe it’s just me, and I’m getting old. People often ask where their flying cars and jetpacks are, but I think the answer is, they’re all around us. Sometimes they’re just hard to see through those old eyes with poor vision…