28 March 2006, early evening
Flocking Ducks, an online address book, is one of those online services that I really wanted to work. The website itself is excellent; it has a solid design, and is very easy to use. I think H&H Labs online address book have done a really great job with the program. Unfortunately, for the service to be worthwhile, more of my friends need to be using it as well. The idea is simple enough; everyone keeps their own info up-to-date. Everyone else just subscribes to your up-to-date information. To this date, Ju-lian is the only person I know who has their info up on Flocking Ducks. I suspect I am the only person Ju-Lian knows with their info up on the site. The problem with sites like this is that they require a large user-base before they are interesting.
Update: I know have 4 more contacts in my address book. One problem i’ve noticed is the vCards Flocking Ducks spits out aren’t compatible with Apple’s Address Book application.
[1] Television
27 March 2006, late evening
1 episode down, 6 more to go. I had fallen behind in Lost recently. There was a period of time when downloading files through Bit Torrent was incredibly slow, and because of this I had stopped downloading the show. Today, I queued up all the episodes I was missing and headed off to work. I just finished watching episode 10, which provides some of the back story for Mr. Echo. Damn. This show never lets up.
Update: Episode 10: Damn. Update: Episode 11: Damn. Update: Episode 12: Damn. Update: Episode 13: Damn. Sawyer you dirt-dog. Update: Episode 14: Damn. Update: Episode 15: Damn. The fact that the episode was in high-res was a nice bonus as well. This seems like a pretty pivotal episode. I wonder what they’ll bust out in Episode 16. Update: Episode 16: Damn.
It seems like the show is taking a more sinister turn in the later half of the series. Several of the characters are far more dark now than at the beginning. There is nothing more awesome then binging on Lost.
Television
27 March 2006, lunch time
Shima and I started watching Lagaan this weekend. This would have been the second time I’ve seen the film. With a running time of just under 4 hours, Lagaan is long even for a Bollywood film. Since the film is about cricket the running time seems appropriate. We must have got about 2 hours into the film before the DVD died. I tried playing the DVD on every single DVD player in my house (there are 4 in all, not counting the PS2) and none of them would play past chapter 29. It is frustrating investing 2 hours of your life into a movie and not be able to see how it ends. I’ll need to track down another copy of the film so Shima can see the entire film. When we stopped watching, the cricket team that was to take on the British was still incomplete. Lagaan is a very enjoyable movie to watch. It is very much a Bollywood film, with its love triangles, over-the-top villains, and at times campy dialog. Still, I think it’s an example of the sort of quality film you can make while still in many ways conforming to the gold-standard of Bollywood film making. The fact the movie is about cricket is a big plus.
The official Lagaan web site.
[1] Movies
23 March 2006, lunch time
The screen on my iMac is absolutely gorgeous. Beyond being huge, it’s also really bright. It’s nice watching movies or editing photos on such a screen. However, typing away while staring at this incredibly bright screen for more than an hour or two will really wear your eyes down. I’ve taken to turning the brightness on the monitor all the way down (it’s that bright). Before yesterday, I was doing this by opening the display preferences and fiddling with the brightness slider. On my iBook, the function keys actually performed real functions, and two of the keys were assigned to turn the brightness up and down. The lack of a keyboard shortcut on my iMac was getting to be a nuisance, so I decided to see if I could figure one out. After a very brief search on Google, I discovered that F14 and F15 turn the brightness up and down on any Mac. You can try it at home too.
[7] Intel iMac
22 March 2006, early afternoon
I am the proud owner of OmniOutliner. I didn’t go out and buy it mind you, it came with my mac, but since I have it, I feel I should make good use of it. OmniOutliner is another one of those applications I didn’t really get when I first used it. It is essentially the mother of all to-do list programs. That might not sound like much, but there are plenty of things you can do with a good list making program. Right now, I don’t do anything flashy with OmniOutliner. I use it to keep track of my spending, and that is about it; I might start making shopping lists with the program as well. A lot of getting things done nuts love the program, as evidenced by its constant mention over at 43Folders. (The 43Folders Wiki has a good OmniOutliner section.) If you own OmniOutliner, you might want to grab these icons made by Mike Matas. The iMac also came with Comic Life and Quicken, but I haven’t used either much at all.
[1] Intel iMac
21 March 2006, terribly early in the morning
I wrote the previous entry on Serenity from within TextMate. TextMate has this feature which lets you edit text from any textbox in a Cocoa application as if it were just some document on your computer. When you save the text and close the TextMate window, you get sent back to the original application, and your text is inside the textbox you were editing. When it works, it’s pretty cool. However, my first attempt to use the service didn’t go so smoothly. I lost my first post on Serenity because the tab I was editing was no longer “in focus”. I hoped on IRC to see if anyone in the ##textmate channel could help me out.
[11:24pm] funkaoshi: hey. do any of you guys know where Textmate stores its temp files when you use the “Edit in Textmate” command?
[11:26pm] allan: funkaoshi: somewhere in /var/tmp/$UID.folders/TemporaryItems/TextMate I believe
[11:27pm] funkaoshi: let me check thanks
[11:28pm] funkaoshi: Allan: did you know that if you remove focus from a safari tab, and then try to save the document you are editing, it doesn’t work? (though it does beep to let you know it didn’t save.)
[11:29pm] allan: funkaoshi: yes… I put a note about it in the install text
[11:29pm] allan: not explicitly Safari, but the “focus” thing
I asked a question in the TextMate IRC channel at 11:24 PM, and got a response 5 minutes later. Now that is tech-support people.
[1] Technology
21 March 2006, the wee hours
I watched Serenity with Dave today, which means I have officially seen all there is to see of the Firefly series. Serenity, like the TV show it was spun-off from, was wicked-awesome. The movie picks up some time after the series ends. In the opening sequence one mystery from the series is cleared up. The action really doesn’t let up from there. The focus of the film is really on River, and her mysterious past. The movie is very much like the television show, so if you were a Firefly fan I am sure you’ll like the film. (I suspect if you are already a Firefly fan you will have already seen the film.) The dialog is great, and the actors do a fine job reprising their roles from the show. Everyone from the main cast is back for the movie. I would have liked to have seen some of the more interesting extras from the series; no one really makes an appearance. I still can’t believe they cancelled the show. It is so good. If you haven’t seen the series, I really recommend that you do. It is a very atypical science-fiction series. You really don’t have to be a fan of sci-fi to enjoy it.
The official Serenity website.
[1] Movies
17 March 2006, lunch time
Sometimes when I have felt a little depressed I would go to Parliament to sit in the public gallery and look down at all those ‘terrorists’ now occupying the government benches. It is something to lift the heaviest heart to behold those who were regarded by the previous apartheid government as the most dangerous terrorists, and who now, in the new democratic dispensation, are the Hon. Minister of this or that. I would recall that some of them were fellow marchers in rallies against the awfulness of apartheid, and with some we were targets for tear gassing, and now here they are, members of a democratically elected National Assembly.
—South African Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu in The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter.
I found this quote in the opening executive summary on a report from the University of Oslo on the LTTE and how it manages the areas it controls. When Haran got back from Sri Lanka last, he was quite impressed with how well managed the LTTE controlled areas of the island were. The one problem is that these institutions aren’t democratic, but I suspect for most people, the fact that they are functional is more than good enough. My concern with LTTE getting power in the North and East is that they would continue to be autocratic—they haven’t really done much to suggest otherwise. We’ll have to see what happens in the future.
[1] Politics | Current Events
16 March 2006, lunch time
In my quest to get better coffee at work, I went to a local coffee shop and bought some freshly ground coffee. Coffee Tree, the store near my home, claims to be the first shop in the city to sell coffee that they roast in the store (and grind if you need them to). The first coffee I bought was from Tuscany (or was simply called Tuscany). It’s a French roast. According to Mezan, a French roast is one where they almost burn the beans. If you roasted the beans anymore they’d be on fire. The Tuscany coffee tastes pretty good. If you like strong, smooth cups of coffee, I’d recommend it. The second coffee I bought from Coffee Tree was Arabian Sidamo. It’s also a French roast, and it also tastes good. If I was a more avid coffee drinker, I’d probably be able to describe with richer language what the two coffees taste like. Next week I will try some Venetian Roasts, which are medium roasted coffees. Coffee Tree is in the Bloor West Village, and is most definitely worth checking out if you are looking for fresh coffee.
[2] Toronto | Life
15 March 2006, lunch time
A few days shy of it’s license running out—again—I decided to buy Textmate. This was probably the third or forth time I gave the editor a shot. Buying a Textmate license at this point puts me about as far from the cutting edge as you can possibly get; most everyone and their mother decided Textmate was cool well over a year ago. Me, i’m just a little slow I suppose.
Read the rest of this post. (509 words)
[4] Technology
15 March 2006, lunch time
Applications crash on my iMac far more frequently than they ever did on my iBook. More often then not, it’s the older PowerPC applications that crash (I don’t think I’ve had a “Universal Binary” application crash yet). Now, when an Application crashes, it really isn’t the end of the world. MacOS X actually pops up a message on the screen informing you that your program crashed, and that you can either: close it, or re-open it. I usually tell the computer to run the program again and all is well. These crashes aren’t that common, but since applications hardly ever crashed on my iBook any number of crashes is noticeable.
Since I don’t really know anyone else with an iSight (except for Yang who is never online), I have been using my iSight to take pictures in Photobooth. There is an annoying bug in Photobooth, at least for me. When I take a photo, and it shows up in the film strip at the bottom of the application window, I can’t select that photo to be emailed to friends, or sent to iPhoto, or whatever. I have to click on an older picture first, before a click on the new photo will register. This is a bit of a nuisance.
When I wake up in the morning, I open my eyes and I see my iMac sitting on my desk. I smile.
[1] Intel iMac
12 March 2006, early afternoon
I watched Hey! Ram last night with Shima. It is one of my favourite Tamil movies. The movie is about communal violence in India. In particular, the film follows the violence that surrounded the partition of India into Pakistan and India. It is so unlike your typical Tamil movie. There are hardly any song and dance numbers, and where music is inserted into the movie, it is done so in a very thoughtful and intelligent manner. The movie is violent—incredibly violent. Bombay deals with communal violence as well, but the riot scenes in Hey! Ram are something else. I think they are some of the most intense scenes of violence I have ever seen—and I watch a lot of movies. Hey! Ram is so well put together, and for the most part the acting is top-notch. The camera work is great. There are a few scenes that are shot brilliantly. I can’t recommend this film enough (though be advised it isn’t for the faint of heart).
A very good review of the film, detailing just how much research went into the movies making.
[1] Movies
10 March 2006, late afternoon
Reddit is a cool site, but is not without its problems. Since I took time out of my busy day to make fun of Digg a little while ago, I feel it is only fair to make fun of Reddit as well.
Reddit works reasonably well, but as with Digg, could use a human hand to help keep its front-page clean. The quickest ways to get a link you post to the front-page of Reddit are:
- Link to an article about Reddit (or another Y Combinator site).
- Write about how great LISP is.
- Link to an article by Joel Spolsky, it doens’t matter how old the article is.
- Link to an article by Steve Yegge, it doesn’t matter how old
- Link to an article by Paul Graham, it doesn’t matter how old
These are some sure fire ways to see your link on the front page of Reddit. Why would you care if your link makes it there? Why for all the Karma of course. Why would you want to earn Karma? I really don’t know, but the fact that your Karma is visible to everyone makes you want to earn it; trust me, it does. This is yet another problem with Reddit. I am certain people post simply to try and earn Karma. (This is probably why their are so many duplicate stories, and so many old stories on the site.)
Comments, recently added to Reddit, are for the most part better than those found on Digg, but I suspect this is solely because it has a smaller user-base. There is currently no way to filter them as far as I can tell. As more users start using Reddit, I imagine the quality of the comment will decline. (They are already pretty lame for the most part, but there are so few of them this is OK.)
The hot page is a bit of a mess to read; the page changes throughout the course of the day, so if you check back, you will find a mix of links you saw earlier in the day and new links, all mixed together. (If you made it a point to rate all the links you saw this wouldn’t be the case, you could identify new links on the page as those without a highlighted arrow.) The recommended links page seems to suffer from this problem as well.
All of this said, I still like Reddit. For the most part it is a good source of interesting links.
Weblogs | Technology
9 March 2006, lunch time
I watched Unknown White Male last night, which was this month selection for Doc Soup. The film is absolutely fascinating; it chronicles the 2 years or so after a man finds himself in Coney Island without having a clue who he is, or how he got there. The man is diagnosed as having Retrograde Amnesia, and can’t remember anything that happened to him prior to “waking up” in Coney Island. The movie examines what makes up someone’s identity. As he determines who he was, and as he meets up with his family and friends, we get to see how they react to him and how he reacts to them. It’s absolutely bizarre. If you can track the film down I recommend you watch it. It has to be one of the more interesting documentaries I’ve seen in recent years because the subject mater is so compelling.
The official Unknown White Male web site.
Movies | Hot Docs 2006
6 March 2006, late at night
I asked Krishna to run through Hivelogic’s tutorial on setting up Ruby on Rails on your Mac and time how long it takes to build the various components. I did the same on my iMac and have compiled the results below.
Build Times for Ruby on Rails Components on my iBook and my iMac
| real/user/sys | iMac Intel Dual Core 2.0Ghz | iBook G3 800MhZ |
|---|
| make readline |
|---|
| real | 0m11.335s | 1m3.091s |
| user | 0m8.900s | 0m36.690s |
| sys | 0m1.792s | 0m7.925s |
| make ruby |
|---|
| real | 1m17.722s | 6m17.849s |
| user | 0m57.552s | 4m5.046s |
| sys | 0m17.796s | 0m31.593s |
| make fast-cgi |
|---|
| real | 0m8.920s | 2m43.256s |
| user | 0m4.803s | 1m10.319s |
| sys | 0m3.395s | 0m26.624s |
| make PCRE |
|---|
| real | 0m25.286s | 0m55.492s |
| user | 0m17.411s | 0m19.038s |
| sys | 0m7.060s | 0m11.081s |
| make lightTPD |
|---|
| real | 0m55.480s | 5m55.640s |
| user | 0m27.063s | 1m42.615s |
| sys | 0m26.821s | 1m31.106s |
As you can see, the iMac really mops the floor with the poor iBook. I am guessing that the x86 version of GCC is far more optimized than the PowerPC version, which may account for the serious improvements. In a few cases the build times are 10 times faster, which is quite impressive. If you spend a lot of time working on software, the faster build times are definitely going to be a big plus.
[6] Intel iMac
5 March 2006, early evening
A review of Getting Real by 37signals
37signals are a design firm turned web application studio that get on my nerves more often than not. (Saying they get on my nerves is infact an understatement.) Despite the more aggravating posts on their web site they remain to this day a good source for insight on modern web development and web design practices. I like reading about the entire software development process. This is one reason I enjoyed Joel on Software so much. Last week 37signals put out a book compiling their manifesto on web application development entitled Getting Real. If you read the 37signals blog Signal vs. Noise you will have heard the term countless times. (It can be grating to hear over and over again.) Still, a few days after the eBook came out I bought it. I’m not entirely sure why. I think the $19 price tag, just shy of $20, and the fact they make it very convenient to buy, were two contributing factors. I enjoyed the book. I am by no stretch a rabid 37signals fan-boy; I sincerely liked it.
Read the rest of this post. (546 words)
[1] Comics and Books | Web Design
5 March 2006, late afternoon
Natalie Portman is one crazy bitch. At least when she raps about driving while drunk and fucking all the guys she wants to fuck and doing all sorts of other things you wouldn’t think a demure young lady would do. Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell are too funny. This is video is so ridiculous. You will laugh.
Update: Link works again. NBC is now hosting this video.
[2] Interesting Links
3 March 2006, terribly early in the morning
This was the third time I saw Magneta Lane in concert. The first time was at the Drake, on a trip to see Femme Generation. The second time was at the El Mocambo. On that particular night Lexi complained that she couldn’t sing, her throat hurt too much. Tonight at the Horseshoe she was drinking tea as her throat was sore yet again. It is understandable I suppose. I don’t know how Hole, Nirvana, or any such band where the singer needs to do a lot of yelling can put on a show night after night. Magneta Lane did a great job tonight. If you haven’t seen them live yet you are really missing out. They are a very cool band. I can see them getting really big, so you should try and catch them before they stop playing at venues like the Horseshoe.
The Awesome Team put on a really good show as well. I like it when you can tell a band is really into their music, and is really enjoying playing infront of you. The Awesome Team aren’t really my sort of band, but I think if you like Blink 182 and that sort of music, you may enjoy them. (Mind you, they may not sound anything like Blink 182. I’m really bad at pinning down the genre particular bands belong to.)
The best piece of music I heard tonight was from a homeless guy playing The Man Who Sold the World on the South-West side of Queen and University. I walked about 50 feet or so past him, then stopped, and walked back to give him a dollar. I wish I gave him more money. He sang the song really well.
Music | Life
2 March 2006, the wee hours
Or All About How I Bought an iMac
I become very impulsive when I decide I want to buy something. I bought my Digital Rebel in this half hour window between leaving work and meeting Shima to see Body Worlds II. I was so excited about getting it, I couldn’t wait another day. Similarly, I got it in my head yesterday I should get an iMac, and by the middle of the day today I had decided I would most definitely get one. I don’t think I’ve ever spent this much money in one sitting. It feels strange. Still, I am typing this on a beautiful 20” iMac, so it doesn’t feel that strange.
Read the rest of this post. (380 words)
[2] Intel iMac
28 February 2006, mid-afternoon
There are two new Intel based Mac Minis available today one is a Intel Solo Core 1.5Ghz machine, the other is a Intel Dual Core 1.66Ghz machine.
Read the rest of this post. (453 words)
[9] Apple Computers
27 February 2006, late at night
24 Hour Party People is a god damn brilliant film, but one that none of my friends want to watch. The movie is about Factory records. I watched it again with the real Tony Willson’s audio commentary playing. His commentary is pretty funny. He provides insights and background on what was going on at the time and what is wrong with the film. The music in the film is excellent, as one would expect. Heather mentioned wanting to watch the movie, so I’ll probably watch it with her again sometime.
The official 24 Hour Party People web site.
Movies
26 February 2006, evening time
Carvill and I went up to Yorkdale today—we had pretty much nothing else to do. Everytime I go to the Apple Store in Yorkdale, I feel like walking out with a new computer. I don’t, mind you. The Mac Minis are very tempting. They’re so small. They look like the sort of thing you could buy on impulse. I got to try out the new Intel iMac, which was quite nice. The built in iSight is fun to use.
[4] Life
24 February 2006, lunch time
When I was a younger boy I used to love pirating software. It was easy and I felt no guilt about it. Software wanted to be free. (That, or I wanted software to be free.) As much as software companies wanted you to feel like stealing software was like stealing a car, I just wasn’t willing to buy that—or their software. I grew older, and I started writing software, and contrary to what you might think, my views on this matter didn’t change. It was really only after realizing how much I spend on a night out drinking or on a nice dinner that I realized I was just being a jerk and should buy the software I use.
Read the rest of this post. (614 words)
[8] Technology
24 February 2006, terribly early in the morning
Digg is a technology website, similar to Slashdot, but with really dreadful comments—and compared to Slashdot that’s saying a lot. That said, Digg is usually on the ball when it comes to discovering interesting stuff on the internet.
One easy way to get on Digg’s front-page is to write a list of the top ten Mac applications no one should go without. It doesn’t matter how many such lists have been posted to Digg in the past week, month, or year, your list will shoot up to the front page. It might take a little while, but it will happen.
Use this knowledge for good, not for evil.
Weblogs
23 February 2006, lunch time
I watched Imagine Me and You with Matt, Kathleen, and Patrick last night at Varsity. The movie is a romantic comedy from Britain. Though cheesy at times—I suppose this it to expected—the movie is quite entertaining and funny. I think the British do a much better job of romantic comedies than Hollywood. The movie stars Piper Perabo as a confused new bride, who finds herself attracted to her wedding florist. (I should add that Piper Perabo is very cute, and she has a very sexy accent.) Matthew Goode plays her perfect, but not a woman, husband. The cast is full of funny actors and actresses. (Anthony Head plays Piper’s father in the film, and is particularly good.) The movie is quite enjoyable to watch.
The official Imagine Me and You web site.
Movies
