RSS Validator

If you’re outputting RSS feeds, you can now have them validated – one small step toward a more XML-interoperable web. Even if you’ve upgraded to MovableType 2.5, you’ll need to update your RSS templates manually to get them to validate properly.

valid-rss.png

Transmit 2

Just spent half an hour with Transmit 2 for OS X — possibly the best FTP client I’ve ever used. Slick, bug free, full featured, and integrated support for SFTP, which more and more sites are requiring. Fetch’s days are over. Snooze you lose…

Asiago Becomes Manchego

After all these years, I’m still naming all my hard drives after cheeses. Ran out of space on the 80GB MP3 storage drive (Asiago) and went to see what the biggest ones on the market today are – didn’t end up going that high – got a Maxtor 120GB, named it Manchego (Amy comes up with the best cheese names), copied the collection over. Swapping out drives in OS X is as easy as it was in BeOS – plug in, initialize, use – no formatting. Remembering it wasn’t that long ago when it seemed remarkable that storage was approaching $1/MB. Now we’re nearly at $1/GB.

Bummed to find that iTunes doesn’t store those ratings in ID3v2 tags, as I thought it did – those were in the library file. So lost many moons of track ratings. Sent Apple some rasty feedback on that one.

One-Button Mice and Babies

I used to be among the haters of one-button mice. Then the Mac came. I decided to live with one button for a while and see how it worked out, see what all the religion was about. Surprised myself how easy it was to make the transition – I never miss the right button anymore (took a couple months to stop missing it). Then the baby came. Babies change the mouse game, not because the kid wants to use the box, but because he gets thrust into my hands almost as soon as I get home — Amy needs a break. That, in turn, means I get a whole lot less machine time in the evening than I used to, and the time I do have is mostly surf time, not typing time. Surfing one-handed with a one-button mouse, holding the baby in the other arm, am disabled – not able to open links in a new window, not able to reveal the desktop with a quick keystroke, etc. May have to go two-button again after all. Apple — consider the children!

Dreams Do Come True: Journaling in HFS+

According to this article at eWEEK, Apple is preparing to release OS X 10.2.2, aka “Elvis” in the next few weeks. Elvis will feature an optional fully journaling filesystem, which can be enabled from the command line. For those of us migrating to OS X from BeOS, this is huge news – Be’s BFS was one of the operating system’s crown jewels (full journaling was only one of BFS’ selling points). Unfortunately, journaling is expected to slow OS X down 10-15%, which was not true of BFS. Prayers are being answered, one at a time…

Deck Chairs

My MacWorld article got noticed in the blogosphere.
The blog referenced is “Deck Chairs on the Titanic,” a title which has a place in my heart because it’s the name of a song friend Roger wrote wrote way back (10 years ago?) when we made the “Underwear of the Gods” tape – recordings of friends and friends of friends playing their own songs – not necessarily all good, but important for sake of posterity. Hmmm… maybe I should MP3 that before the ferrous oxide flakes off…

HTML Email Not So Bad?

After living (barely) through some very intense and extended threads on a private mailing list I’m on, I have to confess that my rabid stance against HTML email is beginning to soften. The arguments I make on the page still stand, but you know, there are more important things in life to worry about. When it comes down to it, HTML is a standard, and a decent viewing client can strip the HTML while viewing. Don’t get me wrong – I still think HTML in email is a bad idea. But I’m not so sure I still think of it as one of the evils of the world. At least not that one that matters.

Got the message below today. I’m not sure, but think that the guy is asking for elucidation on HTML email avoidance.

please advise to what is the most important info to keep from these pages incase once again the html appears & then again to switch it back, & or additional info needed ,
thanks,
jb

MacWorld Article Published

The article I wrote for MacWorld a few months ago on setting up OS X for MySQL/PHP web development, “Serve It Up,” was published in the November issue. There are actually two versions of the article – one on Jaguar, which is in print only, and another on 10.1.x, which is the one they ran online. Enough stuff changed between 10.1 and 10.2 that the online version won’t quite work under Jaguar…

The topic is more technical than the typical MacWorld audience, so producing the piece turned out to be a real editing challenge. In fact, I probably did more round-robins with my editor than for anything I’ve ever written… a process that bordered on becoming a genuine pain in the ass but that was worth it in the end, even if some of it doesn’t quite sound like me.

Architecture is Politics

Finding myself increasingly enamored of this meme that “Architecture is politics.” The idea comes up in Lawrence Lessig’s “The Future of Ideas” and is being repeated by Tim O’Reilly at OSX Con (which I am regrettably not attending). I’ve been drumming on the idea a bit in the blogging class, and it has come up on a mailing list I’m on, in a thread on whether using HTML in email is a political choice or not (I believe it most definitely is).

Applied to software, the meme suggests that there are no neutral choices – every technology decision you make impacts (pardon me for using that word as a verb) the real world in some way… tangibly or intangibly. It affects the question of whether technology flows upwards from the people to the big picture or from corporations on down, for example. It’s all about power – the difference between “power over” and “power to.”

Looks like Jean-Louis Gassee is moving on yet again.

Great piece by Dan Gillmor on Apple’s contrarian (pro-people, not pro-corporation) stance on DRM: Apple stands firm against entertainment cartel

Since the other 72 pieces of spam I get every day aren’t having an effect on my wallet, they’ve decided to double the volume on the subject line. Today I received one promising me two carrots at once: Get a Big Penis and a Free Vacation!

Ack packet via Rebecca Blood: William Gibson is credited with saying ‘The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.’

Hooptie Goo’s Haikus

Just so you don’t think I’ve lost my mind entirely and become driven by nothing but baby for ever and ever, a few quick hits for the week:

ComputerWorld reports that if you type “go to hell” (using the quotation marks) into Google’s search engine, the first result served up is Microsoft.com. So is someone at Google tampering with the database for fun and profit, or is this an actual reflection of the sentiments of the web at large as manifested through Google’s usual bubbling process?

I usually cringe when someone invites me to a party using eVites rather than an invitation of their own device, but I had no idea the world’s leaders were using the service to arrange the war on Iraq!

Yet another Unix/Linux pundit/guru has made “the switch” – again, not from Windows to OS X, but from Linux to OS X. It’s starting to look like OS X is getting more “switch” traction from the *nix camp than from Windows users… raising the question of where the next round of Switch ads might tread.

Hooptie Goo’s Haiku, like you’ve never read before (for example):

I spilled brake fluid
Let’s get some sucking action
And clean this damn floor

At the site, hit Cartoon Classics, then Hooptie Goo’s Haikus — this is one reason I hate Flash-based web sites – rather than dropping a direct link, I have to sit around describing how to navigate… but in this case it’s worth it ;)