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On Safari

It’s funny – an Apple-branded web browser is the last thing I thought I wanted out of Expo, but I’m already head over heels for Safari. Earlier this morning I was wondering why they would have chosen the lesser-known KHTML rendering engine over Gecko, but after feeling its speed and reading that the codebase is less than 1/10th the size of Gecko’s, I get it.

Safari’s bookmarks implementation is a thing of beauty. I’ve wondered since the mid-90s why no one ever seemed to get bookmark management right, but think Apple has finally cracked the egg. The one aspect of bookmark management I miss from BeOS is the ability to add keywords to bookmarks and then find similar bookmarks via live keyword queries. But if you make sure you give good descriptive titles to your bookmarks, the existing Find function works just fine.

They copied all the hotkeys over from Explorer, so everything works as expected. Even the almighty Cmd-click to open a link in a new window.

I’m always surprised to see how many people gripe about the brushed aluminum look. Personally, I’m sick to death of looking at white stripes and would be happy if every app on my system went brushed aluminum. However, it does seem like Apple has violated their own guideline to use brushed aluminum for apps that replace real-world devices. What device does the browser replace?

Music: Sham 69 :: If the kids are united
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Steve Jobs Keynote Notes

Just walked out of Jobs’ MacWorld keynote. As always, if you let the rumor sites get you too cranked up, you end up disappointed. No home entertainment digital hub centerpiece, no x86 processors. But what did emerge was still way cool. Apple releases their own browser, Safari – now the fastest and cleanest browser on the Mac. “Keynote” is Apple’s new presentation software. Final Cut Express is a slimmed down version of FCP. Updates to iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, now all integrated with each other under the name iLife. Two new aircraft aluminum (not Titanium) PowerBooks, in 17″ and 12″, with all the Wi-Fi receptivity issues ironed out, and FireWire 800. Read More for my raw notes, blogged from the Speaker Center at MacWorld.
Continue reading “Steve Jobs Keynote Notes”

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All The Way

The other day I spied a young buck outside The Berkeley Bowl with his pants around his ankles, waddling in boxers, and realized that the detestable fashion of wearing trousers pulled half-way down the butt had finally reached its inevitable conclusion. I’m actually surprised it took this long to happen.

Music: Edith Piaf :: Polichinelle
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Conflicted

Frank Boosman’s take on the conflicted personal political climate mirrors my own. Don’t like to pay taxes, must be a rightist. Do like helping my brother, must be a leftist. Do believe in personal responsibility, must be a libertarian. Do believe in some degree of enforced fairness, must be a socialist. Do believe environmental degradation will whittle us all down to nubs, must be a green. I suppose some wise-acre would say this makes me an independent.

Music: The Clash :: Death Is a Star
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1000 dB

Friend baald passes this on from a mailing list currently speculating on the actual loudness — and energy requirements of — a hypothetical 1000 dB stereo system.

They were discussing what 1000 dB really means in real world terms. As one guy said “it’s about the entire energetic output of the universe…” If you take a 100-dB-per watt speaker (like a horn speaker – that’s something pretty efficient, speaker wise…), to make it play at 130 db would require 1000 watts. Assume that the highest power audio amps currently available are 1000 watts. Want to play at 190 dB? You’ll need a million of those honkin’ amps strapped together. Lets call that a mega-amplifier. Strap a billion of THOSE mega amplifiers together and you still won’t crack 300 dB. After a while, one guy started speculating on the necessary mass of a planet that had a dense enough atmosphere to sustain 1000 dB sound pressures. Actually, most things would be disintegrating long before you got up to 1000…

Music: The Carolina Tar Heels :: Peg And Awl
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Rabbit Foot Blues

A milestone in the family record collection — got the Anthology of American Folk Music (aka the Harry Smith collection) for Miles, Amy and myself. Originally released in 1952, this was a six-LP (now CD) set that included some of the most raw, authentic, real-deal American roots music recorded between 1925 and 1932. Not field recordings. Not stuff “approved” by academics as being representative for classroom purposes. This is the stuff that real people were buying and listening to and growing up on between the wars, when gramophones had found their way into most homes, and after recording technology had become good enough to preserve sessions accurately.

The original set included a book of boiled-down “essences” of the artists and their songs compiled by Harry Smith, like this one for Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Rabbit Foot Blues.” So out-there.

rabbitfoot_tb.jpg
(Click)

A second book is also included, which contains essays by Greil Marcus, John Fahey, Peter Stampfel, and so on. This set is like the Bible to many folkies, and was played over and over in clubs and cafes in the 50s and 60s. Been listening and reading all day and it’s affecting me in unexpected ways. The collective consciousness in this period was far from innocent – musicians were way out there, and lyrics were unexpectedly surreal.

Great Folkways site about the recordings here.

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Music: Uncle Dave Mason :: Way Down the Old Plank Road
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JetBoard

My pop does some handy work for clients in the mountains, and came across this motorized surfboard at a client’s house. We think it’s a 1965 JetBoard.

jet board

There were apparently not too many of them made, and of the few that remain, only one has been restored to working condition. Much faster modern variants are still being manufactured. I’m trying to see whether I can help by taking it off the owner’s hands… at the very least, I’d like to pass it on to my old boss at Wavelengths Surf Shop in Morro Bay.

Music: Etoile de Dakar :: Defal Gnou Guiss
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Snowbound

Up to Pioneer (near Tahoe) for late Christmas, joining Mom and Dad, brother John and his fiancee at Dad’s cabin. Slipped in under a major storm set to dump Saturday night. Mid-way through the day a dog followed us home from a hike – name of Faith, phone numbers on her tag but no one reachable. When the snow started we took her door to door in the car looking for an owner, no luck.

Snow tumbling furiously and sky cracking, made a makeshift home for her in Dad’s basement, then took off in his 4WD to move our cars under the snowline so we’d be able to get out next day. Bad timing. Took forever to get down the hill, cars spinning out all around us, snow falling so thick we could barely see to drive, even our 4WD w/snow tires having trouble and sometimes sliding.

On way back up, they closed the road in front of us. Too many accidents, too much risk. Got stuck eating bad calamari in a pizza dive while they plowed. Meanwhile Christmas dinner was getting cold at home. One of those moments that would be a lot more depressing if the adventure weren’t so ripe.

Three hours later back to the cabin safe, then an hour into dinner the power blew, leaving us with his pot-belly stove and candlelight to finish dinner. Didn’t stop us. Egg nog w/brandy and a whalloping game of Cranium by candlelight.

In the morning, found 18″ of snow on ground at 4,000 ft. Won’t get to snowboard this trip, but that’s okay. It’s Miles first snow.

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BeView Archives

More thinking about the disappeared content on Byte.com, more discussion with other Byte editors and writers, and I finally decided to go ahead and post complete BeView archives here on birdhouse. Left behind the new subscription curtain, the articles are effectively hidden from search engines and the rest of the world, and no one is going to subscribe to CMP just to read my crusty old nuggets. A piece of computing history will be lost forever if I don’t crack them open. So the archives are now open for all, in all their occasionally embarrassing glory.

Music: Orchestre Murphy :: Hymn to the Sultan of Brunei