March 2006 Archives
PoliticsVT announced today that they will be closing up shop in 2007. I'm not really into politics, but this is one of the few politically geared sites and publications that I actually read. Their reporting and discussions are top notch in my book, and it will be sad to see them go.
But I have to wonder - is this really the end? Timing is everything, and tomorrow is April Fools Day. Is this all an elaborate joke? Something tells me it's not. But it does beg the question - why not get help? Realistically these guys have a pretty strong support and reader base. Some of these people are fully qualified to be writers. Some of them write for political blogs themselves, or keep their own blogs. Some people would love to be a part of a community blog like this.
We can hope.
GPGMail is a plugin for Mail.app that adds a GUI for gnupg. If that wasn't English to you, this post is not for you.
It seems that there's a bug in GPGMail that causes messages to randomly be marked unread even after you've read them. I've experienced this bug first hand, though it took until now to learn what was causing it. While it doesn't affect me much at home, it causes havoc for me at the office. That's why I'm thrilled to try out the fix hinted to in this archived email. Note: When clicking that link, read the htaccess box.
Essentially, the email suggests that the issue only occurs when the checkboxes marked, "Only if message is unread" are checked. You'll find those under the Viewing section of the PGP section of your preferences.
I've made the changes here at home, but I won't really know until I try it at work tomorrow.
Update (2006.03.27 12:38pm): By now I'd have had several occurrences of the reported issue and have not yet had a single one. I have thus far been shocked to see not a single problem. It looks like this fix is for real.
[via HawkWings]
Oh blogosphere, how I love thee. Thy divine ability to create hype is truly, uh, divine.
So yesterday we started seeing some posts on several sites, who I will spare the linkage, that announce Firefox 2.0 Alpha has been released to the public. I don't know where this rumor started, though I can tell you that it's gone as far as Slashdot - which, for once, is not the first place I saw the news. Fortunately, Slashdot has quite a few astute readers who note the truth in their comments.
The truth, however, is that they've simply made the branding change in CVS but have not made a release. In his post on mozillazine.org, Asa Dotzler says, "When we make a new release, we'll say so." In other words, if you don't see the news on Mozilla.org or Mozilla.com, it's not news yet.
Something tells me this is the product of people always feeling the need to be the first to report something.
Let's face it, we all have things we like but aren't very good at. Photography is one of those things for me; I enjoy taking pictures but I'm not very good at it. So I've taken to the blogs and I'm asking for help. Please recommend some books on photography. I think I should start with the basics since I'm a beginner who has gotten lucky with some of his shots, so please keep that in mind when making suggestions and let me know if something is above my level for now but should be ear marked for later.
Thanks!
Okay, I don't smoke but there are so many people out there who do that this just makes sense. Vermont has made it law that all cigarettes sold in the state are Fire-Safe. Apparently the paper used to roll these somehow doesn't allow air through it so the only way to keep them burning is to suck air through the tobacco, theoretically by actively smoking them. I know some absent minded smokers who go through a pack in a few hours just by putting one down in an ash try and forgetting and watching it burn down. I'd imagine that this will save them some money.
That all sounds great, but the only real question is how this is done. All paper is porous, isn't it? So how do they treat it to stop it from being breathable? I suppose the answer is that they probably added something akin to plastic or something because, hey, you're killing yourself smoking anyway so why not add a little more?
That raises another fun issue, too. The idea here is to reduce - and hopefully stop - fires caused by burning cigarettes dropped on furniture, floors, or even dry leaves outside. So riddle me this - is it worth adding something that potentially makes smoking even worse for you to avoid these fires? You tell me, since I don't even know that that's how these things work.
Anyhow, this law, rule, or whatever it is, goes into effect on the first of May. More details on this stuff in the article that I got it all from.
Many people, myself included, have held held back on moving over to Thunderbird because it has no integration with OS X's address book. Frustrating, isn't it? Well, the first step toward built-in integration has been taken. Peter Van der Beken has developed a patch to provide that integration. You still have to be savvy enough to compile it yourself, but if you are you get a sneak peak at the future. Bear in mind that there is still no AppleScript functionality, and that there are plenty of other reasons people like me stick with Mail.app (including the sometimes irrational hope that Apple will take IMAP a little more seriously some day), but if this is what you've been waiting for, wait no longer. Vafer.org has it working with the latest version of Thunderbird.
[via HawkWings]
Ecto is a fully featured desktop blogging client for OS X. It also, apparently, has a Windows version but I haven't touched that so I can't say thing one about it. Ecto's website claims compatibility with Bloger, Blojsom, Drupal, MovableType, Nucleus, TypePad, WordPress, "and more." I tried Ecto out for a while last night just to see what it did with my MovableType blog.
I found the interface to be mostly clean and intuitive for everything, noting that it maintained a list of posts and categories internally so it could really be self-contained. At the end of my experimentation I came out with only three issues, only one of which I consider serious.
The first, and most greedy, issue is that Ecto is not free. Fair enough, it's a well written piece of software but I truly subscribe to the donationware mentality. Give me a fully featured piece of software and, if I like it enough, I'll pay you. I'd wager at the end of the day this would increase their user base and bring in more money, even if it's less than the suggested donation. But instead they went the shareware route and require registration. It is for that reason that I will not likely bother to use this client after the demo period. Writing my posts in TextEdit or the MovableType built-in interface is really not that big an inconvenience.
The second complaint is a little bit more legitimate as far as a user willing to shell out the cash is concerned. In the compose window found myself looking at two text fields of equal size as well as the field for my entry's title. After a moment's experimentation, I discovered that the top text field was for the body and the bottom was for the extended body. It would be very nice if those were labeled, but once I knew it, well, I knew it.
The third complaint is the substantial one. As you can see by the list on the right of my site, I use hierarchical categories, meaning a category within a category. You'll notice that this entry is in a subcategory. What you also may notice is that I have two subcategories called 'Apple,' one for hardware and one for software. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered Ecto didn't preserve this hierarchy at all. I was faced with a flat alphabetical category list with - you guessed it - two instances of 'Apple' right at the top. How am I to know which is which? That, right there, is enough for me to walk away from the product and not come back until they've repaired it.
All of that being said, this client is very well built and robust. If you're serious about your blogging I think it's worth trying out. To some folks its $17.95 price tag is worth it. To a casual blogger like myself, I'm afraid not.
Update: After contacting Ecto's author(s), I received the following response explaining that the category hierarchy issue is actually a failing in MovableType, not Ecto.
Adriaan wrote: The MovableType XML-RPC API returns categories to ecto as a flat list. ecto never gets to see hierarchies.see also http://bb.infinite-sushi.com/viewtopic.php?t=372&highlight=hierarchy
Adriaan
The Patriot Act passed, coming as a shock to optimists and a shrug to pessimists around the country. We know it and we don't really like it, but we do have to follow it, right? Right. But you don't have to go overboard. When you follow something in the name of the Patriot Act, make sure it's actually required by it. Remember, requiring something based on an Act that doesn't require it is misrepresentation and fraud, and here's a great bit about what one person did about it.
[via Schneier on Security]
SmallDog Electronics, my favorite (and the only local) Apple distributor, has run into an interesting problem: how to deal with the huge influx of iPod products and accessories while still taking advantage of their existing shopping card. Their solution? PodJungle.com. The difference is immediately clear. I hate to say anything bad about these guys, but their new sister site looks substantially more professional than the old one. I definitely dig it. Check it out!
[via Barkings]
I'm going to have to second this post on TUAW. Damien talks about how many people feel this event was a major letdown, not because of all the hype but because all of the products that were put out were, well, inferior. He makes good points about each product, and to be honest I really don't think any of it was worth a secret hush-hush event. The only thing they unveiled that was worth even a small press release was the Mac Mini, and that barely. Damien makes the point about the price increase for me. For that price, that machine should come with some killer speakers as well as the pvr software he talks about.
So tell me, was anyone really surprised that the Mac Minis were the next thing to go Intel? I know I tried to deny it, mostly on the grounds that this was supposed to be a secret press event so obviously it must be more than just the Mac Mini. But logic dictated that this would be the next thing up. Let's think about it. The PowerMacs will be last because they're so heavily used by graphic designers and without universal releases from Adobe graphic designers won't buy a mactel. So it's now between an iBook and a Mac Mini. Ah, but wait. Look at the specs - a Mac Mini really is an iBook in a different chassis - one that's cheaper to produce and has fewer heat issues. So now we have a new product and a preview of the specs we'll get on the next new product. Here's the real question - if prices went up on the Mac Mini, does that mean they'll go up on the iBooks too? The 15" MacBook Pro looks to be the same price as the 15" PowerBook G4 used to be. I guess we'll find out soon enough.