The Hanover Collaboration

Remember last time I set up a windows machine? Well I found myself doing it again and doing it in a hurry. I’m pretty psyched I got something up fast that’s pretty usable. Major change: Keybreeze.

1. Firefox: obvs
2. Thunderbird: I hear Enigmail is working again
3. Cygwin: install everything, add cygwin/bin (etc) to your path, point “my documents” to ~
4. Dexpot: It gives you Expose, multiple desktops and an improved alt-tab. Can teach you German
5. Keybreeze: This one is big. Hands down, this beats all the other Windows launchers I’ve seen. I’m still waiting for the deal-breaker failing that all the Quicksilver wannabes have. If, like me, you are scorning your Windows machine for lack of QS, there is hope.
6. Windows Registry: remap caps lock to ctrl
7. Python: I found it a lot easier to just to download the newest python, scipy and numpy for Windows rather than compiling scipy and numpy in cygwin.
8. I think I’m going to bind Windows-c -x and -v to copy, cut and paste to make the OS switch less jarring. I’d do this as a Dexpot macro rather than figure out how to do this in the registry

Expandrive just came out and Jon had a hand in it. It lets you mount ssh servers are local drives. It’s neat, you should try it. It’s $29 to keep—soon to be $39 no doubt. But when Cheetah comes out, Apple should have bought it and it will be included. Apple needs this. “Connect to server” works like shit.

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I just retired my venerable Motorola E815. It was pretty beat up. Utilizing 1) the “new after two”, 2) online discounts and 3) selling my soul for another two years, I got the LG enV VX9900 for free. I’m hoping it lasts until someone (e.g. Google) has a phone standard (i.e. OS/API) and Verizon lets such phones on their network.

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Sometimes, particularly when you have a bad internet connection, iTunes will download only part of the podcast, but then it will act like it downloaded the whole thing. Once this happens, there doesn’t seem to be any way to get a copy of the whole podcast. iTunes keeps track of the podcasts you delete to prevent double downloading. If you delete the partial download, then iTunes will assume you don’t want it anymore, and won’t offer that episode for download again.

Even if you hunt down the mp3 on the internet and download it by hand, you still can’t get it into the podcast section of iTunes. It will have to live forever incongruously in the music section.

So I filed a bug report on the Apple website. And the reply just came back.

option-open of the podcast triangle (above the episode list) forces iTunes to load the full feed, even any episodes that the user has deleted.

There you go.

Dell Lattitude D600, its been a good run.

You out-performed your predecessor in so many ways. You managed not to break in 3.25 years. You managed not to get bogged down with shitty adware. You managed not to crash at key moments in my academic career. You managed to always shut down correctly, virtually every time. In short, your service has been long and excellent. But, as you know, all things must end. Its the god-damn second law of thermodynamics, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Lets face the facts, you’ve been freezing up completely lately. I mean, I have to take the freaking battery out. Also, you keep forgetting that you have an ethernet port. Hey, we all get old, but for you, its become a liability to my cause, thus, its time for you to retire.

To be sure, you’re retirement will be honorable. You will stay in my apartment and surf the web and check email until your motherboard finally burns out. It won’t be that bad. You won’t have to do anything hard anymore. Just the fun stuff.

Now, about your replacement . I know that you wanted me to put one of your sons in your position when this day came, but the boss just won’t have it. He insists that all work be done by an OS that computers like you just can’t run. I know you think the new guy’s kind of a yuppie, and you’re right, but he’s competant, he gets the job done, and damn if he doesn’t look good.

So, you have to the end of the day to burn copies of all your important files to CD and hand them over. Then you need to clear off of the desk, and head on home. We’ll miss you around here.

Slashdot ran a feature today chronicling something of an anti-simplicity backlash in the design world. Several important points were made, but one comment, by alleged design guru Don Norman, is absolutely bathed in idiocy:

“Why are Yahoo! and MSN such complex-looking places? Because their systems are easier to use [than Google’s].”

Yeah, I know. Blog bait if I’ve even seen it. But such specious reasoning demands a swift and solid refutation.

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Oh, Sony. How you’ll soon pine for the days of Playstation I, when your marketing gurus made the loudest statement since Leisure Suit Larry that the 18+ crowd had gamers in it yet. You saw an open market, made a competent machine that was easy to develop for, and became the industrial force in a notoriously tricky field. That was 1996; ten years later, your outlook is bleak. Continue...