Zzot!

More random tinkering with my website:

• Upgraded to the latest point release of WordPress.
• I switched to a more orthodox site layout, instead of the bizarre, half-assed crap that I had going on before. Consequences (intended and otherwise) include:
  • More stuff “just works” than used to, including almost anything related to how up-to-date stuff is (which hopefully will have more benefits than consequences).
  • I retired one of my private plugins, which served only to make part of my screwball setup work.
  • For the moment, authentication isn’t done over SSL (as it should be).
  • CSS files (or anything else belonging to my current theme) are no longer served over SSL (as they shouldn’t be).
  • You should have seen the mess that made of my live-preview in MarsEdit.
  • Spammers seem to be getting far less confused on the way to my form submission URL, resulting in a meteoric rise in the length of my spam queue — sorry, anyone trying to comment on my site who doesn’t have my e-mail address.
• I switched anti-spam plugins. Nothing against Spam Karma 2, mind you — it’s quite good, I just wanted to check out Akismet.
• Retired another one of my private plugins that now duplicates a core feature.
• Switched from WP Cache 2 to WP Super Cache, because the former wasn’t working properly on my site. Why cache a site that nobody reads? Why not!

Update: April 30, 2008

Found another one:

• All permalinks in my feeds have been invalid since I did this. I thought the only thing of consequence I had broken by not moving Mint properly was its up-to-date link — I was wrong. Bird Feeder was using the old hostname in the URLs it constructs.

Site Info | Tagged WordPress | Permalink | No Comments

One of my problems with Leopard has been that the way I use Finder stopped working. I set it to “Always open folders in a new window” and hold down option when I want to close the window I start from. This is actually different from the behavior with that preference off — when you open a new window, it has the saved view settings for that folder. When you navigate to a new folder in an existing window, the view settings from the old folder remain. With Leoopard, holding down option merely reverses the state of that preference. A day or two ago I thought I should try all the modifier combinations to be sure they just didn’t hide it on me, rather than get rid of it…and I quickly found it. Hold down control and option, instead of just option, while hitting command-down or whatever and you get the old (just holding option) behavior.

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Whoever sold this ad is a marketing genius. I mean honestly — if you were selling cookbooks, would you have realized you need to get on SourceForge? No, you wouldn’t have. You know why? I’ll tell you — you’re an idiot. Meddling amateurs like you or me would have been wasting our advertising budget on Food Network spots. Luckily, for all humanity, we have proper Madison Avenue types to save us from ourselves.

Click the image for the large version:

Rants, Raves | Tagged Ad-Spotting, IANMTU | Permalink | No Comments

Here’s what passes for normal conversation around here:

Me

Would you expect my components to get horked if I tried to export them both from the same FLA?

Marc

Uh, no. Why?

Me

Darn. They each have their own component name in the resulting SWC, but they end up having the same class name.

Marc

Are you using the same classes in them or something?

Me

I’m using some of the same classes, but the components themselves each have their own class. If I right-click on Export SWC File… in the library, both components are in the SWC, but with the same class name. And I can’t just export one component and then the other, because you get two copies of each, presumably only one of which works.

Marc

That’s weird.

Me

Did I mention that I was using an Adobe product?

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Since I posted predictions, I feel like I have to post a post-game summary as well:

Code Signing

Mostly correct. Your code must be signed to be distributed through iTunes, and Apple does intend to prevent you from distributing your app through any other channel. The difference is that you get your certificate as part of your (paid) iPhone Developer Program membership — and for less than you can usually get a code signing certificate.

Student / Hobbyist Developers

The text of my prediction was correct, but the spirit of it was wrong. You can, technically, develop your application without paying a penny to anyone — but only if you don’t intend to test it on a device.

Paid and Displayed

Same as above, basically. Apple created a new paid developer program, which wasn’t really what I meant.

Xcode

Partially correct. There are new tools, and some of the existing ones do get new tricks — but Apple seems to be throwing the whole mess of tools into this endeavor. Sure, Interface Builder isn’t in the current beta, but I totally didn’t expect Instruments to be included.

What’s in a name?

This was from a list of additional predictions I had that I thought weren’t worth posting an update or sequel post. This OS does get an official name — it’s referred to all through the docs as “iPhone OS”.

Here are some other interesting points from my reading so far:

• Xcode has its own list of devices (perhaps not surprising) that you have to add you device to by plugging it in with Xcode running.
• You create your code signing certificate using the Certificate Utility in Keychain Access, and then upload it to Apple’s servers (once you’ve joined the program), and then download the signed one and add it to Xcode.
• While you’re downloading stuff, you’ll need to download your Profile as well — to me this strongly implies that the exact nature of the restrictions is negotiable (at least they are for the really big fish).

• I love really specific qualifiers on informational pages:

  The iPhone Developer Program will initially be available to a limited number of developers in the U.S. and will expand to other countries in the coming months.

  Limited? I know your developer.apple.com totally screwed from the load after the announcement, but still. In the coming months? Gosh. Is that the same timeframe for when most of us would actually be permitted to join?

Weblog | Tagged ADC, iPhone, Predictions, SDK | Permalink | No Comments

I’ve mentioned the furry contingent of our household in my writing here; their names are Miesha, Sasha, and Chi-Chi, oldest to youngest. Miesha and Sasha have been together forever, and Sasha tolerates Chi-Chi like an annoying kid brother who’s always following him around. Miesha and Chi-Chi don’t really get along.

If they’re all scared, they can all hide in the same cupboard. Miesha, being the biggest and the meanest, sits in front. Sasha, being a giant furry chicken, hides behind as many other cats as possible, leaving Chi-Chi in the middle. Chi-Chi’s healthy weight is probably half Sasha’s,¹ so this sort of looks like a montain lion hiding behind a rabbit hiding behind a fuzzy godzilla, but at least Sasha is trying. At any rate, this is the only circumstance where Miesha and Chi-Chi don’t start hissing and growling at each other on sight.

The following occurred on Monday of this week. My apologies to any friends or family who learn of these events from my blog. If you’re new here (and a little slow), L is a pseudonym for my wife; I do not have our cats’ permission to use their real names on my web site.

4:10 pm

Miesha pretty much always has attitude for everyone. She gives L attitude, and they’ve been together for all of Miesha’s life and close to half of L’s. If Miesha doesn’t want to be petted, or if she’s decided she’s done being petted, she’ll warn you and then she’ll bite you. She’s also got some back pain. Most of the time Miesha is a “you can look at me but that’s it” cat.

L notices Miesha is violating most of what I said in the last paragraph, to the point of seeming delirious. She texts me that she’s taking her to the vet because “she’s really weird.” Our friend D helps in this production. If you’ve never taken a cat to the vet, you’ll have to take my word that it’s best done with a friend when one is available.

4:45 pm

D is livid.

L doesn’t remember the conversation at the vet that clearly, and I haven’t talked to D about it yet, but after they all left, she told L that we’re not taking any of our cats back to him.²

5:30 pm

L needs some time alone. D leaves her at home and calls me at work to tell me that Miesha has passed away. She passed quietly enough that L might not have immediately noticed.

6:00 pm

I just get up and leave, basically. I don’t tell anyone that I’m leaving or that one of our cats just died. I’m sure it’s been an hour since D called.

6:30 pm

Miesha and L have been together for 16 years; longer than I’ve known L. Miesha got L through some very hard times. I come home to my wife holding Miesha for the last time.

7:30 pm

It’s eerie how much she looks like she’s just asleep. So much so that neither of us can really think clearly until we wrap her body. We put her in my car for the night. Part of me is thinking “we can’t just leave her out in the cold.”

We had pretty much just finished this when my boss calls and asks me about something I really can’t remember. From my voice, he guesses that I’d been asleep. After answering his question I tell him that “we’ve had a death in the family” and that I wouldn’t be in on Tuesday.

I’m calling this the first time I’ve lost a pet. Technically it isn’t, but I was young enough when my sister’s dog passed that I scarcely remember it. My wife and I spent the night curled up together watching who knows what on TV. We also updated our address books — I had a lot of birthdays missing. There’s a really bizarre Proustian question in there somewhere.

1. My theory is stunted growth caused by malnutrition before the shelter found him, if you’re curious. [↩]
2. Don’t ask me for his name; I’m not running the Better Business Bureau here. [↩]

Life | Tagged Family, Pets | Permalink | No Comments

Instead of trying to convince people next Wednesday that I was expecting whatever Apple’s announced the day before, I figured I’d blab my theories this Wednesday. Sure, it was, in fact, very early Thursday when I finally started typing this, but hey — I came up with this whole idea before midnight, and it’s the thought that counts, right?

Let me say up front, I don’t know anyone at Apple, and I don’t have the inside track on anything. I read whatever NetNewsWire finds for me and decide what I think is bull, just like everyone else. I’m also ignoring the backpedalling on whether this will still happen in February, since I really have no guess whether it’s actually delayed or not.

All that being said, here’s my thoughts on what we’ll hear about an iPhone SDK next week:

Code Signing

Everyone thinks there will be some kind of code signing. I think that you’ll need a real code-signing certificate from a recognized, trusted root to distribute your stuff through iTunes, and distribution through means other than iTunes will be “unsupported”.

Student / Hobbyist Developers

You’ll be able to develop applications with an Online membership to the developer program and without paying a tithe to Verisign for the previously mentioned certificate. Anyone who predicts you’ll be able to run your own code on your own device with Xcode and the cable you already have is right. See above for my guess about distributing your application once you’re done developing it.

Paid and Displayed

Professional developers (i.e., those who have paid ADC memberships) will get something extra. There are a lot of possibilities here, none of which I particularly like, but I think there will be something.

Xcode

There will be some new tools (i.e., the much-rumored simulator), and some existing ones will get new tricks. Some of the existing tools will not get any new tricks, and a large number of people will think everyone at Apple has their heads up their asses for for not including one of those tools in the iPhone toolkit.

Mind you, there’s more to developing good applications than being able to locate the “Build and Run” menu item on short notice. Especially on a mobile device, you have to live with your app to figure out if your interface blows, and that includes trying to use it and trying to not get hit by a bus at the same time. The bus service in my office sucks, no matter how wide I leave the door open. I would expect Apple to know this,¹ but I’m not counting on them doing anything about it.

Casualties

Several Cocoa developers will be attacked in the coming weeks and sustain minor injuries. The weapons involved in these otherwise unrelated cases will include assorted handheld electronic devices, a stapler (used as a blunt object), three books, and an extremely unfortunate Carbon developer who was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

After an intense investigation, the police will break the case when they reexamine the evidence and realize that the handheld electronic devices consist almost entirely of Palm m505s, Tungsten|C’s, and a variety of Treo devices from different carriers. The assailants will all turn out to be former members of the Palm developer program who were driven over the edge by offhanded remarks about how much harder it is to develop without “using something called ‘Interface Builder’”.

I probably had a couple more items in mind when I started this, but that’s all I can remember. Hopefully the others weren’t the really insightful ones. Now comes the highly suspenseful waiting to find out just how ludicrously off-base I am.

1. and no, I don’t mean that I can’t catch a bus in my office [↩]

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I’ve been messing with my site again, so don’t be shocked the next time you go to the actual web page. The color scheme is almost certainly not final — its just some random set of light-on-dark colors produced by fiddling with the color picker in TextMate.

Aside from the obvious throwing stuff around the page willy-nilly and splashing geegaw colors on everything, features include:

• A Tag Cloud. I was getting a lot of threatening phone calls
  from the Web 2.0 police for not having one, and my
  cat just couldn’t stand the stress any longer.
• Breadcrumbs. Sometimes. They don’t work properly in pages yet.
  In fact, they don’t work properly anywhere other than date
  archives and single entries.
• Asides. You wouldn’t know from how things look in the feed,
  but my site presents asides differently from regular posts.
  Oh, and I might start doing them.
• The footer no longer claims I haven’t written anything in two
  years. Then again, maybe I haven’t written anything in
  two years. It’s hard to tell sometimes.
• What little of consequence you could formerly do from my
  archives page you can now do from every page. So don’t
  bother going to the archives page to do it. You don’t
  need it. And it isn’t one to go to.
• Broken Stuff. I don’t know what or where, but I assume there
  is some. And there’s probably twice as much of it for people
  who still use IE, although I doubt any of them read my
  blog.

Site Info | Tagged Asides, Color, TextMate, WordPress | Permalink | No Comments

I still don’t get it. Okay, now that I think of it, there are two things I don’t get. First, I was so sure the “Translucent Menu Bar” checkbox would be under “Appearance” that I thought something was wrong when I didn’t find it there. That being said, I also still don’t get the big deal with the menu bar. Having used Leopard for months, Leopard sans translucency looks even more flat and lifeless than Tiger does. Were people even complaining about the menus themselves? I honestly don’t remember.

In other news, under 10.5.2, I’ve had a sharp increase in the number of times the app switcher pops up with the wrong number of icons in it. Strangely, most of the time the app I’m looking for isn’t one that the system forgot to draw in the app switcher, so it isn’t really that much of an inconvenience — but it’s still odd.

Weblog | Tagged Leopard, Mac OS X | Permalink | No Comments