Fnord.

One of the nice things about Mac OSX is that it has the concepts of network ‘locations’. For example, I have ‘Home’, ‘Automatic’ (default) and several others like ‘Via [redacted] proxy’

Useful stuff, but it’s often desireable to do a bit more. I’d like to switch HTTP proxies, default printers, and just maybe initiate a backup when I get home… stock OSX doesn’t have a simple way to do this.

There are several programs to do this, I use and like MarcoPolo. Free, open source, scriptable, unobtrusive, quite clever.

Oh yeah, it supports Growl, too, which is a major plus for me.

Main screen:

Rules:

Actions:

I’ve been using it for a week or so, and so far the main annoyance is the delay required after waking from sleep in a new location - it may take 10-30 seconds to associate with the WiFi, derive the location and apply the rules. Annoying, but probably unavoidable.

I plan on using this more as I gain confidence in it. For example, I want it to run a backup when ‘location is home, AC power is present and IP is ‘foo’ (wired connection) and this looks do-able.

The printer changing seems problematic, perhaps because (as shown) my work printer name has spaces and a backslash in it. There’s no feedback or diagnostics that I can find on this.

Cool stuff!

(Update 8/4/07: Found the perfect image for this story on this somewhat related story.)

Via the Dilbert blog, the obvious-in-retrospect news that, duuh, assholes like making other people angry. They get off from it, even if the reward is an expression that goes by too fast to be consciously visible.

That’s what I call depressing research.

There’s a causal link with testosterone levels, which also explains that schmuck in the sports car.

Reminds me of this Stephenson quote, lifted from the funniest project page ever:

“Nothing is more annoying to sophisticated people to see someone who is rich enough to know better being tacky–unless it is to realize, a moment later, that they probably know they are tacky and they simply don’t care and they are going to go on being tacky, and rich, and happy, forever.

…This is all strongly reminiscent of the heyday of Communism and Socialism, when the bourgeoisie were hated from both ends: by the proles, because they had all the money, and by the intelligentsia, because of their tendency to spend it on lawn ornaments.”

–Neal Stephenson

Seems like asshats are not only happy, they get MORE happy from rendering others unhappy. No wonder they end up on top, without remorse - hell, the misdeeds that got them there got them off at the same time.

From the article:

“It’s kind of striking that an angry facial expression is consciously valued as a very negative signal by almost everyone, yet at a non-conscious level can be like a tasty morsel that some people will vigorously work for,” said Oliver Schultheiss, co-author of the study and a U-M associate professor of psychology.
…
Wirth, the lead author of the study and now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, added: “Better learning of a task associated with anger faces indicates that the anger faces were rewarding, as in a rat that learns to press a lever in order to receive a tasty treat. In that sense, anger faces seemed to be rewarding for high-testosterone people, but aversive for low-testosterone people.”

I picked a bad time to stop drinking.

Via I’m-not-sure-which-gadget-blog, the Blackberry 8300 aka ‘Curve’:

A large improvement indeed over my trusty 7290. Thinner, faster, 2 megapixel camera, MP3 player, finally sized to fit in a pocket instead of the geek holster.

I’ve been waiting for this, particularly the form factor plus camera. Nearly jumped on the 8100 ‘Pearl’. However, I’m glad I waited, because I really like a full QWERTY keyboard.

It’s not out yet on T-mobile, and the iPhone is due this summer too, along with the a-bit-thick Helio Ocean, so we’ll see what I end up with. It’ll be really cool to have email + camera + phone, that’s for sure. Finally, I’ll be able to blog like Chuck.

One way or the other, just like the song says.

Reviews I’ve found so far:

1. Wired
2. Engadget
3. Airtimemanager
4. cnet
5. Laptop Magazine

More info:

1. RIM press release
2. High-res image gallery

Chuck just forwarded an email to me, from a colleague of his asking about RSS, readers and justifications. I’ve been an RSS junkie for some time, so I thought I’d take a stab at it.

You can find a full definition of RSS here on Wikipedia, but let me take a stab at a users’ view of it.

RSS

RSS is a method for combining web updates into a single program. As a user, this lets you scan more of the web in less time.

A way to eliminate hitting reload on a site to see if they’ve updated since were last there.

A concept as hard to explain as a web browser

From another point of view, RSS lets sites tell people easily when content is added or changed. This means that Joe User can add these so-called ‘feeds’ together into a stream of news that they (theoretically) care about.

In practice, it works pretty well. Sites publish RSS (or Atom, see the Wiki article for details) feeds, users use a reader of some sort to view them, and if a story interests you then you can read it.

Sites publish either ‘full-text’ or abbreviated feeds. For example, the New York Times just publishes headlines and a sentence. If you want to read the full article, you have to load the link (which the reader makes simple.) Many blogs publish full-text, where the RSS item has the entire story plus links to pictures. I much prefer full-text feeds; that’s what I have for this blog.

Anyway, here’s a screenshot of my preferred newsreader, a Mac-only product called NetNewsWire:

(This is the beta version)

It has various layouts, this is the one I usually use. RSS feeds are grouped into user-defined categories on the left. In this shot you can see some of mine:

You can see I have some feeds (NYT, Washington Post, some others) in ‘News’, a few local ones in ‘San Diego news’, and so forth. The point is, you can group them however makes sense to you and not me. Which I do.

Generally, I sort feeds by how much I read them. News goes at the top, then local stuff that might affect me, then associated high-perceived-value blogs into ‘low update rate’ (named for infrequent blogs) and then topics of interest. Such as watches. (Shameless plug, there).

On the far right, you can see a number of vertically-stacked thumbnails. NetNewsWire has tabs, and this is showing all the links I’ve followed. This is essential in my opinion. When reading an RSS feed, I just hit enter on the one I want to read, and NNW opens them in tabs, in the background, where I can peruse them at leisure. If you have to ‘click, read, hit back’ each time then RSS would be a lot less useful.

Here’s a screenshot of reading Boing Boing, which shows the embedded web browser and full-text feed. Click for full-size:

This shows a lot of the features I like. Note that user-defined groups of news read super easily, where you just hit spacebar to advance screens and skip to next unread news item.

All of this adds up to a system where I can efficiently learn and read far more than I could with my previous system of bookmarks and tab sets. I still have a tab set that I open in the morning, but the news part of that (as opposed to weather and comics) is migrating to RSS very quickly.

I think that’s the part I’d like to emphasize: Not so much the underlying technology, but what it gets you: An easier way to keep up with what interests you.

There’s a couple of follow-up essays I will write if anyone’s interested, on RSS readers, finding feeds, sharing them, web aggregators and such. We’ll see how this one flies.

MacFusion.

A sweet little menubar applet front end for MacFuse, which is a port of the Linux-original user-mounted filesystems.

Non-geek translation: You can use this to mount remote Unix or OSX machines as Mac filesystems. It’s easy. It handles sleep/wake, and seems more stable than the sshfs command line.

Trying it now for having my itunes library on my server, will see how it works.

Update: Ghort comments that this fails for him due to mismatched UID/GIDs. I didn’t notice because, due to similar problems with NFS, I set my server UID to match my laptop UID some months ago. Not sure if there’s a workaround or not, there probably is but MacFusion may not accommodate it easily.

Given my coffee, err, issues I keep wondering if I should try roasting my own. A good friend or two has made the jump and are urging me to follow. Just saw this on Cool Tools, seems like a decent roaster. Hmm….

Our back yard, closeups with the new point-and-shoot, a Lumix DMC-FX07. (More on this soon)

As a late addition to the PSP page, this munificent cable. Seven bucks, lets you charge the PSP from your laptop while on the road. Just got mine, works fine, a must-have. One less AC adapter to pack!

Update 5/6/07: Yeah, the picture is wrong, but its the same one on the Madcatz site, sorry. The actual cable is a Y, where the USB flat (A) connector forks into PSP power (barrell) and USB mini.

I have to confess: for the most part, I’m not a Mozart fan.

He’s widely held in high regard for very cerebral music, genius, yadda yadda. To me, he’s a lot like certain forms of jazz: intellectual brilliance does not necessarily make for pleasurable music. You need, IMHO, some emotion.

(Updated 5/6/07: There are exceptions that I enjoy - symphonies 40/41, some of the operas, the Requiem, not sure what else.)

Which leads us to Bach. (JS, that is. There were several.) There are many, many reasons to love ‘ol JSB: the Brandenburg Concertos (the last word in Baroque IMHO), the Goldberg Variations, The Art of Fugue, the Mass in B Minor (I like this performance) and of couse the coffee cantata! The man wrote a cantata about coffee addiction! How cool is that?

If I can’t drink my bowl of coffee three times daily, then in my torment, I will shrivel up like a piece of roast goat.
…
Recitative Narrator
Old Schlendrian goes off to see if he can find a husband forthwith for his daughter Lieschen; but Lieschen secretly lets it be known: no suitor is to come to my house unless he promises me, and it is also written into the marriage contract, that I will be permitted to make myself coffee whenever I want.

Trio
A cat won’t stop from catching mice, and maidens remain faithful to their coffee. The mother holds her coffee dear. The grandmother drank it also. Who can thus rebuke the daughters?

Not to forget the cello suites, either. Get the Rostropovich version, I have two others and neither is even close.

Of all the forms of Bach, I have a particular weakness for his works on the pipe organ. My mother used to play organ for our church, as was also instrumental in introducing us to classical music in general. Thanks, Mom! I also used to work in Cordiner Hall, and every now and then music prof (emeritus) Stanley Plummer would rehearse on the halls’ pipe organ. Once, we were in the tunnel underneath the seats, which is 4′ tall, and he was playing Bach! Total ‘Phantom of the Opera’ moment.

(Cordiner cross-section, I think the tunnel is partially shown under the seats beneath the balcony. You get the idea.)

Pipe organ is definitely an acquired taste. Actually, its closer to musical anchovies. I like ‘em both.

Bach spent 17 years as church organist in Leipzig, and I think that gave him a comptence and insight for the pipe organ that no one else ever matched. He understood how the low pedal tones, when sustained, would setup standing waves in the long, narrow cathedrals, and how to maximise the limited dynamics of the instrument. Magnificent stuff.

My favorite performer is Marie-Claire Alain, who I found via MHS. However, last week I found a ten-disc set of pipe organ via Dan’s blog. Cost? twenty bucks!

The artist is Helmut Walcha, whose personal life is fascinating - he was blind, with perfect pitch and musical memory. From the article:

As a result of a smallpox vaccination, Walcha had poor eyesight since childhood, and was fully blind by sixteen. He learned new pieces by having musicians (including his mother in his childhood and his wife in later years), play for him four times (each hand separately, the pedal part separately, and the complete piece). Having perfect pitch, he would memorize the piece while listening.

I got my copy yesterday and am enjoying it. I think the low cost is partially due to the older analog recordings (40’s and 60’s) , but it still sounds damn good and the price is irresistable. I’ve listened to three of the CDs so far and am enjoying them immensely.

(As an aside, consider headphones or limited sessions, out of sensitivity to others within earshot who aren’t pipe organ fans.)

As the Wiki article notes, his voicings were unusual; his performance of the classic Toccata and Fugue in D sounds like call-and-response at some points by his use of alternating ranks. Most interesting.

Highly recommended.

Fame surely awaits.

Yeah, that was sarcasm. Been posting there, which is partially why there’s been less here. Might be of interest.

1. MTM camo watches
2. Spring drive chrono
3. Timex T series
4. Timex TX brand
5. Swimming lap watches
6. Suunto dive watches

More on the way, both there and here!