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Gizmadness

I’m sequestered at Schussman North, enjoying a bit of snow. But I can’t help but check in in response to Kieran’s waving of the semi-transparent lucite Mac signal flag.

Holy cow, this sucker looks cool.

But why, Apple, why locked in to Cingular?

Text editors have more fun

When was the last time Microsoft Office gave you a holiday treat? TextMate gets all dressed up for Halloween.

textmate's halloween icon

More photos at flickr.

Steel cage

On the matter of Mac wifi security, John Gruber throws down.

They get letters

A few short letters I thought of writing during and after my trip to Montreal for ASAs:

Dear Fortunate Timing: Thanks for taking me to Montreal on Wednesday, instead of Thursday.

Dear Canada: Your twenty dollar bill is lovely.

Dear Montreal: I really like your city but I think you ought to work on the whole running-red-lights-at-high-speed issue. Admittedly, it was impressive to see that Porsche rocket down the hill, but the narrow margin between it and my knees still makes me a little queasy.

Dear Air Canada: My overall experience with you was quite nice. Forgetting to transfer my baggage to terminal 2 in Toronto so that I could clear customs in time to catch my flight to Phoenix, however, was a pretty big oops. Thanks for holding the plane a little longer.

Dear Customs/Immigration Guy: I was sweating because I had been running. Didn’t mean to freak you out or anything. Still, you could have been a little nicer when it took me a second to get my brain in gear and tell you what I’ve been doing in Canada. For a few seconds, “Waiting with low blood sugar for my bag” was all I could think of.

Dear Apple: I had earlier believed that I had escaped the sudden and random shutdowns I hear tell of on the MacBook. Turns out, not so much. It’s hard to write and give a presentation on a computer that doesn’t turn on. It’s like the prettiest, most expensive lucite paperweight I’ve ever seen, currently. *

Dear ASA: Again with the cross-country trip? 2007 is New York. Maybe 2008 could be in Miami, or Boston, or Chicago—yeah, we haven’t all gone there for at least a couple of years. How about some attention to the West? Seriously, Salt Lake City hosted the olympics; I think it could handle us, but you’d all have to get over the High Culture bias first. I can tell you where to go for a beer, if you want. Denver, Seattle, San Diego, and Portland are also just fine.

Dear ASA: If you’re going to have conference hotels, how about having the conference, you know, at the hotels? The palais was a pretty neat building, but if the meetings aren’t even going to involve the hotels in the slightest, maybe we could promote any of the multiple very nice, much cheaper, free-breakfast-including spots instead? Again, you’d have to get over the High Culture bias first.

Dear cabbie: You say you’ve been driving that elderly couple, the one I shared a ride back to the airport at 5am with, all week? Do they know how much you’ve been ripping them off? The hotel-airport fare isn’t normally $50, dude.

Dear Portugese restaraunt on Crescent: You’re kidding, right? The only thing Portugese about our meal was … well, I don’t know anything about Portugese food, but I’m pretty sure you don’t either.

Dear French-Canadian TV: Wow, we can’t show anything like that on broadcast television in the States. How very European. Also, I caught a little bit of Star Trek 2 dubbed into French late one night. Know what’s the same in any language? “KAAAAAHHHNNN!”

Dear sociology bloggers: Sorry I couldn’t stay. See you next year.

* I was going to do the joke where I write, “My computer has been shutting itself down unexpect NO CARRIER”, but Drek beat me to it. Damn you and your compatible sense of humor, Drek.

Update 8/26/2006: Because I know folks are on the edge of their seats, I returned the MacBook for repair, received it three days later, and it has performed great ever since. Fingers crossed that Apple has zeroed in on the shutdowns problem and I’ll have smooth computing from here on out.

Back in Mac

Just in time for the 4th of July, the (once-suspected to be ill-fated) MacBook was delivered on Monday. The good news is that they didn’t end up formatting the hard drive—as is frequently done during repair—so I didn’t have to spend two days getting everything put back together again. Various case pieces are at least better fit together than they were, but there is still a bit of gaposis. No way in hell I’m sending it in again, though.

So now it’s full steam ahead with unlimited productiv—hey, widgets!

Hand-waving

What’s a fair per-day rental rate for a MacBook? ‘Cause I’m thinking about drafting an invoice.

 

As of today, June 30:

image

 

That looks awfully familiar.

 

Update: Hey, hey, hey:

image

What's happening?

Apparently, the pending part of return pending is more fluid than I imagined it would be. MacBook Repair Return Watch as of today, June 23, unchanged from Tuesday, June 20:

 

image

Spare parts

A quick update on the MacBook repair front, because I know you’re all sympathetic to my plight. After being misrouted by DHL, the package was a bit delayed getting to the repair facility, and I talked to AppleCare this morning, since I’ve been staring at the unchanging status message for a week:

image

It turns out that they’re really repairing it. They’ve replaced most of the external case in order to fix the warp, and are waiting on some parts to finish up. On one hand, it strikes me as good practice to repair, rather than replace, the unit, even if it involves fairly dramatic re-building of the MacBook’s body (“we have the technology…”). It suggests that somebody is actually looking at the work that is being done, and I like the idea of Apple Certified Craftsmen running their fingers along the case seams. (To be fair, there are plenty of things that I like—gnomes, for instance—whose actual existence I’m not prepared to assert.) And it makes it more likely I’ll get back the same quiet and not-too-hot machine that I started with. On the other hand I’m a bit cranky because they won’t have the final couple of parts (at the master Apple repair facility, they have to wait for parts?) for “another few business days.”

So on balance I think the good outweighs the bad, but I’m still more-than-ready to get back to work on that fun little machine.

 

June 20 update. A change in status.

 

image

 

Now I just hope to get the shipment before evacuation.

My mostly-good MacBook

There is good news about the MacBook, and there is bad news about the MacBook. The good news is that in ten days of use I haven’t seen any of the extreme heat or moo-noise issues that are making the rounds on the complain-a-rama forums. Instead, I have had a solid week+ of perfect performance: It’s fast (I put 2GB of RAM in it), quiet, not unreasonably hot (no more so on the lap than the Toshiba it is replacing), has a keyboard that takes a bit of getting used to but is quite nice to work with, and the screen is slick: A nice wide aspect ratio, clear and sharp. It’s light enough to carry around for a twenty-minute walk from one’s hotel to a coffee shop or campus.

And until the last few days, I would have noted that the build quality is excellent. I was going to say that the laptop has a bit of heft, but it’s a solid, comfortable-feeling piece of equipment. And so we come to the bad news: It’s still largely solid, but the bezels around the keyboard and the screen have some warp—whether it was there when I received the MacBook or developed over the past week of (relatively light) use, I’m not sure. But it’s certainly there now. I’ve posted a few photos.

Manufacturing defect? Purely cosmetic? Something that represents a heat-related issue? Something that will get worse? I don’t know. On one hand, it strikes me as a mostly but not entirely cosmetic issue, and I hate to be That Guy who gets all cranky when his laptop gets a scrape. But I’m concerned that this represents a defect that could come back and cost me more time/money/effort in the future. And the nice people on the phone at Apple did indicate that it’s something that they can remedy, so as much as I don’t want to give up my otherwise-perfectly-functioning LovelyBook, I’m going to ship it on home for a checkup.

If it comes back mooing, I’m gonna be pissed.

 

Update: Apple has a pretty slick mail-in repair program, with just two potential issues: 1) They seem to have forgotten to put my pickup order in the system the first time around, and 2) They should probably put the number to notify DHL that you’re ready for them to pickup the box, on something other than the invoice that you seal up inside of the box. Just sayin’. Folks need that number, and it’s all taped up inside the box.

Making iCal speedy again

Idiosyncratic technical note no. 4: Calendaring in molasses

For some reason, iCal recently slowed way down on me. Like “click and go make coffee while iCal finds focus” slow. I found a solution in the comments thread here and it seemed worth sharing.

  1. Quit iCal
  2. Find ~/Library/Application Support/iCal
  3. Move the entire “Sources” folder to the desktop
  4. Re-launch iCal. It will look horrifyingly empty for a few seconds, but will rebuild shortly, inserting all your previous tasks, schedules, subscribed calendars, etc.
  5. Take it for a spin; it should be much faster
  6. Trash the old Sources folder (note there’s a new shiny one in the directory)

Covert stylings

This post by Lago is ostensibly a rant about Griffin being unacceptably behind the times. But I can read between the lines. “I got one!” he’s saying. “Badger me for my impressions of the lovely new dual-core Intel iMac!”

Life in Mac years

The next few weeks might be a super time to pick up pre-Intel Macs at bargain prices, though if you have the cash, who would really want to? The new MacBook looks slick (though like Tom, I’m not sure about the name change); I wonder if its stock 512 MB of ram will be more sensible with the new Intel chips than it was with previous processors? Likewise, the new iMac with its dual Intel chips looks smokin’—but I’ll hold onto my G5 iMac as long as I can. Rent, and all. It was just months ago that Apple was unveiled the second, then third, generation of its iMac line; today the line wholly jumped the track and grew wings. Just another year with three generations of product.

Switched, one month later

About a month ago, as part of my plan to set up a new, work-focused home office here at Schussman North, I got myself a new computer, a lovely iMac. That’s right, I Switched—well, partly: I still use our trusty old Satellite laptop when I travel or go into town to the coffeeshop for an afternoon. But for the most part, I’m using the Mac these days, and I’m loving it.

With the introduction of the new model iMacs, the prior version of the machine was discounted quite a bit, especially at academic stores, so I was able to get the 20-inch model and spring for a fat memory upgrade. So far the machine really hums along: It’s quiet, mostly spendidly fast (emacs, strangely enough, seems to lag a bit when compared to the laptop), and the display is gorgeous, wide enough for multiple windows or displaying lots of data, with crisp text. One month later, a few more thoughts.

photo

Things I’m enjoying

  • Bibdesk: Bibdesk is an application for working with BibTeX files. It has powerful sorting and editing features and integrates well with writing documents in Emacs: Just copy and paste a citation to generate a \cite statement—for more \cite options, BibDesk includes a drawer full of alternative cite commands that can be dragged to documents to build citations. With BibDesk, I’m able to combine my half-dozen or more different BibTeX files into a single master file that’s easily sorted by author, keywords, or any other query. BibDesk also handles local copies of papers nicely: Drag any PDF (or other file format) to a BibDesk entry and it will be automatically associated with that entry, copied to a central repository, and renamed according to your favorite naming convention for easy later identification. It’s really slick. And because the underlying BibTeX file is preserved, the database can always be opened and manipulated with Emacs or your favorite text editor. BibDesk is extensible through scripts that let you add, remove, or edit fields in any number of entries at a time. Scripts also facilitate downloading entries from various citation databases, and BibDesk has a great set of import tools for dealing with plain text or other bibliographic database formats.
  • Unixy and open source power: All my open source applications have been ported, so the cost of switching was minimal. I’ll probably end up buying a copy of the educational version of Office, but substitutions like NeoOffice/J offer as many alternatives to commercial software as are found on Windows and Linux (note that they’re not always perfect substitutions, but they’ll usually do the trick). And I’ve got a fully-powered up shell underneath it all, so even version control was a seamless switch.
  • Speed: The iMac sure is snappy most of the time—thanks, I’m sure, in part to the 2 GB of RAM I put in. But even before that upgrade, it was nice and speedy.
  • Quicksilver: What everybody else has said: Wow, it’s neat. Still, I’m sure that I’m underutilizing it, as habituated as I am to reaching for the mouse when I need to open or find something. (Same goes for spotlight.)

Things I’m still puzzling away with

  • Digital Camera: OS X won’t recognize my old Pentax EI-200 digital camera. The camera shows up in the USB device list, but I can’t mount it or get iPhoto to find it. Come on Apple, how hard is it to detect a USB mass storage device and just load it up? I shouldn’t need a new camera to work with this thing. So for the time being, photos still load up on the laptop with Picasa.
  • The keyboard is just different enough that I still stumble over hotkeys, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why end and home don’t do anything. Am I just missing something? The different meanings of control, alt, and command aren’t always apparent.
  • Every once in a while, the machine doesn’t cleanly shut down. I get a message that it must be restarted, either via the restart key (which, um, I don’t have, as far as I know) or by holding down the power button. Something to do with the Tiger upgrade? I’ve never had problems with stability while using the machine—it’s rock solid in that regard—but I do wonder about this quirk.

About, the short version

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