Tiger Upgrade: iChat Supports Jabber and SSL

I was insanely happy to notice iChat's support for Jabber and Jabber over SSL. This will be a boon to Corporate Netizens. Of course it fully integrates with Address Book, displays conferencing capabilities and all that good stuff. Eh Justin, if you had a hand in testing or building this feature, well ok, even if you didn't, mad shouts out to you ;]

Tiger Upgrade: Sticky Notes 3.4.1: Fixes Loading Bug

Be sure to get the latest Sticky Notes version from Chronos Software. 3.4.0 freezes on start-up, at "Loading Database ...". 3.4.1 fixed this issue and Sticky Notes is running peachy on Tiger.

Tiger Upgrade: iSync All Devices First

Be sure to run iSync on all your devices before running the Tiger upgrade. It likely won't be the end of the world if you don't, but you'll be safer, i think. Tiger installs a new version of iSync, on which you should re-enter preferences on a per-device basis. iSync will be doing a "first sync" and offer you the option to merge or override what's on your devices with what's on your computer. If you merge, it says you're likely to have duplicate data, and that's because this version of iSync has no knowledge of records imported on past versions of iSync.

Basically, by the time you run the Tiger upgrade, you want to make sure that whatever lives on your computer matches data that lives on your various devices.

Tiger Upgrade: Back-Up /etc/hosts

my upgrade from Panther to Tiger appears to have replaced my /etc/hosts with a default one, without backing-up the original. But I've got a back-up somewhere else. So should you.

Update: On some other machines, Tiger appears to back it up to /etc/hosts~, but I think i already had an older copy from a past upgrade at this location, so my /etc/hosts~ is the older older file, not the one I wanted.

In any case, if you care about your /etc/hosts, just back it up :)

Tiger Upgrade: Colloquy Error: Fixed in Nightly

The following error was fixed in one of the Colloquy nightly builds. The 4/16/2005 nightly beta build is working fine for me in Tiger. Check out their downloads page.

Please report this message to the Colloquy development team with a brief synopsis of your actions leading to this message.

-[NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: mutating method sent to immutable object

The error occurred in:
task_start_peeking: can't suspend failed (ipc/send) invalid destination port
-[MVConnectionsController initWithWindowNibName:] (in Colloquy) (MVConnectionsController.m:157)

Tiger Upgrade: Smooth!

I'm on a 1.25Ghz G4 Powerbook, with 1GB of RAM.

Here's my history:

• Back in late 2001, I switched from a Dell laptop to a 400Mhz TiBook G4 running Mac OS X 10.1
• When Jaguar came out, I did a regular upgrade, everything went fine.
• Shortly before Panther came out, I migrated the 400Mhz TiBook onto this 1.25Ghz AlBook mounted in Target Disk Mode using Carbon Copy Cloner. After re-adjusting some Airport options, this process also went smoothly.
• I then proceeded to install Panther on this AlBook. Again, this was a smooth upgrade.
• After yet another upgrade, I'm running Tiger, on what one might consider as the same laptop i've had since 2001, with data i've carried around since 1999.

After backing-up the hard drive, the Tiger upgrade went very smoothly. Upon booting, my cheese hadn't moved, everything was still where I expected it to be, which is crucial to a smooth upgrade. Once Spotlight was done doing its indexing, the system felt at least as snappy as it did under Panther, snappier in some areas. Safari 2.0 feels *much* faster, smoother rendering, and works very-well with my autocomplete script with over 5000 test contact entries. I'm thinking I'll soon be able to remove some of the hacks I had in there. The RSS icon now shows-up on most sites I regularly visit. (Note that the EarthLink News channel has provided RSS feeds to its syndicated news since 2001) (not tooting horn or anything).

Spotlight took about 3 hours to index an 80GB hard drive filled with about 60GB of data. It's very effective. I've got a lot of files on here, over 80,000 pieces of emails since 2002 across multiple mail accounts. Here's something fun to try:

1. Create a text file anywhere on your hard drive, open-it up, and type anything in there, such as: "tiger rocks my world". Save it, and right-away, hit CTRL-SPACE or click the Spotlight icon at the top-right and type-in "tiger rocks my world". It takes about 5 seconds for the file i just created to show-up along with every other file on my hard drive where the words "tiger" "rocks" "my" "world" have appeared. But my new file does show-up prominently displayed as "The Top Hit".
2. Now, repeat the same operation by typing "tiger_rocks_my_world" into the same file, saving it, and right-away searching for "tiger_rocks_my_world" in spotlight.

Mail.app migrated my mailboxes from an old format to a new format. That took about a half hour. I have a lot more files in ~/Library/Mail now. Anybody know whether there's anything I can delete to save disk space? This new version looks very slick and implements smart folders, a feature which Entourage had since 2001. heh. Go Mac BU dudes!

More Upgrade notes will appear in later separate posts.

Hello from Lake Jackson, TX

HTTP 304 and GZIP: Our Best Friends

The HTTP 304 response is likely one of the most underrated pieces of big ol' RFC 2616.

Mad props to Om Malik for surfacing the above article in his very-well researched piece on Safari, Tiger, RSS and the Bandwidth Bottleneck.

I also think we need to bring Accept-Encoding: gzip / Content-Encoding: gzip back to the foreground. Back when Netscape 4.x was too pervasive, there were a few issues that made many of us shy away from leveraging gzip:

• Unreliable client-support: I remember issues where Netscape would crash upon receiving a .css or .js file over gzip
• gzip adds CPU load on busy servers handling many requests per second. In those days of slower CPUs, it was often best to offload this work on dedicated hardware/proxies, or not do it. Today CPUs are fast.

I've heard scattered rumors of certain user agents who do send the accept-encoding gzip request header, yet barf on the gzipped data. I've yet to see one such user agent, please share the info if you have it :) Some shops will enable gzip Content-Encoding based upon a list of allowed user agents. That works too, albeit not ideal .

Google.com serves its pages over gzip, provided you send it a user-agent of a decent web browser.

Flickr Rocks

a wee Flickr praise. hey ye think they'll bump my account up to 2016 after this praise? w00t :)

Arnold is now 32!

L'âge des Filles!

A funny e-mail my sis sent me today:

L'âge des filles!

Qelle est la différence entre des filles âgées de 8 , 18, 28 ,38 ,48 ,58 , 68 et 78 ans ?

A 8 ans, tu l'amènes au lit et tu lui contes une histoire.
A 18 ans, tu lui contes une histoire et tu l'amènes au lit.
A 28 ans, tu n'as pas besoin d'histoires pour l'amener au lit.
A 38 ans, elle te conte une histoire et t'amène au lit.
A 48 ans, tu lui contes une histoire pour ne pas aller au lit.
A 58 ans, tu restes au lit pour ne pas entendre ses histoires.
A 68 ans, si tu l'amènes au lit, c'est toute une histoire.
A 78 ans, si tu peux sortir du lit, c'est aussi toute une histoire

Google Video Upload is LIVE!!!

OK. Well, if this Google Video thing turns out to be as cool as i'm thinking it's going to be, i just might switch back to a lower tier for my .Mac account.

Who am i kidding, i can never have too many places to put stuff online.

update: their "uploader" appears to be windows-only. Any way we mac users can do this over webdav or something? I mean c'mon what's the best platform to author video content?

Avon Breast Cancer Walk

My good friend Monica is looking to raise $2,000 through her Avon Breast Cancer Walk donations page. I've known Monica since 1997. She practically taught me to swing dance. She's one of the top 5 coolest chicks i know, and she's got a big ol' heart! If you like what she's doing, give her a wee boost :)

E-Mail, Reloaded: IM2000

A co-worker of mine who's spent a good chunk of his career making our e-mail world a better place just pointed me to IM2000. Interesting stuff.

If I grok this correctly, it would bring e-mail closer to a publish/subscribe model.

Tom and Laura's Honeymoon Pics

My friends Tom and Laura came back from their honeymoon in Africa a couple of weeks ago. They took amazing pictures which I've uploaded to my flickr account.

If you have not yet tried out Flickr, I highly recommend you give it a whirl. It is to this day the best online photosharing site.

Software Entrepreneurs: Think of the Mac

The Mac can help you. It was meant to help you.

Running with Apple

Run, froggy, run!

Om Malik: Internet Anxiety

Another interesting piece by Om Malik gives us his take on what he refers to as "Internet Anxiety Disorder".

I doubt most of us can exactly relate to his plight, at least, not I, in the sense that I'm not important and not many people care to be in touch with me at any given point. I consider myself lucky in that regard.

I subscribe to over 100 RSS feeds in NetNewsWire, and it does feel overwhelming at times, but i go through periods, such as this one, where I just tune out the rest of the world as a challenging project occupies the largest part of my waking hours.

Running helps clear my mind and refocus. I'm glad I took that up a couple of months ago. The iPod Shuffle makes this all the more enjoyable.

From my home, i'll run down 8th street, to the strand, through the sand, to the water, hang a right, headed up north to Manhattan Beach Pier for a while, once there, hang another right, through the sand, past the strand, up the Manhattan Beach blvd. hill, hang a right at the wood-chip trail, head back south to hermosa beach for another while, a right on 8th street, back to home. Takes me about 45 to 50 minutes of unabated chris-time. I do this some Friday evenings, every Saturday, and every Sunday. And then? A manly bubble-bath in the claw-foot tub, HOOH-HAH HAH!

Two Dogs Up For Adoption!

A friend of a friend, Megan, is seeking loving homes for two lovely dogs. If you're interested, feel free to send inquiries to me and/or my good friend Oakley ( her blog entry on this).

We're all located in Southern California.

Let me just emphasize the fact that this is a fairly urgent matter, two dogs' lives are at stake here.

Here's the 411:

I was talking to Brandon about having to find a home for my American Bulldog.  He lived at my mom's house who was renting and the landlord has decided after 11 years to sell the house and she has to move and can't take Beethoven or Sami with her.  Sami is a Black Lab mix who's 8 years old. Beethoven is 4 years old and both are very sweet.  Beethoven has allergies but doesn't take anything except Advantage.  Beethoven is balding due to his allergies but he doesn't scratch or lick because of it.  The shelters all say he is un-adoptable because of his allergies, so they would put him down. Sami we gave to the Humane Society but would love to connect her with someone who could give her a loving home.  Beethoven is a really good dog when he is one on one (no other animals) otherwise he feels like he is in competition and is a little hyper.  I figure if I tell enough people someone has to know someone who knows someone who could help.

Google: Home Video Blogging?

Fact or Rumor? It's been heard through the grapevine Google's about to release a home video hosting service.

One of many potential upcoming applications of the Google File System?

Say Hello to iShirt

Magnetize!

Cool SVG Site

SVG is neat.

Beauty Girl Blog Microsoft Internet Explorer

Fun with Referrers.

Not sure what they were searching for. But someone reached my blog googling for this exact phrase. I came above The Scobleizer Himself! :)

Good Times.

L'Oeil du Tigre / Eye of ze Tiger

"Faites Peser Ici" roughly means "weigh your stuff here".

Eye of the Tiger

Apple Releases iHome

If it's on slashdot, you know it's true, especially today.
Say hello to iHome.

Breathtaking Pics of New York

awesome pics by a fellow blogger.

Sony PSP Addicts

Despite launching with what Om Malik decries as a deplorable game selection on a closed platform, Sony appears to have unwittingly harnessed the creativity of geeks worldwide and sown the seeds of an affluent ecosystem with its PSP. Gigaom's latest article on Sony's hot toy analyzes this phenomenon through a review of the cool PSP hacks and gadgets, Sony's take, their ambitious plans, and the PSP's potential future evolution into an iPod-like ecosystem.