Geekery

Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.

Tron

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Very, very cool. I just picked up the Tron Special Edition DVD during lunch today, and got to watch some of it after I got home. I jumped around a bit in the film itself just to take a look at it, then bounced over to the second disc for all the special features and watched the ‘Making of Tron’ documentary. Turns out that Disney’s DVD department has done their usual stellar job, and the documentary is a full 90 minutes long! Much better than the 15-minute fluff piece that seems to be the norm for so many studios. I didn’t get through any more of the special features tonight, but I plan to soon.

Oh, and possibly one of the coolest things about this disc — right at the end of the documentary (around the 1:23:00 mark or so), there are a few quick glimpses at concept art for a possible Tron 2.0! There’s also a very cryptic teaser when you load the disc that ends with this web address — www.tronkillerapp.com. I’m not sure if it’s early promotion for Tron 2.0 or not, but it’s a very interesting site…will be fun to see where this goes in the future.

In any case, if you’re at all of the age to have been as entranced by Tron as I was, this set is a definite must-buy.

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Quotebook updates

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Well, when I nuked a fair amount of my site, one of the things I managed to kill was the random quote generator that displays a randomly selected quote underneath the quotebook link in the contents bar and on the quotebook introduction page. So, I’m working on going through my quotebook and re-creating the list of quotes for the generator to pull from, and as I do so, I’m adding hyperlinks where appropriate to the attributions. In so doing, I believe Royce may end up with more links to his site from mine alone than from the rest of the ‘net in totality. Never let it be said I never do a friend a favor — no matter how completely goofball it may be.

AARRGGHH!!

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I lost my blog!

I had some problems with my webserver earlier this weekend, which necessitated having to reinstall the system. When I copied the essential files for my website off the box, I forgot one crucial little directory — and managed to completely bork up my blog software. Dammit.

I think I’ve still got all the essential information at the moment, it’ll just be a bit of a chore to see if I can get it all put back in. I don’t have any way of fooling the software into believing that all these files are actually part of the current install, so I may need to do a lot of hand work to get the old posts back in. But — if I can’t do it — well, it looks like I’m just starting over.

Lord of the OS

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Recently one of my friends, a computer wizard, paid me a visit. As we were talking I mentioned that I had recently installed Windows XP on my PC. I told him how happy I was with this operating system and showed him the Windows XP CD. To my surprise he threw it into my microwave oven and turned it on. Instantly I got very upset, because the CD had become precious to me, but he said, “Do not worry, it is unharmed.”

After a few minutes he took the CD out, gave it to me and said, “Take a close look at it.” To my surprise the CD was quite cold to hold and it seemed to be heavier than before. At first I could not see anything, but on the inner edge of the central hole I saw an inscription, an inscription finer than anything I had ever seen before. The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth:

12413AEB2ED4FA5E6F7D78E78BEDE820945
092OF923A40EElOE5IOCC98D444AA08E324

“I cannot understand the fiery letters,” I said in a timid voice.

“No, but I can,” he said. “The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English this is what it says: ‘One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them, One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.’

“It is only two lines from a verse long known in System lore:”

Three OS’s from corporate kings in their towers of glass,
Seven from valley lords where orchards used to grow,
Nine from dotcoms doomed to die,
One from the Dark Lord Gates on his dark throne
In the Land of Redmond where the Shadows lie.
One OS to rule them all, one OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them,
In the Land of Redmond where the Shadows lie.

— Source unknown

The new album from M.C. Escher, ‘Please Escher Don’t Hurt ‘Em,’ featuring the hit single, ‘You Can’t Draw This!’

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Okay, I’m kind of frightened — as I was making my paper deliveries, the girls up in HR (Can I say ‘girls?’ It’s probably not politically correct, but at only 28, it seems kind of funny to call people within a few years of my age either direction ‘ladies’ or ‘women.’ Not that they’re not ‘ladies,’ I’m sure…it just seems a bit too formal. But I digress….) were listening to MC Hammer‘s 2 Legit 2 Quit. Kinda scary. Kinda funny (especially since all four of them still remembered all the movements…but then, so do I…), but kinda scary. Weird stuff.

Hmm…if I didn’t babble so much, the title of this post would probably be longer than the post itself. Score one for being talkative!

Beyond the rumor sites

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MacWorld Expo SF is coming up next week, which normally has the various Mac rumor sites all a-tizzy trying to predict what may or may not appear. This time, around, however, Apple — rather than staying their characteristically silent self — is doing the online equivalent of tossing a goldfish into a pirahna tank, through the posting of oh-so-subtle headlines like ‘Beyond the rumor sites. Way beyond.’ to their website. Now, now, shouldn’t tease the animals….

— AtAT’s take on Apple‘s apparent plans to make their most rabidly loyal followers’ heads implode.

[From Usenet: 1.2.02 0143]

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[Note: This was originally a post to the alt.sys.mac.newuser-help Usenet newsgroup. I’m including it here for completeness. Originally archived here.]

Albert –

First off, I hope your experiences with OS X continue to improve, as you indicated they had started to in a followup post. Figured I could go ahead and jump in the fray, though… ;)

In article <asteg-5FD600.02164401012...@news.mindspring.com>, Albert Steg <as...@mindspring.com> wrote:

The installation process disbabled my Enternet software, crippling my internet access, and even when I got back to system 9 I found my internet aliases (eudora and netscape) hidden from my desktop and replaced with Explorer. Felt like a Microsoft ploy.

That’s something of a surprise. Each time I’ve done an OS X install (starting with the Public Beta), it’s gone smooth as silk. Really unsure as to what may have gone on to actually disable anything.

…and the interface is totally new, isn’t it?” Why is there no warning or explanation in the manual that this system represents a radical departure from the Apple of the past 15 years?

Well, it’s definitely a new system, but the manual I got – while really underwhelming – did at least have a cursory “this is what you’re gonna get” feel to it. Much as ‘puter people sterotypically go with a “install first, read later if something explodes” attitude, sometimes it can be helpful to at least flip through the documentation at least once first… ;)

I am, along with others, somewhat surprised that you were caught so completely off guard – wherever you’ve been, you must have been really out of touch. If you start poking around the web, though, there’s a lot of good information on all the various changes, both why they were done and what the various repercussions are. The OS X manual that Carl linked to (http://homepage.mac.com/rgriff/files/osxguide2.pdf) is a good start, I’d also recommend spending some time digging through Mac OS X Hints (http://www.macosxhints.com/), lots of good info on there.

Am I alone in being dismayeed and bewildered here? These huge Playskool-style icons,

These can be scaled up and down to your preferences…they are a wee bit on the big side by default.

the inability to open two windows at one time

You can have more than two open at once. Check your System Preferences and View Options (under the Finder’s View menu) for the various options there.

…the oily, gimmicky sluuuuurping of windows

Some people like the ‘genie’ effect, some don’t – I’ve switched it to the ‘scale’ effect, as it’s a bit less processor-intensive (and therefore a bit quicker on my machine).

down to the Windows-like “dock”

It takes some getting used to, but I’ve found the dock to be a very nice addition (though, I’ve gotta admit, I’ve liked certain aspects of the Windows taskbar too). I keep my dock devoid of any aliases, so that I don’t have to try to distinguish between icons of running aps and icons of apps that I can run if I want, and only use it for whatever’s running at the moment. For me it works much better as a application switcher than as a launcher, but different things work for different people…experiment with it a bit, after the initial shock, you may find it more to your liking.

instead of the crisp windowshade feature of previous systems….

As has been noted by a couple people, there is a shareware program that will bring windowshading back to OS X (though I don’t use it myself).

these are improvements?

Overall, yeah…just improvements with a bit more learning curve than has been necessary for past OS updates. But then, past OS updates didn’t completely rewrite the OS from the ground up, either…. :)

How about an explanation of the itools program, rather than just thrusting it at you in the config process?

Apple would do well to explain this a bit more. However, breifly, iTools isn’t so much a program as it is a set of services that Apple provides that you can use or ignore as you like. It includes free e-mail with a mac.com suffix, an online storage space (your iDisk), and some other features that can be explored in more depth on Apple’s iTools site (http://www.apple.com/itools/). You don’t have to use any of them, though, if you don’t want or need to.

Can I use Eudora instead of Itools. . .

Yup – I think there’s even an OS X version of Eudora out by now. Check VersionTracker (http://www.versiontracker/macosx/) to be sure.

or do I have to use Itools to access eudora now?

Nope, though you probably can use Eudora to access your iTools mac.com e-mail account if you’ve set one up (though I’m not 100% sure on that).

. . . granted I have to give it a chance, but I am not looking forward to this.

Well, go ahead and poke around, play for a while, and give it that chance. There’s some culture shock – especially since you apparently didn’t know what you were in for – but it’s not that bad once you get used to it.