Technology

Things that catch my geeky interests that don’t fall into a more specific tag.

iCal questions

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It’s been out for a couple days now, but I just donwloaded iCal, Apple’s new calendar/scheduling application. I haven’t even got it installed yet, and I’m coming up with curiosities.

  • Why use a .pkg installer?

    One of the great things about having a Mac is how easy most programs are to install — just drag them over to your Applications folder. Apple even touts this in an article aimed at Windows programmers moving to developing for the Mac:

    The commonly used “Setup” application, along with Install Wizards, are discouraged on Mac OS X. Use a drag install instead, which is simpler and preferred by Mac users.

    So why is it that Apple’s own programs (such as iCal’s, .mac‘s Backup, and so on) are distributed using .pkg files, requiring the use of the Apple Installer program?

  • Why does it need my password?

    Tied into using the Installer, why is Administrator access needed to install iCal? Is it really that tied into the system itself? Just seems odd.

Maybe these questions will be answered as I go along…I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

:-)

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Everything’s gotta start somewhere, right?

Back in 1982, this post showed up on the CMU CS general bboard…

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-)
From: Scott E Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c>

I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:

:-)

Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use

:-(

And the world has never been the same!

Mike Jones has the full story.

Font tweaks and hiding links

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Just on the off chance that anyone visits my site tonight (the evening of Sep. 9th, possibly into the morning of Sep. 10th), no, the site normally doesn’t look quite this wonky. I’m working on adjusting my font stylesheet to be a bit more what I’ve got in mind — but things may be a bit odd in the meantime.

Deal with it.

;)

Update: All done now — now things look the way I wanted them to. And, of course, I’m playing with a few more tricks…

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Kung-tunes is back!

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I took a little time last night to get Kung-Tunes back up and running again — as before, there’s now a ‘Music of the Moment’ box displaying whatever .mp3 I’m listening to, updated every 30 seconds so that it’s always current.

Technical details follow…

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It just works

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Nathan Torkington, one of the staff over at O’Reilly is documenting his experiences as he moves from a Windows-based PC to an Apple iBook. Gotta love articles that state:

I plugged in the digital video camera (editing be damned!) and it Just Worked. I built wget and it Just Worked. I downloaded VM and it Just Worked. I plugged in a three-button mouse and it Just Worked. I came to realize something: I’d been with Microsoft for so long, who are complacent and hoard their customers, that I’d forgotten what it’s like to use an operating system built by people who want it to cooperate with the rest of the world. It’s good.

(via Daypop)

Well, I’m not surprised

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Those who surf the Web using a Mac tend to be better educated and make more money than their PC-using counterparts, …tend to be more Web savvy, with more than half having been online for at least five years…are 58 percent more likely than the overall online population to build their own Web page and also slightly more likely to buy goods online, according to the report.

(via MetaFilter)

New toy

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This is too cool. Yesterday evening I was talking with Melvin (my landlord), and he gave me a new toy to play with! We were talking about Palm devices, and I mentioned that mine died a while ago. Turns out that when he got his post here at the Park Seneca apartments, the company gave him a nifty little cell phone/Palm combination device. The thing was, he already had one — so he gave me his old one! Really surprised me, but he had no use for it anymore, so he figured he’d rather have it be used by someone than just sit unused in a drawer.

This thing is a nifty little toy, too — it’s a Kyocera SmartPhone. I’m not using the phone part of it yet — I’ll have to call Qwest when I’ve got some more stable income and investigate that — but for now, I’ve at least got a very functional PDA again.

When Elephants Dance

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Michael Fraase’s ‘When Elephants Dance‘ is an excellent summation of the current flap over digital rights and the dangers in the entertainment industries current drive to control everything. This should be required reading for anyone who listens to music, watches movies, or uses a computer.