Monday, April 30, 2001
Ever since I moved my trusty PowerMac 8500 downstairs to reside in the same room as my new G4, the monitor has been acting up. It has been regularly, yet unpredictably, flashing into fits of bright green rage and then returning to normal again, as if nothing ever happened. My wife and kids figured that the old computer was simply jealous of the ample, wide-screenliness of its new roommate's Cinema Display - pixel envy, if you will. An interesting theory, but not too darn likely. Aiming to solve the problem, while ultimately trying to avoid lugging the welterweight Trinitron downtown to get serviced, I popped the back off the monitor and gave it a compressed air bath. Still the screen gloweth green. Next came a pass of contact cleaner on the cable and port connectors. Nothing. Thinking that it may not be the monitor after all, I slapped the cathode ray on a previous-loved Quadra 700 that had been collecting particles of basement downstairs. Given the size difference between the Quadra and the Apple Multiple Scan 20, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I slapped the computer on the monitor. How green was my valley? Not at all, thank you very much. The incandescent filament began to warm and out came the screwdriver to pop apart the 8500. What should I discover? Gobs of microscopic grey schmutz encrusting the pins of the video memory on the motherboard. A few more shots out of the can of air, and no more green. Exciting, eh? And how was your afternoon?
Sunday, April 29, 2001
But he get honey. He is found of sweets.
Saturday, April 28, 2001
Ooh, this could be fun... the Blogger Template Design Contest.
Apparently I have too much time on my hands, because I was starting to wonder how long it would take Apple to slap an Aqua æsthetic all over the mild-mannered Mac logo. Well, they've gone and done it. Now the indubitable, smiling icon of usability (no, I'm not talking about that Jakob twit...) is not just happy people, he's shiny, happy people.
I don't play computer or console games, but there is something that makes me think that a PlayStation2 might be worth investing in. Screw the gameplay, it's time to clamp on the PS2 Linux Kit. Something is strangely fascinating about being able to do stuff with a piece of hardware that doesn't make much sense. Just like running a web server on my Newton, turning a PlayStation into a workstation has a certain geekish appeal. Via Alternate
Friday, April 27, 2001
On December 19th, 1996 our home was connected to the internet using a new-fangled device called a cable modem. I distinctly remember when a brochure arrived in our mailbox expounding the need for speed, and describing the Wave service. It hooked me. I called and ordered it the same day. Our home was the 34th in the city to be connected to the system which now purports to have tens of thousands of users. Today, the cable modem is going back to the cable company and the home network is now running through my ASDL connection. You served us well, my cranky old friend. So long, and thanks for all the @home spam.
Thursday, April 26, 2001
As the last few remaining name servers in the western hemisphere slowing suck the minty-fresh zone data from my humble pile of hardware in the basement, I can say with a fair amount of certainty that your sites are live again. My apologies for the tardiness and welcome back to the ether Jane, Duane, Jon, Reech, Howie, and Rachel. Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back...
Oh the irony of it all.
You Can't Always Get What You Font
From my perspective, a very large portion of computer users take fonts for granted. Fonts come bundled by the dozens with nearly every piece of design software that ships, and you get a veritable truckload of them included with each new release of the Mac and Windows operating systems. Relatively speaking, they're cheap. They're a commodity. They're expected to be there in the font menu and expected to work when you need them to. This apparently isn't the case with Unix systems - take your pick. To be honest, I have minimal experience with Unix environments, command line or otherwise. But based on my limited exposure, I agree with this article regarding the non-existent standards for implementing and supporting fonts within those environments. It reminds me of doing tech support for PC users trying to install and use typefaces before Windows 3.1 was released. It seems as if every single application required not only it's own unique outline data or metrics file, but an independent directory to store them in as well. Regardless of how necessary unified font management is to making an operating system usable to anyone beyond the classification of geek, it's not something that will develop magically in the OS. It didn't on the Mac. We had SuitCase, MasterJuggler, and Adobe Type Manager to lend a hand. Sounds like a market niche to me. Hey, Adobe! Yo, Extensis! Are you listening?
IBM Caught Black-handed
When clever advertising campaigns go bad, society always pays the price.
Wednesday, April 25, 2001
Gosh, it feels good to have a working site again.
Off the top of my head, I present to you a few selected words and phrases that I have run across with increasing frequency over the past several months. I would be quite happy never hearing any of these again. Ever.BigCoBlech. Maybe I've been hypersensitized to these particular net industry-related idioms because I read Dave Winer's obfuscations on a regular basis. Perhaps it's time to cut down on my daily intake.
LittleCo
web savant
being a player
closing the loop
operationalize
structural realignment
industry shakeout
dot-bomb
I've always been of the opinion that the font smoothing built into the Mac OS was a bit clunky looking. If Adobe Type Manager would anti-alias TrueType fonts as well as it does PostScript ones, I'd use it exclusively. But since ATM doesn't swing both ways - associating with the Béziers while giving the Quadratic Splines the cold shoulder - I usually opt to turn the font smoothing option off completely. One piece of software that also does system-level anti-aliasing is SmoothType, created by Greg Landweber, the crux behind the code of Kaleidoscope and other interface-noodling utilities. Using SmoothType, on-screen type appears truer in character shape and letterspacing than when rendered greyscale by Apple's built-in anti-aliasing engine. It's still not perfect. In fact, the type occasionally wanders over to this side of fuzzy. However, in most cases the lack of harsh edges on the characters makes the text infinitely more enjoyable to read. There is a comparison of the two font smoothing techniques on David Earls' typographer.com site. Via Microsoft Typography
Some of you will undoubtedly remember all those guilicious browser skins that the web services shop Alphanumerica once had bubbling on their burner. Aphrodite. Sullivan. Fruity Gum. But ever since Alphanumerica was swallowed up by the ever so smoothly named CollabNet last summer, full-domain linkrot has squashed all attempts to locate these alternative interface flavors. However, a little bit of digging found that the entire Aphrodite open source user interface project is now being handled and hosted over at MozDev.org. Now that we've taken care of that bit of business, the next question to answer is this: why do some people make it so ludicrously hard to locate information about their previous products and services? Does it really involve that much time to insert a couple of dozen server side redirects? I've covered this topic before, so I won't start up yet another rant on the rationale for supporting historical URLs. It's just so easy to handle this type of content change, it boggles me when I hit a dead end.
Tuesday, April 24, 2001
For those who are curious, this is the magic nugget of wisdom which ultimately helped me escape from my adventure into hell:"The IP address configured in the TCP/IP control panel must be the IP on the external interface in order for QuickDNS to work properly. QDNS does not handle lookup traffic on any interfaces created with IPNetRouter or with the IP secondary addresses file."It was right there, just staring me in the face all the time. Imagine that.
During the past two weeks of frothing commotion and tearful co-worker farewells, my change-addled brain completely forgot that April 5th marked the first anniversary of this here blog. A small milestone, but something to trip over and faceplant into nonetheless. I suppose since I flubbed up and missed the opportunity to celebrate one whole year of writing about nothing in particular, I can expend a bit more effort on another imminent birthday of sorts. In late July, splorp.com and the grantcam turn five years old. Maybe it's time to start cranking on that redesign again. Now, if I could just get rid of all these ding dang dust bunnies... git!
I think I just got windburn. It seems like it was only a couple days ago that Barebones Software released BBEdit 6.1, with a freshly pressed shirt and a shine on its shoes for a date with Mac OS X. Wait a minute, it was only a couple of days ago. And now it's old news because this afternoon the 6.1.1 updater has been posted. Don't you wish that other software companies were this responsive.
Monday, April 23, 2001
I can almost feel the tectonic plates shifting into alignment again. I'm absolutely convinced that the majority of the problems I've had with name servers and zone data and domain propagation over the last few days are because Joey Ramone died. I'm just sure of it. Everything has felt so out of whack lately, hasn't it? I'm not trying to lay the blame on you Joey, but something has been amiss.
Thursday, April 19, 2001
Thinking of using the rumored clustering capability of future versions of OS X to build yourself a super computer in that spare linen closet? Don't forget to use stackable Tupperware cases.
Sure, everybody wants shiny, new DVD drivers and such, but it's nice to see the familiar faces of some programs that I used way back when getting a fresh coat of paint for OS X as well. You can thank the venerable Dave Alverson for noodling under the hood and cranking out a new version of Zterm just for the occasion. And for those of you who won't be taking the OS upgrade plunge any time soon, he still includes pinout diagrams in the documentation for connecting a modem cable to your cute, little Macintosh 128 serial port. Woo hoo.
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
Hang on brothers and sisters. Your domains are next in line.
How many ways can you say "pain in the ass"?
Praise the soul of Jon Postel, I think we're alive and kicking again. For those of you just tuning in again after the move, I have been struggling in an attempt to get the world to understand just where in heck my new server is. After a week's worth of Network Solutions domain records getting primary and secondary name servers reversed, and a DNS box that just wouldn't load data from a master name server if it's live depended on it, I've finally got the splorp.com domain spitting into the wind again. A big frothy pile of carbonated thanks must once again be heaped upon the other Grant for his knob-twiddling and throttle-punching down at the former place of employment. We ended up having to import the entire zone record for splorp.com verbatim into the secondary DNS in order for the dang thing to work. Now that I can finally finoogle the domain data and not have the lights go out on me, I'm going to set up a separate secondary name server that I know will run and skip and jump along side of my primary. That other server just has a bad attitude if you ask me.
Monday, April 16, 2001
If this weren't so typically Network Solutions, I'd be laughing out loud. When I updated the domain records for all of the sites I host, I specified that the DNS running off my ADSL connection was primary and the DNS operated by the other Grant was secondary. The secondary DNS would just do what it was told and pull the authoritative zone data from the primary server. Since the primary DNS was all set up and ready to rock, I felt no need or hurry to get the secondary data set up on the other server. In retrospect, that was a dumb move. Apparently somewhere in the domain name data soup, Network Solutions gets the primary and secondary server designations mixed up. Using the whois cgi form on their site, the name server entries appear in the order I specified. But, using a command line ns lookup or another whois site, the server order is reversed. WTF? No wonder the information isn't propagating, every name server on the planet is trying to pull data from the machine that doesn't have it yet. Yet. Stay tuned for next episode.
Sunday, April 15, 2001
Oh goody, the email is finally starting to trickle through on the accounts connected to the recently transferred domains. And doesn't it just figure that the first two messages I receive are spam.
Saturday, April 14, 2001
Note to self. Next time you need to move servers and domains, make sure that you leave the old DNS entries in place until the updated host records are completely propagated. That way, the MX record for your primary domain will be accessible during the transition period and your email account will still work. Arrgh.
Friday, April 13, 2001
We're back. And at least some of the world can tune in. Until the magic of DNS propagation works its merry way throughout the entire system, some of you won't see this message for another day or so. All in all, a relatively painless move. I can't wait until I'm back on a regular posting schedule. The last couple of days have been like fighting a bout of technical constipation.
Thursday, April 12, 2001
Another late night, another step toward becoming my own internet service provider. I've managed to cram all 34 of the domains I host into the new name server, and I also set up a stopgap web server to hold their place in line while the physical box moves across town sometime today. My partner on the dance card last night was Network Solutions (insert audible gasp at your discretion.) There was only 34 domain records that needed to be updated... what could possibly have gone wrong? Fortunately, nothing. I finished confirming and submitting the last of the domain record changes around two in the morning. At least the ones that I could modify myself. A few of the hosted domains do not have my handle as the admin contact, so those will have to be updated by their owners. Oh! I hear my email ringing. Excuse me a moment.
Wednesday, April 11, 2001
Sometime during the next 24 hours, I will moving this server to its new home in a cluttered, but cosy, corner of my basement. Part of the imminent parade of fun that awaits me is updating the thirty or so hosted domains to point to my DNS. If for some reason this server ends up being down for longer than a day, never fear... it will be back. I promise. And since most of the folks I host sites for read this blog, you can consider yourselves warned. What kind of service level agreement do you expect to free, anyhow? Wish me luck.
Tuesday, April 10, 2001
Some of the treasures uncovered during the sorting and packing tonight. Left to right as shown: Adobe Illustrator for Windows 1.0 demo on 5.25" floppy; Apple Stellar Invaders on original Apple II Diskware 5.25" floppy; and Lisa Office 7/7 Release 3.1 System Disk 4.
What else did I stumbled upon this evening? How about a February/March 1991 issue of Beach Culture magazine, in all it's grunge pre-cursing, David Carson-y goodness. Or perhaps I can interest you in a folder full of unused Letraset dry transfer lettering sheets?
With only two full days to go, I'm packing up a goodly chunk of my office tonight. The soundtrack for the evening so far has been Pizzicato Five: The Fifth Release From Matador and The Dandy Warhols: Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia. Two discs with titles about being from somewhere, on a night when I'm getting ready to leave from somewhere. There's nothing at all meaningful about that, trust me.
Acoustic baffle. Certain combinations of words just make me smile.
The problem with the mail server last night was that the board-mounted lithium battery was dead, causing a rash of rebooting issues. Mad props to techie guy Chris and the other Grant, who resuscitated the patient. All are doing well this morning.
Monday, April 09, 2001
Crappity crap. The mail server I share with the other Grant is down this evening and the automatic reboot system doesn't seem to be holding up its end of the bargain. As much as I'd love to drive all the way downtown again and give the box a swift kick in its digital pants, I think it'll keep til morning. I guess that's the price you pay for running a server that only gets restarted every 18 months or so. Ah well, like I need to be digging through more email anyway.
They're throwing me a party this afternoon. I promise to behave.
Palm Teams Up on PDA Friendly Overcoats
What surprises me about this is not that the concept was thought up in the first place, but the fact that Palm is actually lending their name to it. Then again, Palm has been known to dive into the pool before checking to see if it's filled with water on other occasions. First, it was the whole Claudia Schiffer thing, and now overcoats? I shudder to think what may be next.
Sunday, April 08, 2001
Just four more days remain in my tenure at EyeWire. Last weeks anxiety has subsided and evolved into a numb state of reflection. The grey, overcast sky and the corn snow falling past the office window aren't helping me concentrate on anything in particular. The sound of a dozen hard drives whining and the occasional whistle from the air vent above my desk are becoming a soundtrack for the backups I'm burning to disc. I listened to a voicemail message left yesterday by someone who has been a colleague of mine for the past seven years. The person said that they were going to be on vacation during my last week here and felt compelled to say something. The message said a lot of awfully nice things about what I did while I was here, and why it will be so different when I'm not. I'm not sure that I believe all of what was mentioned, but it sounded like it was true enough to them. I'm sure that if the sun were shining today, all of this wouldn't seem nearly as surreal.
Friday, April 06, 2001
That fact that I just spent the last twenty minutes or so diving through the new XHTML 1.1 recommendation over at the W3C probably says more about me than I care to admit. At least I managed to pull one lovely, burnished nugget of previous unknown information from those pages. Check out the details of the proposed Ruby Annotation Module. There are some sweet things you can do with Ruby tagged text, based on the few examples shown. And of course, the typographer in me found the following bit of background information just as interesting:"The name "ruby" in fact originated from the name of the 5.5pt font size in British printing, which is about half the 10pt font size commonly used for normal text."Nice. And Ruby has such a unassuming charm to it. After all, they could have named it after some other pretentious, historical type size like Paragon or Brilliant or even Great Primer.
MacAddict OS X Hack Repository
MacAddict is only Mac magazine around that still has some balls. With a healthy chunk of attitude, they're stepping in and showing everybody within throwing distance of a plist file how to stupid-size their desktop icons. Be very afraid. This is only the beginning of an online resource that is destined to be full of even more useless things to do while noodling around OS X.
Cables and boxes and discs! Oh my!
Thursday, April 05, 2001
There's a shiny, happy box full of WebStar upgrade on the way as of this morning. Now all I need to do is conjure up another disused Power Mac so I can transfer over all the sites I'm currently hosting. Sure, I already have a 9500, courtesy of Bruce over at Webcore Labs, but the little voice in my head is telling me that running a software router, DNS, mail services, HTTP, and FTP all in the same 48 MB of memory probably wouldn't be prudent. Therefore, I'm going to spread the love out amongst a couple of machines. Crap, I've still got a pile of stuff to do. Excuse me for a moment while I panic, ever so slightly. Argh.
Wednesday, April 04, 2001
It's sneaking up on me. Only 8 days until I am no longer working at EyeWire. Some people are going to give me the berries about the fact that I still say that I work for EyeWire, and not for Getty Images, which is our parent company. The main reason for this discrepancy is that for the past 20 months or so since EyeWire became part of the Getty Images family, I've have never felt like I was part of anything other than EyeWire. A group of amazing people, many of whom have left the fold or are about to leave, formed EyeWire out of the ashes of what our previous parent company referred to as "a divesting of their visual content division". I felt a part of EyeWire. I never felt a part of Getty. And right this minute, I almost don't feel like I am part of either. Speaking of feeling things... I used to get this oppressive, flustering cloud of anxiety floating over top of me every time I had to prepare for a trade show or a business trip. I've had the same feeling ever since I started trying to get all my ducks in a row before this departure. Twelve years of doing stuff that I've honestly enjoyed, and now I'm facing hoards of oppressive floating ducks.
Tuesday, April 03, 2001
Textism offers up a quattro of handy dandy text formatting scripts designed specifically to facilitate processing words for the web. They've been written specificallty for Tex-Edit, but can be more or less tweaked and noodled for use with any AppleScript-compilant text editor.
I don't know about you, but I sense that this Modern Humorist piece is just riding on the month-old coat tails of the original pre-emptive strike against meme-jacking, All Your Brand Belong To Us. Both of these sites are playing up the idea of using the worn-out All Your Base meme for marketing purposes. The difference is that Modern Humorist is promoting the idea through mockery, whereas All Your Brand is mocking the idea through promotion.
Monday, April 02, 2001
In case anyone still gives a flying flip, Netscape has just released yet another revision to its limping, old-school browser suite. Yes, here it is folks... give it up for Communicator 4.7.7 in the flesh. And once they get around to it, the release notes for this version should appear like magic at the end of this link. I don't suppose they would have fixed any standards support issues in this puppy, eh?
Sunday, April 01, 2001
Creating Docklings in Mac OS X
"A dockling is a lightweight component, packaged in a MacOS X bundle, which can provide constant visual feedback through its icon as well as a pop-up menu which can execute commands." Cool.
Bingo!
Just testing for a bug in blogger. If all goes as planned, this entry which was originally posted at 3:33 pm won't show up in my blog until after 4:33 pm.
I just realized that it has been exactly ten weeks since my last haircut.
Certain people would like to think that my previous announcement was just an elaborately constructed April Fools Day ruse. Nope. Although, speaking of feign elaboration, I very much enjoyed stumbling across this fine example over at The Mac Evangelist.
