Blog

New version of MacOS X, Panther (aka 10.3), is now running on the desktop as well as the laptop. I wasn’t in a hurry, until my sister bought an iSight in the Burlingame Apple Store yesterday. We wanted to test iChatAV between the laptop and the desktop, so that set off an afternoon of backing up, both to CDs and the external FireWire hard drive. Fortunately, those backups appear unnecessary for the moment… especially fortunate because it’s unclear whether or not the FireWire hard drive problems that have been cited by many, and acknowledged by Apple, are limited to FireWire 800 or 400 drives. Apple only owned up to the 800 drives, and my external is a FireWire 400, so less reason to be concerned. But data is data.

Anyway, I’m checking all the various applications, and things appear to be in good shape, via the Archive & Install upgrade method. I did appreciate the peace of mind offered by Take Control of Upgrading to Panther, the $5 e-book from the publishers of TidBITS.

Of course, the catalyst for the install still hasn’t worked fully… the iSight works beautifully, but using our FireWire DV camera, a Canon, isn’t yet giving us video, although the audio is definitely functional. Hmmm… let me know if you have any tips/URLs to consider. I’ll be muddling through today.

Several made the trip out here, and talked to several more throughout the day. Turkey is still in the oven, but we’re enjoying ourselves. Had a nice surprise this morning when we went on a walk in Golden Gate Park, and found the Conservatory of Flowers open and uncrowded. It re-opened a couple of months ago after being closed since 1995 due to windstorm damage and fundraising delays. I’m not a big flora fan, but interesting all the same, and the current exhibit of butterflies was a big hit with the boy.

A bit slow, but interesting: Search Engine Decoder. [via Emergic]

I just reviewed an illuminating re-think of mapping the California recall votes, thanks to a pointer from Jeffrey Veen. Wow. You can really lie better with pictures than numbers, if you want to. I visited the Exploratorium here in San Francisco yesterday, and smiled my way through various hands-on and eyes-on exhibits, several of which pointed out the way our expectations color (literally and otherwise) our vision. I currently have EarthDesk set to display the Miller projection on the desktop map of the world, so I’m aware of some of the tradeoffs in displaying information, but this look at the recall vote, and the ways in which lazy choices can influence the understanding of information is dramatic. I don’t have the skills or the tools to experiment in this field, but fascinating all the same.

Just read this IBM developerWorks article about the poor state of documentation. Fair enough, but whining about it without providing more specific examples, for real-world products, isn’t tremendously helpful. (I rarely write documentation, but I have done some for internal tools.) The only tip to improve the process was on indexing.

Want to make a good index? Ask people to look things up in it, but require them to write down the words they think of before they look in the index. Now make sure all those words are in your index. You’ll be stunned at the gaps this uncovers.

Bookmarked this NYTimes.com article on the digital home and its discontents several days ago. Written by James Gleick, whom I’ve read regularly, this essay points out that our implementation of technology in the home is ahead of the maturation necessary to make the technologies used invisible. Plug and play? No way.

Once you’ve entered the future, be prepared for a double-edged question: Is your house smarter than you are? You’re likely to hear it from your spouse, who just wants to watch TV, while you struggle with the combined TiVo-DVD-satellite remote control.

I’ve been there, with the TiVo, and I still have printed-out instructions from the TiVo website about how I might be able to use a splitter to watch some shows at the same time as we record something else. But I’m reluctant to take the plunge, after the recent Comcast debacles. Gleick goes on:

It falls to the homeowner to serve as local information-technology manager. After all, with power comes responsibility. Someone must take charge of operating these new and complex devices, not to mention the programming and systems design. The homeowner spends increasing time alone in an important new room, a room off-limits to some members of the household: the wiring closet. User manuals proliferate. Sometimes it is even necessary to read them — necessary, but not sufficient.

We (well, not me) are very good about keeping and organizing all our manuals. I do read many of them, for the technical equipment. The experience doesn’t leave me feeling informed and educated. May I blame the manuals?

But how many individual remote controls can one person want? Generally, the answer is one. So we need one more smart helpmeet: the programmable remote, a computer in itself, with hard and ”soft” buttons and scroll wheels and touchscreens and trackballs. And very large manuals.

We haven’t taken that plunge, as we attempt to use only the TiVo remote. For most things, it suffices… and that’s good enough.

Our technolust and Luddite impulses have rarely been so provoked — and at the same time and in the same people. Workplaces and cars have plenty of resonance, but the home is special: hearth, womb — place of succor, not bewilderment. So Smart Houses cause both stress and exhilaration, and the emotions are hard to separate. ”For those of us who don’t want to have any part in restructuring our lives, it’s daunting,” says a New York psychotherapist whose home I.T. manager is his wife.

I’m the tech geek in the family, and the AV system challenges my geek cred every day. I’ll just try and upgrade the computers to MacOS X 10.3 (laptop done, smoothly… desktop, waiting to back all the data up first).

I’ve been reading five daily comic strips using NetNewsWire, via RSS feeds from Tapestry. This morning, I learned about iComic, a dedicated application just for comic strips. I’m guessing it works much the same way, but maybe I’ll try it out. I am not a big fan of the San Francisco Chronicle Datebook section. Without the comics, there is even less reason to open that section of the paper. I do wonder how long before the comic strip creators, or their syndicators, block this type of usage, though.

Aaron Swartz commented on The Procrastination Paradox yesterday. With some amusing links, he also asks the big question: what’s the root cause? He comes up with one answer:

There’s only one explanation that makes sense: it’s not anything intrinsic to the task, but the outside importance of the task that makes us procrastinate. But what possible reason could we have for putting off tasks that are important? It seems like a totally bizarre thing for our brains to do.

Aaron also asks for other ideas.

I have two ideas on the topic, and some would say I’m an expert. 😉

The first thought is that we can think faster than we can act. So, you can think through the raw outline of what needs to be done, and in what order, and you know how long it will take (or think it will take), and making the commitment to spending that time on that one task, and nothing else, is daunting.

The second motive behind procrastination is perfectionism, or, perhaps more accurately, the fear of screwing up. It’s easy to do something right in your head (or so we all like to believe), but the translation between thought and deed is rarely (never?) 100% accurate. Something is always lost in translation, so to protect yourself from embarrassment, it’s easier to avoid the comparison between thought and deed.

I have been notorious for this kind of delay, mostly in school, but I’m not going to pretend I’ve ‘recovered’ from these practices yet. I’ll be interested to see what other comments are sparked by Aaron’s post.

If you are on vacation, Monday sure feels different. Of course, still reading all my feeds via NetNewsWire first thing, and checking my email (mostly spam, caught by Apple’s Mail), and trying to juggle playing with the boy and a bit of computer time.

NYTimes article Getting a Job in the Valley Is Easy, if You’re Perfect really gets you excited about the ‘recovery.’ Witness:

Indeed, what qualifies as good news in the technology industry is not so much evidence of overall job gains, but signs that job losses have slowed considerably.

Great…