karl.tsakos.us/blog

I was awoken this morning by my work Nextel ringing. Power’s down at work, again. That means I will have to go in and turn the servers back on since this outage is clearly running longer then the UPS’s will handle.

So work will put a bit of a damper on my wasting the day plans. Apple’s OS X Leopard was released yesterday and of course I pre ordered it. I spent the day yesterday backing up my computers and installing leopard on them. To give a very brief review, Leopard has reignited my sense of fun in computers.

In less then 24 hours, I have been experimenting and discovering exciting features that are just smart and well implemented. For instance, I was going to my friends house for the first time yesterday so he e-mailed me his address. The new Mail application has a feature called, “Data Detectors,” which look for certain text fragments like addresses and lets you take an action upon them. The e-mail containing my friend’s address gave me a little menu when I moved my mouse over his address. From that menu I was able to add his address directly to his address card in my Address Book and then locate his house in Google Maps. Such a simple but powerful feature because of some smart programs got what people needed even if the people didn’t know they needed it.

I have been experimenting with a couple of other features as well. First there is spaces which lets you create multiple spaces with applications assigned to each one. What? Yeah, it’s a little hard to explain. I’ll give you an example. I have my e-mail application in one space and my web browser in another. When I switch between the applications, I switch between the spaces so each application is in it’s own clean environment without the other in the background. Switching between applications and spaces is seamless and intuitive. I have seen other “spaces” implementations for the Mac and for Linux. This is the first time it has excited me.

I have also experimented a little with Time Machine. This is a slightly controversial application do to the way it was implemented. To put it simply, Time Machine is incremental backup software. In other words, it records changes to applications, documents and directories and saves their states so you can go back to an earlier version or just replace a missing document or file or address or picture or, well, or anything. The controversy comes in the interface. Microsoft already has a similar application. When you want to restore an item you are presented with a list showing the item to be restored’s versions and dates it changed. Simple and to the point. Apple took a different approach. Time Machine can be implemented from the Finder or certain applications. What it then does is remove you from the environment you were in and replaces it with a picture of the window you were in receding into a wormhole in the background. You can then visually move back in time to the missing item or just an earlier version. You can then review the item to make sure it is what you were looking for and then restore it.

The controversy that I have heard people comment on is the graphics are overkill when a list with dates does the job just fine. I whole heartedly disagree. I like the visual environment they created (but I am a big fan of Deep Space Nine). I believe visually seeing the document in the environment you last saw it helps you determine when you last had the version you are looking for. The visual cues are key.

Anyhow, those are my first impressions of Leopard. I am excited and look forward to discovering more pleasures of using this operating system in days to come.

I shall endeavor not to get political here. I just have to ask, does it make sense to award the peace prize to a person and an organization spreading the word on things that might be happening and might or might not cause other things to happen? (I should point out that the topic these people are espousing is theoretical and the predicted outcome is in no way approaching a certain outcome.) Are you telling me there is no one in the world actively working towards Peace? There is no one who is clearly and in a substantive way causing real world change for the better of mankind? There isn’t even someone out there trying and failing?

It’s just I’m finding these awards a little hard to believe.

That’s what my apartment is, moist. Not that I want it that way, but right now it is raining very heavily and my roof is leaking in a new and dramatic way. Perhaps some day I will climb to the roof and patch it. Not that it is my roof to patch, but it is very difficult to get my land lord to do this sort of thing. Anyhow, I can’t complain, I get a lot of apartment for the rent I pay.

So I’m waiting for Dave and his friend Putnam to arrive to go to dinner and then it is band night. I assumed we weren’t recording since we will have company today, but the rain has really assured us of that. After all, the leak is next to the recording room. Anyhow, more to come on the recording in later installments.

Writing a theme may prove difficult. I don’t seem to have the time to research what it will take to create the look of the site site what with work and my busy social schedule. Most annoying.  However, it turns out to be very simple to find free WordPress themes and just use those. I think I may stick with this one a while. It’s clean and simple. I kind of like it.