Hail

So, I was waiting around for a bike ride today to see if it would warm up any...and it started getting colder...and then the hail storm made my decision about whether I was going biking!

Carrots

I had totally forgotten sowing some carrot seeds earlier this year. I remembered today, and so I got my harvest (after the hail stopped, lol!) --

Friends' Get-Togethers

Tonight, Deege and I went to two different parties -- the first by a male couple in my neighborhood -- they've been in their house for 22 years! The other guests were mostly from my neighborhood as well, so it was nice to meet other gay men in the area! And their house is of about the same time period as mine, so the furnishings & colors were to my taste.

We were probably only there an hour and 1/2 or so before we left to go to the party in the Fan. Enjoyed the second one very much too -- different crowd, but very enjoyable. I'm totally going to be dry tomorrow when I wake up. I have to be sure to drink a lot of water before hitting the sack tonight.

Trojans, Viruses

On a different note -- I was in Facebook tonight, and without clicking anything, the browser URL was suddenly transferred to a different site.

The new site promptly told me how many trojans and viruses were on my system. (I can guarantee you that I have ZERO of those on the Mac...) I was rolling my eyes...

Funny thing was that the site was using a bunch of Windows terminology to warn me -- showing me "My Documents" for example, when there is no such thing on the Mac...or popping up a fake dialog box about Windows alerts...Helllooo -- I'm on a Mac here -- no Windows!







I hate sites like that!

Had a good weekend. Couple of bike rides, and last night saw some friends who are back in town as they try to figure out what to do with their house -- it's not selling, even though it's in a great neighborhood, and they have lowered the price. So, they are thinking of renting it. No pictures from the get-together -- the pictures I took just didn't come out well.

Here's a pic from the bike ride yesterday. I do like Libby Hill Park --



***
On a different topic, like the writer of the article below, I too have been wondering when we'll get around to having more touch interfaces for computers.

The article is dead on about the mouse -- it mentions "touch mouse" which is somewhat similar to the "Magic Mouse" that Apple just released.

While it may be hard to imagine right now, eventually there will not be physical keyboards. Apple’s tablet may well be the first product that will get users accustomed to this idea. And yes, as I said, plenty will bitch. But eventually, technology will improve, and virtual tacile feedback will improve, and there will be no need to take up so much surface area on any device with physical keys that really serve no purpose.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/29/touching-all-rumors-point-to-the-end-of-keysbuttons/

Evidently, Apple is working on a tablet. Here are some ideas of how it might look --
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-will-the-apple-tablet-look-like-2009-10#perhaps-the-best-weve-seen-1

I found an article on some Exposé features that I did NOT know about.

For example, while Exposé is active, you can hover your mouse over the thumbnail, then use the spacebar to use Quicklook. Who knew?

Also, I didn't realize that you could use Command-1 and Command-2 to change the order of the thumbnails.

Here's the article.

I did a quick movie to show what I'm talking about.

I haven't had a technology post lately, so here ya go...

For (almost) the first time since I bought my iMac in 2007, I have a case of consumer lust...new iMacs are out. There have been updates since I bought mine, but this is the first time that I wish I were made of money :)

There are a couple of things I like about the new ones --

1. The base model (which is what I have) has a slightly larger screen now (21.5" diagonal instead of 20").
   
2. 4 USB ports instead of the 3 that I have now. (I got around this limitation on my current machine by making sure that the external drive I use for backup is also a USB hub, so I can plug things into the external drive.)
   
3. There is now an SD slot -- although I'm not sure I really would use this. I tend to hook my camera up via USB. Taking the card out of the camera to hook it up to the computer seems like a lot of trouble.
   
4. Of course, the processors are better -- faster than mine, and a choice of either a quad core or dual core, depending on the model.
   
5. The model that I would order (if I was in a shopping mood) would have a minimum of 1 TERRABYTE of disk space. Not that I'm out of disk space or anything...but that's a lot more space than I currently have!
   
6. Up to 16Gb of RAM. I think my current iMac is maxed out at the 4Gb I have installed.
   
7. Thank goodness that the wireless Mighty Mouse has been retired! The small scroll wheel on the Might Mouse collected dirt or lotion or jelly or whatever happened to be on my fingers at the time.
   

   
   I have had to clean mine like once a month! I have been too cheap to buy a new Bluetooth mouse as long as the one I have works, lol!
   

   
   The new "Magic Mouse" (who comes up with these names???) doesn't have any seams at all on top! So, no more places for dirt to collect!
   

****
Anyways, I see that ole' Walt Mossberg likes Windows 7! I think he still gives the edge to Mac OS, but in years past, he really hasn't been fond of Windows.

So, that means Win 7 must be quite an improvement!

I don't think my old Dell laptop will be up to Win 7. I could conceivably upgrade to Win 7 for my virtual (VMWare Fusion) Windows installation on the Mac, but I think there's no reason to -- I only use Windows XP to run Quicken right now, and that's all I use Windows for at home.

So, I don't think I can justify the expense, just to play with a new toy!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703298004574459293141191728.html

Since we probably won't get Windows 7 at work until the year 2020, I will be relegated to testing it out at Best Buy on the floor models, lol!

***
It has been hard to get back into working this week! I came back to this mass of e-mails and decisions that happened last week that threaten to derail the project. How can so little work get done in a week, yet so many decisions get made that endanger the project? I mean, damn.

I miss traveling, and I also miss hanging out with my friend in Asheville. You know, I had forgotten that when he moved from RVA to Asheville five years ago, I was sad for a few days (I had also forgotten how very tall he is! He was like, "I haven't grown any." lol).

When I came back to RVA this time, I also felt a little sad to have left him. I'm not sure exactly why. It's not a romantic situation (well, maybe just an itty bit), but it seems that my heart resonates in a certain way with him. There's no way that we would be compatible long term partners, but I was still a little sad after I left.

***
It was nice to get a bike ride in tonight. I hadn't been on a bike in a week and 1/2. It was a short 12 miler, but it felt good -- took the road bike out since the last few rides had been on the commuter bike.

The Mac is generally pretty easy to use. But I just ran into something that made me wrinkle up my nose.

Quicktime X has a sound recording feature. Great, right?

But the default is to record from the microphone. Ewww...your recording includes all the background hiss that microphones pick up.

Not a solution.

After a Google search (what did we do BEFORE Google??), I found that the way to do this is to use Soundflower. I already had Soundflower installed because iShowU (a very useful app) uses Soundflower.

After you have Soundflower installed, open up Sound Preferences --


Set the output to Soundflower --


Then, start your audio recording in Quicktime --


And from the dropdown twistie, select Soundflower as your input --




When you are all done recording, use Sound Preferences to set the output back to your normal output (in my case the headphones).

So far so good. I'm okay with this part of the process, even if it is a couple extra steps. It's okay with me that I use a third party tool to re-route sound from the speakers to use as input to Quicktime (especially since I get to avoid the hiss from the external microphone).

But here's where things turned not okay.

When you re-route the sound, you really re-route it. I mean to say, you can't hear the sound play while you're recording!

Um, how the heck am I supposed to start and stop at certain places if I can't hear it?

Another nose wrinkle...

So, score one for Windows, right? I don't remember having any problem recording system sound and listening to it through the speakers at the same time!

Anyways, here's my brief recording...I was listening to Daft Punk, lol! As you can see, I sort of cut it off midway because I couldn't hear when I got to a good breaking point! Daft Punk.

I intended to get a walk in tonight, but by the time my new hedge guy showed up, so I could discuss what I want him to, finished talking to my sister on the phone, and then finished updating both the iPhone OS and iTunes...here I still sit!

I'm a bit sad today. Sounds like my youngest nephew just got his orders to ship out to the Airforce. That means both nephews are in the forces.

***
The iPhone update was minor for me.

The iTunes update was a bit more important. It allows me to organize the apps on my iPhone screens!

Prior to this, I had to drag the icons around on the iPhone -- at best tedious. It's nice to see that I can now organize them in iTunes and have it synch to the phone.

Getting ready to head over to friends' house for a lunchtime cookout. I'd like to bike over, but I'm resisting the temptation because the hams are still a bit sore. I'm waffling.

Yes, I'm still sore...but it's not bad -- and it's only 3.5 miles to the friends' house.

And I now have the road bike back (the chain was bent). I suspect when my wet shoe slipped off the pedal during the ride last weekend, that I kicked the chain and bent it. It was right after my foot slipped that the chain came off and my troubles began. And that would explain the grease mark on my sneaker.

***
I accidentally filled up my Time Machine backup drive last night! Time Machine is Apple's automated backup routine. The way Time Machine works is that you connect an external drive, and Time Machine will start backing up to it automatically.

Until last night, I still had all the backups that have ever been made -- all the way back to Nov 2007 when I first set the Mac up. But yesterday I was doing something else, and I created 2 zips, each about 50 Gbs each -- the two files together were bigger than the remaining space on the backup drive.

I left the zips over night, and noticed a message from Time Machine this morning. Time Machine dutifully deleted older backups to make space for these big files that it needed to backup. So, now I only have backups back to Jan 2008.

Not a big deal -- I have probably only looked back to the Nov 2007 backup one time -- to see if I could find a file that I hoped I had brought over from the old Dell. But I had been keeping an eye on the drive to see how long it would be before it had to delete any old backups. Almost 2 years is not bad, and it would have been longer if I hadn't created those huge files!

***

So, I finally decided to go on one of the Richmond Area Bicycling Association (RABA) rides. They divide the rides into A,B,C, and D depending on how fast and far the ride goes. I chose to do the D ride today because I had never ridden with RABA. The D ride today was 20 miles. The pace was WAY too SLOW for me, lol!

It was fun to get out and ride. And the other guys on the ride were nice -- I actually wish I had gotten the phone number for one of them, but I digress -- but it was SO SLOW. So, next time I will try the C ride, which was 32 miles I think.

But here's the deal. It was good that I chose the 20 mile ride. About 1/2 way through the ride, my chain jumped off. Okay, I put it back on, but for the rest of the ride, the bike changed gears madly, on its own. Pop, pop, pop, pop...the gears would change madly back and forth...it was MADDENING, and actually unsafe because I would be going up a hill in traffic, and it would switch gears on me.

I totally got grease all over my hands and other places as I was futzing with the chain. We stopped at a store at mile 12, and I was SO looking forward to washing my hands, right? Except, the store's bathroom had no soap or paper towels -- so I used some water and toilet paper to sort of wipe the grease off my hands!

I just dropped the bike off at Performance Bike. Gives me a good excuse to get the ole' silver bike out and ride!

***
Heading out to a dinner date tonight...friend, date? Not sure. This is a guy that I knew and was attracted to years ago. Not sure if there's still chemistry or not. I had dinner with him not long ago, and we're going again tonight.

***
Installed Snow Leopard today...It's mostly a bug fix release. It is snappier. And there are a few user interface changes.

Took a little time to install --


You can now navigate better through the "Stacks" grid -- scroll bar and navigating through folders --


The option to "put back" from the trash has been put back into OS X -- I think it disappeared after OS9.


The Stacks "list" has a nicer translucent black --


The printer driver is providing better information back to the Print dialog box. It used to be harder to get information on ink levels and such through the Print dialog box -- now that information is integrated into the Print dialog.




Time Machine is supposed to be faster to back up now. That could be, but as usual after an upgrade, it took it a long time to back up -- after an upgrade there are more changed files for Time Machine to backup.


The file names for screen shots now include date/time instead of being named "picture 1," "picture 2," etc. This is both good and bad -- it's more information, but it makes it harder to find your screen shots when you want to, say, upload them for a post like this. It makes the list busier.


There's a preference to make minimized windows NOT take up space on this Dock. This preference makes minimized windows act more like they do in Windows. For me, that's much appreciated.

I can't give a screen shot of this, but Exposé has been updated, so that if you left click and hold it over the app icon on the Dock, Exposé will show just that application's windows.

There's a new Finder preference that tells Search box at the top of the Finder window to default to searching the folder you're in (as opposed to searching the whole Mac).



Unfortunately, my beloved Quicksilver does not work any more. Hopefully, there will be an update!

Update -- one of the Quicksilver plugins was causing the crash -- in my case, the Airport module. I renamed that module, and now Quicksilver loads!

While I was doing laundry last night, D texts asking if I wanted to do dinner...

Laundry vs dinner with a friend...laundry vs dinner, hmmm...lol...Sounded good to me!

Anyways, we went to Max and Emma's -- chain, meh, okay -- but I liked the ice cream at Gelati Celesti afterwards...and the company, of course :)


***
I think I've mentioned that I'm a user interface guy at heart...not to say that I was ever very good at creating them, but, like porn and art, I know a good UI when I see one.

Apple does a great job at creating a UI.

Except, there's one thing that just bugs me. I like my action buttons to perform the actions they say they perform. For example, an Edit button should put a record into edit mode, so I can make changes. A Save button should save my changes.

What I particularly dislike (it's a pet peeve) is when the button doesn't change names -- Edit means edit, and then, what?? what??, Edit means Save?

Like in the Mac Address book. Here's how you edit--


And then, here's how you save your changes --


It's just a pet peeve of mine that the text on the button doesn't change.

Dang Crackbook! I was supposed to get my butt up very early and bring the car into Firestone to get the state inspection.

I got up a late, and then I just HAD to check Facebook. That's when a (new F/B) friend from high school started up a chat. Well, there was a burning question I had wanted to ask him, so I chatted with him, and that meant I got to Firestone much later than I wanted. That means, it's going to take forever to do my car -- like several hours -- because there are people ahead of me. At least I got my burning question answered, lol! It was the answer I expected, 'cept with lots more personal details than I expected!

I could have just come back tomorrow, but I have been putting this off for a while now -- the state inspection expired in June, so I guess I was on the "13 month" plan this year. I also need new brake pads.

Anyways, it just means a long boring wait...I could be biking! This is when it would come in handy to have a partner to pick me up -- romantic partners do come in handy for some things, right?

***
Ya know, I'm using my old Dell laptop right now. Although I use a Mac at home, it is an iMac -- not a Macbook. When I'm out and about, I use this Dell.

Lawd, I miss the Mac! Yes, I use Windows at work, but I sort of expect that sort of pain at work. But when I'm doing my personal online stuff, I really really have gotten used to the Mac!

A lot of times, it's just the small things. Like, right now, I want to go take a restroom break, but I don't want to leave the Dell sitting by itself on the table. On the Mac, it would be easy to shut the lid, go into sleep mode, take it with me to the restroom. Then, come back to the table and plop it down and start using it -- it all happens in a snap. But if I do it on the Dell, the silly thing will take AGES to come back to life after I shut the lid. I feel like Homer Simpson, deciding if I should get up and go pee or not...

***
On a different topic, this Salon article is about how the Republican party is facing demographic changes -- the party does well among white voters, a population which is shrinking as a percentage of the voting population.

And the anti-immigration stance of the Republican party has turned off many in the non-white percentage of the voting population.

That's a pretty well-known trend, I think. The one comment the article made that I hadn't really thought about is that, with Obama's win, young voters probably have now gotten the voting bug, and will continue to vote.

And I think the writer is correct -- when you believe strongly enough in a candidate to vote, and the candidate wins, I think that gets you into the voting mindset. Until then, you might think your vote won't matter...but one win for a candidate you believe in makes you start thinking your vote does matter -- so you get in the habit of voting.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/07/20/gop_math/index.html

The other night during a storm, the external speakers on my computer stopped working. Everything is hooked up to surge protectors, so I guess it could be coincidence that the speakers stopped working that night. I tried changing the fuse in the subwoofer, but that didn't help.

These four satellite speakers and the subwoofer were the speakers that I ordered with the old Dell six years ago. I don't know what the expected life of external speakers are, but I suppose I did get a fairly good number of years of use out of them.

My computer is the primary entertainment source for me. I listen to lots of music, NPR and other radio stations, watch TV episodes on Hulu, play a few games, etc.

So, the sound matters to me. Having to listen to the Mac's internal speaker is not a great thing! Although the Mac's internal speaker sounds better than the old Dell, it's still just not that great.


I find picking out speakers to be fairly difficult.

You have no way of knowing how the speakers will sound in your space, as opposed to how they sound in someone else's space and at the store.

It's difficult to judge ratings online. If someone has been used to listening to an internal computer speaker, then ANY external speaker will sound great, so they will rate it high. On the other hand, an audiophile will think almost any computer speaker is terrible -- they typically just aren't up to the same level as home entertainment systems.

Also, if someone has a $50 budget, then they will pick the best speakers they can get for that money, and then rate them highly.

I settled on the speakers below because of the types of comments made about them online -- the comments seemed to match sort of what I was looking for.


I looked at the Bose Companion 5 speakers, but they were just too darned expensive. Smaller (and cheaper speakers) all seemed sort of tinny.

So, I settled on these speakers below, which people online seem to love. I have not heard them, but the place I ordered them from has a local store, so I can return them if I need to. (The local store didn't have them in stock).

There's no separate subwoofer -- just 2 "bookshelf" type speakers. The dimensions (8.75h x 6w x 7.25d) are bigger than typical computer speakers, but I think I can work them into my space.

These speakers also seem to be in short supply. The place I ordered them from said they would ship in 2 weeks -- which seems long to me. Amazon said 1 - 2 months! I have a sneaking suspicion that Amazon may be more correct, so I may be living with the Mac's internal speaker for a while!

I had an odd problem today with the CD/DVD drive on the Mac.

As I was working, I noticed that the drive sounded like it kept trying to eject a CD. But I knew there was no CD in there, right? So, I figured maybe the drive just needed a little help, and I would just stick one of my CDs in, and then eject it again. (Note to self: next time you have this bright idea, be sure to use a CD that you don't care about.)

The iMac Superdrive does not have a manual eject button -- it's all software, baby. So, I inserted my Civilizations IV CD, and it slid into the drive. Then I pressed the Eject key on the keyboard, saw the Eject symbol show up on screen, the drive made the ejecting noise, and .... nothing else happened.

After I re-started several times and tried various things that I found online with no success, I was beginning to think I was going to have to schedule a trip to the Genius Bar at the Apple store to get them to work on it.

Anyways...I saw a post online where someone suggested re-setting my "PRAM" for this problem. (At this point, I'm thinking to myself -- "I have PRAM?") I found these instructions on how to do it (basically pressing the Command, Option, P, and R keys at the same time when the computer first starts up (before he gray screen shows up)).

And it seems to have fixed the problem. The drive is not making any noise anymore, and I was able to insert and eject a CD with no problem.

No idea the cause -- this is the first time its happened. I did have the new version of VMWare Fusion running when it started happening...but I can't blame that software unless it happens again.

Update

The whirring noise from the CD drive re-appeared for a while later in the day. Someone online said that it was like a Chinese water torture -- having the drive whir every few minutes.

Anyways, I found a thread online that suggested that the last version of Growl has an interaction with Mac OS 10.5.6. The suggestion was to uninstall Growl. I have had 10.5.6 for a while and Growl for longer than that and have never heard this constant whir.

And I like Growl. But I did notice that I had Growl showing up in my menu bar at the top of the screen. So, I changed that Growl preference and I haven't heard the whir again.

And the drive appears to be functioning properly.

I'll have to keep an eye (or ear in this case) on this.

There have been one or two revisions of the iMac since I bought mine, but this is probably the biggest one.

The new iMacs do not have Intel chips -- opting instead for Nvidia chips.

The top of the line iMacs are hella expensive, but one thing really caught my eye -- they are coming with Terabyte sized drives!


http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/imac?mco=MTE2NjM

I wonder how Apple will fare in today's economy. Yes, they have a devoted group of followers, but I think most people are holding onto their money right now -- so I wonder if Apple will ever lower its profit margins a bit..

Google Earth has a new version that lets you go underneath the sea. The picture below is just off the Hawaiian Islands.

The only negative thing is that it forces you to install the updater as a background process -- which seems very "Windows" to me -- I hate having processes run like that on the Mac. I don't use Google Earth that often, so I'm thinking of uninstalling it, just to get rid of that updater process.


The other thing -- these are not "real" images -- more like cartoons.

When I was a Windows user, I used Picasa to organize my pictures. I see that Google has now released Picasa for the Mac (beta).

I found the program very useful when I used it, but now that I have Adobe Lightroom, I probably don't have as much use for the program.

Picasa made it easy to sort and organize your pictures, then upload them for sharing to the web. But I've now gotten used to either uploading to either Karmic-Dragonfly (manually), or Flikr (via Flikr's web interface) or Kodak Gallery (via a Firefox Add on).

So, I'm not sure if I will use Picasa anymore or not. Here's the link to download -- http://picasa.google.com/mac/

Picasa is efficient at finding all your pictures. It then lets you organize them into "Albums" for uploading.


Picasa also provides editing tools --

I had a very pleasant time with a good friend at a coffee shop this evening. It was Lift down on Broad. I got to see his BRAND NEW MacBook! Apple should pay me a damned commission, lol!

****
Since that very close friendship broke down a couple of months ago, I have felt a void in my life.

So uncharacteristically of me, I ran a Craigslist "Strictly Platonic" ad to see if there are other gay Buddhists / Wiccans in town who would like to get together socially.

My idea was that it would be less related to practice or sitting, and more related to social interaction.

What gave me the idea was my friend who lived in San Francisco talking about the San Francisco Gay Buddhist Fellowship. I've attended a couple of sittings at the local Buddhist sangha, but nothing was specifically targeted towards GLBT folks.

So far, I've had a few responses -- one who speaks French :) Now, I actually have to organize a coffee get-together or something with the people who responded!

What a BEE-U-tiful sunny day! Last I checked, it was like 70˚ F (21˚ C)!


I'm spending some of the day wrapping Christmas gifts -- instead of putting names on the gifts, I usually print off a picture that I took of the person from the previous year. And of course, I often go for the worst, most unbecoming picture -- that being the evil side of me, lol! One year, I used a picture of my nephew's butt -- I took the picture while he was wrestling with my other nephew. At the gift exchange, they had to figure out whose butt it was to be able to deliver the gift to the correct nephew, lol!


Anyways, Apple released an OS update today -- 10.5.6. I installed it. No big whoop for me. I saw that they improved the performance of the Chess application. Thank god...I don't know how much longer I could have lived without that ;)

I did notice some verbiage about improving graphics for gaming performance -- that might help when we play Civ IV. Sometimes while playing Civ IV, the graphics will go black as if the video card is overheating. There's a program called smcFanControl that we use to bump the speed of the internal fans up to keep that blackness from happening.

Otherwise, everything seems to be functioning as normal on the Mac.

Steve Mobs sounds a lot like Moe, the bartender, lol...I like the reference to the 1984 Superbowl ad...


Update -- The Youtube is no longer available due to a copyright claim by 20th Century Fox. If you want to see it, Hulu has the full episode -- http://www.hulu.com/watch/46689/the-simpsons-mypods-and-boomsticks - starts around 02:15.