Author: Tim Jarrett

Thanks, and bugs

I love the Mac community. The people who blog from the Mac are willing to try new things (about 171 people have downloaded my app from VersionTracker, not counting the ones who went to my site) and ready to tell you when they find bugs. I am really glad that you guys are out there–I was panicked that I had no testers, but I do now and they’re piling up the bug reports! Look for a new version soon to fix the initial bugs.

Blogging and AppleScript Studio

I just released Manila Envelope 1.0. It’s a native Mac OS X app, written in AppleScript Studio, that allows posting to a Manila-compatible site via SOAP.

I think this is what Dave was asking for last week with respect to Watson. But my app isn’t a screen scraper–it is a non-browser-based simple native blogging tool that uses the Manila API.

The software can be downloaded from my software and scripting page. Source code is available, not because I’m an open source movement guy (I’m not) but because AppleScript Studio is a young environment, I don’t understand it very well, and I figure other people can learn from my pain.

You can read about the development of Manila Envelope by clicking on the application icon to the right.

Burned.

Looks like some of my genealogical research is seriously suspect, according to this article. This is really disappointing: the Freeman family (my grandmother’s family) was one of the genealogies I was pretty happy with, but it looks like some of the records (and it’s not clear how far back) are suspect.

This is an important lesson to me as an amateur genealogical researcher: always document your source…and investigate any second hand evidence before adding it in.

It’s not work, just fun

I’m playing around a bit more with Radio UserLand. It’s going to take some patience to make it work, as I really want to get it to point at this site and not at my Radio Weblog. Meanwhile I’ve decided how to move forward on Manila Envelope, which was felled right before launch with an impossible problem with the preferences. I’m going to have to write my own code to write and read an XML preference file. Should be fun. Dig we must…

But much less tasty

Tomorrow morning the Galileo probe will take its last photos in a low-altitude flyby of Io. It’s due to crash into Jupiter in early 2003 so it doesn’t accidentally land on Europa, which has the best chance of any of the Jovian moons to contain life, and contaminate it with bacteria. I’m looking forward to seeing the photos; as I’m married to an Italian-American woman, there’s always been something amusing to me about a planet that looks like a pizza from hell.

Grumpy old blogger

I’m home. I have a cold. I’ve looked at Radio 8 and I’m not sure what’s going on yet. It looks really cool, and the UI is much better than in 7, but there’s a little bit of a learning curve. Now I’ll have to figure out how to blog all over again.

And I don’t wanna grow up either.

One of the things that came up was my grandfather. He’s possibly my favorite relative (sorry, everyone else), and also my last living grandparent. And he’s been alternately reminding me how much I care for him and scaring me over the last couple of days.

Last Saturday, I wrote about my detour to the family reunion. I spent a lot of time catching up with family–some people I hadn’t seen in quite a while; some read this blog frequently (hi, Jack!). But I think my favorite moment was sitting around the piano with about half the thirty people there, Mom playing, all of us singing Christmas carols (and the “Hallelujah Chorus”). Part way through, Pop-Pop asked the other folks to lay back so that my he, my Uncle John, and I could take a verse. It had been years since I sang with them at all, let alone solo, and it sounded great.

I probably didn’t notice at the time because of that and other factors (like my quick drive over and my need to hit the road), but Pop-Pop wasn’t in great shape. When I got there yesterday at 1 pm, I really noticed it: while his brain was as quick as ever, his speech was a little slurred, his fine motor control was gone (hands moving spastically and constantly), he stumbled when he walked because he was dragging a foot. His diabetes, normally pretty controlled, had really spiked before Christmas, and he was still feeling the effects, they thought. My Aunt Marie and I took him to the doctor this morning, and though his blood sugar’s down he is still having the symptoms. So we took him by the hospital. They’ve ruled out a stroke and are now investigating other causes.

I want him to be ok. I want to be able to introduce him to great-grandchildren some day, so he has a new audience for whom he can be the hysterically funny gentleman he was when I was growing up. I want eighty-four to be a good year for him, not the start of a downward slope.

Breaking the silence

Whew. Whirlwind journey almost over. I have a long train ride between Metropark and Boston tomorrow, and then I’m really back. Apologies for radio silence: some things came up. I’ll probably write about a few of them shortly.

In the meantime, I wrote this update on Saturday: Sorry about the unexpected silence the last two days. I was staying with a friend who had no broadband and had given up his home phone. I spent a few days catching up with old college and work friends. I’m certainly happy to have had the chance to visit with everyone, but I’m really ready to come home now.

I spent most of the day with Esta. We drove into Charlottesville for dinner and nostalgia, and now we’re sitting in Cocke Hall blogging. At least she’s blogging–my site is down and I’ll have to post this later.

New business model: hate your customers

About a month ago, I wrote Universal Music Group to complain about reports that starting in mid 2002, all their CDs would be copy protected using a format that renders them unplayable on Macs and on many CD players. Today I got a response from an automated support email that I’ve posted. I think there are two things in the letter of interest:

  • First, they claim that they hope to include Mac-based “playability” on copy-protected discs, and that they “have not made a commitment” to put copy protection on all their CD releases. This directly contradicts the statement made in Billboard last month.
  • Second, they claim that “unauthorized CD ‘ripping’ leads to illegal Internet distribution of music.”

The second is an interesting and novel claim. Let’s break it apart. First, what does “unauthorized CD ripping” mean? The last time I checked, fair use allows me to make a copy for personal reasons. This blanket “unauthorized” accusation and the copy protection measures that attempt to prevent it are only infringing my fair use rights. Second, how does ripping lead to distribution? Last time I checked, they were two separate acts. Just because I rip one of my CDs to put it on my iPod doesn’t mean I’m going to distribute it on the Internet. I agree that file sharing programs like Napster and KaZaA are designed to facilitate distribution. But ripping? Oh man we’re in trouble if the RIAA goes after that one.