Today’s silly link from the Museum of Depressionist Art: David with the Head of Godzilla. Since Seanbaby doesn’t update regularly any more, these guys are the funniest stuff I see regularly on the web.
more…
Crossing the Ocean
This is pretty cool: Manila Envelope got picked up by FrTracker at Bluedays Software, a software tracker in French. And the app isn’t even localized… If anyone out there wants to help me translate Manila Envelope into your language of choice, please let me know. (Hint: the biggest issue will probably be the Help file.)
Now playing
Currently playing song: “Spartacus” by Branford Marsalis Quartet on Crazy People Music.
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.
You asked for it…
Dave asked for a screen shot for all the “Mac-impaired people” out there… so here it is.
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.
Manila Envelope Part 10: Idiot
It looks like preferences have been broken for almost two weeks in Manila Envelope because, while rewriting the code on the train, I swapped the order of two arguments to a function. Two weeks!!! As Dave says, “We make shitty software….with bugs!!!”
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.
Shameless plug
I’ve been playing around more with Radio UserLand. As a reminder, my blog is available for subscription in RSS format. The link is http://www.www.jarretthousenorth.com/xml/rss.xml.
Good morning!
It’s snowing here in Boston. I missed the first snow of 2002 while I was on my trip; it’s nice to be able to see the second one.
grr. grr. grr.
Today’s the day: the company deadline for removing all IM software from our computers. Management, in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks its distraction potential outweighs its usefulness as a business tool. Personally, I’m not over-fond of IM, and amn’t particularly sorry to see it go. But what does it say about managers that, rather than search for the real reasons that their employees’ productivity is dropping, would rather rant, rave, treat the employees like children and take away their toys? 1. The economy’s too bad for them to give us the bonuses and raises we need to make this job worthwhile. 2. They’re idiots, and bad managers. 3. They’re just as addicted to Solitaire and Minesweeper as the rest of us.
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.
Old age and guile
Well, here I am. Sitting back in the Sloan lobby, waiting for some trivia folks. We’re off to battle the real MIT brains, which is anyone not involved in the business school program. That’s ok, I’ll take old age and guile over youth and enthusiasm every time.
Back, with tangerines
My turn to rise from the blogger dead. I’ve been laid flat (lain flat?) for the past few days by a very nasty cold bug, which I unintentionally and not on purpose probably gave to Tim during his visit. And my Internet connection at home isn’t working for the very simple reason that someone out there is out to get me. Seriously, I’m back, I’m eating tangerines, I’m reasonably content and on the way to being more so.
About Pop Pop: like Tim said, it’s been incredibly hard on the whole family — I don’t think any of us had realized how much we rely on Pop Pop to hold us together. Mom says that he’s doing better, though — his blood sugar was way, way down last night. As long as Mom has reason to be optimistic, so do I.
Have a great day, all…