What's it all about, Alfie?

This morning I decided it's been almost a year since I've gotten the latest FORTRAN compiler from the HPC for Mac OS X web site. They typically update ever couple of months, and with the release of Snow Leopard, I was in for a wonderful treat - they had a Snow Leopard version that generated 64-bit executables. This is fantastic news!

I downloaded the package, updated my uninstall script based on the tarball's contents, and then gave it a whirl.

  peabody{drbob}275: gfortran --version
  GNU Fortran (GCC) 4.5.0 20090910 (experimental)
  Copyright (C) 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
 
  GNU Fortran comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
  You may redistribute copies of GNU Fortran
  under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
  For more information about these matters, see the file named COPYING
 
  peabody{drbob}276: 

Sweet.

I love that they build this package with auto-vectorization and OpenMP built in. This is just one of the most wonderful treats of life: to be able to work with such a wonderfully simple programming language on such wonderfully complex problems. Face it - there's no GUI for FORTRAN, it's standard out. Period. That means that you're not going to be making a cool web browser in it. It's not meant to do that. It's meant to push bits around and solve problems like never before.

There's no doubt that FORTRAN was one of the things that drew me into computers back in the 70's. It's just that incredible. I feel incredible joy in being able to use it. Thanks to the HPC on Mac OS X guys for making my day.

I didn't know that VelaClock wasn't Snow Leopard compatible but today I noticed that VelaClock 2.2 was out and they mentioned that it was now Snow Leopard compatible. Of course, I had to get it.

This morning Apple released updates to iWork '09 on Software Updates. There were several things fixed and updates to iWork.com as well. I still think this is my alternative to Microsoft Office, as it's much better for all that I do. While I know it's not a complete replacement for all the macros and scripting, it's more than good enough for me.

This morning I noticed that Growl 1.2 is finally released, and had to update. This is one of the big things that didn't work well with Snow Leopard, and I'm glad the developers stuck with it to get everything fixed up as soon as they could. Things take time.

Yeah, it was a little bit of work, but as promised, AT&T delivered a new carrier file for it's US customers today and I just needed to "update" the software on my iPhone and it picked it up. Then, a simple restart of the phone and it was sending and receiving pictures and video messages on the SMS stream. Quite nice.

Now all I need is legal tethering!

UPDATE: the AT&T cell towers are all having a lot of trouble with this upgrade. It seems from about 3pm to 6pm it's nearly impossible to send and receive TXTs. I'm sure this is a surge of the MMS usage, but still. They could have planned for it. They have been collecting money for the capability, so they should get it going. Well... hopefully, it'll settle out soon.

Once again, the Growl team has published another beta, this time 1.2b5. The list of remaining issues is shrinking rapidly, and I've got to believe in a few more weeks they'll have them all worked out. But for now, it's nice to see that progress is being made.

This morning I saw that iTunes 9.0.1 is now on Software Updates. It appears to be a handful of bug fixes as well as improvements in syncing for iPhones (yeah!) and they reverted the behavior of the "maximize" jelly - now it's the Option-Click that maximizes it and a simple click makes it the mini viewer. Nice. It' great to see them respond to user feedback.

Oddly, this didn't come across on Software Updates, but it's worthy to update for the little printing I do. The install was particularly time-consuming, and for a while there I was thinking it was hung up. But it was just taking a long time. In the end, it was all OK, and now I have the latest printer drivers. I'm still wondering if it's coming to Software Update soon... Hmm... if not, I'll have to manually update the other machines in the house.

They seem to be getting close to a release with Growl 1.2b4 as the release notes are less about bugs and more about tweaks in the app. Minimum version of OS X, icon layout in the DMG, etc. These things are the polish on the app as opposed to the real meat of the functionality. Good to see.

While continuing to work towards a release that's Snow Leopard compatible, the Cyberduck team has released 3.3b3 and it's getting closer. I haven't had a real need to check on Cyberduck, the upgrade to Snow Leopard made me take an active interest in the app's compatibility. It's nice to see the progress is still being made.