What's it all about, Alfie?

Yesterday I was playing with Skitch and FlySketch and saw that when I tried to do a screen snap in Skitch with the hotkey Cmd-Shift-5, I got a lot of problems and then didn't get the snap I wanted. The screen seemed to freeze, I couldn't get it to stop, and then I hit Enter, and I got a snapshot, but it wasn't what I wanted. I was convinced that this was just a conflict in the two applications - both of which use some kind of hotkey combination for their behavior. Not a terrible thing, but I don't like these conflicts as they sacrifice stability, so I picked Skitch over FlySketch, and wanted to give it a shake.

Well... overnight I thought more about it and wondered if it were possible to get the kind of things I liked in Skitch in FlySketch. So I flipped open the laptop and started looking at the preferences of FlySketch. When I saw that it's full-screen snapshot hotkey was Cmd-Shift-5 I knew that I'd found the problem. So since I have FlySktech set to pop-up on Cmd-Ctrl-F, I made the full-screen snapshot in FlySktech be Cmd-Ctrl-Shift-F - something easy to remember. Then the Cmd-Shift-5 would be Skitch's and there would not be a problem.

Or so I had hoped.

So I fired up Skitch again and along with the newly-configured FlySketch I tried the Skitch snapshot - Cmd-Shift-5. It worked!

Wonderful lesson to learn: Always check for hotkey conflicts.

When my daughter wanted to have her web site include Flash-based form submission software I needed to make sure that PHP on frosty, my iMac running OS X 10.3, would be able to email out properly. As I found out, 10.3 is not set up to allow this, but it's easy enough to configure once you know how. I Googled the problem and found most of the answer, but there was one line missing and that turned out to be a critical line for the forwarding of emails while in a PHP script. The low-down is that you just need to properly configure postfix on the box, as it's already installed and most of the work is already done for you. So here goes:

First, look at /etc/hostconfig and make sure that there is a line that reads:

  MAILSERVER=-AUTOMATIC-

Next, you need to edit the file /etc/postfix/main.cf and make sure it has the following lines:

  ...
  myhostname = frosty.themanfromspud.com
  ...
  mydomain = themanfromspud.com
  ...
  myorigin = $mydomain
  ...
  inet_interfaces = all
  ...
  mydestination = $myhostname, localhost.$mydomain
  ...
  mynetworks_style = subnet
  ...
  relayhost = smtp.comcast.net
  ...

and then you need to uncomment the line in the file /etc/postfix/master.cf to look like:

  smtp     inet  n    -    n    -    -    smtpd

At this point, if you restart your box, the email will send out from the host to any email address on the net. This is also very helpful in that my crontabs are now able to send me email off the box and this makes it a lot easier to keep track of them.

I've done this on Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4 and it works great on both. I just wanted to write this into the journal before I forgot how to do it in the event that I need to do it again.

Today I had a little time to work a bit with Numbers from iWork '08. I had a spreadsheet worked up in Mesa that I wanted to convert to Numbers and see what it'd look like and how easy it would be to get it copied in and looking the way I wanted it to look. I was really pleasantly surprised that getting the graphs working was as easy as it was. I expected the data transfer to go smoothly - after all, it's just cut-'n-paste, but adding in the graphs was going to be a test as there was a lot of data there to graph and Mesa, for instance, had a harder time than I expected getting it all plotted properly.

I was a little disappointed in the fact that there weren't two-level column headers available in Numbers. I'm sure they can be created by making two rows look like headers and then have the top row of cells span multiple columns, but I'd have thought that Apple would have allowed multiple headers. Slightly disappointing, but still, not the worst thing to happen - just something to work around.

I was very pleased with the page layout and the multiple pages in a workbook. This feature has Excel and Mesa beat, hands-down. While it may be trivial to the Excel wizard, as I've seen them remove the row/column outlines and draw borders to make it look like the table (or tables) are on a blank white sheet of paper, this allows you to really do it. Also, it was a very pleasant surprise to see that dragging a table or graph from one sheet to another was possible without any change in the naming of the cells in formulas. This is something that Excel fails at, and while it's possible to get around, it's nice to be able to build up something and then drag one object off a page onto another after things are all built up.

I'd love to see tabs in the GUI tools - say, being able to drop down a tabbed interface on the page and then add tabs and drop content on them. It's a microcosm of the pages, I suppose, so it's not terribly important, but it'd be nice in the few things I was doing, but again, not a show-stopper.

After just about an hour of working with it, I'd have to say that I can't imagine that there's something I'll need it to do that I wish I had Excel for. My needs are relatively simple, and the capabilities in Numbers is really quite amazing. I'm very glad I got iWork '08.

I like to keep up to date on the software that I use on a daily basis, and with my move to HostMonster for hosting and WordPress for my journal (blog), I have been using MarsEdit a lot lately. So I was very interested in the word I'd been hearing about version 2.0. A completely redesigned interface, new features, more media choices... all made it sound like a must have update. So when I found that it was out yesterday, I had to check it out and upgrade.

What I found almost made me laugh. I had originally written my journal on static HTML pages. Then I moved to a PostgreSQL-driven database journal on my Sun box with a web-based PHP front-end. When I got my first iBook I took the time to make an XML-RPC driven interface to the Journal on the Solaris back-end and a Mac OS X client on the front-end. It allowed me to do a lot of the things that MarsEdit can now do, but it was a lot more unrefined and lacked all the polish that MarsEdit has. What was funny was that with the move to MarsEdit 2.0, the main window looks exactly like my iJournal app. I had to giggle. I may have been onto something after all.

I'm glad to have moved to WordPress, HostMonster, and MarsEdit, but it's funny to see that I wasn't all that far off on what made a good journaling (blogging) application, after all.

I'm spending a little time this morning watching the iMac, iWork, iLife Event in preparation for the announcements today regarding the new iPods. Unfortunately, there's no one covering the event today, which is a bummer, but there's no way I'm going to travel for the announcement, and I can't blame anyone else for not going either. But the rumor sites are all a buzz about the confirmed full-screen iPod - if anything can be considered to be confirmed from Apple before it's actually announced.

As for the event, I have to hand it to Steve, the guy is a Showman, no doubt about it. I have to say that it's interesting to see him play to the smaller house on the Apple campus. As I watch the presentation I'm struck by the fact that anyone in the creative arts with talent makes it look easy, and makes us all want to join in. Basketball, painting, story telling, and in this case, movie making (iMovie '08) - it doesn't really matter what it is - we see this done my a really gifted individual and they make it look so easy.

Yes, I have to give it to Steve... he makes these presentations look easy. I can't wait to see what he's got cooking for today.

UPDATE: I can't believe that the new full-screen iPods are only flash-based and only go up to 16GB. I understand that the new features are nice - WiFi, etc. and I can see that Apple wants to be able to extend the battery life to something much longer than the current 4 hours, but to limit the machine to 16GB is a big of a dumb thing to do. I'm not sure I'm even interested in this model any more. It certainly places the iPod and iPhone in much greater competition with one another. I'd have thought that a hard disk-based iPod would have cut the battery life, but boosted storage so that they were not in any real competition with one another. I guess we'll have to wait for the next update to the iPods because I can't believe I'm going to look at 16GB and think "Hey, that's half of what I have now with a 4 yr old iPod, but let's get it!"

Yesterday Apple updated iWork '08 and with the addition of Numbers to iWork, it was something I really had to try. I've been putting off getting MS Office for a long time. I just didn't like the idea of spending money on another Microsoft product, and TextEdit and Mesa did almost all the tasks I needed. But they weren't 100%, and in the end, I still had to do a lot of fiddling with Word, Excel, etc. So I was happy to see that iWork added a spreadsheet.

I got the trial and tried to open up some of the critical Excel and Word docs that I needed to have. For the most part, I need to be able to read and write these formats, so it was very nice that right there on the web sites, it says Pages and Numbers can read and write Office formatted files. Combine that with the fact that the style of these apps is incredible, and you have a really compelling argument.

Then again, it's $79.

Sold.

I will use the trial until I get the serial number in the email, or get the package from Apple in a few days. It's nice to be able to support the Good Guys and at the same time fit in with the rest of the business world on the file formats. Yup... I'm a big Apple fan.

Stories on the Mac rumors sites say that a new Nano with video capabilities is coming out next week. Not bad. I'm sure there are lots of folks that will buy it. I'm not one of them, but there are plenty that will use it to store a few shows, or a decent music collection. But the real news is that it's not the update to the real iPod. That's still being estimated at next year as a no-phone iPhone. Once again, if they make it I will buy it. My old iPod is still working, but it's got issues on the sound production, and the battery is not what it once was.

Touchscreen iPod sourced, dated for August?: "Apple has chosen Wintek to supply touchscreen panels for an upcoming video-capable iPod, say sources in the Taiwan supply chain. The local electronics maker, which produces small LCDs for cameras and other handhelds, is reportedly set to ship capacitive touchscreens without specific software controls or integrated circuits to accompany them, allow..."

(Via MacNN.)

All I can say is Wow! This is the iPod I've waited for. If they let loose on this one, and it's got at least the storage of the current models, then I'm going to be getting one the first weekend they come out. Far, far, too cool to pass up.

It's been a quiet day - got word on a bug fix I'll incorporate tomorrow, fixed a few issues with some data, but it's been a nice and quiet day. So I spent a little time trying to see if I could get iChat to work from my MacBook Pro to my kids' MacBooks. I know that they can video chat to one another, but when I tried to chat with each one I got the 'Error -8' problem that seems to be pretty common to a lot of folks.

If I had to guess it's in the ports, but it's possible that it's the NAT on the Netgear wireless router. I'm going to have to do some tests when I'm at home to see if I can chat them when I'm on the same network, and if that works, can I chat them when I'm on the primary network in the house. This will test the Netgear router as the kids' machines are on the 'downlink' side of the router, and the internal network is on the 'uplink' side. If that fails, then I know it's in the Netgear router and I need to deal with that. If not, then it could be the router at work, or blocked ports.

What's really amazing to me is that Apple hasn't put this out in a FAQ or something to address this directly. It's almost like a simple software update would say "Hey, I can't Video chat because I can't connect to port x on the other machine." Then you'd have some URL to go to and see what the problem was. This would be incredibly simple, but they haven't done it. I suppose it's not a high priority as for most people is just works, but when there's a problem, it's always better to give an error message with as much information as possible.

So I'm hoping it's something with the Netgear setup. The Apple web site mentioned turning off UPnP on some routers, but there wasn't a lot of real detailed information other than the port numbers that needed to be open. Since none of the machines has the firewall turned on, I think it's got to be in the router at home - or here at work. If it's here at work there might be a chance I can get the ports opened, but we'll have to see. I might not be able to. In any case, this is a puzzler that didn't need to be as puzzling. Apple just needs to have better error messages.

UPDATE: turns out it was the available bandwidth at work. There are 200 users on the one 1.5Mbps DSL line and that's not leaving any real bandwidth for the iChat AV connection. Problem solved, but oh how I wish they'd have real bandwidth for these lines - that, or a really fast WiFi in the Chicago area so that I could use that and not have to hassle with this either.

Well, it's going to be a big Mac weekend this weekend. First, I'm going to enjoy the rest of the week at home as July 4^th falls on a Wednesday and so I'm going to make a nice 5-day weekend out of it. Ahhh... But that's not all. Oh no.

Yesterday my daughter accidentally dropped her Gateway laptop and really fractured the display - it's kind of neat, in an artistic way. It's an accident, and it gives me the opportunity to move her off Windows onto a MacBook. This is great as I had more than a few problems with the WiFi card in her laptop. The drivers were more than 3 years old and no newer drivers existed and the ones that were on the box weren't very good. If she shut the lid it would not reconnect to the access point when she opened it again. She got good at manually reconnecting it, but there's a better way, I know.

Also, my wife is using a little nicer Gateway laptop that she's comfortable with but it's still more maintenance than I would like - face it, I have to do this all day long, I shouldn't have to deal with it when I go home. That's no reason to replace it, but my son really deserves a laptop for all his hard work on grades this year, so we're going to hand down this guy to him and get my wife a new MacBook.

Then there's the Mac Mini that's going to be fixed in a few days that we'll be picking up from the Apple Store. Add to that a big external drive and a couple of cron jobs to the laptops and we have a reasonable back-up plan that means that we're not going to loose anything. Whew! What a massive Mac weekend!

I've got to get all my daughter's stuff of her Windows laptop and converted to the Mac, but then she can use iMovie/iDVD to put her movies together which she now has to do on the Mac Mini. Also, the web building software on her Windows box is OK, but iWeb is as good or better and that will publish to a web server in my office and so she can convert her stuff as she has time and energy and get moved to iWeb. Other than that, it's Firefox and Gimp - which I'll move her to Photoshop Elements. In the end, she'll be much happier and I'll be free from the support that I've had to do up until now.

My wife's machine will be the most difficult because she gets things like Word and Excel docs, and there's no viewers for the Mac, so it'll probably have to mean that we get Office. Could be worse. But she's got years of email in Outlook Express and I need to convert every single email for her - plus contacts. It's got to be done right or she's going to be very upset. After that, I think it'll be easy because other than web, email, and Office, she's pretty easy to keep going.

My son will want to get some PC games, and that's OK as he wasn't as keen on the Mac as a PC simply because of the games. Now that he knows about Boot Camp he wants a MacBook, but he's going to have to wait a bit. This windows laptop will be fine for him for a while.

So, between all the machines that need to be set-up, accounts moved, data shifted around, backup scripts written and scheduled, connectivity checked... it's going to be a Big Mac Weekend. I can't wait.

UPDATE: turns out, my wife wanted to get a 15-inch Black MacBook, but since those aren't made, she decided that the 13-inch screen on the MacBooks was just too small for her. So she decided to keep her Gateway laptop - for now. But we got two white MacBooks for the older kids and I spent the time getting them set up and going with their iTunes files and accounts on the new machines. They love them, and the only thing I really need to do is to get some backup solution written. Nothing fancy - maybe rdist from the laptops to the Mini and then a complete nightly backup of the Mini to the external HD. Don't know, but I'll work it out.