This morning I saw that Google Chrome dev 12.0.742.0 was out with "stability and performance fixes". Sounds like polish to me - nothing wrong with that. Keep making it better, and while you're at it - throw back in the H.264 will ya?
When I got my new MacBook Pro (early 2011), I got the program gfxCardStatus and it allows me to control the integrated/discrete graphics very nicely. What I noticed right away was that Unison and Twitterrific didn't like the discrete graphics, and so I emailed the respective authors and asked if they'd heard of this problem. Interestingly enough, they hadn't. Well... today I got a lot closer to figuring this out because one of the guys at Panic thought to ask about the console output.
Interestingly, it says:
4/19/11 3:47:05 AM Unison[1069] unknown error code: invalid display
4/19/11 3:47:05 AM [0x0-0x20020] Tue Apr 19 03:47:05 peabody.local Unison[1069]
.com.panic.Unison2[1069] <Error>: unknown error code: invalid display
Well now... isn's this interesting. Unison (and Twitterrific) are reporting that the AMD Radeon HD 6570M is an invalid disply. That's certainly something that you don't see every day. It also seems to remove the question of bad hardware from the table. If the libraries are seeing this as an invalid display, then it's the interpretation of what they are seeing that's the problem.
I sent this into both places, and we'll see what comes back. I'm hoping a fix for both of them.
[4/25] UPDATE: I got a response saying that an Apple engineer said it was the Flash Plugin. Since I'm not using Flash, that can't be it, but I did take a chance that it could be some plugin. So I removed the following plugins:
and when I restarted Safari, MarsEdit, and Chrome, the problem went away! So it's a plugin, allright, and one of these is bad. I don't really need any of these guys, so I'm leaving them all out, but it's nice to know I can find out the bad boy by putting it back in and seeing when things break.
This morning I saw that Google Chrome dev 12.0.733.0 was out and the release notes say only that the release focused on stability and UI tweaks. I noticed they fixed the centering of the page title in the tab which used to be left-justified, then it switched to centered, now it's back to left-justified. I'm sure there are other things like this, and that's OK, it's a pretty stable browser.
Today has started out exceptionally stressful. I've got a few guys helping me that are not doing so well, and some don't get the urgency of the impending deadline. It's all building up to a ton of stress and I'm starting to be a touch sharp with people. After all, if we're supposed to be done in four days, why are you asking me about a point that should have been worked out a long time ago?
It was getting pretty out of hand.
Then I realized that I wasn't taking my own advice. Specifically, that advice I gave my daughter about her test anxiety. "Don't worry about the grade", I said. "Focus on the knowledge, and the tests will take care of themselves."
Good advice, in my book. But I wasn't listening to it. I wasn't listening at all.
I've been letting this arbitrary deadline I didn't agree to get to me. I'm working 12 and 13 hour days and it's been a nasty couple of weeks. I've resented having to slow down to help people. I've resented the slower people in the group hassling me about giving them work. I know they mean well, but really? I work four times faster than you do. Giving work to you is slowing me down - even if you never ask a question.
But that's not really the point, is it?
Isn't it about trying my best to bring these people along? Helping them see how they can be better at their craft? I think that's the point.
I know there's no way I can't be seen as giving it my best.
This morning I wanted to hook my new MacBook Pro up to the existing TimeMachine backup stream that I've had going for quite a while. The problem is that in the past, it's been a someone manual operation, and with the loss of the ACL control app in Snow Leopard, nearly impossible. But I was being silly, wasn't I?
Turns out, that in Snow Leopard, if you just hook up an existing TimeMachine drive to a new machine, it'll ask you if you want to continue with this backup set on the new machine! This is exactly why I love Apple. They think of these things, and plan for them. In the past, it was manual, but now it's automatic.
Gotta love these guys!
I looked at the tracking for my new MacBook Pro from Apple and noticed that it was out on the FedEx truck for delivery! I like tracking it from China, but I like even more the idea of getting an amazing new laptop! This guy has the fast i7 processor, with 8GB RAM and the 512GB SSD. I know that my existing Core 2 MacBook Pro will seem very slow in comparison.
Quad core... I've been waiting for that for a long time. And even the memory is faster. This is going to be a major upgrade. I'm really jazzed about it.
This morning I had an interesting little problem - WordPress 3.1.1 was released with a few nice little fixes, so I went to HostMonster to update my installs. The problem was that since that odd little 3.1 double upgrade, I was unable to upgrade to 3.1.1 because SimpleScripts was saying that the version number was wrong. Not cool.
I'd been upgrading every time SimpleScripts instructed me, but the second upgrade to 3.1 didn't seem necessary, but I did it anyway - and everything worked. But it wasn't without consequences, it seems. So I had to cancel that update - which wasn't obvious, but I figured out, and then I had to upgrade to 3.1.1 within the WordPress site, and then try to upgrade in SimpleScripts.
This second (unnecessary) upgrade finally detected that I had the version that I was updating to, and it just updated the version number in SimpleScripts. This was a big "Whew!" on my part, and it's nice to know what my options are in dealing with these updates. So it's all up to 3.1.1 and things are smooth once again.
This morning I saw the tweet that MarsEdit 3.2.1 was out with a few nice little fixes. I hadn't been having any issues, but it's still nice to see Danile make progress. I'm still waiting for that BBEdit/Vim/SubEthaEdit editor in MarsEdit. I think it could really use it.
This morning I saw that Google Chrome dev 12.0.725.0 was out and the release notes say it all:
All
- Updated V8 - 3.2.6.0
- Spring cleaning in the code, lots of code cleanup and refactoring under the covers
It's nice to see the clean-out of old code. I'm sure there's a lot that's sitting there - like maybe the H.264 decoder... OK, enough of that. In any case, at least they got the icon back. Baby steps.
This afternoon, Angelina wanted to be able to print from her iPad to the printers in the house. Since AirPrint was not enabled in Mac OS X 10.6.6+, I knew I had a few options open to me: hacking the system to enable it (it was enabled in a pre-release version of OS X), or buying one of the sub-$10 apps that allowed you to share all your printers on a Mac OS X desktop with AirPrint clients. I'm not a fan of the hacking, so I decided to give the apps a try.
When I was going through all the apps for this, I noticed AirPrint Activator. This guy used to be a hack, but now the author says this about the app:
Apple requested that I take down the AirPrintHacktivator page as they stipulate that the application is distributing copyrighted source code and/or software. AirPrint Activator is now replacing the defunct AirPrint Hacktivator application. It provide the same functionality without the use of any Apple files.
You can use AirPrint Activator as a replacement of the previous generation Hacktivator application. If present, it will take care of cleaning any Apple files installed by the previous generation Hacktivator when you “deactivate” AirPrint. It will only inject a single line in a CUPS configuration when you select to “activate” AirPrint.
I really liked that it only injects a single line int he CUPS config file. That's the kind of change I can deal with. Sure, it's liable to be broken in the next release of OS X - or even on an update to CUPS in a subsequent security update. But for now, it's possible, and if I need to learn what this change is, I can, and then I'll be able to update it myself in the future.
The next wrinkle turned out to be that my Mac Mini was sharing a printer that wasn't being shared via LPD any more. Seems Snow Leopard turned off the LDP sharing by default. Well, I found this hint and simply enabled LPD sharing again:
cupsctl 'BrowseLocalProtocols="cups dnssd lpd"'
As soon as I did that, my old LPD-based sharing machines found the printer again, and all was well. With these two things, I have AirPrint working perfectly in the house now. I even printed out a few pictures from my iPhone for Marie who needed them for school.
Very nice.