Blender 2.49b was released this morning and I had to get it. Yeah, it was all about fixes for the game engine part, but I still love it. It's one of the only places that still has a download link for the Irix OS. Cool.
With another round of security and stability fixes Firefox 3.5.3 is out. Pretty standard stuff, just needed to update and we're done. Simple, but very effective. Use it every day.
This morning I noticed an update to iMovie was out - with an interesting list of features:
- Improved compatibility with camcorders using the iFrame video format
- Improved compatibility with importing video captured on the iPod nano
- Fixed problems with resizing the iMovie window during playback
looks like there was a bit of incompatibility on the importing fixed up this time. SOunds good to me.
This morning I noticed that iTerm 0.10 was finally out, and I have to say, it's been ages since a real update to this guy. It's nice, but they are still missing the ability to have workspaces, and the one thing they have that I like is the ability to remove the scrollbar. I've come to terms with this and Terminal.app seems OK to me. Wish I could turn off the scrollbar, though.
I've heard a lot about ClickToFlash, and I have stayed away from it so far because I didn't think it was that bad. I mean sure, a few stolen cycles here and there, but I didn't think it was a really serious problem. But still... I've seen Liza's computer. She's always going to very heavy Flash sites and she could really probably use this.
So I decided to get it and give it a spin. It comes highly recommended, so it's not junk. We'll see if I don't like this better. Certainly, it's something to try with Liza.
Today I wanted to upgrade my PostgreSQL install to 8.4.1 (from 8.3.x) based on the KyngChaos package I'd just started using. It's as much a test of the upgrade process as it is about any 8.4.x feature in PostgreSQL. It's really not all that hard, just a few steps in the right order.
First, open up a Terminal.app window and become the user postgres:
su - postgres
then, dump the database. Assuming you're in the postgres user's home directory - /Users/postgres, you can do something like:
/usr/local/pgsql/bin/pg_dumpall > postgresql_20090930.dump
and the dump will be tagged with the date. Easy.
Next, turn off the existing PostgreSQL engine, and set set the old install aside:
sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.postgresql.postgres.plist cd /usr/local sudo mv pgsql pgsql_old
Next, install the new package. If things are going well, the new engine will be started by the installer. As long as the launchd file exists, you should be OK.
Next, load the databases. Back in the postgres user's Terminal window:
/usr/local/pgsql/bin/psql -d template1 -f postgresql_20090930.dump
Check that the databases are back and functioning. Then it's just a matter of a little cleanup:
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/pgsql_old
This morning I saw that Camino 1.6.10 was released. It's not my favorite browser, it's Mac-like, sure, but it's not as Mac-like as Safari. Also, it's going to be hard to beat the Safari experience on Snow Leopard, and they need to build it for multiple Mac OS versions. Still, I use it probably once a week, and when I do, it's nice to know I'm up to date and have the latest security fixes, etc.
Not quite the best browser, but it's nice to have around when I need it.
This morning I saw that Acorn 2.0.3 is out with a nice list of bug fixes. I like the ability for Acorn to take a "dragged" image from Safari and automatically open it up. It's not like it was hard to right-click, copy the image, and then in Acorn create a new from the clipboard, but it's cleaner and more intuitive for the new Mac user.
Great app, getting even better. Super.
Well, as promised, NetNewsWire 3.2 has shipped and with it, an ad 'panel' at the bottom of the list of feeds. Thankfully, for a mere $9.95 you can purchase a license for NetNewsWire and get those ads removed. Very reasonable cost.
There's a lot there that I don't take advantage of, but what's there is incredibly valuable to me each morning. Great application.
Well, I'm really glad this happened... Google has finally gotten push email for GMail accounts. Sure, it's using the Microsoft Exchange connector in the iPhone OS 3.x, but still, that's a lot better than the polling I had to do in the past. Also, the Yahoo! push email was very unreliable in my usage. Sometimes I'd get emails in a minute or two, and sometimes I wouldn't get them until I opened up the Mail app and it scanned for me. Far too unreliable to use everyday.
But with GMail Push, I can (and did) move my iPhone email to GMail and then redirected the forwarder on iphone@bobbeaty.com to the new GMail account. Then, by following these simple instructions, I was able to get my GMail on the iPhone. Very nice.
When I sent a test email from my laptop to my iPhone, it arrived in less than 3 seconds. Amazing. You can't beat Google for good engineering. Thankfully, I used the domain mail forwarding so that changing the underlying email account was easy and didn't effect the stream of emails. What a sweet deal.