What's it all about, Alfie?

This morning I read about Amazon released an iPhone/iPod Touch app called 'Kindle for the iPhone' and I have to say I'm pretty darn pleased that they did. While the screen on my iPod Touch is not as big as my Kindle (1.0) screen, it's still nice that I can take a book or two or 50 with me on my iPod and read. The iPod screen is bright, easy to handle, and you really can't beat the convenience of having two ways to read my books.

I'm guessing they use the WiFi to talk to Amazon and permission the reader - not bad. I see that an iPhone would be a lot better at this, but that's not what I have, nor do I plan on getting one now. But it's a nice app, and I'm certainly going to try it out and see how it goes.

Good job, Amazon.

UPDATE: after downloading a few of my books from Amazon I'm really quite pleased with the interface. It's clean, easy to read, and a real treat. Not something I'd use all the time, but it's really not bad. Again, if I had an iPhone then it'd be great. The Kindle has the EVDO link, as does the iPhone, but my iPod is a little more limited with it's WiFi. But still - it's nice to have.

A little while ago, Marc Liyanage looked at the ClickToFlash and saw that it was straight ObjC, and with that, he embarked on writing an ObjC plugin for Safari that views XML in a manner similar to how IE shows it - formatted and stylized. The result is XML View Plugin 1.5.

The result is pretty darn amazing:

There's also an automatic updater, as well as the ability to modify the style with CSS and Javascript. Pretty impressive, I must say.

I don't use XML a lot, but when I do, it's really nice to have something that will format and display XML nicely.

Today I was checking at HostMonster to see if Fantastico had WordPress 2.7 or 2.7.1 (the current release). Now I know that Fantastico is a little bit behind the latest releases, and even the better (more up-to-date) SimpleScripts that HostMonster brought on-line a few months ago. The problem was that converting from Fantastico to SimpleScripts was something that the user (that would be me) had to do the conversion themselves. You had to do a basic install in a location, then copy things over and reload the database... lots of grief, and lots of ways for something to go wrong. This kept me from converting to SimpleScripts.

Well... today I noticed that SimpleScripts has a new WordPress conversion feature. Basically, it reads the configuration information from the Fantastico install and then "takes over" for it and allows you to manage the install with SimpleScripts from that point on.

What a break!

So, I converted my WordPress install to SimpleScripts and in less than a minute, it was possible for me to manage it - and that includes updating it to 2.7.1! What a deal! Yes, I'm happy to say that I'm now off Fantastico and on SimpleScripts. HostMonster is still the provider, and I've never had any problems whatsoever with them, and can't imagine a better hosting experience. Super duper. Love it.

This morning, between questions, I was scanning the WordPress site for a few themes that I might try out when I open this weblog back up for public consumption. I'm looking for a white background, two-column, simple layout. I'm really not into the flash and color of a lot of the blogs out there - it's just a place for me to put my thoughts and notes, as well as code samples, etc. Just plain stuff.

I do like the WordPress theme system, and there are a bunch of good themes out there on the WordPress site. It's just an issue of looking through the ones you're interested in and picking out the winners. Today I picked up a few (four) and we'll see what they do for me when I turn the blog back on. I'm hoping for a nice image boost from the default WordPress theme, but it has served me well for all this time. Can't really complain.

Well... I have four more days and then it's freedom. It's going to feel good to be looking forward to the new job.

Well... it came today and so I left work a little early (3:00 pm) after the last of the meetings and went home to do the conversion. The unboxing was impressive, as always. The set-up started very uneventfully, and then I ran into those things that I keep forgetting about - the docs I have in /Developer/Java that I probably need to move to my home directory if I want to make this a smoother transition next time, and then the amazing fact that all the developer tools (Xcode, etc.) are not copied.

I can understand that, in a sense, but in a larger sense, it's amazingly obvious that they should be copied over. After all, /usr/local/ gets copied - and that's not even visible to the average user. The Developer Tools are something that needs to be copied. Period. No excuses.

Fonts. Fonts are another thing that aren't copied over. Thank goodness that I keep the fonts around for a while, or else I'd have a pickle of a time getting them to install in short order. Let's face it - I have until about 8:15 pm to get this all done for tomorrow or else I'm taking the old notebook back to work, and I'll have to repeat this over again this weekend.

But I got them installed. I had to re-install Safari 4 Beta - but that's completely understandable. I then had to deal with setting up a few preferences on Terminal.app, and Xcode, and then it was looking pretty much normal. Sure, the display size is great, and at the same time messes up the layouts I've been using on the older MacBook Pro, but that's something I can get used to. I just need to work with it for a few days to come to the best layout of the different Spaces.

On the whole, it was a good time. Stressful for a while, but I got it all done in an evening and now I can make sure it's all OK, and then convert the old laptop into a new Kids Computer for the living room. That is going to make things a lot cleaner in the living room and will also provide a nice speed bump from the Mac Mini that's been there for quite a while.

Well... the Blender folks have once again released a new version of the interesting 3D modeling software. I know I need to take time to learn to use this thing, but I just haven't had the time yet to do it. But I keep getting the updates so that when I do have the time, I've got the latest version to work with.

I learned that Adium 1.3.3 was out this morning, but oddly enough, the built-in updater wasn't able to update from 1.3.2 to 1.3.3. I'm not sure if this is a server-side issue with the upgrade package, or that the Sparkle updater wasn't working in the 1.3.2 release. Not sure, but I have 1.3.3 now, and it's got a bunch of updates.

It's interesting that it's got Facebook connectivity, as we've been going through a bit of that at the house these days. I'll be interesting to see how that integrates. Should be fun.

Years ago when I was just getting back into the Mac scene, I needed something to mess with images for a few web sites I was building. I looked, and certainly couldn't afford Photoshop, and the likes of Acorn and Pixelmator weren't yet out. The low-priced landscape seemed to be dominated by GraphicConverter. Now it's at 6.4 and there are a ton of new features.

I don't use GraphicConverter as much as I used to, but it's something I'll always have because of it's place in getting me back into the Mac scene so nicely. Plus, it's just a great overall tool for graphics manipulation.

I was watching an episode of Solitary 3.0 this weekend, and I have to say that reality TV has hit a brand new low for me. I mean, I can see that some reality TV is just trash from the word 'go', but this seemed like it might have had a shred of interesting content in that it could have been done in a format where people were really stressed, and really was the equivalent of solitary confinement.

But no... this is just individual achievement. Better to call it "Everyone for Themselves". There's no extended period of silence. No sensory deprivation. No real psychological stress put on these folks... they get to smell crappy things, sit on painful seats, do stupid drinking games with Root Beer... it's constant games. Not like any solitary any prisoner ever faced.

In the end, I realize that they can't really hurt someone for fear of a lawsuit. But they could have made it a lot more interesting. I can't imagine I'll ever watch again.

I've been a user of GIMP for more than a decade, and it's always been a solid graphics tool - invaluable on some platforms that have nothing else, but even a nice to have on the Mac. There are just some things that it does exceptionally well. But of late, the builds of GIMP for Mac OS X for Leopard have required that you update the X11 package to a more recent build of the XQuartz project - the basis of Apple's X11 package. While I've wanted to stay current with GIMP, I did not want to have a non-standard X11 install. So I was stuck.

Until now. Today I saw that GIMP for Mac OS X 2.6.5 was released, and I decided to download it on the off-chance that it would run on a stock Leopard install. It did! Fantastic!

While it's not going to be something I run all the time, like Acorn, it's something I'm really glad I have at my disposal when I need it. This is wonderful news.