What's it all about, Alfie?

They have updated my favorite medical software - as if I had that great a need for medical software, OsiriX 3.2. The web page indicates that the 64-bit add-on is now 25-50% faster, but the standard Open Source app is 32-bit - which is an interesting business model.

These guys have put a ton of work into the app, and they started Open Source, and mean to stay Open Source, but they want to make some money. Understandable. Rather than have the app need a lot of work, like JBoss, and charge for the manuals and consulting, these guys have a fully functioning 32-bit app, and they charge $149 to get the 64-bit add-on that boosts the memory space and speed. So... free is limited by the memory of a 32-bit process, and if you want to spend the $149 you can get more capacity. Nice.

I can't say as I'd ever need the 64-bit add-on as I only have the family's xrays in OsiriX, but I can imagine my sister and her husband (doctors) that would pay for something like this - or the clinics/hospitals they work at. To them, this is easy, just like paying for BBEdit is for me. It's a tool of the trade.

So, hat's off to finding a new model for getting a little money out of the Open Source model.

Yesterday was a hectic morning and I had no time to get to the Firefox web site to get the released Firefox 3.0 - but I was able to get it this morning. With 3.1 already in the works, I don't expect the Firefox team to have much of a break, but that's the life of a browser developer these days. Seems it's faster, better, faster, better... a never-ending cycle.

Glad they are doing it. Get Firefox 3.0 - you'll be glad you did.

This morning I got news that one of my cron jobs was behaving badly - and by badly I mean very badly. The script was built to clear out the logs of some very verbose processes that are really not very necessary to monitor, but if they get too big and can't be written to, will crash the processes. And those processes are important.

The problem was that when running the script I made the assumption that I was in the directory I was in when I ran it manually. This was a big mistake and all the scripts I typically create have at the top:

  #
  # Now let's get right into it...
  #
  program=`basename $0`
  dir=`dirname $0`
 
  cd $dir
  echo 'Running '${program}' from '${dir}

so that we get into the directory of the script and then all the moves are relative to that directory. The problem was that this was clearing log files but the names of the log files weren't specific. This means that without this code, the directories I tried to clear weren't there, and then without sufficient checks to make sure they were there, I started clearing out all the files from the $HOME. Not good.

Thankfully, we have .snapshots of all the directories so that everything I cleared out was easily restored. But I needed to fix things so it didn't happen next week. In addition to the code (above) I also added in checking code for each directory so that I know the directory exists and don't get into the situation where I think I cd somewhere, and don't really move at all.

It was funny, in a way. It's been a very long time - about 15 years, the last time I remember making a script that wiped out data accidentally. Then, too, I was able to get it back from backups, but it was still a shock those first twenty seconds when it was gone and there was no 'undo' to easily bring it back. Everyone makes mistakes, me too. Live, learn, and code better next time.

Nice to see that the auto-updating of Firefox 3.0 is working, and that the Team has released RC3. It's getting better and better, with fewer issues on Windows, and stellar performance on my Macs and Linux. I'm guessing we're getting close to the final release as it's June, but no idea when the final release will be delivered. Great work.

UPDATE: this news story puts the release of 3.0 on this coming Tuesday, June 17^th. Looks like it's only a few days away. Nice! Looks like it'll be official in just a few days.

This morning I noticed that Fantastico at HostMonster had gotten the update of WordPress to 2.5.1 - so I took the time to upgrade. It's pretty simple, and I keep the roll-back instructions in VoodooPad Pro (just in case), but I doubt I'll ever need them. I'm pretty sure the 2.5.1 upgrade is for security issues, and there aren't a lot of additional features in this guy, but it's always nice to stay current with these things - just in case someone decides to create a 10 million machine bot storm to crack all WordPress sites.

I'm still looking forward to the Google Summer of Code work for putting a caching system into WordPress. While I don't get enough page hits to really need a cache, you never know when you might be Slashdotted, and for that, a cache can be a lifesaver.

This morning I awoke to find that Firefox RC2 is out! I've noticed a few issues on the Windows version, but that is probably related to the fact that I go through so many more page views on the Windows version, due to my work, and it's probably no more or no less stable than the Mac OS X and linux versions I also use daily. As I use Firefox, I'm amazed that there's so much effort and real improvement going into browsers these days. WebKit and the new SquirrelFish JavaScript engine... Firefox and it's improvements... it seems that the browser really is trying to become the application delivery vehicle these days.

I'm not sure where all this is going... the browser has a ways to go before it's going to compete with a desktop OS for application building. Forms-based apps are easy - like the green screen apps of old, form fillers are a big segment of the use of computers. But there's still a lot of things that are at least done a lot easier on a desktop OS, than in a browser. But it's getting less and less. Impressive work.

UPDATE: so far, I'm very pleased with RC2. It's working much better on Windows than RC1, and as that's the one I do the most page hits on, it's nice that it's working better. I'm hoping the good news just keeps coming.

While I'm not a big JavaScript writer, I can see that there are a ton of sites that use this technology, and on that front, it's nice to see that WebKit has gotten a new JavaScript engine that is already significantly faster than the old one, but also has room for significant improvements as well.

This probably won't make it into Safari until a later release of 10.5.x, but it's nice once again to see that the Apple guys are pushing the envelope with this stuff and working hard to get the best and fastest tools to us. Bravo.

I very close friend of mine this morning pointed out the followers that I had on Twitter. I had no idea I had as many followers as I do. Oh, sure... it's nothing like the 20,000 or 30,000 that some folks have, but it's still very interesting to me to see that I'm basically using it to communicate with one friend. That, and the reliability issues with Twitter in general... well... I have to say that this has become something I hadn't expected.

If they can get their infrastructure cleaned up, and I think they can with the money they have, then this might be a very interesting little tool. Then again, I almost never use the web site - instead, I use Twitterrific client that's far more fun to use.

We'll have to see how things progress with Twitter, but I have to say that I'm really quite amazed with the following.

I have started to use WordPress at work for my daily journal of activities. Previously, I had a simple static HTML page that I'd write in daily and it worked - but it wasn't really nice and it certainly didn't make it easy for others to join in and do their journaling as well.

So I set up a WordPress infrastructure and it's working very well. But the problem is that I can't run MarsEdit on linux or Windows - and the web-based WordPress posting page works, but is far far too wasteful of screen real-estate for my tastes. So I have been looking for a nice, free Windows or Linux blogging client. I've tried a few and they seem to work OK, but the problem with the best of the linux clients is that they don't allow for multiple Category selections, and I do that often to indicate which projects this entry 'touches'.

So I had to broaden my horizons to include Windows apps.

I found w.bloggar and it seems at first look to be just what I'm looking for - monospaced font editing (in HTML, please), multiple category selections, easy editing and posting, and it's free. Can't beat that. Small... compact... just what I was looking for. It's a shame that it's on Windows and not Linux - or that Drivel (the best linux blogger) doesn't allow for multiple category selections, but that's life, and I do not feel like writing one myself.

So... good to know that I've got the tools on Windows (at least) to do the updates efficiently and cleanly. Not bad.

Today I finally got the WordPress installation for my daily work journal up and going the way I wanted it. I then started back-filling the entries from my old manual HTML journal to the WordPress blog. It's slow work, but in the end, I'll have the complete, searchable, history in WordPress for management to see.

It's not that the old system was bad, it's just that this system can be used by all the developers to make a consistent journalling system for all the daily work which makes the generation of management reports far simpler. No one has to guess or search their memories to remember what they were doing when. Just throw in a paragraph on every topic worked on in a day and you're good to go. Simple.

Simple for me, anyway. In a few weeks I'll have the complete history moved and I can take that old journal offline. It'll be nice.