What's it all about, Alfie?

Today I got a notice from Comcast that I needed to get a digital receiver now for channels 23 to 77, and since I watch Comcast SportsNet every morning when I run (channel 37), I really needed to get one for at least that TV.

The problem was, when the "Digital Switchover" happened, Comcast was saying that as long as you have your TV into a Comcast cable - no converter required, you were safe. I thought that was nice, and a good way to get (and keep) customers happy. So when I saw that they were taking away 60% of these channels, I thought Yup, this is typical Comcast!, but I was being hasty.

It turns out that they are giving each customer up to two digital receivers free. This is simply stunning to see from Comcast. Our cable bill is on the high side of $200/month and includes the 32Mbps 'Ultra' Cable Modem service - which is nice (for the most part). So to think we had to pay another $10, $15, or $20 a month for the boxes was something that made us feel a little less than 'loved' by Comcast.

But they surprised us. Good for them. Maybe they're trying to repair their crummy reputation. It couldn't hurt, that's for sure.

I noticed that ZeusDraw was updated to 1.3.3, but that it's still not Snow Leopard ready. Something about the resolution of saving an image. The update is scheduled for net week, and I can wait for that as I don't use ZeusDraw all that much.

Well, while I'd heard it was running OK with Snow Leopard, LaunchBar 5 RC4 is out with the single release note:

• This version is compatible with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

so I'm glad that I was able to get this before I updated to Snow Leopard. I'm still holding off for Growl and Dropbox, but they should be fixed up any day now.

Another of those apps that's important to me - Dropbox, isn't ready. There's a beta, and it looks to be almost there, but it's one that's in the "not" column, for sure. I'll just have to wait a little while before moving to Snow Leopard.

Skitch is one of those applications that I simply can't imagine not having, and so I was very happy this morning to see it was updated to provide Snow Leopard compatibility. I don't need any fancy new features - I just need to know it'll work with the new OS.

With all the updates for Snow Leopard, I was going through all the significant apps I have and thankfully, DrawIt 3.8.5 is out with updates and, I assume, Snow Leopard compatibility fixes.

• Significantly improves text display but only when there are no filters applied to the text
• Compatibility fixes with the upcoming Sketch application
• Other minor bug fixes

It's going to be a busy day of updating as it's on sale and that means the NDAs are dead and things are starting to flow. Sweet.

I was going through a Snow Leopard compatibility list this morning and noticed that Shimo 2.1.1/389 - the nice front-end to Cisco VPN is not Snow Leopard ready. So I fired it up to check the version. When I did, I saw that they have an update: v. 2.2.1 which is compatible with Snow Leopard.

Whew! That was close. I want to upgrade to Snow Leopard, but there are some things I can't live without. I'm going to make a list and check them off as we go. It's getting close - today's the day.

This morning another of the updates for Snow Leopard (10.6) compatibility is out in Fission 1.6.5, the lossless audio editor from Rogue Amoeba. I was just using Fission yesterday to convert some sound files to iPhone ringtones, and it's simply amazing how simple it is. You simply tell Fission to "Save as Ringtone" and you look and it's there in iTunes, waiting to be synced to your iPhone. Wild.

I'm sure this isn't the last of the updates, but it's good to see that this one is ready to go for Friday.

One of the editors that I want to use, but just isn't there - yet, is SubEthaEdit. It's collaborative features and vision of being lightweight and fast are things I want to use, but there have always been a few things that BBEdit or Vim does better and I can't seem to get behind using SubEthaEdit over either one of those.

Well, this morning I noticed that SubEthaEdit 3.5 was out, and I certainly upgraded to see if any of the things I needed were included in the update. Sadly, the big feature improvement is code-folding, and while that's really neat, I've never really used it - regardless of the editor. I've had it in many editors, and I just prefer to see all the code as opposed to seeing just the highlights and then "pop open" a section to work on it. I can see the value, I just never got used to it.

Old School, I guess.

So it's nice to see the update, but it's still not there - quite yet.

This morning I noticed that there were additional bugs found in the WordPress 2.8.2 security upgrade, so out comes 2.8.3. The release notes from the WordPress Blog are simple:

Unfortunately, I missed some places when fixing the privilege escalation issues for 2.8.1. Luckily, the entire WordPress community has our backs. Several folks in the community dug deeper and discovered areas that were overlooked. With their help, the remaining issues are fixed in 2.8.3. Since this is a security release, upgrading is highly recommended. Download 2.8.3, or upgrade automatically from your admin.

Given that upgrading is so simple at HostMonster with SimpleScripts, it's a no-brainer. If there's a security update, I want to get it. I've got a lot stored in this guy, and keeping it safe is a key concern for me.