What's it all about, Alfie?

This morning I saw that Cyberduck 3.0.3 is out - fixing a few "arbitrary crashes" and fixing the handling of the Web URLs. I'm not exactly sure what arbitrary crashes is all about, but I'm guessing that it's something that was hard to track down, they put a big hammer to it, not wanting to really dig in and find the problem, and this 'big hammer' solved the issue. Like making large blocks synchronous - it doesn't really find and solve the problem of multi-threading contention, it just removes it, and in removing it, the problem goes away.

But it's just a guess. Still, it's a nice app.

I try to have a decent attitude about the day, but from the first moments of today, all I've wanted to do was to go back to bed and forget about work. I did my run and got to work - I even got reasonable gas this morning - $3.099/gal... but it's been a struggle just to keep going.

I need to have something to look forward to. Maybe that's a weakness of mine, and a co-worker called it my need to have something to complain about, which may seem true, but I think it's the need for a challenge... a fight. Something to struggle against and overcome. That's what makes a day great.

Today has been a struggle just to keep going. I sure hope that this evening helps to refresh me and make it all seem better. At least something to look forward to.

This morning I saw that OsiriX 3.3 is out and while I don't spend all day looking at the x-rays of the family, it's nice to see what they are doing and staying up do date. This update looks about the same, and I haven't had time to dig into the release notes for this version, but I'm guessing that there are a ton of under-the-covers changes for this guy. It's also fun to check out the x-rays every now and then, and an update means I'll fire up the app and have a look. Fun.

I have been having a lot of issues trying to get a blog editor on Windows and Linux that's decent. In fact, the only editing tool I've been able to use is really the WordPress editor. The others I've tried mess with the date/time stamp and make it impossible to really do what I need. But there's hope - ScribeFire.

I was looking for something about the date/time issues with Deepest Sender, and came across a link for ScribeFire, and decided to give it a try - couldn't hurt. I was very happy I did.

It's not exactly the UI I'd have chosen, but then again, it's not the worst I've seen. It works, and amazingly, it doesn't mess with the posting dates. That's great. Don't get me wrong, it's not MarsEdit, but then again, most of the postings I use Windows and Linux for are work-related, and that's easy stuff.

Anyway... I have a new blogging client and I'm hoping it works every bit as well as I hope.

It's pretty amazing... I think it was the movie Hellraiser where the "bad human" (as opposed to 'Pinhead') said that the ultimate pleasure was the cessation of ultimate pain. I hate to think of having a good day as the absence of having yet another horrible day, but maybe it's just that easy.

I've been able to do a few things today that have nothing to do with the project that would make 'Pinhead' scream and I have to say it feels very good. I've done a lot of work on that 'puzzle box', but even in doing that, I was able to actually make some progress as opposed to being foiled by users not being specific on what they want, or the docs and tools making it virtually impossible to get what they ask for to work.

So it's a 'smiley' day... now if I can just leave before it turns bad again...

At the end of the final debate, the candidates got up and I guess McCain was going to shake Obama's hand, but this was what was caught on TV:

If I were in the McCain Camp, I'd do my best to make this funny -- and try to play it off... otherwise, it looks very very troubling.

The more I look at this, the more troubling it looks. I know how people felt in the Ford Administration when he was always falling. Had to be a horrible feeling.

I found this little tidbit this morning in my RSS feeds... it's saying that the 17-inch MacBook Pro is only slightly delayed due to some problems with the display and optical drive. Fair enough. Looks like it's going to be an interesting January, as the MacWorld conference would be a perfect place to showcase this new release.

I'm still hoping that it's going to come in a quad-core version... but if not, then it'll be a tougher decision on if it's time to buy or not. The all-in-one case would be very nice for me, but the rest of the notebook is pretty much the same as I have. Yeah, a little faster, but not a world faster.

Looks like I've got to wait a few more months to see.

Once again I got a nice little tweet from MarsEdit that it was ready to go with lots of little fixes for version 2.2.1. Many, it seems, are specific to the Atom publishing protocol, and the tweet said that it was happily speeding towards 2.3.

Good enough. Got it, and am using it right now. Super.

I couldn't have said it better myself:

While Apple sees only the upside of glossy screens—bright and vivid colors—I see only the negative—myself. Well, myself and whatever else happens to be above and/or behind me. All those vivid colors come at a terrible cost in terms of reflection and glare—there are times when the screen is nearly invisible, due to the glare from overhead lights or other sources of distraction (people walking by behind you and so forth).

I know that if the new MacBook Pro was in 17-inch and had everything else I wanted, I'd probably try to get by. But given that it misses so many of my key points, I'm with Mr. Griffiths - I'll hold off for now.

I was reading NetNewsWire this morning and one of the feeds had this article on the best way to write Cocoa initializers. I have to say that I didn't know it was possible to have the self re-defined in the super's init method. That certainly does change things.

His default initializer code is elegant and robust:

  - init {
      if (self = [super init]) {
          // set up instance variables and whatever else here
      }
      return self;
  }

or, if you're into trapping errors like I often am doing, you have the 'negative' of this method:

  - init {
      BOOL    error = NO;
 
      if (!error) {
          if ((self = [super init]) == nil) {
              // flag the error and log the problem
              error = YES;
              NSLog(...);
          }
      }
 
      return self;
  }

When I looked back at my initializers for a few projects, I was stunned that I have the exact same code as he did. I thought I had forgotten the self could change, but I hadn't! I'm amazed at myself. This is a wonderful little surprise.

If in doubt, read the page, it's full of good reasons for the checks. Hot Dog! I had it. Sweet.