What's it all about, Alfie?

I was a huge fan of Hotmail when it was first introduced. I loved that they started with their entire infrastructure being linux boxes - when the easy path was to choose Windows. I used it, told everyone about it, and loved the independence of it. This was years before Google was even a search engine - let alone "gmail". So the idea of a free web-based email was new. There was Yahoo, but that was limited unless you were a paid subscriber, and there was Hotmail.

Then they got bought up by Microsoft, and the slow dive began. It was clear that they wanted to show that they could build the same great service on Windows, but in the end, it was a miserable failure in the first years. I had almost given up on it. Then it started to come back. MSN IM was the first real decent thing of that old system, and then things built on that and got better. Now, it's decent, but completely overshadowed by GMail.

However, they haven't really caught up to GMail because they haven't allowed generic POP/IMAP access to the mail system. Until now, that is. Sure, there was a plugin for Mail.app that would talk to Hotmail, but that was a bit of a hit-n-miss proposition, and I never really used it because I couldn't really trust it. Now, it seems, we have complete POP capability with SSL encryption to Hotmail.

This hint really goes through most of it, but the big points are these:

• set up a POP source in Mail.app
• the POP3 Server is: pop3.live.com
• the SMTP Server is: smtp.live.com
• your 'Username:' is the complete Hotmail address: you@hotmail.com

When you're done setting it up, Mail.app will recognize that this server allows SSL (excellent!) and it'll be ready to go. Very nice to not have to have Firefox up and running to see emails from Hotmail anymore.

This morning I checked Software Update and noticed that there was an update to iMovie ro fix a problem:

This Software Update fixes an issue with projects having a size of 0 KB. Attempting to open these projects would cause iMovie to quit unexpectedly at launch.This Software Update also addresses a problem where full-screen mode could not be accessed on some systems.

Not that I've heard a lot of issues from the kids on iMovie, but I was looking at some video from vacation and know that I'll want to be stitching it together so I certainly wanted to update.

I'm not a very good traveler. I get motion sick, I don't like the seats in commercial airliners as they are a touch too small for my 6'4" frame, and I don't like all the crowds at airports, etc. But I like vacations. I also like coming home. This vacation was a doozie in that we got to snuba with sting rays and also got to zip line hundreds of feet up in the canopy of the Jamaican hillside.

I loved the former, and was simply too scared to even scream on the latter. But Liza had a tough time with the rays and loved the zip lining. Seems fair. Symmetric. And the rest of the cruise was pretty nice. I think we realized that we're not really cruise people. We aren't really fond of the crowds. I ran every morning - save the last, as we had to disembark at 9:30 am and that meant getting everybody up and out early. But still, it was something that I'm glad we did. Something we needed to do so we'd know we don't need to do it again.

I'm not sure what out ideal vacation is, but the trip to Mexico was a lot closer than this cruise. Not that it was the cruise line's fault. I think they did exactly what they said they'd do, it's just a little matter of expectations. Ours were pretty high, and the reality was that it's really targeted for people that like being around big groups of people. The pools were crowded except for very early in the morning and very late in the evening. The breakfasts were a bit on the crowded-side, but really, it was all probably a matter of getting used to the way it's done on cruises.

It was fun to be on vacation... but it's great to be on the way home.

While I was on vacation it seems they released a new version of MacVim - Snapshot 45 and includes refactoring for the front-end as well as fixes to the ATSUI renderer. I haven't run it through it's paces yet, but I've got it and it seems to be running just fine.

Excited to see what they did while I was on vacation!

I was talking to a co-worker today and he mentioned that there was a Firefox setting, in about:config that would make Firefox release all it's used memory if it was minimized. This sounds very nice. So here's the deal: pull up about:config, look for the setting config.trim_on_minimize and if it's there, make it 'true'. If not, then right-click in the main section of the preferences and add it.

Restart, and you're done. Pretty neat.

I've got it set up on my work Firefox, and we'll see if this allows us a little relief on the JavaScript memory usage. I'm hoping it does because then when it's minimized, it's out of the way. That would be very nice.

UPDATE: you have to minimize all Firefox windows in order for this to kick in. Not exactly hard, but you have to remember to minimize everything. Nice to have in your pocket if you have things like the Google Visualization widgets on your pages.

I have been noticing the problems that my web page runs into when dealing with lots of data for the AnnotatedTimeLine. In Firefox 3.0.8, if I even fetch the data, I have a potential leak situation. It seems to be functioning a lot like the Java garbage collector where it'll let the memory rise, and then collect a bunch. I was trying to figure out where this was - in the JavaScript on my end, or in the Google code, when we decided it would be a good idea to try Google Chrome and see if it's 'independent threads for each page' idea would yield better results.

I'm glad I did.

It turns out that the JavaScript engine in Chrome, and possibly it's use of WebKit, makes a big difference in the memory stability of my page. Also, the debug capabilities are far better than those in Firefox. I can see the memory usage of each page and plugin separately. This fact alone made me realize that it's not in the Flash plugin. It's in the JavaScript.

This is good news because Chrome is a much better JavaScript engine, and it's funny, because it's because of the AnnotatedTimeLine that I need to have a superior JavaScript engine in the first place. Sort-of like they made the problem, and then realized that they needed to make the solution as well.

So I'll be looking more heavily at Chrome in the coming weeks. It's got a lot of promise, and while I'm not sure I'll use it on my Mac, as it's got WebKit and SquirrelFish in Safari 4 (Beta), it's nice to know that something with that level of capabilities is available on Windows. Not bad at all.

I was reading today that the Google App Engine now is allowing an 'Early Look' at Java. This is really interesting based on the work I've been doing with servlets and the Google Visualization API. Interesting, to be sure. I took a little time today and read up on what they are offering. It's interesting. There's an Eclipse plug-in that can do it all, you just need to write the code. It's got a test framework built-in... not bad. I'm sure the Python version is as nice or nicer, but it's a big advantage to me to be in Java for all the Java tools I already know about.

So, it's something to consider. At this point, I can't see myself using it without a really good reason. It's putting yourself at non-trivial risk, and the lack of cost isn't that big a deal right now, but it's got the Google 'cloud' behind it, and that's nice.

SOmething to consider.

This morning I was checking and it turns out that DrawIt 3.7.5 is out. The Sparkle notes say only:

Big improvements to the vector tool; better mouse-over effects, consistency and working at high zoom factors

so that means good things to me. I'll have to check it out soon and see what the differences are. I can already tell, there are some interesting UI changes so it's shaping up to be something interesting.

Good enough.

After a significant chunk of time, Dropbox released an update to it's multi-platform client: 0.6.507. The release notes say that there are a few issues fixed with Mac OS X, but I haven't run into any yet, and I've used it to keep three machines in sync. It's really quite simple, and at the same time, quite impressive. It's the way software should function - do something well and stay out of the way.

If you want to keep a folder in sync across multiple machines and platforms, give this a try, it's really quite amazing.

Well, I got one thing figured out - the bottom 'graph' on the Google AnnotatedTimeLine is a graph of what? Well... it appears that it's a graph of the final column in the dataset. Odd, but I guess that's one way to look at it. I might have liked it to be the first, but that's only because I have the total in the first column (after the date/time). Interesting.

I suppose that now I could move the total to the last column, but that would take a bit of effort, and based on the discussion I started on the Google Groups, it looks like I'm not the only one that's interested in this being a little more flexible. Here's to hoping that they respond with some flexibility in this.

[4/16] UPDATE: the last message in this thread was from VizGuy at Google:

1. Its the last data series.
2. Its a logarithmic manipulation of this data.
3. We have an open feature request to let the users control this data.
4. For now, you can hide this part of the chart (displayRangeSelector:
   false). I know its not perfect, but for those who get crazy, it might be
   better than leaving it as is... 🙂

From this, it's clear that I'm not alone in my confusion and the solution wasn't at all clear. Saying it's a logarithmic manipulation of the last column is really not at all clear. But it's on their list of things to do, and that's going to have to be enough. If I really wanted it to mean something, I'd move the totals data to the last column.