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November 4, 2009

On Google Wave

I call this: computers,tech — Posted by KP @ 3:58 pm
Here’s my contribution to the “What the hell is Google Wave and how do I use it?” department of the world wide web.

So what the hell is Google Wave?

This is a really complicated question. The simple answer is
“It can’t be described because it’s like nothing there’s ever been before, man. It’s, like, going to change the way we communicate forever!”

This is at once true, and a cop-out.

But first, here’s a picture of my current Wave window, so you can put some context to what I’m about to tell you. You can click on it to blow it up.
wave

So it’s like…?

  • It’s kinda like email

    If you wanted to, you could use it just like email. The basic Wave screen looks like most email clients, with a 3-pane vertical setup for your inbox, trash, etc. on the left, a list of your waves in the middle, and a display on the right of the current wave you’re reading.

    A wave is a series of replies. In email terms, it would be like seeing the history of replies by scrolling down the email. Except instead of being plain text, it’s threaded, and automatically time stamped, and can be edited and added to. It can include multiple people, and since it’s all contained in one conversation, you don’t have to worry about someone not being CCed or missing someone else’s reply. You also can see the other person typing in real time, which is at once cool, and the source of great insecurity. It also has a “playback” feature where you can read the conversation in the order it was written, so if you’re joining in late, you can understand how the discussion evolved. But still, so far, it’s kinda like email.

  • It’s kinda like IM

    So you’re thinking, wow, I can chat with someone else in real time and see them typing. Isn’t that just like IM? Well yes. I’m not aware of any IM that supports threaded conversations, but I suppose there might be. I doubt it would be as robust, with the ability to go back and edit stuff.

  • It’s kinda like IRC, Usenet, forums, group IM

    One of the cool things about Wave is that it can be used for group conversations. Which is kinda like IRC and group IMs, except it’s more persistent, so it’s kinda like a forum or usenet.

    It can be used for realtime communication if everyone is online at the same time. I was just in a public wave about Mac software and some guys helped me pick out a trackpad app for my iPhone (Touchpad is what I went with). So you can chat in real time, or come back later and read the responses people have left, like in a forum. The thing that makes it unique, is that it can be both at once, and is threaded. A simple tap of the spacebar moves you to the next unread post (which is called a blip), so you can find the new stuff easily among all the threads.

    Also, like a forum, you can post pictures, polls, maps, widgets and other non-text goodies that others can see and interact with. “Isn’t it going to end up like MySpace?” Yes. Yes it is. They will need to have some robust features in place to make sure it’s controllable. The coolest thing about it is that it supports drag-and-drop via a browser extension called Google Gears. This is very new, and I actually don’t have it installed myself yet, because it’s not yet compatible with Snow Leopard and I haven’t felt a pressing need to try it in other OSes. The important thing is, Wave will support drag-and-drop media, which will be a great relief to those who want to post pics but don’t like dealing with Photobucket, IMG code, and so forth. Even as someone who understands HTML, the hassle of getting a picture from my computer hosted and linked discourages me from doing it. Have you noticed how many posts I’ve made lately that don’t have pics? It’s not even that hard on WordPress, but it’s still annoying.

    Also, like a forum, Wave has many common formatting features like text size, color, background color, bold, italic and underline, etc. to make your text stand out. Some people are doing really obnoxious things with text background right now.

  • It’s kinda like Twitter

    You can use it to post little updates. There is also a plugin that creates a wave that allows you to see your Twitter feed and make posts from it, so you can actually use Twitter with it, or it could become a replacement for microbloggers instead of Twitter.

  • It’s kinda like a blog

    Some people are using it for blogging. I like to think of myself as a person open to new technology and ways of thinking, but this one blows my mind a little too much to begin using it. I have seen a blog that actually has a Wave window embedded in it, where visitors to the blog can contribute to the wave right from the blog (or from the Wave interface). Someday this will be really cool, but Wave is very slow right now in this developmental phase, and there aren’t many people who have access to it, so it’s not something I want to get into right now.

    What I see this being useful for is comments on blog posts. You know how each post has the comment thingy at the bottom? Imagine that being a Wave instead, where you don’t need to register with the blog, you just post as your Wave identity, and can have a real-time (or not) threaded discussion with other visitor and the blogger. It would be immensely cool, and I can’t wait for it to be practical to implement that. Wave also supports private servers, so you can use the main Google servers or host your own (this feature came out literally yesterday, so it’s not something normal people can actually implement right now). So theoretically my self-hosted blog could have its own private comment waves, but I’m not sure I like that. I also don’t know if that means people would have to register separately (as they do now to post comments on self-hosted WordPress), which would suck.

    OK, how do I get it?

    Like most Google products, they are rolling it out slowly. They invite a bunch of people. Those people start to use it. When they’re ready for more users, they give the initial group a limited number of invites to give out to friends (or sell on eBay). I got in on the 2nd round of invites, from a sound man I used to work with, who also works in IT and obviously knows the right people! So far I have not been given any invites to give out myself, nor has anyone among the group who were accepted along with me, so far as I can tell. I can’t wait until I do, because I need to get the people I work with on it so we can start collaborating!

    If you want to try it, you have to find somebody with an invite. I suggest posting on your Twitter and/or Facebook that you’re looking for one, maybe one of your friends has one. You will then get a dozen or so responses saying, “WTF is Google Wave?”, at which point you provide the link to this post. If you’re lucky, one person of your 400 friends will know what you’re talking about and have an invite.

    OK, I got it. Now how does this work?

    Since so few people have been let in, you probably don’t know that many other people who have it (maybe just the one dude who got you the invite). If you want to try out the email-like-ness of Wave, you’re going to be bored.

    Here’s the first thing you need to know while you wait for some friends:

    with:public

    This is how you talk to the Wave community at large. Type this into your search bar above your inbox, and it will display all the public waves. There’s a ton of them, and you will see it updating in real time, which means several new ones will pop up every second. Some will be in languages you (and your computer) don’t speak. It’s incredibly overwhelming, but there it is.

    AAAAAH!!! Too many Waves! Now what?

    OK, now you need to narrow it down. You can add an additional search term after “with:public”, such as

    with:public iphone

    This will bring up all the waves that contain the word iPhone, which is a lot, which sadly mostly don’t actually have much to do with the iPhone. You can also search for phrases like

    with:public “iphone apps”

    which might help a little.

    If you want to make sure you’re really going to get a list of Waves that are about what you’re searching for, you should use tags. You can see tags at the bottom of the window of the wave you’re currently reading. You can click on these to bring up all the waves with that tag, or you can search blindly from the search bar to see if anyone is using a tag you might be interested in.

    tag:theatre

    The problem I’ve found so far with tags is that not enough people are using them. The fascinating thing about this experience is watching people figure out how to use this new tool. I assume that soon everyone will realize there are just too many waves and possible search results, and that tags are a better way to find waves that are about what you’re interested in, rather than simply containing a key word, and will make sure their waves are tagged for easy searching.

    in conclusion

    I’m really excited about the future of this idea. I see a lot of potential for its use in theatre, to allow collaborators all over the country to share ideas quickly and clearly (imagine the set designer linking to his latest groundplan while the lighting designer comments on it, and everybody else gets kept in the loop and can ask questions.)

    I can think of some specific instances last year with The Acting Company where we would have needed this, while the costume designer tried to describe the shape of a scabbard to the prop supervisor on a conference call between New York and Minneapolis. “There’s a picture in that email I sent out. Oh, you weren’t cc’ed on that?” Once Wave is open to everybody, I truly believe it will change the way we put shows together.

    I also hope that it ends up being robust enough to replace forums and comment threads on blogs, because it’s a much more powerful and standardized way to have discussions.

    It’s still very much in the alpha stage, so don’t expect a finished product if you do get in, but I’m looking forward to seeing it grow, because the potential is amazing if they do it right.


November 3, 2009

Dear Windows XP

I call this: computers,mac,pc,tech — Posted by KP @ 5:27 pm

Hi, what’s up?

Sorry to bother you, as I know you are a highly complex operating system that is the result of decades of development by presumably the most brilliant minds in computing that money can buy, and I am just some girl with no formal training in computer science who is trying to do a clean install of Windows, but I need to tell you a few things.

My hard drive has two partitions

I’ll put this in really simple terms you can understand.
One, which you call drive C:, is formatted for NTFS, because I knew you’d like it. With a little help from my friends at Apple, they gave me this thing called Boot Camp, which helped me to install you, since my Macbook Pro doesn’t have a floppy drive. Boy was I glad they were around!

So you’re installed on drive C: (which I assumed would be something you’d be interested enough in knowing that I don’t have to tell you in a blog post).

There’s also another partition, which until now you have been calling drive F:. This is my Mac partition. It’s a lot bigger because that’s where I get actual work done. Anyway, you don’t need to know anything about that. It’s formatted in HFS+, which I know you don’t like, so I was hoping you’d just ignore it and we’d both be happy.

I needed to install SP3

I’m sure you were very excited to take advantage of whatever features it has, probably really obvious things that I wouldn’t believe weren’t in any earlier versions of XP if I bothered to look it up.

So I downloaded SP3, and you happily began installing it. You never asked me where to put it, and I didn’t expect you to, because hey, you’re not a bad OS, and I figured you knew the difference between an install of WindowsXP and well, anything else.
This is a bunny with a pancake on its head. It, also, is not a valid install of WindowsXP, and will not accept an upgrade to SP3:
pancakebunny

So I thought you had this under control, but then you started giving me those error messages. And I started to think, “Why does Windows always do this? Why is it when I’m performing an installation that should have no conceivable way for the user to screw it up, does it say things like, ‘Cannot find file: xp_something_really_important_sounding_4226s.dll’?” And then you look at me, like I have it, like I’ve been hiding it from you.

I was disappointed in you. All I’ve done on this drive is install Windows, and continue installing Windows updates. How could you not know where this file is? There’s also this new thing called the Internet, which I know you know about cause I’ve been using it since 3.11, and maybe you could find the file there, since that’s where you got this whole service pack from anyway. But no, you just expected me to have it.

So I did a google for it. And I happened to find one result that was talking about getting the error while installing Boot Camp. And you know what I found? In that case it was because you were trying to install SP3 on the user’s Mac partition.

So while I was hitting “cancel” in every place I could find it while simultaneously shaking my other index finger and saying, “oh no, you d’in’t!”, I noticed a progress display in one of your many redundant install windows showing you nonchalantly trying to uninstall files from drive F:, thinking I wouldn’t notice, and you could tell me it must have been some virus I have that screwed up the install, right? And then you could pop up that little shield again in my taskbar, cause, you know, dismissing it multiple times a day for years wouldn’t give you the hint that I don’t want antivirus software slowing down the OS that doesn’t contain any data valuable enough to need protecting.

What the hell were you thinking?!

What ever possessed you to think that volume had anything on it you could use?
Was it formatted in a file system you can run Windows on?
Did it currently have anything resembling Windows on it?
Was there another drive, perhaps named C:, (cause I know for you that tends to mean it’s the primary hard drive, but maybe you just call it that because you like the letter C) that you could also have used?
Does this suspicious-looking drive C: contain an install of Windows?
Is it possible it’s the very drive and installation of WindowsXP that you’re currently running in??
Did it occur to you that maybe that’s where you should be installing SP3?!?

In Conclusion

My friends over at Apple actually have a knowledgebase article about this. Their solution is different than the one I used (which was to disable the drive letter for the Mac partition while installing SP3). Either way, maybe you could pass this on to the next hapless person who tried to accomplish anything with you.

And lest you think I’m ungrateful, thanks for not being Vista.
Sincerely,
Karen


October 20, 2009

Google Wave

I call this: computers,tech — Posted by KP @ 12:44 pm
Update: I have made a much more comprehensive post about Wave.

So after some begging and much waiting, I got myself an invite to Google Wave. I haven’t had much opportunity to try it out since as far as I know only one person I know has it. I’m looking forward to it being released to more people so I can start playing around with it. It does look like it would be very helpful for conversations about productions, especially since the nature of my upcoming tour has us rehearsing halfway across the country from where the designers and crew are, and from where the set is being built.

Here’s a cute YouTube video that I found which explains “3.5%” of the functionality of Google Wave, namely how it can replace and improve upon email.

Reservations

I like to keep things forever, and I tend to refer back to them over time. My email folder goes back to 2003 (I can’t remember what I did to lose my data from before that, but that’s when I got my Equity card, so it covers pretty much all major shows I’ve done). If I can manage not to screw anything up, I fully expect to be able to be able to read my emails from 2003 fifty years from now. If I can’t, something is wrong with the choices we have made technologically. I don’t have a problem with cloud computing, as long as I can have a copy of everything locally, in an open format that doesn’t depend upon one company staying in business and supporting that format for me to continue to be able to access and manipulate my data. If Google Wave catches on, I will need to know that it can be saved with the same certainty as email.

It’s still very much a beta, but I like the concept in general and I’m excited to see what it turns out to be useful for.


October 13, 2009

Geeking Out About Color

I call this: computers — Posted by KP @ 2:29 pm

I’ve been kind of obsessed with color since I started web design.

Picking the colors for the new site was a huge mental undertaking, and I think I’ve got something I’m kinda happy with for now. Let me introduce you to my colors:

#FF4F03 This is the primary color used on the site. Let’s just say I have the hex code memorized. It’s the link color, and the navbar and most orange things are based off of it in some way. That picture of the tech table on the front page is tinted with this color. It’s kind of everywhere.
                           #F02311 This red is used very sparingly, on the line that divides the main content from the sidebar, and as the text shadow and underline for the H3 headings. The most interesting thing about this color is that on colourlovers.com it has been named as “Sex on the Floor”.
#FB8400 This orange carried over from the old site, kind of by accident. I had finished the site but was still unhappy with the colors I chose for the H2 heading. When I was updating the blog colors it looked so much better than what I was about to replace it with that I kept it.
#666666 I like grays a lot. I also like grays that have hex codes that are easy to remember. You will see this is a pattern. This is my default medium gray, it’s also used on the H1 headings.
#333333 This is my favorite gray. It was used a lot on the old site. All the “black” text on the site is actually this color.
#4D4D4D This one is my 2nd-favorite gray. It’s around here and there, mostly for text. It’s most prominent as the H3 heading (with that “Sex on the Floor” color as text shadow).
#F6F6F6 This was a new one for me. It’s only used on the front page for the box that I call “topfeatures.” That box used to be a darker color but when I used the orange mentioned above for the headings it looked muddy, so I needed something that was not quite white but would allow the headings to pop.

As I mentioned, I use ColourLovers.com to find new interesting color combinations and to play with palettes. It’s a cool site.


August 11, 2009

15″ Macbook Pro Now Available with Matte Screen Again!

I call this: computers,gaming,mac — Posted by KP @ 12:43 pm

A followup to this post, in which I debate whether I can handle buying a 17″ Macbook Pro, partially as a result of the fact that it was (until today) the only Mac laptop still offered with a matte screen.

Well today I read on TUAW that the 15″ is now being sold with a matte option again.

This is good, since if I decide the 17″ is just too big, I have options. On the other hand, if you look at the other post you will see that although the screen was the dealbreaker, there were other reasons I was still considering the 17″, mostly related to the idea of having a more desktop-like experience while living on the road.

That being said, I have lived my entire professional life with a 15″ Mac laptop, and have rarely used a larger computer or external monitor for work purposes, even when living at home. Of course a larger screen would be nice, but it has never been necessary, and the balance of the 15’s size being large enough to work on for long periods, but small enough to walk around with makes it possibly the ideal form factor.

I could use a larger screen and higher resolution for seeing more of a spreadsheet on one page, coding my website with code on one side and a larger preview on the other, those are legitimate purposes, but the main reason I felt I needed a larger screen was for gaming on the road. I was starting to get a bit of cabin fever gaming in 15 inches for a year on end, and getting ready to go back for at least six months more of that.

Gaming isn’t necessary, but it also is part of my life that I enjoy and I think it is a professional concern, as there have been times when circumstances have prevented me from enjoying certain activities that are normally part of my lifestyle, such as listening to music on my commute, having alone time in the car at Reagle, and when these things are taken away they start to affect the delicate balance that keeps me sane and calm. Somehow I have found a way to enjoy doing a job that most people refuse to do because it’s too stressful, and my continued ability to do my job well requires that I take care of my mental health and give myself opportunities to unwind so that I can go to work happy and with a positive attitude that will filter down to the rest of the people on the production.

I don’t know if an inch-and-a-half of additional screen real estate will make the difference, but if so, the ultimate benefit is that I would not resent my job for taking me away from things that I enjoy, and on a day-to-day basis, I think that’s a huge deal.

On the other hand, I have to consider how much the size of the laptop will negatively affect my work and free time. On the road I find myself actually using it on my lap — or balanced precariously on something else — a lot more often, since I’m often in improvised situations where I have to make a desk out of what’s available, and I will probably be writing the show report from a couch, either at the venue or on the bus.

I looked into how much Tekserve charges for Macbook Pro rentals, and it’s $100 per day, or $200 per week (and upwards from there). As much as I’d love to have an opportunity to run around with a 17″ for a while before dropping $2,500 on it, I don’t think it’s worth nearly 10% of the total cost to have just a week to decide if I like it.

Anyway, the decision is still far away (I hope), but I need to keep paying attention to all the ways I use my computer during the day, and how many of them would be impractical with a larger machine.


August 7, 2009

The Sorry Jar

I call this: computers,gaming,theatre — Posted by KP @ 11:04 am

In our rehearsal room for La Cage, we have some very apologetic people. So much so, in fact, that our director decided early on that every time someone says “I’m sorry,” they owe him five cents. Naturally, being stage managers, Paul and I were put in charge of keeping track of the debt.

BACKSTORY:
I have been working more with Google Spreadsheets lately, which I have grown to love as a result of my involvement with the game Battleground Europe. As a member of the Axis high command, I was first introduced to Google Docs because all the data that keeps the officers organized is contained in some very complex and fascinating spreadsheets. Whenever I meet somebody who has better paperwork than I do, my first instinct is to steal all their tricks, so I had great admiration for the Italian gentleman who created them, who goes by the name of Lince. When Lince retired from the high command, I offered to take on the management of the spreadsheets if for no other reason than to get a chance to play with them and learn from them. Lince and I are still in the process of training (the time difference from here to Italy being a bit of an obstacle at times), but I have learned so much already.

So back to my story.
We began on the first day keeping track of the Sorry fines on a couple of post-its, but of course this wouldn’t work. I also wanted a solution that would be able to be edited in real time by Paul and I, even simultaneously. Google Docs is the simplest way I know of to do this.

So I created a little spreadsheet that has all the actors’ names (and mine, and our director’s), and a column for each day of rehearsal. It totals how much each person owes, and at the bottom displays the total money raised.

You can take a look at it here to see how we’re doing.


July 31, 2009

Entertaining Notions of the 17″ Macbook Pro

I call this: computers,mac — Posted by KP @ 1:01 pm

First, an astronomy lesson.

Our Solar System

mbpsize

As you can see, with the new unibody design, the 17″ Macbook Pro is now slightly smaller than Jupiter.  If you count Saturn’s rings (which also do not fit on airline tray tables), you could even say it’s smaller than Saturn.  Which brings me to the point of this post.  For the first time in my life, I’m letting myself even entertain the notion of maybe for some reason in the future considering one.

I love love love my current 15″ Macbook Pro (I forget it’s official designation, I guess it’s 2nd gen, 2.4gHz Core 2 Duo).  I bought it the day they released the model with the LED backlight.  June 2007.  First of all, when it died on the road this past spring, I had to face the possibility of needing to replace it.  I was not happy about this, in that “oops! my computer’s broken, I guess I need a new one!” kind of way.  The problem is that  Apple in their infinite catering to the non-Pro users of their Pro lineup, have done away with the option of getting the 15″ with a matte screen.  Apparently, despite the fact that the Macbook Pro now comes in three sizes, only the 17″ is now Pro enough to include the features professionals need like a matte screen or Expresscard slot.  The nomenclature is all screwed up now.  It used to be if you wanted an OK laptop you got a Macbook (or an iBook).  If you were a professional, and needed more power or options (which you were willing to pay for), you got a Macbook Pro (or Powerbook).   Now the division between those two things has nothing to do with where the word “Pro” appears in the lineup, it’s inexplicably between the 15″ and 17″, as if all the professionals of the world are giants who only fly first class.  OK, rant done about that.  But it’s the first step in understanding why we’re even having this discussion.

First of all, the timeline.  I’m not shopping for a new computer.  As I said, I love the one I have.  Aside from the fact it completely up-and-died on me an hour before a performance in Phoenix, it’s been otherwise rock solid, and with its new logic board and battery, it’s in many ways only a few months old.  The only feature it’s lacking is the new touchpad that can do zoom gestures, and it still has a separate physical button, which I find just fine.   It’s just over two years old, but lately I’ve started to think long-term about its life.  It just love it so much.  I do not love the current model, so an upgrade essentially would be a downgrade.  But someday, there will be a feature much better than the glass touchpad, that will start to make an upgrade a must-have.  Maybe it will be processing or graphics power.  Maybe built-in GPS (after a year with an iPhone, I go to Google Maps on my laptop and I’m like, “‘Enter starting location.’  Oh that’s easy — here.  What do you mean, you don’t know where here is?!  Do I have to do everything for you!?”) .  Maybe Blu-Ray will become useful for something and Apple will start including it.  Anyway, although I see no reason to upgrade now, my average satisfaction with any computer I’ve ever owned is about three years.  After four years I become willing to sell my body or carry out hits for the mob in order to raise the money necessary for an upgrade.  There’s also the unfortunate possibility my current computer will have another catastrophic failure, get run over by the tour bus, or be stolen, and I will have no choice but to upgrade.

But since in all likelihood its desired retirement is about a year away, I have (quite responsibly, in my opinion) begun to make plans to ensure that whenever that time comes, I will be ready for it.  Mostly that involves having a large pile of cash saved up over a long period of time, rather than having to scrounge it together and go into debt when out of the blue I realize I need to upgrade.  This includes decisions about which jobs I take, what I buy at the supermarket (no Pom juice this week), ways to pocket more of my per diem on the road, and careful consideration of any expenses that are not rent and food.   So I am very proud of myself that hopefully I will be able to afford an upgrade before I even know I want one.

So as I said, this upgrade is still a ways away, I hope, and the current lineup of Macbook Pros is not necessarily a reflection of what my options will be when the time comes.  But instead of looking at the current lineup and praying it changes because I don’t want any of them, I have recently begun to think if I had to make the decision today, maybe the 17″ is an acceptable choice.

Some thoughts:

  • Matte screen. I covered this in my rant. If I go with anything other than the 17″, I will have to settle for the glossy screen. Not cool. I’m not always trying to fit my computer on a tray table. Percentage of the time I spend looking at the screen… hmm, maybe 100%.
  • Screen size Speaking of gaming. The biggest reason I’m thinking about this is because of a discussion I had with someone who also plays Battleground Europe, and happens to be a lighting designer who travels a lot, and also plays on a Macbook Pro, except on a 17″. The thing that makes me miss being at home the most is the screen size — it’s just not the same gaming experience playing on a laptop, largely because everything is so small and it’s hard to aim effectively when everything is compressed to just a couple pixels. A 17″ is not going to compare to a desktop monitor, but that extra 1.6″ and 1920×1200 resolution (which is the same I play at home) would help a lot in easing my frustration with being on the road so much. The larger screen and resolution would also help with the graphics work I do, and make for a more comfortable user experience in general.
  • OK, the size So the thing is big. My primary bag (see review) is designed to accommodate up to a 17″ MBP, so no problem there. The sleeve I bought to go with it would have to go (even if I replaced it, I don’t think sleeve+Macbook would fit in the slot). Some of my other bags are designed for 15″, but at least one of them was really designed for the Powerbook and never quite fit the extra millimeters of the MBP anyway. The 17″ would be more inconvenient to carry around casually (and my casual laptop-and-little-else bag is custom fit for the 15″ and would need to be replaced), but it depends on what the circumstances of my life are. There is no “casual” mode when I’m on tour or doing summer stock anyway. There’s one bag. It has all the stuff in it all the time.
  • A lot of the sacrifices I’m talking about making are adjustments to the idea of never being home. Of course as soon as I invest a lot of money in making that lifestyle more comfortable, then I’ll book a Broadway show and never need to leave New York again. But should I be so unfortunate as to have that happen, at least I could afford to buy a different Macbook Pro every month!
  • 8-hour battery life This is kind of inconceivable to me. I refuse to believe it’s even remotely possible. If the thing lasts for five hours for more than a year, I will still consider it a miracle of science. But at any rate, the 17″ reportedly gets an hour more battery than the 15″ due to the extra room.
  • Extra USB port Not a huge deal, but I could do my gaming without needing a USB hub, which is one less thing to unpack and plug in every day. I would also imagine it would provide slightly better performance than my $5 Radio Shack hub.

So these are the considerations currently floating around in my head. Of course whenever the decision needs to be made the current Apple product lineup will need to be compared, as well as what my job prospects are looking like at the time. I wish I could borrow somebody’s 17″ for like a month. If I had no dignity I should tape blocks of wood to the sides of mine and count how many times a day they piss me off.

UPDATE: I had to go to the Apple Store today, so while there, I took a look at the 17″ which was conveniently next to the 15″. It’s huuuuuge! In both the good way and the bad way. I picked it up a few inches off the table, and it’s noticeably heavier than my current machine. I actually sometimes get nervous that I’ve left my MBP behind when I’m carrying it because I can’t tell it’s in my bag. I don’t expect that would ever happen with the 17″. It’s definitely not small, but I’m not opposed to the idea of getting one.

UPDATE: New Post


July 30, 2009

Apple Releases 2TB Time Capsule. Karen wishes for 320GB hard drive.

I call this: computers,mac,theatre — Posted by KP @ 11:11 am

Today I read this article on TUAW about Apple’s release of a new Time Capsule (router with included hard drive for wireless backups) with a 2TB capacity. Suddenly I feel like a Luddite because the scale of everyday storage capacity is starting to exceed the amount I work with exponentially.

The largest hard drive I own is 160GB. I have three of them. One in my laptop. One that was the backup drive for my laptop and once got knocked on the floor. And the one I bought to replace the one that got knocked on the floor, even though to this day it appears not to have been damaged. One can never be too safe. Of course one could also back up to multiple locations, but one doesn’t have the time for that, or a 2nd enclosure for the other drive, and one is too cheap to get a nice one, and too techno-elitist to get a crappy one.

Anyway. All this to say, I would love to upgrade my laptop drive to a 320GB 7200RPM drive, but I must admit to being a little bit wary of doing the installation myself (my Macbook Pro is out of warranty and Apple Care, so that’s not really a factor, I’m just trying to keep this machine happy for another year or so). However, my computer is now just over two years old. The logic board was replaced four months ago, the battery three months ago. At this point it feels in many ways like a spring chicken again. Which makes the hard drive even more likely to be the thing that fails, though I must say it has always inspired confidence, and doesn’t even make any kind of noise, as one that’s as old as it is, and moves around as much as it does could be expected to make. I check its SMART status every now and then, and it just keeps chugging along. Except it doesn’t chug. As I said, it’s silent. Fujitsu. Damn fine little machine in there. Western Digital tends to be the HD maker I trust, but I think that may need to change for these future drives. I’m impressed.

Yes I said “drives.” In order to back up said drive, I would then need to purchase a second drive at the same time, of 320GB or bigger. So there’s a bit of cash involved beyond just the cost of a single drive at Newegg. The plan currently is that I would only do the installation at home, where I have all my stuff, tools, spare parts, etc. in case I ran into unforeseen complications (I did bring my precision screwdriver kit to Reagle just in case I got inspired).

I’ll see how I feel both technologically and financially when it’s almost time to head home in about three weeks. I also have a phone interview in a few hours for what could potentially be a rent-paying job for the fall, so if I book that I think I can handle a couple hard drives. I actually have been entertaining a number of potential jobs, but hadn’t really thought about it so specifically. It needs to be this one. Momma needs a bigger hard drive!

My concern about the upgrade also is that while I can see that my hard drive is creating the bottleneck in speed, I worry that 7200RPMs will damage my battery life. Which it might. But although I like the freedom at work to sit at different places without having to find an outlet, I do spend most of my time plugged in. Paul has been Super Electricity Assistant this year. Wherever we sit, he’s right on it with a power strip and extension cord. Usually with the power strip gaff taped to the table too, and the cables nicely dressed.

For the external drive I would need more space. Originally when I bought my backup drives it was back in the days B.T.M. (Before Time Machine). Back then you just cloned your drive and that was it. I specifically wanted a drive that was an exact duplicate of the one in my machine, so that in the event of a complete hard drive failure, I could physically swap them and carry on like nothing happened. The way Time Machine works, by keeping multiple backups as far back as your hard drive capacity allows, encourages that your HD be many times the size of the drive it’s backing up for maximum effectiveness. Not to mention it would be nice, since Time Machine does not store its files in a way that’s bootable, to have room for another partition that could be an actual clone. Or even a third partition for storing stuff totally unrelated to backups (like large video files, movies, anything big that doesn’t need to actually be stored on the computer).

The only problem with all of this is that going bigger than 500GB wrecks my whole backup system, because that’s currently the biggest any 2.5″ hard drives come. I like using a laptop drive for my backups. It’s small, light, runs without external power, and serves not only as a backup of my files, but as a backup for the hardware itself. Being on the road all the time, the ability to have a spare hard drive in my computer bag that travels with my laptop 24/7 is a great security blanket.

If I lived at home most of the time, a Time Capsule would be a nice idea for a second, non-portable nightly backup (either an actual Time Capsule hardware, or a hard drive plugged into an Airport Express). I don’t have a Time Capsule, because as is just my luck, I upgraded to the Airport Express “wireless n” router just before the Time Capsule came out. In fact I think I missed the cutoff date to turn it in for an exchange by like 2 days. So needless to say, I really won’t need a new router for some time. And as you can see, I have no idea what I would do with 2TB of storage if I did.


May 30, 2009

Razer Mamba Review

I call this: computers,gaming,pc — Posted by KP @ 3:50 pm

side1My birthday present to myself was the brand new Razer Mamba wireless mouse.  How new?  Well actually I don’t know, because last I heard it was supposed to come out on May 18, and then on like May 3rd I went to the website to see about preordering it, and there it was, “in stock.”  I feel like Razer sends me a promotional email on pretty much a daily basis about some headphones or keyboard or some crap, and yet they never actually bothered to advertise via email or on the front page of their website that pretty much their biggest product release ever was now available for purchase?  Razer mice aren’t always carried in stores, but I did find it on Amazon, which is where I purchased it, since I have an Amazon credit card and some gift certificates to spend on it.

First of all it should be said that the mouse costs $129.  If you can’t see the value of spending that much on a mouse, you can stop reading now if you like, or continue reading for fun if you want, but I understand there are only a certain percentage of people for whom this product is intended.  Those are probably the same people who have a keyboard worth $129, a joystick worth $129, and a set of rudder pedals worth $129.  At that point, why should the mouse — the primary way to interact with most games — be given any less attention?

The big deal about this mouse is that it’s the first time that Razer has released a wireless mouse.  Being the dedicated gaming hardware company that they are, they didn’t believe any wireless mouse could stand up to the needs of serious gaming, so they simply chose not to make one until they thought they could do it right.  So it was with much fanfare that they announced some months back that they thought they had finally come up with something worth doing.

Despite the enormous potential for it to be a disaster, I decided that my lifestyle which will have kept me away from all the comforts of home gaming (big monitor, joystick, pedals, TrackIR, surround sound) for basically a full year deserves to be treated to the finest of the one peripheral I actually get to bring with me — the mouse.  My current mouse of choice was the Razer Deathadder, which is a wired mouse in basically the same shape as the Mamba.  In addition to being wireless, the Mamba also offers two additional buttons, placed kind of strangely in the upper-left corner of the left mouse button.  They’re primarily intended to adjust sensitivity on the fly, but can be configured for anything.

One of the coolest things about the Mamba is that it can convert pretty much instantly from wireless to wired mode and back.  The transmitter has a dock built into it that the mouse can rest on when it’s not being used, and it charges over USB.   If you’re using the mouse and start to run low on the battery, or simply want the reliable performance of a wired mouse, you can pop the cable out of the transmitter and plug it directly into the mouse, and voila! you have a wired mouse.  The delay is only the time it takes for Windows to recognize a mouse being unplugged and then plugged in.  I have found that sometimes it seems to take a little longer for the connection to become stable when switching to wireless, but it’s still about 30 seconds.  I wouldn’t recommend doing it in the middle of a firefight, but it’s easy to do during a quick break from action.

Here are a couple shots that illustrate how the cable is removed:
topwire1

topwireless1
On the underside of the mouse are a few buttons. The latch on the upper-right is the release for the USB cable. On the lower right is the pairing button. I don’t find it generally necessary, but there’s one on the mouse, and one on the transmitter — I guess for when they get confused, or perhaps on a new install. And on the left side is the power switch for the mouse — it’s turned on for wireless mode, and off when charging or when wired.
bottomwire1bottomwireless1

The two little gold dots are the charging connectors.  The mouse docks on the transmitter, kind of like a pedestal, like so:

charging1Of course if you’d rather play than stare at your beautiful mouse, you can just use it wired, and it will charge as you continue playing.

Mamba vs. Deathadder
As you can see in the photos, they are really pretty much the same size. The changes are very subtle, and from what I can tell, all seem to be good adjustments.
img_2761img_2763

I’ve found the adjustment from the Deathadder to be pretty seamless.  The Mamba is a bit heavier because of the battery, but the teflon feet are much smoother, so I don’t notice the weight.  I’m also not the kind of gamer who really has to lift the mouse that often, so it’s not a big thing for me.  Another small difference is in the area of the side buttons.  The buttons themselves have a thin layer of rubber on them, which feels nice, and there is a more generous rubber area below the buttons, which makes it a nice comfortable place to rest your thumb when you don’t want to hit the buttons accidentally.  There’s also a very slight lip towards the back of the mouse which gives a little more grip and control in the thumb area, especially if you need to lift the mouse a lot.  The cord, should you choose to use it, is woven, not rubber like the Deathadder.  A lot of people prefer that because it moves a little more freely.

Aesthetics
Any gaming gear strives to be both functional and sexy.  The Mamba has the standard blue LED style going.  Some people think blue is too cliché, but I don’t mind since it happens to match the lighting on my keyboard and joystick.  The Mamba has less lighting than the Deathadder — just two narrow strips of blue on the mousewheel.  However, the charger/transmitter has blue lighting on the bottom, and around the button on the front of it.

Another good thing is that like most of Razer’s mice, the settings are saved on the mouse itself so when you plug it in on another computer your keymapping and sensitivity settings travel with you.  I believe that requires the drivers to be installed on each machine.  That’s fine with me, since I primarily need it when switching between my home computer and laptop, it’s nice to know that any changes I make to the settings will be up to date when I switch machines.

Rant On
One thing I absolutely hate about Razer is their driver software.  They packaged this thing like it came right out of the dark side of Cupertino (the packaging would take up a post more complex than this one — feel free to google, I’m sure you’ll find lots of unboxing videos and photos).  I swear, I have never seen a product packaged this well from Apple.  And yet their software is absolute crap.  Look at this mess:

mambaNot only is it ugly, I don’t know what shenanigans they have to do to make the edges do that, but whatever it is is totally non-standard and refuses to pop up when I alt-tab out of a game.  Like it can’t overlay against a 3D game or something.  If they had just made it a regular damn window it would be fine!   There’s a lot of shenanigans going on in their software.  Like why is it when I plug in my Deathadder on my Mac, before choosing an OS, it goes backwards? The X axis is reversed! See most fancy mice, when you plug them in to an unknown computer, the computer’s like, “Oh, that’s a mouse.”  And then you install the driver and the computer’s like, “Wow, that’s a really fancy mouse!”  Well with most Razer mice I’ve owned, you plug it in, and the computer’s like “WTF is that?”  And then it does the hardware detection thing, and slowly gets the idea, and the mouse starts working, and then you install the drivers and it starts working well.   But right out of the box, it’s not actually a mouse.  And that pisses me off.  Every time they release a new product I hope they’ll change all this crap and stop acting like, “Hey look at this cool interface we coded in our dorm room — it has jagged edges,” and act like the professional purveyors of pwnage they otherwise present themselves to be.  Whoever designed the packaging for the Mamba needs to bitchslap whoever designs their GUI, and get them on the same page.  Rant off.

Summary
Overall I’m very happy with it. It hasn’t changed my life, but even as a wired mouse it’s a step up from the Deathadder. When gaming I like to have the mouse directly in front of the keyboard, but the wire usually gets in the way when I need to type. This is the biggest change I’ve noticed in usability from being wireless –I only need to worry about where the mouse is, not what the cord is dragging over.


April 24, 2009

My Newfound Love of OmniFocus

I call this: computers,mac,phones — Posted by KP @ 9:40 pm

Among my favorite types of computing applications has always been the organizer/checklist/outline kind of app. Back in my PDA days, the Palm apps Bonsai and ShadowPlan competed for my heart with each new update. When I got a Mac it came with a version of OmniOutliner which I loved a lot, but alas because it was one of those “came-with-the-Mac” things, as soon as I tried to install a new update it broke my fragile registered version, and I was pissed about it and refused to pay for it, so it was gone (I’m currently having that relationship with ComicLife).

The other problem I have with tasks in general is that the default Apple apps have a really stupid way of handling them, or at least stupid to me, growing up with Palm’s big four apps: Datebook, Contacts, To-Dos and Memo. Apple seems to hate to-dos and memos, so much so that after what seems like centuries in technological time, we may soon finally be seeing them sync between iCal, Mail and the iPhone. What, I ask, was the damn point of using them at all until now? First I stopped using tasks, because I could never get them to sync properly between iCal and my Treo. So I just wrote everything as a note. Now as an iPhone user my notes don’t sync with anything (???!!!!WTF??!!), and yet I still write everything as a note. Occasionally I will email that note to myself if I really need it in another format.

So of course I looked to the App Store to see what the third party developers had come up with that might serve as a basic tasks app. I honestly wanted a basic tasks app — a list and a bunch of giant checkboxes. I tried, I really did. But at the time the basic apps were either ugly, overpriced, or reported buggy and lacking basic features. Who knows, since there are no free trials. But the one that sounded the best to me was the most complicated of all — OmniFocus. At $20, it’s one of the more expensive apps in the App Store, but that was back in the day when an average game was $10, so it didn’t seem as expensive to me then as it might now when everything else is 99 cents.

Using OmniFocus brought some kind of order to my life. I use it sometimes for shopping lists, generally more of the long-term stuff, not like “what I need to get from Duane Reade in 3 hours,” which is usually a straight list. I write down things I want to work on with my computer, like reinstalling Parallels, which I forgot to do the last time I was home; and things I need to pack for the next leg of the tour, or what I hope to accomplish during my down time on the next load-in day. I also have a special project for fight call, which is really not what OmniFocus is designed to do, but I tried it anyway. With both Henry V and The Spy, we have a rather extensive fight call, running through distinct sections of fight choreography with different actors. There is a standard order which we have developed for that, and especially because we perform The Spy so infrequently, Nick and I needed a way to keep track of that order and make sure we’ve hit all the proper scenes. So I have a project for Fight Call and a sub-project for each show, and inside each are the actions representing each individual fight and the actors needed. I’m not sure exactly what app Nick uses for his list, but he has it on his Blackberry. This allows both of us to open our phones at the top of fight call and Nick runs the current fight while I can let the actors know who is up next and which scene it is, and make sure they have their weapons ready when it’s their turn. This is sort of a recurring checklist rather than a regular list of tasks, and the blending of the two types of lists is kind of weird to me, but I think OmniFocus can be made useful for things like this, or prop checklists, with a little work.

Anyway, I was very happy with my purchase. Of course it’s designed to sync with the desktop version of the app. That is, if you’re willing to pay $80(!!??!!WTF??!!) for it. It’s kind of all or nothing. There’s not a way to say “Gee I’d like to be able to see and edit my OmniFocus file on a desktop machine” without fully committing to using the software to run your life. I’m not sure exactly what happened to me, I think it was a conversation over drinks with a few of my colleagues about organization and task lists that led me to question if the fact that my technology has failed me, and is driving me closer and closer to having to etch my tasks on tablets, might someday result in me screwing something up. I’ve done OK with this seat-of-the-pants way I’ve been running my life and career with the occasional iCal appointment (with or without an alarm) to remind me to do things, or with a plain-text list in my iPhone’s notepad. But really, how far I have fallen since the days when there was a checklist for home and shopping, and work stuff was laid out in fancy outlines with multi-part projects and due dates and things!

So I decided — by way of writing an action in OmniFocus on my iPhone — that when I got a chance I would download the 14-day trial of OmniFocus desktop. I have been using it for about two days, and so far I am hooked. It’s got an even steeper learning curve than the iPhone version, but the larger screen in some ways makes the relationship between the different views and types of data clearer. I’ve also been watching some of the introductory videos on the website. After that, I discovered a great set of video podcasts called ScreenCastsOnline, which do in-depth screencasts of popular Mac apps. I’ve only watched a couple, but they have tons available that I want to see. They also offer podcast subscriptions in HD or iPhone-compatible sizes. I sense this will be a new favorite podcast of mine. You can get the links to either of these feeds on their website.

In all, I’ve been having fun trying to think of every little thing I need to accomplish and entering it into OmniFocus and categorizing it. I think I’ll be much more efficient using the desktop app since the majority of what I need to accomplish either requires me to be at my computer, or in an environment where my computer is out. This way, the iPhone app, which is a little more cumbersome to use due to the fact that it can’t run in the background, is only really needed when I’m out and about. More thoughts to come as this experiment goes on…

UPDATE: there is now an entire page of the site dedicated to OmniFocus tips!


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