Month: June 2009

The Mac is dead. Long live the Mac!

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

So the next version of Mac OS X (10.6 “Snow Leopard”) is going to be Intel-only. That means those with the older PowerPC-based Macs are now left behind.

This is fine and good. The way Apple needs to move forward, they need to do it with the Intel chips. The old PowerPC chips just aren’t going to cut it any further, so it’s good for Apple to cut the losses.

I do wonder tho. In the keynote speech today Apple said after installing Snow Leopard that you’d regain a lot of disk space. My guess? The lack of the PowerPC portions of the executables. Makes sense to not bother shipping them any more.

These days for me to support PowerPC isn’t really a big deal. I work in higher level languages (C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++, Python, etc.) and I don’t have a lot of endian issues to deal with any more (e.g. we store things in neutral ways, like XML or plist-binary formats). So to deal with PowerPC is merely flipping the switch on the compiler to do ppc codegen. 

But it does mean that I need to buy a new iMac for the family. The old G5 one is certainly a relic now. I’ve always said with tech stuff that you should wait until the last minute to buy… wait until you absolutely must have it and can’t live without it any more for whatever reason, then buy and buy the best you can. Since there’s always something new and better on the horizon (and you know even better is just behind that, ad nauseam), that’s about the best you can do. I’ve put off the iMac purchase for as long as I could, and while I’m not rushing to The Apple Store to buy a new one, I know it’s coming.

Mike Brown and Bushmaster

/ hsoi

Last night I watched the WEC 41 rematch of Mike Brown vs. Urijah Faber. Great show. Some long exciting bouts, some that were over in seconds. I have to say that I wasn’t happy to see Jens Pulver lose and lose so quickly (he won me over as a fan some long time ago), but no question he made a mistake putting his head down and Josh Grispi was right on top of it and locked Jens up for the submission. Great feather in Grispi’s cap, but I really hope Jens doesn’t retire or at least if he does retire from fighting that he stays active as a trainer or something. Very emotional night for him.

Anyway, the point of this posting was watching Mike Brown walk to the ring and seeing Bushmaster Firearms as one of his sponsors.

That’s awesome. 🙂

The Brown/Faber fight was great. I wonder exactly what happened with Faber’s hands, and I can’t help but think that if he had full use of his hands he would have won the fight. I would love to see them have a Brown v. Faber 3 as their next fight.

But again, what tickled me the most was seeing Bushmaster as a sponsor. Nice exposure for them!

WWDC 2009 Keynote Thoughts

/ hsoi / 9 Comments

Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference starts today, and of course the keynote is the big deal the world watches.

I’ve attended WWDC many times in the past, but I intentionally skipped it this year. Saving the company a little money, WWDC has turned into an iPhone luv-fest, the quality of the conference has gone down over the years (yes, I’m an old-timer), it’s packed, the fan-boys are in way too much effect here… it’s just not worth it. I mean, people were lining up outside the convention center at 4:30 AM to be “first in line” for the keynote. Sheesh! I’d rather spend the week being productive and working. Any of the few sessions that’d be worth attending I can catch videos of later.

Oh well, so what came out of the keynote.

  • Updated the entire portable/notebook line. That’s good stuff and looks like they’re moving the whole line towards their new form factor. Good deal. I’d love to buy a new one to get that sort of new battery life.
  • Simple Snow Leopard improvements, like Exposé in the Dock, faster install and recovery of disk space is good. Enhanced “previewing” support directly in the Finder. They are small things, but the devil is always in the details.
  • Chinese input via drawing on the trackpad? That’s interesting. I need to check on how that works and if it works for other “symbolic” languages such as Japanese, Korean, etc..
  • I like Safari 4’s “crash resistance” setup, because without question the highest crashing thing on my Mac is the Flash plugin.
  • That QuickTime has finally become “X” and gotten the much overdue overhaul is great.
  • Grand Central, OpenCL, 64-bit hardware and the OS fully committed to 64-bit, multiple core CPU’s and wicked powerful GPUs, just awesome stuff for a geek like me.
  • While I think MS Exchange is a huge steaming turd, I do know how many organizations are based upon it for all of their electronic communication and organizational needs. So that Apple is embracing this and putting Exchange support directly into the OS is good, both for Apple and for Microsoft.
  • Overall I’m liking that Snow Leopard is going to be what they said it was going to be: refinement. Leopard really brings about a maturing Mac OS X in terms of features and user experience, so now you need to stop adding on features and making the features that you have really solid and stable and refined. Snow Leopard is doing that in a big way. Thing is, as a geek I know it’s good and will move to it. But from the early days of Snow Leopard (as a developer, I’ve had access) I was always curious how Apple was going to make this appeal and be marketed towards consumers because the non-geeks well… I don’t know how it will appeal to them to plunk down the money for the OS upgrade that does a lot of awesome stuff under the hood which then enables us developers to do awesome stuff…. but that doesn’t equate to simple whiz-bang features that you can list on a box or in an advertisement. What’s there to really entice the consumer? 
    • Now I know. Pricing it at $29, or $49 for a family pack. Smart move on Apple’s part. They know there aren’t any whiz-bang flashy features to really sell to consumers, but make it a cheap upgrade that gets you lots of things towards the future. It mainly helps developers out, so now we can write software that use the new technology, the $29 OS upgrade price is a negligent barrier then for people to upgrade the OS to use our softwares. This is all good stuff. Glad Apple did this.
  • Snow Leopard will be available in September.
  • iPhone. Cut/Copy/Paste/Undo. Gosh, such essential parts… about time they’re here. Landscape mode all around, good. Spotlight, neat. Of course more iTunes/Store integration, which is great for them and AT&T.
  • “Tethering”. Nice. But AT&T won’t support it and who is the iPhone carrier? Sheesh. 
  • “Find My iPhone”, only through MobileMe. Way to drum up business! 🙂  I actually think this is pretty cool, but on the surface appears ripe for abuse or other evil things, so hopefully they thought about that (likely so) and it’s a fairly controlled and unabusable experience. But yeah, this is cool.
  • P2P support is good, gamers will like that. They’ll also like the in-app purchasing ability. Hardware accessory support is very good.
  • Push notification. ’bout time.
  • Other little iPhone OS 3.0 things that are good, especially the expanded language support. It’s nice to see the OS coming along, maturing, catching-up.
    • Available June 17.
  • OO… TomTom for iPhone.
  • But 8 iPhone demos. Ugh. I know Apple wants to trot out a lot of people and cool things, but when you’re at the show, sitting in cramped quarters (the chairs are all clamped together, they’re barely wide enough for a child to sit in, then consider most geeks aren’t exactly svelte and it makes for a very uncomfortable 2 hours), man… this is painful. And I’m not there and it’s painful, but from dealing with it in the past I know the pain.
  • iPhone 3GS. Faster, better camera, video, digital compass, voice control, encryption and data wiping. Awesome.
    • $299 for the biggest (32GB) version. Nice.
    • Also, the existing 3G iPhone (8GB) for $99.
    • Available when? Depends: 3G today, 3GS June 19. 
  • There was no “one more thing”, and for that I’m glad. While it was a cute thing in its day, I’m glad it went away. People got way too hyped up and it got ridiculous. Fanboys get all excited prior to the show and work up expectations that there’s no way Apple can live up to, then people moan and grow because their unrealistic expectations weren’t exceeded. So I’m glad they’re doing away with it. In the end, I think the keynote offered some great stuff and really showed where Apple is going. They are focusing on making the OS very solid towards the future. They are making their hardware platforms grow and improve, and working to make both the hardware and the OS work very well together (one of Apple’s strengths since they sell them both… it’s part of what makes a Mac a Mac, vs. using Windows atop any old hardware or using any old hardware with whatever OS). Plus it’s evident iPhone is #1 at Apple, because you know the revenue streams are ridiculous here. Many of the new things demoed during the keynote rang of $$$ for them, carriers, and developers.

While I was watching various live webcast coverages, when Bertrand Serlet was up I found myself reciting all of his quotes with his accent.  Then Scott Forstall came up for iPhone stuff and gosh, I remember when Scott was just a low-level guy at Apple; it’s really neat to see how every year or two he’s climbed further up the ladder there at Apple. That’s quite awesome for him. Then while watching the keynote, near the end, Wife IM’d me and said “one more thing”… Wife doesn’t understand what “one more thing” means in the context of an Apple keynote, it was just a funny coincidence. All this stuff? It was just like I was there, but with a better seat. 🙂

I will say, this is one thing tough about my current job. I have to ship product that works for the existing users, so I often end up being behind the curve. All these new things are great, but I still have to support Tiger users (Mac OS X 10.4). I don’t get to really take advantage of new things for quite some time. Frustrating, but I can see what I can look forward to.

That said, one thing people find hard to believe about me is that while I’ve been an Apple user since I was a kid and have spent a good portion of my life developing software for the Mac, I don’t own an iPod or an iPhone and never have. Main reason? I don’t have a need. But the iPhone has been full of want, and that iPhone 3GS seems like maybe a good time and place to start. In fact, maybe a 3G for Wife and a 3GS for me (Wife isn’t as techno geek).

Cell phones as defensive weapons

/ hsoi

Davis has a good posting about how you can use your cell phone as a defensive weapon.

But of course, it’s not quite what you think. 🙂  Quite a good strategy for what he’s getting at however. It reminds me of those gadgets you can keep in a pocket. You are entering some situation you don’t want to deal with, slip your hand in the pocket and press a button on the gadget. In a couple minutes the gadget will go off, like a cell phone ring or a pager or some such thing and then oh, I’ve got to take this, sorry, gotta end the conversation with you or I need to leave the room to take the call or whatever. Amusing.

Still tho, there is potentially a bit of serious self-defense application here. The key point is being aware of your surroundings.

Funny search term

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

I like to check my blog stats. What can I say, I’m a numbers geek.

Most of the search terms that get to my blog tend to be what I expect: guns, self-defense, martial arts, kuk sool, maybe the various bands from Sunday Metal or music-related posts.

But today I had my first funny search term:

hand placement when making out

I do have some articles that discuss hand placement, but not in relation to making out. I put the search phrase into Google and gave up trying to find my blog in the search results after clicking through a number of pages. So I guess this person was doing a lot of reading for them to get to me. 😉

Now, I find some humor in this; not depreciating humor, but more finding it cute and innocent as I imagine some young awkward teenager behind this (but who knows). I figure the person searching on the term was honestly looking for some advice. Maybe it’s just the old fart in me but… back in my young awkward “first time making out” stages of life I didn’t have any Internet to look things up on (get off my lawn while you’re at it). You just happily and awkwardly stumbled into it all and did whatever you did. Maybe it got too intense for her and she stopped things, or maybe it got too intense for you and you stopped things. And hopefully if you’re wondering about just where to put your hands while making out, yes there will be a stopping point not much further down the road from there! But you just did what you did and dealt with the awkwardness and the joy. If you did get any advice it’d usually be from some friend telling you something like “put on side one of Led Zeppelin IV“.

So to whomever was searching for the answer, if you’re still searching for an answer, the answer is to stop geeking it up by searching for answers online. Go do a more uh… “direct line of searching”. I’m sure they’ll be just as awkward and unsure as you. 🙂

TSRA Legislative Wrap-up

/ hsoi

Here’s the Texas State Rifle Association’s 2009 Legislative Wrap-up.

My feelings:

* Employee Rights

As I’ve stated before, I am not happy how the Voter ID bill held up this and hundreds of other pieces of legislation. 

* Campus Personal Protection

Not happy about this one, but it’s evident there was a majority of support and it only lost out due to process.

* CHL Notification

I’m happy the penalty was removed, but I have no real problem with the requirement as I think it’s good to show your CHL anyway.

* Firearms purchases

I actually was surprised this was even a problem, so it’s good to see this come about.

* DPS Sunset

Good stuff here.

 

So, you win some, you lose some. You pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep on chugging. Regroup for next time. See you in 2011. 🙂

My First Hunt – After

/ hsoi / 18 Comments

Yesterday I went hunting for my first time. In short, it was a good time and I look forward to future hunts!

If you’d like to know more detail, read on!

Continue reading →

Sunday Metal – The Sword

/ hsoi

I stumbled across The Sword a little over a year ago. Austin, Texas might be known as the “Live Music Capitol of the World” but much of the music they stress tends to be of the country and folk variety. Not so much emphasis on heavier music. So when I heard about this heavy band hailing from Austin I thought I’d check it out. Keep Austin Weird and support the locals, right? 🙂

Overall I like The Sword. A Black Sabbath-inspired band, certainly with a lot of homage to the ’70’s but with some thrash inspiration as well. The vocals aren’t the most powerful thing, but it’s hard to imagine The Sword with anything else. Plus how can you not love song titles like “Lament for the Auroch”, “How Heavy This Axe”, “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter”, and my favorite “Fire Lances of the Ancient Hyperzephrians”.

I haven’t had a chance to see them live, even though they are home-town boys. The few Austin shows they’ve had since I discovered them I wasn’t able to make for various reasons. They’ve been on tour with Metallica, which is great for them. Whenever they do come back to Austin, I do want to check them out.

Two videos today. 

“How Heavy This Axe”, so you can get a feel for the band themselves (bell-bottoms and all):

“Fire Lances of the Ancient Hyperzephrians”, just because it’s an interesting concept video.